"
Ivy crawls up the garden wall
Builds a ladder towards the sky
Can't be climbed but whose gonna mind
If I claim it can be done"
~Conor Oberst
I used to think winter was my nemesis. It was an enemy, a catalyst for this dark season that erupts in me. A volcano of depression. And then this morning I saw the moon. A waning gibbous.
It stared at me with pity and asked, “Can I dance with you?”
“Just one more tune, and then I write until I get it right, but yes sir, I was born to dance with you.”
"I would have bet my babies that this simply was not true. But there’s something about this winter that is connecting me to you."
Gracefully we swept the earth, suddenly I realized these memories no longer hurt. This land wasn’t my youth. It was now, a park where we play, where we sled, just dirt.
I thanked him for this peaceful reprieve, and just then he released me.
I wanted one more dance, I knew if we stopped it would hurt. So I called him a motherfucker and said, "You are nothing but a flirt."
I could see the dust that looked like sugar beneath my feat, so pretty you want to eat it. But too pretty you don’t dare. The icey sparkles stare, and know they belong here as much as the moon. And the barren trees look like hands trying to hold me. I stare at the moon, the ice, the trees and ask with such concern, "But do you even know me? Why do you try so hard to hold me."
"Yes, we were there all the way. Yes, we know what you did at 21, and 22."
"You were there at 26 and 27, 30 too?"
They gently nodded, like a mother soothing her baby to bed. It was just then I realized, they have known and know every thought that has ever been in my head. And still, oh what they would do ...for me. Anything.
I don’t deserve to be carried the rest of the way through. I am a humble servant now, that should be me carrying you. Maybe this is why I always feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. Maybe this is why I feel other people’s pain, 3,000 miles away.
Maybe this is why I take her calls when she is losing it in L.A. I remind her there's no winter there, it's snowing here, come home and just play. Rest your heart Maria, just come home and play, just one day.
I see now the winter is not my enemy. Maybe it just longs to dance with me. Emotionally. I always feel strung out in this darkness, not realizing it is detangling me. Like a locket and a chain. I need the winter, to sing these blues, to feel sane.
I am the closest to my true self during winter. I go inward and these thoughts, sometimes more than not seem to hold together. Sometimes they seem so well-constructed and still they splinter, but oh well.
Sometimes they make smile, sometimes it’s more like a pout. But that is part of the process. I don’t care, as long as SOMETHING comes out. I never rule the wasted word OUT. I let me fingers play the keyboard, the way she plays with a piano. Grinding into her bench. It’s a smidge obscene.
In the context of the world, it is innocent.
This world is war-torn and rape and bombs. It's missing his terms of endermeants, it is a lover passing on. It's the things we sacrifice because we're always for want. And it troubles me during winter because me naked and barren, in an empty hole with family, is still never for want.
Save for the lover passing on.
I don't understand most people, so I listen to my sad songs.
I don't want what you have, and I wonder when enough will be enough. How much room in our lives, it's all cluttered with stuff. It's never enough. It's never enough. It's never enough. Until we are no more. I'd rather return the thing and put a memory in a drawer
4 a.m. out my window staring, swearing I was waiting for June. But June was never there, it's always just me and my suitor the moon.
So I give in. He doesn't leave me when it's dark. He understand and feels the same way as me. I will get throughthis season by letting him dance with me. And I will give it my best, give it all of me. Anything, anything, until it comes out of me.
Maybe I type and talk the way the moon dances with me. Tried to explain it to an audience once, when it comes, it comes with an urgency.
It comes in cycles with the moon, these phases of creativity. And sometimes I must wait patiently, despite the pain. With this thought a sensation came over me like happy chills, hugs from beyond, I could feel the winter dancing with me before the snow, when it was just rain.
We’ve been dancing all along. Our creativity dancing game. But it only comes in the wee hours of the morning, when no one knows my name. I don't want to be recognized, not by body or by hair. I just want the anonymous words to whisper through the air...to someone who desperately needs to hear.
This is my creative season. It’s the season of emotional pain. But that’s what you get for being a writer. No one promised me SANE. That’s what you get for writing a book. You get emotions and winter, tears like cold rain.
All of those and one dirty look. Old memories, old friends. Whatever fall lent me, perhaps the winter took.
I will find it here. I will stay here and keep on digging, if not dancing.
I let go of the people who tell me it can never be won. The angels told me-there is something the universe is trying to pull out of me, until it does, I am never done.
"Mr. Moon, would you like to dance with me again. Please sir, just one more. Just one."
Recent Comments