gemini?

yesterday I ran in pink running shorts and a fluorescent yellow Key West "smile mon" t-shirt. it was 48 degrees and sprinkling when i walked the long way to my car after work. i wanted to walk in the rain all night, but there was no one to do that with, and silly as it sounds even to me, i wanted company.

this morning the 2363 driveway is covered in sand-textured snow. i'm surprised the handle didn't come off when i tried to open the passenger door on my car. ice!

if it was warmer, nicer, brighter out today and the road didn't look treacherous through the window in the door from my floor-bed, i would run, far.

if tomorrow wasn't supposed to be the same as today i would take my day off and head somewhere, anywhere in my car. somewhere, anywhere. it's all the same. everywhere i go i seem to find something worth having and something i don't want at all.

i'm trying hard these days to be optimistic. i'm trying hard to be here. for awhile it didnt feel like trying at all. now, 9 weeks later, i'm trying.

money and working solely for it make me sick. but my debt makes me sicker. so i work on.

i want mountains and endless trails. i want clear air, my tent, some hiking poles and a backpack. i want to sit by a fire completely alone, listening to the sporadic crackling and knowing that while it may not be "normal", there doesn't seem to be much that's more right for me. at least right now. how is it that this life, this normal life, is so difficult for me? very little about it makes sense to me. what if we have it all completely wrong. what if we've built this thing and called it life and so we all subscribe to it and believe that any diversion from this norm we've created is somehow wrong or strange or irresponsible. there, i've said it. and i want to say something else-

i'm not irresponsible. in fact, maybe i'm the most responsible of any of us. why? because i know who i am while recognizing that i have no idea what i'm capable of, i know what i want and that sometimes i'm clueless as to how to help myself, and i know what makes me come alive and am willing to chase fervently after those things. because i'm unwilling to compromise who i am in order to appease people around me with a narrow scope saying that real life can only look a certain way. because even when i'm working 50 hours a week i go for ten mile runs, read books that make me cry, spend hours talking to a friend about how messed up i am and how i really want to change but just the thought of the effort it will take/is taking exhausts me. maybe the irresponsible are the ones who have houses and families and excellent jobs but rarely take a moment to analyze or work on their own person, or to do something or find something that makes them truly happy, or to be aware of a world outside their own.

i say this realizing that all my life i've depended on people with solid jobs and solid lifestyles. i don't at all think the wandering life is ideal or better or "the way" or any of that. it's not. but it's incredibly disrespected by a lot of people. it's seen as lazy, avoidance, unfit, unsuitable, not really living. they say when i'm 70 and still have to work because i don't have any retirement that i'll wish i had done something with my life. maybe i will. or maybe i'll never stop doing something with my life. maybe when i'm 70 i'll have my tent in the woods and i'll grow vegetables and be contented. or maybe i'll be going strong, speaking life into beautiful people in developing nations or messed up cities who have no one else to believe for them, who've been told they're a waste and that their lives are somehow unfit.

we create our own ideals. i've decided that much for sure. this "ideal" life of working everyday doing something i could care less about so i have money in the bank and cash in my wallet and new stuff piling up in my closet, it doesn't do much for me. i prefer my $1 turnips from the market to all the steak in a steakhouse. (truly!) i prefer mountain air to mall air and ocean water to chlorine. i prefer to bathe in a lake than a shower, prefer to smell like smoke than perfume.

and within this same body is a girl who glows when she puts on skinny jeans, pulls on her black leather boots, and straightens her hair. she takes mink coats for rich ladies and serves bloody mary's and mimosa's at artistic soiree's on saturdays. she smiles politely, jokes properly, quietly refills the shrimp coctail, and knows she is captivating.

it's the same girl who can no longer sleep in a bed, eats tuna out of the can for the protein, and could at any moment decide to head out.

Good Stuffs.

I'm sitting in my office in the RTS mechanics shop eating hummus and pretzels. I very well could be the first person to walk a tupperware packed to the brim with home-made hummus into this building.

Yesterday I went for a run simply to be in the sun. I started out aggitated and ended calm. That's why I run.

I took a hot shower, put on my sweatpants, made a half a pot of coffee, opened every blind in the house, and lit some incense. Music seemed to be the next step. I fiddled and faddles with the DVD player but Jason Upton would not sing. Five minutes later I looked at the window of light illuminating the couch and decided maybe this was exactly what I needed, exactly what I'd been avoiding for months- a completely quiet house with nothing to distract me from my self. I crawled onto the couch and sat in that section of sun. It warmed me completely and instantly. I sat there for almost two hours, drinking coffee, writing notes, thinking.
coffee brewing, incense burning, books and notebooks laying open around me..

THAT'S what I've been missing in my life. That's what I crave.

Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Truman Capote:

I've read that past and future are a spiral, one coil containing the next and predicting its theme. Perhaps this is so; but my own life has seemed to me more a series of closed circles, rings that do not evolve with the freedom of a spiral: for me to get from one to the other has meant a leap, not a glide. What weakens me is the lull between, the wait before I know where to jump.

And then there's the sustenance:

Blessed is the man who listens to me,
watching daily at my doors,
waiting at my doorway.
For whoever finds me, finds life
and receives favor from the LORD.

-Proverbs 8

Madonna wrote a book

called The English Roses.

I read it on the hardwood floor of one of my dearest friends apartments while drinking coffee out of a clay mug that she made. It didn't have a handle.

She left for work before 7 and I left shortly after, but first I sat in the calm of the morning in a home I had entered only hours before surrounded by her - books, scarves, photographs. I balanced perfectly on an imperceptible line distinguishing hers from mine.
I think that's home.

Marilyn Monroe watched me. I'm quite sure she approved.

PART-AY!

How do I begin, other than to say:

I'm back (by popular demand, ahem KERRI!).

This has been my life. Every person with whom I've partaken of this thing called living, every place I've called home whether in passing or for a time, every mile I've run both alone and in company, every mountain I've summited be it for a view or blanket of gray, every bag I've packed with things I've needed and things I've wanted, every manhatten I've sipped and every cigar I've smoked, every batch of granola I've baked, every ridiculous story of being stuck in stairwells and sleeping in garages and eating out of coconuts. Every Milky Way seen from every swamp, forest and sand-dune previously unnoticed on a map...
That collision point of insignificance and significance that I find on the shore of the ocean- the shore that I called home as I unrolled my sleeping bag, the same shore that stretched me to liberation at the tip of Florida; I am changed... and the Atlantic is home.
The way the air moves at the highest point of a peak. My heart moved too.
shifts and swirls and aches and calm.
(become still enough for long enough; there is always calm).
My soul sings for the children playing in the firehydrants
and for the mornings and the nights with my only friend the sky.

My confession:
I've failed-
my God and my self.
But this is life. and I'll die knowing I lived. I took chances. I let my mind and my soul and my spirit be challenged. I believed what I believed because I tested, tried, and experienced it, not because someone told me I should or because I modeled my life after and adopted the many mindsets of a man.

I've made mistakes, a lot of them. Somewhere in the past 2 years of meeting people and discovering the sense and meaning of place, I became someone I don't want to be. My open mind opened itself to the point of confusion and frustration and I forgot that self-denial was an option. In some ways I know there's truth in the thought that perhaps I'm better now than I was two years ago. The things I've seen that have sent me to the place of deep disatisfaction and misunderstanding are also the things that have promised me that life is a whole lot deeper than most of us are living.

I have much to say. I have thoughts on people- on relationships, individualism, purpose. I have thoughts on places- on being here and being everywhere and finding a definition for home.

I have thoughts on dreadlocks and business suits, on dirty needles and breakfast thursday.

I have thoughts on the FACT that I have the most incredible, selfless, true friends imaginable. They say to me "I don't care if this offends you," and I receive.

I have hope that tomorrow I will find life in a new way.

For right now my soul aches. It's been aching for days. This has been my life. Every moment I can't take back, every moment I wish would linger..

This is my life.
I've lived this.

(absorb that, oh my soul...)

*to all who came to celebrate today, thank you. I am at rest and on edge as I lay here in my floor-bed. you make me want to be better.. you crazy Lovers, you!*

extra Ginger in that Tea, please.

To know something and to realize something are different things. I've known that I've changed, but today I realized how much. It happened slowly over the course of the two years since I graduated from college. When it happens like that it's easy not to notice.

I'm an ant in a jar in a mall. I eat crackers out of a coconut shell (it makes sense to me). This tiny, uninsulated room is excessive. I can't find much that's healthy about joining a "health club". When the sun comes out I go for a run because I need sun, and I can't get enough air.

I feel calm and more beautiful than I've ever felt. Perhaps it's the merlot, though I felt this way at 6am as well. This state of no longer being a slave to my body or a result of my mind lets me look out a cafe window and see and feel a town for what it is.

Some days I want to be a musician - to spend all day writing lyrics about life the way I've bore witness to it, the way it's made my heart lurch beat jitter jump sway and stay. Other days I want to be a bartender dressed in black, sexy and sleek and simple. Most every day I want to pick up a dirty needle off a dirty street and look over my shoulder as I walk from Camden to Phily. Always I want to believe in glory, and when I see the way the sun sets on a forest in winter, the way the browns and whites become bronze and gold and the mountains disappear from top to bottom, I do.

My heals hurt from my hiking shoes. But if you point to a peak I'll walk with you to the top. Home is somewhere up there, and though this spirit be prone to wander, it knows when it's home.

Productive Bummery

Dostoyevsky
Peace on Earth Christmas Cards
Burnt Granola (grateful birds)
Tie Dye (purple fingers, green fingers)
Yoga on the hardwood floor
Keeping the fire burning.
That journal she threw up on
(yeah.)
Becoming something without doing anything.

Remember how music knows you. Remember that you can run for hours before growing weary. Remember there are warmer places, higher places, emptier places.
Remember that both fire and ice can be made.
Remember how beautiful you are covered in mud.

The trees are orange in winter as the sun goes down.

What you've done isn't who you are. You're going to have to go a bit deeper for that.

fresh batteries in my mag

I daresay I've become a bit ragged.
Sometimes I walk into Java's in the ROC and see ragged people, but I'm not really sure how ragged they are because see, I think some people want to be ragged, and that's not really very ragged at all. After three months of living out of a car followed by ten months of living out of a "red bag", I am ragged. I just am; a product of the last eleven months. It's natural and right, and even now that I have a closet bursting with clothes, most of which are too big, I wear the same ones until I'm laying in bed thinking "what's that smell" night after night until finally (perhaps today) I decide it's time to wash some things. (note: I'm not very proud of this, I'm just not re-adapting very easily to the world of so much stuff.) The kitchen cabinets, basement cabinets, and two refridgerator/freezers in my parents house are bursting with food but all I seem to go for is the homemade grainy bread, the rice, the beans, the bananas, and the granola. I don't desire anything else which is strange, even to me. (although there was this white chocolatey pretzel stuff on the counter this morning of which I admit to thoroughly enjoying, knowing that my digestive system will rebuke me later.)
I bought a car, something that makes most people super excited. I'm not very excited. Except that now I can go anywhere at anytime, which I'm not convinced is actually good for me right now as I need to learn how to be still and quiet again. It's coming back to me rather quickly, but after ten months of having to fight for quiet, not having my own space, working sometimes upwards of 55 hour weeks and always having something new to explore, it's strangely different being in a familiar place with familiar people and all the space and time I could want. I have this car, but it doesn't excite me. When I look at it I see two thing: a potential home and a hunk of metal that will in the long-run eat up my bank account and make my brain hurt.
I drink my coffee black.
One week we didn't have sugar. Then we ran out of milk.
The show must go on.

mushrooms in the forest.

I walked to my piano shack tonight. It was dark and cold and wonderful.
I can't believe how easy it is to sing my soul, scratchy throat and all; when something's part of you, it's part of you. (I wondered what it would be like after so many months without.)

I needed to wander tonight. By foot. So I followed the river through the woods until I reached the creek, which I followed to the railroad tracks, which I followed to my driveway, which I followed home. I needed the air, the open space. I put my flashlight in my pocket. I needed the darkness.

I ate granola out of the plastic tub and drank tea out of my mug.

I decided that to be home is to run roads I've never run, because I can.
I decided that to be home is to make a shining, smooth table out of a slab of a log with dad, dozens of biscotti with mom.
I decided that to be home is to stop dead in my tracks and listen to the wind, the trees, the silence.

To be home is to connect.

And freedom has nothing to do with disconnect.

Roam.

After exactly one year of roaming the United States, staying in no one place for more than six weeks, I have an announcement:

The adventurer within me is not going anywhere. It is still there. I don't want to settle down. I don't want to live a "normal" life. I'm not tired of traveling. I'm not tired of new things. I'm antsy and anxious and restless as ever.

I think I was made to roam.
I think I was made to experience.
I think I was made to be free.

And I think that's okay.

(coming soon: an overview of who the heck I am right now!)

Cyprus Knees!

It's been a good amount of time since I last wrote. What's transpired as time has passed, becoming so very fluid while my thoughts have become firm and my inner self tastes freedom more and more each day..

The last couple weeks in Camden pressed that city inescapably into my heart. I am filled with heaviness and love as I write this now, five weeks after driving away with a screams reverberating within me.

Her leaning into him, shooting into his back outside McDonald's as kids rolled by on bikes and people walked by without a second glance. The emptiness and eerie silence of 500 State the night we drove home to find our house taped off, blood stains from our neighbor's murdered body darkening the steps next door. Standing on the front steps listening to people chat, watching people walk by, all as normal the morning after. That 13 year old boys grinning face looking up at me, "so how do you like Camden now?"

It's the most messed up place I've ever been.

And the service day in the park that had been closed for weeks because of a murder.. the 70 community members who showed up to help clean up the park, their park. The movie night in said park that night.. over a hundred locals showing up to watch Avatar on a blow-up screen with a blasting sound system - too much water-ice.. so much popcorn.. so many people, together in a city with no reason to trust anyone at anytime.

I'll remember the AHEC van, surveying individuals about their thoughts on needle drop-boxes and a needle exchange system.

I can't write about every person, just as there's no way to dive in and go through everything I saw, heard, experienced, felt. I feel I'm doing an incredible injustice to the city as a whole by not telling every story and taking the time to relive it all, but I don't think I'm ready to right now.

Messed up and beautiful. Dead and hopeful. I've never been anyplace so cold and felt so okay. Camden, you certainly made an impression on me.

I spent a week in bed, sick and tired and unable to do anything (something I've also never experienced before). Why, I'm not entirely sure, except that Camden depleted me.

But to switch gears, what's happened since is wonderful wonderful wonderful! I'm living in Virginia Beach, VA in a tiny house three miles from the Atlantic Ocean..

Falling asleep to crashing waves and waking up sandy and happy with the birds and the rising sun will never get old. Just as the constant strumming of guitars and the positive, motivated atmosphere didn't take too long to get used to.

I'm on this brand new composite team for this, my final, round. In two days I begin training for my Wildland Firefighting "Red Card". As for right now, I'm happy. Very happy.

And I walk barefoot down the street in the morning.

And I read Hesse and Kerouac and Dostoevsky, and Whitman.

And I play pianos in tiny churches with people I met only two weeks before (but I've known them forever).

And I talk life with people who make me want to be more alive.

And I feel *sigh* I feel like me.

And that's big.

(oh yeah, and about that photo.. I am officially a dumpster diver.)