The time that ticks past

My first shopping adventure of the semester... in which Caiti, Paul, and I shared the same cart. Never again.

Petit Jean hike

Lake Sylvia with my (housemate's) dog, Abby

My childhood self's favorite band, Trout Fishing in America, playing on the 4 month anniversary of my mother's death

My research project... death and grief in American culture. I will be funeral crashing and interviewing people who lost loved ones

First of many fires in my backyard

I was 4 when I listened to the waterfall sounds of the shower as my mom got ready for work before sunrise. The day I found out the cancer came back, I sat on top of a waterfall. 3 months after she died I sat behind one. What will I do if the water ever stops flowing?

Crumbles.

Should we conquer ourselves? Is that what I'm trying to do here?


My life shattered, my love, my soul, all flaked off into tiny shards and shattered as it burst silently, massively. The world has burst with me, though, it seems. And my car, my ever-trusty steed, Ruby, my refuge and my savior--the one who helps me run away (well that's what people say I do, anyway)–she was shattered too the other day. And a woman in Kroger came and prayed for me but didn't know a thing and so she prayed for only one nice thing and left the rest to suffer.

I have realized how much my life-whatever it is-can move about here. Things no longer feel stagnant, I am constantly going and creating. My housemate would tell you I am a rare sight in our home, especially without friends about. But frequently it halts still. As though I'm moving so fast and then I hit the immovable, impenetrable wall and it knocks the fucking wind out of me and I fall down for a little while until I play with the dog and then start chuggin' along again I guess.

But even this movement is quivering as it can see the end so clearly, this time I know the exact day when things will crumble so at least I can worry accordingly.

My closet wall serves as a punching bag and I used it the day after my car windows were bashed in and broken and when my current heartbreaker infiltrated my home. I ran a lot too, wherever my feet could find ground until my little world was covered in ice and then the whole town was littered with glass shards–my inner happenings spread outward, how strange to see such broken reflection.

One of the last pictures on my mother's camera.

No attempt at theft, just frustration, it seems.

How could I have ever believed I knew so much?

An old letter, and death to it all, with light, does it bring.

Subject: I wrote poor lee

9/8/13

Dear dear,

            I was lying outside on the ground Friday afternoon, soaking in as much of the remaining warmth of the day as I could with my eyes closed and resting when I heard a rustling. I opened my eyes just in time to see all of the trees disperse! into tiny particles, or at least that’s what it looked like. Anyway, they were small bugs that were clutched together, formed into these giant shapes and colors and textures… becoming the actual trees, it was no imitation. Turns out trees were made up of these bugs all along! I am not sure if they were all the same kind of bug since, of course, each one was so minutely different–there were both brown bugs and green bugs all on the same tree, some yellow too, or red, black. But then there were different types of “trees,” so even with the vast array of differences within one species of tree, there were innumerable shifts and changes between the bugs of one tree and the bugs of another.

            Oh but when they took flight and all mingled in the air, these billions of trees were floating and flying! Even if they did not keep the form of the trunk or the leaf, they held the same essence, you could still see the grandeur of these beings… these bugs, or… or trees–they became one in the same.  I was drawn to the sight and did not notice that half an hour had passed since I began staring, but now they were gone from my point of view and I finally took a breathe, looked around, and everything was empty.

            First, I was amazed that no one else was around… no one had seemed to notice. A boy biked past as if nothing had changed, but perhaps we get used to that. There is a change in every moment and we eventually get used to gluing ourselves to some idea of stableness, either in the future or the past. Maybe that was why I noticed. I was finally resting, in the present, nowhere else. Feeling how the wind and sun changed placement and direction, the atmosphere becoming and being encompassed. (Can you be truly present with someone else? Can you be truly present without experiencing the world through yourself? Is objectivity real at all? Is grass objective? That’s silly, grass doesn’t even have a sense of such things.) But how could I be the only one to feel the emptiness? The trees, they were no more, at least not that I could see. They had flown away.

            Somehow, in that moment, I felt abandoned. A greater loss, I thought, that I had felt such awe just a moment ago. If one day I just walked outside and there were no more trees, would it feel better or worse? It was dark now, and a few stars struggled to shine against Conway’s light. I admired their persistence. I rolled up my blanket from the ground when all of a sudden a star fell, all the way to my feet! What a day. Suddenly, though, everything turned to light, it wasn’t yellow like the sun, just bright and empty like a hole. Who knew a hole could blind you? It seeped across the ground from the fallen star. I looked up out of fear of falling just to see that a blackness was covering everything above my feet. But again, this was not a black like night, but instead an emptiness of a different sort–one that did not open around you, but closed. That is when I fell. If it was up or down I could not say. But I panicked and struggled, waved my arms about and jerked my body here and there until I tired and finally became calm. That is when I realized that even if I was falling, I was never going to hit anything, there would be no impact and so there was no reason to even label the very thing as falling… instead it was just being. Although, I was barely being by then anyway as my body seemed to have disappeared too… perhaps the black and the light were too encompassing for me to see it, but it began to feel as though I didn’t even exist outside of my thoughts. Did the star eat the world? Am I alone? Is this God? It was. “It,” my thoughts finally left, and my feelings… this sense of my, “I” became everything (in turn, nothing). Although “my” feelings were gone “I” could still sense. Not actions or reactions but the wholeness and emptiness simultaneously. It was not scary or sad, it was not. That is when I became. I died to live. I died and became alive. I became alive to die. But death didn’t exist, and neither did alive. And there was no. more. Language.

 My mother is in the hospital for things. Manageable, “treatable” things, but things none-the-less. I think it is starting soon.

 I will reiterate three things: I miss you… maybe not in my movements anymore but inside me somewhere deep, I would say my heart but that seems too cliché and, being a hipster, I must rebel from such things. I love you…it seems weird to type it like this, as if the typing renders it meaningless but I can’t be with you, I can’t love on you, I cannot show you… loving from afar is very different and very strange. So I type it, and it feels like it is nothing, because it is, they’re just 01001101s, but I trust you know, and I know you know, so I should not fret.  I am glad you are far away for this, for my mother’s end… I can feel your support and yet cannot rely too much. I believe it will help me maintain strength, and not drain yours either.

 With all the force of the binary code, I send my love electronically, universally.

You amaze me, you help me amaze me, you amaze, ahhh maze.

 PS. Sorry this is so garrulous, effusive. Do you have an address?