Genesis

 Where do you find yourself in telling a story? You can start at the end but they may wonder how it has all commenced. Certainly, the middle is a place to consider but the confusion will ensue, without doubt. The beginning is fundamental. I find origins to be absolute. Vital. You might pursue the path that is to know me but never could you accomplish this absent of knowing my history. I want to understand you so I ask where you were born. Your earliest recollection. First shared glance of friendship or fear. Birth is the beginning of everything. It is what makes us. Seldom, do we start anywhere other than it. The starting line is famous. It breathes room to build upon. Steps forward in time feel neat when you can draw back to a time, place, a moment. If you were to meet me and inquire nothing of the other women that I have been, you would never know me in all of my capacity. You could learn from here on out. You may come to know the woman I will be down the road we walk but all previous parts of me would turn over in mystique. Look at me from the start. To have someone walk with me through every correlating step until common ground arrives. This is the same journey I crave in knowing someone. Yearning to reach out for the past versions of you so I may better hold the you that you are now. Understanding is having the patience and love to walk through moments you weren't there for. Maybe if I could witness my own birth, I could see things within myself that I am blind to now. The thought of looking my infant self in the face...maybe if I could achieve that, I would know why she feels so far away from me sometimes. It is all in the start. 

I found this entry a few nights ago, buried amongst other writings. It was one of the last things I wrote before leaving home.

everything is flying past me now

i used to pray for the pace to liven up

i'm yelling out "wait up!"

let me just taste this

can i?

allow me to dance here

slow

i want to be

to be nothing

nothing but being

deep in the hollowest parts of myself

i see places preparing themselves

i am carving my way through

impossibilities 

remember every initiation period 

do not forget how much heart it took to get here

say thank you 

pause

our mouths bow in complete recognition 

total devotion

you are a saint. 

I wanted just a minor part

In the Italian restaurant I meditated on the thought that an overwhelming, all-consuming mass of writers have come before me. A feeling of being last in line to something arises in my mind. So many humans have articulated and sculpted their experience into coherent linguistics and stories. My own spirit has absorbed and adopted these poems. These convictions of writers before me. Paralyzing. In front of my pen, paper, and pasta, I asked myself if there is anything I have to say that would not be counted as a reiteration. 

Does an original thought exist anymore? Are we regurgitating each other's own, 

"I have loved you. I have had to deal with it"

?

My conclusions were just as misdrawn as the genesis of my thought. In this instance, I doubted myself as a writer. Assuming that a sentence must be birthed, fresh, and unheard of to be digested, validated, and loved. No. We are all feeling each other's suffering when we read. We remember humanity. It has been dead for so long. But when we read, it's real and enflamed with devotion. The thoughts of those before me only compel me to exile my own wonderings onto a page. Even if my own word is not new. It is my word. 

muscles

i have maintained my innocence i sing like an angel i deserve love and to be loved even when i can't love myself i love my past versions of myself i love god i love you god i love you thank you i know you've walked every road alongside me i believe in you because i believe in me i believe in love i believe in nature and in the unfolding i believe in my pain and it was real and it is real right now for me tonight i still sting i still ache in my knees when i think about the face of my father i still keep going i love you i love you i have been a shell but the sea foam sang the tide in and i was filled with muscle and vitality and pearls once again and i have remembered my reason for going and getting up and still smiling at strangers every day and my child self is dreaming in her yellow-sheeted bed about just how tall she'll stand at twenty-one i love her i love her i love god that little girl was god she didn't even know no one told her 

Totality

 My conclusion this week is that I might just be the sum of all parts. From the mountaintop, the city looks like this quaint ecosystem of car noises, bikes, laughter, and warmth. I look down on it all with a feeling that I am not separate from it. That feels good. That feels right. That feels like what I wanted.

Sometimes, I fear that I will be unhappy when I am old. To morph from endlessly inspired, romantic and inexperienced poet to cynic... death be the more suitable option. Can I feel this connectedness forever? Does the pursuit of forcing it to linger destroy what joy froths there?

My aim is unclear. Maybe I am only becoming aware of what feeling to chase rather than how many digits I want to see on a paycheck. Is the point of working to enjoy what you do or to make enough so that you may go forth and enjoy life outside of the cubicle? There is a purpose in me. In all of this. All of this is me. I won't grow unhappy. I've tossed the bitter seed. I've casted my lonely parts away. Maybe I wince at the thought that I've exiled parts of me but maybe it was vital.

Happiness is buried in the pursuit of it. Don't smother it. Let it notice you first. Flirt with it. Give it the eyes. Take it by the hand. See love's palms. Kiss them like your lover's collar bones.