tampopo

my journey of late has been strumming the guitar recklessly while learning to bend my voice around chords and words. here's the latest stepping stone along that path, blending well with the getting to one's roots and appreciating what one has, even if others may not...

~❁~❁~❁ tampopo (daisy) ❁~❁~❁~

went to the park, picked a daisy
put it on her doorstep
got a text, said i’m lazy
is one all i get?

next day, rode to her house
knocked on her front door
but instead of two daisies
figured i’d best bring her four

she just shook her head
and said, ‘they’re half dead’

went to the park, picked a daisy
put it in a flower pot
watched it bloom, it did faze me
the beauty in what i’ve got

i just nodded my head
it’s a shame, she’s half dead

~❁~❁~❁~❁~❁~❁~❁~❁~❁~❁~❁~

the loneliness is just a part

i hear some people can appreciate the good because they just know 'the good'. but i don't know anyone like that. the people i know who truly appreciate love, beauty, and friendships have all fucked up royally (burned bridges, been an ass, and so on) or have been fucked over (sometimes we put ourselves in those situations, sometimes they just happen), but come out of it for the better, with wisdom and a truer eye. so when i claim the words below aren't dreary, i'm thinking of that for selfish reasons: that often our lives have this similar thread, and how lucky it is when you come out wanting to be a bit more to someone else.

putting words out and admitting our weaknesses is far from easy. with all the heartache, in all the depths, much as the shaking of my chest when i felt my heart had just been pulled from it: those moments feel like the end of the world. (and really, in heartbreak, will it ever feel unlike that? and if it does, does that mean i've lost my heart, or a piece of it?) yet once we surface, do we dive back into the same dark waters? or do we improve our stroke and find a better space (in our heads or in our hearts) to cast our net? the thing that perhaps oddly makes me smile in all of this is the self-realization that this part is a work in progress. yeah, yeah, we're all works in progress. but knowing specifically what you want to avoid and what you just flat out want, that's a good thing when you get there, even if  that realization came at the expense of some truly shitty times. part of why i blog is that i want to be true to becoming less selfish, giving more of myself. my own therapy. it is why i had a roommate for half a year last and continue to host couch-surfers, to learn to share my space. it is why i had two open relationships the year prior, to work on my jealousy and insecurity, however paradoxical that may sound. i force myself to deal with things in which i am not comfortable. i cannot say others can force me there. but if self-imposed, i go in knowing i will come out better for it.

***

now, if we could just skip that whole dreary fucked up tunnel-vision end-of-love/life ditch from which we eventually emerge feeling like we and our hearts have just been pummeled to near death, if we could just have some soundtrack playing right at that moment when despair starts to descend ~ a song warding off gut-wrenching emotion and instead slapping us with perspective ~ maybe we'd all wake up just a bit sooner. this song, the loneliness, is like that for me, with its optimism, however slightly jaded, and this blog, my scream:

in the loneliness

oh, the loneliness

and the scream to prove

to everyone that i exist

and the scream to bring

the blood to the front of my face again

...

crescent bend

although this northwest sogginess has been just a few spells so far since summer came to a close, it's already into me a bit more than usual. maybe it's having just spent much of the end of it in the heat of austin and san antonio and my hometown in between. the heat kept me indoors much of the time, but the mornings and the sun invigorated me more than i've felt in some time. they even spurred me on to start running, something i've never found enjoyable. yet there i was, less than two weeks into my five week stay, looking for something to keep me tidy while my diet shifted slightly more towards the (much) heavier local fare. oddly, what ignited much of this new-found addiction were these old timers in the bar a stone's throw from my mom's front door. as they talked of this nature park not too far from us, i sat a bit in disbelief, considering this town of thousands ~ once just over five hundred when i grew up there ~ would be the last place i'd suspect such a thing. or that some old timers would be talking of or turn me on to such.

so i checked it out ~ only after stubbornly running a lesser route along the old stretch of highway, now all but abandoned as a through-fare since its rerouting ~ and indeed found an oasis, with over a hundred species of birds and the cibolo creek running through, with water even despite the severe drought. (i later learned it's the lucky recipient of reclaimed water overflow, and when i learned that, i recall fondly smirking and pausing on the word 'reclaimed' as i stood on texas soil, as it's not something i nor others often think when considering texas. hell, i hated the place when i fled it to come to the pacific northwest fifteen years ago.) the running trail is one of caliche that gives just enough to be easier on the knees than asphalt. so here's where these things conspired and i took up running, just in august. with the sun warming me in the mid-morning and sweat dripping from shirtless me, a feeling today i am missing enough that i booked my next flight home, desirous of my oasis. i may have to wait a bit later in the day, but even in december, i'm sure to find some sunny, if slightly cooler, days there. and hear the sound of caliche underfoot.

***

murakami's memoir, 'what i talk about when i talk about running' ~ which i am about to finish ~ has only given me more fuel to run. but really, it's the solace running gives, with headphones on and just me and my challenge. and my thoughts. i've found the latter tend to flow a bit as the sun and movement loosens not just my limbs and muscles and expands not just my heart and lungs, but my mind. it's been an interesting journey to come to love something i thought i never would.

the train

tonite, the train whistle's blowing outside somewhere down the line, and its echo is somehow finding my open window. i know the tracks around here, and this one sounds a bit away to the west. the echo is a tricky thing, though, and if i didn't know the track and where the train typically blows its whistle, i'd likely think it much farther south. as it is, the whistle reminds me of my grandmother's house in cibolo, before she got married in '80 and moved to wallis, near houston. in the summertime, i'd often stay there with her. at night, the light from the fluorescent security light in her backyard would stream in through the blinds, illuminating the living room with this strange glow that always made me a bit sad and lonely, the way only fluorescent lights can. the room, too, dwarfed me, with it being completely open to the kitchen and the long custom dining table that would seat sixteen, at least. so here is where i'd sleep, as clocks ticked and the refrigerator hummed, and as dogs barked in the distance ~ being in the country with few neighbors, but neighbors nonetheless, close enough to hear when the slightest disturbance set off these protectors of the rural. once familiarity tuned out the noises inside, though, and if the dogs were at rest, the silence really could be deafening, as if cotton filled my ears the harder i tried to listen. even planes skipped this space, with little reason for flight paths to cross it. so instead of comforting noises like the highway drone that turns into the ocean as you dream, this silence compounded my loneliness. luckily, a train would pass every now and again, and on cooler evenings with the windows open, i could hear it as it rumbled along the tracks just a few miles away. there are two crossings from the house, one a few miles east, where my window pointed, and the other just a couple miles west. westbound trains passing in the dark would blow their horns at that eastern crossing, and i could just barely make it out, being so distant. but then the faint rumbling of the train would ease into my ears, giving me company for a few miles of track. when i finally heard the next whistle blow, i knew the train would soon fade until the next one came through. by that time, though, i would be fast asleep, the time between them simply too long for my enduring of the silence, instead opting for the comfort of, hopefully, the sweet dreams promised by my grandmother and her goodnite kiss.

blackberry on my arm

when much younger, the adolescent years, the summertime brought unbearable texas heat. perhaps nothing as it is now, thanks to 'climate change' or whatever you will, yet hellaciously hot all the same. perhaps the hell of the texas heat has only degrees this time of year. a hundred twelve versus a hundred six? either way, pedal or run in it, you're dead. so to escape, one turns, naturally, to the water. and for all the sun-baked misery, the springs in this place indeed seem to spring eternal coolness, relief to young and old, a soothing balm. sometimes it'd be stinky falls, whether by proper means with a tube in the broad daylight, or under cloak of darkness, with friends, sans tube and illegal in our activities, including stripping ourselves bare and foolishly shooting our bodies through its whitewater shoot. other times, it'd be lazily floating downstream of this, splashing the cold water onto the scorching rubber of our tubes. and sometimes it'd be where man would divert the waters of the comal into the childhood oasis of schlitterbahn (german for slippery sled or road or something or other). there, among its concrete and plastic tunnels, tubes and chutes, we kids would find our wet disney world, exhausting ourselves in her summertime relief. i'd later recall how i never wanted to take the wrist band off after my day there, sometimes leaving it on for weeks, and how, when i recalled that memory years later, how silly that seemed.

yesterday, i canoed with someone with whom i feel quite fortunate to be able to stare at the bow and find there, rowing and smiling. once we knifed through the crazy tangles of algae and unusually thick underwater weeds greeting us at the start, we came to find much clearer waters. then, along the banks of the slough, something i thought i wouldn't find in this crazy portland summer of unripened fruit: plump blackberries. so we pulled up close and plucked a couple of pints, with some missing their target and falling in the canoe, staining my bare feet, and others crushed on the vine from my hands being clumsy and their being a bit too soft. once we'd finished the harvest, cy noticed some blackberry on my arm, and this instinct came over me, to cherish the moment. so i left it. as i type this, the blackberry stain is there still. silly, happy, me.

you'll be the scarecrow

i remember a couple years back, listening to a song by e, you'll be the scarecrow. i hadn't listened to the song in at least a half dozen years, but something just told me to spin it up, and so i did, over and over. it always tugs at me, this song that references the end of the wizard of oz, when dorothy tiptoes up to the scarecrow's ear and whispers, 'i think i'm going to miss you most of all'. the next morning, i had a dentist appointment. i signed in, walked over to the waiting area, and as i went to sit down, i noticed in the kid area a flat-screen tele, playing the wizard of oz. and not just any moment in the film, but the exact moment where dorothy whispers this goodbye to the scarecrow. i stepped up to the screen, mesmerized and perplexed, and, believing deeply in such signs, immediately wondered: when i leave this world, who'll be my scarecrow?

i've learned some hard and lovely lessons of late, about loss and giving. and i now know i have to be fearless in love, that holding back protects no one's heart. as a close friend just told me yesterday, we have to love fully no matter what. it may only last a week, but we still have to strive to be someone's scarecrow. and maybe then, we'll find ours...

*****

one day i'll have to fly

to the next great unknown

one day i'll be outta here

back on my own

and when i come around

for my goodbyes

you'll be the scarecrow

the state line

today i thought about running to the state line. i'd just eaten too much, and feeling a bit heavy, i wished for you to spur me into action, for me to grab my sweatshirt and shoes and jet out the door. with snow still on the ground and topping the golden brown hills, i step down off the porch, my breath just before me on each exhale, splitting as i run through. beside, the river runs swiftly under a thin layer of ice. then i come upon the puzzle horse where the apple tree lies dormant, waiting patiently to bear fruit once the summer sun finds his way back. the horse breathes warmly onto my skin as i stroke his forehead. while you keep running. i pat him once more and run to catch up to your side. once there, you disappear. but i hear you. your footsteps. your breath. memories that will not thaw and melt away. the river may be the columbia or the rio grande, the terrain a cool and drizzly gorge or a hot and arid canyon. no matter. i hear your footsteps on the gravel and your breath in the air. and i smile, catching my breath for the run back home.