it is the space where the tectonic plates are moving, and the gravitational pull has shifted and everything i used to know about how our words flowed back and forth has been shifted through the dirt and the soil down into the core, it is there, but unattainable.

Then there is the fact that I am looking at the stars differently. I used to strain to see the faintest, stare steady so that in any instant i will not miss a thing and now instead I let them wash over me and consume me. I take comfort in their quiet chaos, the reminder.

Settling can happen by particle. It can happen while pushing the back of your teeth with your tongue, your eyes narrowing, and momentarily deciding not tonight, not this moment. And something inside you burrows down from the tip of your tongue, busy shaping the back of your teeth like the ocean turning shards into sea glass, down through the front of your throat, cast straight through your sternum, and out through the curve of your back, there is relief and there is lack.

and the drilling of your teeth feels like nothing but the blast of cold air penetrates your spine.

We learn to be cold and have hard edges.
There are not always gentle arcs carrying us in waves.

Moments to not forget:
They seem trite when written down.
They are a moment for the bottom of your stomach.
The moment of forcing yourself to turn internal
In an attempt, a successful attempt to let every pore of your skin wiggling
and reach out
and vibrate towards that light.
it may be your only chance.

I need constant, verbal reassurance.

WEEKEND NOTES:

• Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt
• Matt Connors
• Night Shift
• Saturday Brunch
• electric blue nails

how do you begin to write about settling--about your arms feeling heavy, as if they could sink out of their sockets if they just dangled there long enough in idleness. the sickening feeling of literally just spending a day to spend it, to fill it with repetitive tasks of cleaning, and straightening, and justifying not getting out of bed. The satisfaction of a having no fear for money or security, just the slow grinding of dragging your calloused feet through the sand, or maybe even better the grinding it into the concrete slowly wearing down the calluses. It is work that is constant and uneventful and painfully mundane. There is a glint of fear that one day you will shed that last bit of dead skin and reach something pink and tender and go too far. sometimes this desire to keep grinding can only be counteracted by standing on your head.

a difference

There is no urgency here, I felt, a week a go; only routine, the practice of subways and the complete  lack of control to arrive anywhere faster. This city dictates your speed and impresses on you a stillness, a deep breath in the hollowed moments of transit.
and then
The smell in seattle is lovely and the passing of time feels natural, not demarcated by train timetables or event schedules but coffees. There are plum trees and sideboard houses but I still do not think I could live there: it is too light and there is nothing to push against, to lean your weight into, it is gliding.

I want to know you all but I am only made more aware of how many

I met a young woman who ran across the Sahara desert for seven days. Her feet filled with blood so they punctured her toenails to drain them. Then she slept and ate in Florence with her former love who had ran through the desert with her only to say he wasn’t committed. Then the love letters in Geneva-but wouldn’t that be hard? I asked, to be in a relationship with a man from Geneva? I work remotely, I would just move there. She said it with no hesitation. But she wanted the man who ran across the desert with her.

You may think this a lie, but it isn’t.

There is also a woman who quite her job as an automobile engineer to start her own business that sells a contraption that makes friendship bracelets.

When I told them about art handling-they laughed and said it is funny to think of all the jobs in the world. I thought-you sell tutus, carnivorous plants, and friendship bracelet makers. 

This is not exciting to struggle with: nothing. For an absurd sense of fulfillment. To twiddle my thumbs,

and dunk my toes into waters full of unknown troubles only in search of the last string (spring) I can remember left hanging lose.

Or is it, actually, the other way around. Everything else has turned to bright embroidery floss. Tantalizing when presented tidy and organized-like rows of fresh fruit waiting to be handled and then consumed. But in the midst of the overwhelming sense of option-fail to realize that the floss, once untangled, is thin. Hard to hold, impossible to thread. 

Somewhere-I am wading through the colors to find a thick braided rope.

Once again it is an effort to let the fingers move- a perpetual public display of emotion.