I've been waiting for my mind to catch up to the innumerable significant events that have occurred in the past 2 weeks, but it's gone into hibernation. As a writer, the biggest roadblock my craft faces is that I am inspired at the most inopportune moments. Emotions and diatribes are inspired on subways, in the grocery store, walking down the street, when I'm 3 hours in to a 12 hour work day and I have grown weary of acknowledging my thoughts and so, I don't take notes and my voice is lost. My voice is lost in the chaos of existing day to day. I daydream of Taos and the clarity I felt so high in the mountains, the effortlessness my voice experienced, the vast unexplored region of my thoughts unveiled themselves and for the first time in my life, I felt free. But then friends died, my heart was desecrated by ruthless misunderstanding, other friends (close friends) were met with crisis and I found myself on the phone for hours dissecting and analyzing the meanings of these life-altering events; all my energy expelled in participating in life rather than reserving my energy for writing.
And that brings us to now, this very moment, where I am sitting on the back porch of the house I'm convinced I will buy in the not-so-distant future, debating what it is I want to convey, what emotions I care to capture, and I'm drawing a blank. How do I convey the enormity of change that has taken place since my arrival in California? Just telling you, the blog, you, the blog audience, what's occurred isn't as simple as a timeline. The censorship of privacy is suffocating, as the secrets of my beloveds are necessarily safeguarded lest these relationships face the guillotine should I disrespect those boundaries. How to write about it all and not lose anyone, or my dignity, this is the challenge of my lifetime.



Ryan arrived by train on Wednesday. I sat in the Amtrak outdoor waiting station, blinding tears of anticipation making it impossible to enjoy Bukowski. His train was early, as was I. In the moments before its arrival, I saturated my spirit in the West Coast sun, begging the Bay breeze to cleanse his heart the moment he stepped onto the platform. My best friend, one of the most intricate beings on the face of the Earth rode a train 52 hours, with 3 overflowing suitcases and a broken heart. His silence throughout the trip settled my anxiety, knowing that the experience of seeing the world through observation car window panes must be having an effect on his perspective. Naively convinced (as I was) that California is always warm enough for shorts, it was no sooner that his train had halted than I spotted him with a plastic clothing knapsack slug over his shoulder, garbed in a petticoat, Tom Sawyer cap, cut off denim shorts and a 50 lb suitcase dramatically altering his balance. I walked briskly, nearly running, convinced that if I didn't reach him in time he'd disappear like a mirage. Our smiles stretched so broadly, the muscles in our faces creaked with months of disuse. His suitcase crashed to the ground as we screeched and threw our arms around one another. It was an inevitable reunion and with Vodka on his breath and a slight stammer to his speech, there were no words for acknowledging that we have found a home in one another. The days to follow have blended together, filled with conversations we've been meaning to have since his October departure. Our mothers are equally relieved that we are together, their fears about our distant travels are not silenced by the reassuring courage we feel when on the road. They think only of our aesthetic safety and there's no convincing them that we're safe unless we are together. It's in knowing this that I know how fated our friendship is and how true my love is for him.



We are so many things to one another. He is the person I unveil my most deeply-rooted fears to, the person who criticizes my driving and leaves me voicemails recounting how terrified he is of the dive bombing hornet that's made its way into our apartment. He's the person whom I trust to help smudge my new home, knowing our combined spiritual well being can drive out any negative force, the person who takes my heaping pile of belongings and turns the house into a home; a home I now share with him. He's the person I lay next to in bed and in front of the fireplace and laugh until my bones hurt.
Upon his arrival, I realized that I'd never felt our bond disconnected. He stepped off the train just as I'd always known him, and it felt more like I'd picked him up from work rather than a 4-month excursion to Chicago. Nothing had changed between us, but within us, we are filled with the wonderment of the world experienced in the others absence. For months I begged the Universe to tend to the wound left by his departure. I had felt whole in his presence and then broken and disbursed when he was gone. It was impossible not to be grateful that he'd found love and I'd found ambition, but the homesickness was at its worst when I was still in Kansas and he was braving the Chicago winters.


Wednesday night drinking and gourmet pizza in Berkeley was followed by two days of SF wandering. His overwhelmed silence and then verbal outbursts, falling everywhere on the emotional spectrum, taught me to be silent once again. My voice feels small in the shadow is his heartache. The psychic we visited in Haight asked me about the man I love and suggested that we are fated. His reading suggested that his California experience will not be the last of his travels. This is the sort of love I find myself within often, one that is consistently present within my heart, but not always tangible. The psychic told me that my aura is blotched with distrust and abandonment, entrenched for decades, and that romantic love will be impossible for me until I cleanse my spirit...but this man, she said, this man will always be the one you love without the fear, without the wall. There is nothing he could of ask me that would be too much, and nothing I wouldn't give to ensure his happiness. It is an unusual love, but it is what I trust in most.

The Year of the Dragon

And so as the sun sets on another exhausting week, I throw aside the homework and pick up Bukowski- allowing my mind a chance to thaw for the first time in what seems like an eternity. There is nothing and everything here on this beautiful coast. There's no escaping my mind, but there are thousands of miles worth of distance between myself and the memories. Memories of effort, memories of being misunderstood, memories of feeling as if I am the most problematic friend and lover on the planet, memories of knowing that my very existence made a tremendously positive impact, memories....so many memories.



Ryan leaves Chicago for California tomorrow afternoon. His heart is in shambles and it is once again that we unite on this front. There's nothing like being in love and no comparison to the hole left inside of you once it's discarded, removed, erased, negated. There are cracks in his voice when the moment, the memories, are swallowing him whole. There are gaps of silence in his communication when he is lost in deep recollection. We love and lose the same and find solace in the others adventure. There's no telling if my experience will provide him with the peace he seeks. I don't know that California would have been as peaceful to me 5 years ago, 2 years ago, even 3 months ago, as it is in recent times. There is an incredible comfort in the anonymity of a city this large. No one to recognize your face, no one to tell you they've heard all of your lines before. No one who's seen you naked in any regard. It's just you in your overcoat, pacing the city streets, eyes grazing the shops and potential infatuations, just you and your thoughts and an expression no one can read.



The Poet and I celebrated Chinese New Year in Chinatown last Sunday. Brightly lit lanterns and disarming blasts of firecrackers shattered the slowly drifting sun. She quoted Kundera and told me I was perfect. How little she knows, how hard she tries- masking all the insecurities and the uncertainty, though I see it in her bowing knees, her pocketed hands, her questioning glances. None of us are perfect nor perfect for one another. There is only the moment and then, eventually, only the memories. I am lost in a whirlwind of thoughts and ambition, per usual. I am solidified in regret and hopeless in expectation. Reality has finally approached me and will not leave. There's so few ways to be honest and yet, no way around it. I'm just waiting for someone to see my trap door, my cellar of secrets.



I listen to children screech relentlessly as they run down the cement trail next to my window. Their parents follow slowly, patiently, dying for a single uninterrupted sentence. I wonder what brought them here, what their regrets are- if Ryan and I will become as so many before us have- full of resignation and won over by the security of no longer making an effort. I'm not passing judgment but I can see it in their stance, their glazed over nods, their jogging suit, tennis shoes coordination, the absence of a glow. Is that what happens when you accept that you have no control over your fate? Or is it that he and I belong to a rare group of galactic miracles, burning nearly as bright as the sun and longer than the identified planets? Are we destined to be orbited but never landed upon, deemed hopelessly beautiful but untouchable by observers? Will our love and lovers be as meteors, our loneliness allowing them to gravitate into our atmosphere. From a distance they appeared gentle and we drew them in, but their closeness proved destructive; the mark they've left will resonate for all of time- our surfaces are pocked with the damage of unearned trust. Do we burn too bright, too long, too intensely? Are we the reason our lovers are incinerated before intimacy can be achieved?



I've been alive long enough that my scars have become visible. The damage shows in the lines under my eyes, the squint of my mouth as I lift the familiar wine bottle to my lips, the drag of my walk as I count the cigarette butts in the gutter. This isn't the destiny I had in mind, but heed my warning- never fall in love with a writer. Whether you're the antagonist or the protagonist, we never let you forget our fickle remembrances of the time shared. Everyone becomes a character warped by our indecision, our hope of changing the course of fate through the editing process. In writing we can be the hero, we can save the day, take away the pain. When you're written down, everything can be erased and revisited, time can heal and characters can steer the course of fate with a single line. I don't think anyone ever walked into love thinking "this is going to ruin me," but a writer knows better and perhaps that is my detriment. I want the fairy tale I can't foresee, the great love that hasn't been written. I want life to surprise me rather than cynical arrogance blockading revelation. There have been years without surprises and then a moment filled with thousands of unexpected shimmers.



As much as I try to write about the complexities, there are no words to describe the heaviness that lingers from Kansas City, to Chicago, to San Francisco. We are all in love with the idea of love and we are all tainted by its majesty. The most I can hope for is a Western wind that carries on it serendipitous encounters, midnight inspiration, city light poetry. Actual love can destroy but the intended love of broken-hearted writer can save the world. Wait for it. It's only another moment or two before we supernova.