blurry night driving

Tonight I am drinking Sailor Jerry out of a Starbucks mug from the Twin Cities. Someone else has been collecting them. The mugs. I am sitting in the part of the countryside that belongs to a Delta pilot. Out by Ikea. I'm sitting on his front porch and watching his neighbor park their Ferrari into a garage as big as my house, but all I'm thinking is, what would have happened if I had kept driving til I ended up at your house instead.
The answer is nothing.
I'm not going to do this all and hope it works.
Because then what happens the next day?
Not the Nobel prize. Not for showing up at your door uninvited. Not the cure for cancer. Nothing good would happen. I'd get back in the car and drive home, unanswered.

The street goes back to black, except for a fullish moon, there, right on schedule. For better or for worse. I listen to the Front Runner humming on the tracks. Brakes. Humming. Freeway. Crickets. Country.

We could sail. If I showed up at your door. Somehow we'd sail away. Even if it was just laying on someone else's manicured lawn and talking about sailing away. I could still smell the ocean and listen to you breathing.

Oh no--wait--don't do this. Set down the mug, and listen to dogs barking a story to each other, faintly, everywhere. It will keep going. You will have to do this, and then one day it will be over suddenly. Like you had never
wept
at
all.

walking in the valley

"It's what I always wanted," she said, as we walked through her garden. She pointed at each row and specified each plant. I was awake for every second of it. I mean, I haven't slept all week, but what I somehow grew up and realized via God and God's love, and the women who teach me things when I show up in myself in various warehouses or workplaces, was that I was legitimately happy for her, in her moment of having everything I ever wanted.

And I'm not used to that.

But what I do know, is that I like the chase. I like to be alive for that. To not know what is coming next is the greatest part of being alive? To walk out your front door with a credit card is an unlimited possibility here in America? But you may want to get it a more difficult way than that. With many breaks in-between to stop and look out of windows or wait for a tram, or reply to an email, to talk to a man in salmon-colored shorts, or to secede from a nation.

This life is long; you stare at the fruit on the tree to try to make it grow faster.
And then while you wait, you buy fruit from a grocer.
And the grocer is trying to know his purpose too.
Summer skin.
Your hair will keep growing. People you don't know will die and leave their bodies.
The fruit might keep growing. And one day it will either fail to sustain, or it will blossom into something you can cook into a pastry, or consumer quickly in an afternoon.

I love you.
I will love you.
I have loved you.

Simple conjugation and history. 

Two weeks paid vacation won't heal the damage done. I'd need another one.

Sometimes I think about all the people out there that are making more money than I am, that can't spell, and I wonder what I'm doing with my life.

I took a night off of angry 3-mile runs, and just watched Space Jam.

"Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."
-Marthe Troly-Curtin

I actually really love Mondays. I like routine. Sometimes on Sunday afternoon, I just tell myself, "You are almost there, you can make it." Because Sundays feel so sloppy and the plans are unpredictable.

Because I ate so much junk food over the weekend, I bought a bunch of vegetables at the grocery store after work to do a vegetable fast for the rest of the day. Then I went to the liquor store to get some beer and wine (I am not drinking hard alcohol for the month of May, and it is actually a great way for me to exercise self control and still enjoy a drink at dinner or before bed...) and this lady asked me if I knew much about wine, and I said I didn't, but most of the employees at our state-owned liquor store are not very helpful, so I tried to help her pick something she wouldn't hate.

"Sorry I don't know more about wine," I said.
"Well you know more than me, and you are a sweetheart," she said with a worried look on her face, and it made me feel a little taller for a minute.

But then I went home to chop up my vegetables and sliced my thumb open because I was getting too cocky.

I guess what I'm trying to say, Sharon, is that I feel a medium amount of good, right now, and there is a tan creeping into my skin.
There is a five mile run creeping into my feet.
My hair is getting longer even though you can't see it, and you won't believe it.

I'll send you a picture so you can know.

I stuck around, I did behave

Do you remember how I searched you out? How I climbed your city's walls
Do you remember me as devout? How I prayed for your calls...
I stood still... it's what I did.

Love like ours is never fixed.

T&S