laying in the bath. love the languid pull of the water on my hair. floating, spreading, reaching in ways I never seem to. A turn to the side no better.

plume of snow flying off a branch in the aftermath. like steam from congested city streets in the summertime.

the other night reminding me of a month ago. half moon hanging inverted like a forgotten teacup in a dust clouded cupboard.

well, i'm not too good at keeping up with regular promised messages it seems. though since i only have myself to disappoint here, i suppose it doesn't really matter much. today i felt very few things. tonight the crescent moon reminded me of a glass slipper. i'm thinking of dying my hair red, but i worry it will clash with my skintone. plus it took so long to grow out my natural medium brown to this length; such a dilemma. the world makes me sad more often than i wish it did. but when i think about the things out there, i feel guilty that i'm not consumed by sadness all the time. to be honest, sometimes i am. sometimes i can't get beyond it. so overwhelmed by it that i can't function at all, to try to change things as i should.

this poor neglected blog. i seem to only remember it when i want to remember some beautiful thing that i've seen. though that's not really true exactly. maybe that, combined with the restless heightened mood that makes me stay up all night sometimes. the other beautiful things, on other nights, i don't remember them for the most part. i really should make more of an effort to write here regularly. even just about my everydays maybe. maybe if i'm in the habit of it i won't lose so many memories of lovelinesses that happen throughout the day. last night for example, a woman in the waiting room tapping her shoe over and over. a buckle on the side moving slightly with each downward movement; a little loose. i couldn't take my eyes off it. i kept imagining it loosening more and more each time, barely but perceptibly so. it must be, under such a near forced march. any moment it would certainly fall. riveted almost as much by the crisis that did not unfold at each moment, as by the action itself. time passed as it does in waiting rooms. and she stood and left the room, clicking shoeheels the only sound, echoing down the hall.

windows, rain, breathless sleeplessness. lights blurred down in long stretches of pavement. earlier, the heaviness of first singular drops reaching through thinning leaves. last humid almost summery rain of the year. driving back, an exhilarating loneliness i regret to relinquish.

last week, lovely windy cold october day. nostalgia, as if i’ve seen the wind blow the same leaves for centuries.

a few days ago, snowing at night. under a streetlight, inside a kaleidoscope, motion taking me slowly back to childhood.

from below, looking up

flakes darting brightly like tadpoles in a pond.

the next few days may be strangely defining, in multiple oddly converging ways.

cold air neither still nor alive. pulling my sweater close, knees curled to my chest. i'm happy tonight.

shadows catching against each other, accidental pleats. trying to erase a growing unreality. fabric catching on healing skin, already fading moment of electricity. touch reminds me again of the present, though merely my own.

i've been rereading things that i shouldn't. i cried a long while tonight.

fog hovers low along the curves of exit 15 nearly every night; it's beautiful. clinging to the pavement, with an unreality of far away places that may never exist for me.

i long to create something beautiful and true. but i’m not an artist, a musician, a writer, a scientist. and yet i wish i were. a desire so strong inside me always with nowhere to go. a constant restlessness. all that’s left to me are actions, acts. a thing exactly as it is, is what makes it beautiful. the more real something is, anything at all, the more beautiful it is.

my grandmother, the last relative of my extended family that i knew at all, died this week. i’m reminded of how unbearably sad i feel when i let myself think of the family i come from, one that has never believed in closeness. as a child i used to fantasize about someday being part of a big family, instead of my own which was filled with almost no one, and an unbridgeable separateness between those who did exist. strangers to strangers, not caring to change. instead i imagined family reunions filled with good food and music and noisy children and traditions. color, clatter, and joy. where people knew you too much instead of too little. i hardly knew my grandmother, she was 90 years old. i wonder did she have a happy life? was she lonely? was she relieved by death?

i saw a girl moving her arms like a bird. fluid and graceful, a seamless unsought mastery. too youthful yet to be young. looking so much like what she's not. thin arms, lengthening limbs, wisp of hair caught in the wind, trailing, flying. an innocent unknowing that can't last.

holding the hem of my skirt in my hand. thick velvet, a sultry whisper against my palm. the loose threads of the underside, scattered thoughts brushing my fingertips.

tonight

tonight, i sat in my car in the parking lot until i felt cold. and then i put on my coat. the stereo has a crackle, circular, in waves. less and then more, then gone, and then again. listening to songs that remind me of the past. it's raining. it's always raining when i feel something. threads tangled up with no ends. every raindrop i've ever felt, stretching in a line, a river, then a flood; wanted and unwanted. tonight watching the rain is like so many others.

letters

i could abandon this in a week, i have that tendency. i don't know what i want this blog to be really. maybe things that made me feel something. or remember. or a record of beautiful things, things i don't want to forget. or things that make me want to stay alive, mostly. or nothing at all. it's almost like a letter to everyone and no one at once.