Milo refuses to settle on my bed come nighttime, etc.

that says more than my heavy eyes and scatter-prone thoughts have been able to, this past week-and-whatever. he trots behind me all day, plaintive crescendi coloring his meows, and crams as much of himself onto my lap as physics permits. it’s sweet, but ultimately gifts me more guilt for tossing and turning and not being able to settle myself. the only thing to do seems to— for now—separate thought and feeling when the two in conjunction raise a clamor from which i can discern little and must wring progress, lurch by labored lurch. to realize and to refuse to suffer from it; to suffer and refuse, sometimes, to think of it. little could devastate more deeply than the hardening of my own heart. but rational fear has truth tangled in its roots, and where i balk to delve, i must craft a dwelling-place. 

if you’ve been paying attention,

you’ll see that i dragged myself over rivers, through woods, and up more switchbacks than i care to count today. it was a lovely homecoming i got from two friends who absolutely do not know how wonderful they are, when they shuck their blinders and inhabit themselves as *people* as well as (excellent) musicians. my body feels grounded, and i could weep from that relief alone. somewhere along the way i made nascent peace with the year to come—with the basic idea that there is a new year on tomorrow’s horizon— for which i am grateful. peace is something i am sorely in need of, and the waters whose surfaces i have kept my hands far above are all internal, tempest-prone, turbulent, eddying. so that’s where i need to delve, obviously, but i’m still divesting of heavy limbs, heavy eyes, and a heart lightened, but heavy residually. tomorrow remains entirely unplanned for the first time in years. maybe it will be better that way, and maybe it will mean i end up racing around trying to throw something together. but it’s coming.

it really just sucks to sit dumb in the face of the various denizens causing me emotional pain.

what color does their wrath turn the air? is the pain of collision dulled by instantaneity? exponentiating through time; a pathos-parabola? wrenching? enervating? a catalyst of heat, or chill? a shadow cast into hyperbole by light’s careening ricochet, or a form cast into shadow by necessity?

it’s not that i’ve forgotten how to write. i just have come to contain an amorphous mass of converged thought-entity/state/time that defies, or transcends, or stifles my language. which murmurs maledictions to tunes like “you’ll have to break yourself down deep to expunge this.”

sometimes my existence balks when i sit down to trammel it within clause-cages.

and I’m becoming okay with this; my inner equine, at whose heels domestication chivvies, ever in vain. words, bits, bridles, tools all, efficacies subject to wax, wane, and well-intentioned sully.

oh, but the storm came not a day too soon.

and i will bear the sullen chill of this hollow house, swathed in sweatshirts and gulping down the dregs of grace, until the clouds wilt, bereft of magnanimity, and sigh as wind whisks them waterward. my petals will ever open amidst torrent.

retreat (an open letter)

to you, if you’d like;

when we last spoke, it was far too late on a Tuesday night (or far too early on a Wednesday morning, depending on your outlook) and i was flailing, trying to write out my trepidation and, as is my wont, barely succeeding in both coherency and catharsis. now, on the other side of three-ish days in Portland, i’m sequestered on Belvedere Island, with two giant black labs and music for company. the silence is as complete as the island can manage, save the keening of gulls, lapping of waves, occasional foghorn blasts, and the raucous carousing of the wealthy and wealthier from the yacht club at the base of this little mountain loaded with houses of staggering beauty and indulgence. this post already suffers from too many “me’s” and “i’s.” perhaps Duke and Duchess, upon whom my eye falls often (to make sure they’re sprawled somewhere near their beds, or at least laying quietly elsewhere) deserve credit for this (another word i *have* to stop leaning on so heavily), but i feel no obligation to do anything, go anywhere, be anything to anyone. i just am. it humbles and fortifies me, both at once. to say that i’ve maintained a relaxed state throughout the day would be an absolute lie; we both know i’m woefully incapable of that. each time my body (mind?) tenses up and Needs Something To Do Now, i pick up my Schumann biography and lose as much of my sense of self as i can manage. the clamor invariably subsides, and i return to whatever it was that i was (or wasn’t) doing. the dogs adore me—i can’t help but pay them much more mind than their family does—and although i’m sure i’ll mind smelling of canine soon enough, their desire to be close and stay close is one i wholly identify with. how could i resent them for gravitating towards me as an entity offering acceptance, stimulation, and love, when i do the same, in my way, with my pack?

if you’ve seen any of the pictures i’ve put up (most are of the view from my front porch,) i’m sure you can’t imagine why i haven’t left the house yet today, and won’t, in all likelihood, save to set the recycling out and answer the door when the deliveryperson arrives with whichever cuisine i decide to call in. surrounded by such beauty, both urban and natural, and me inside? like millions of stereotypical teenagers, i must be wallowing in ignorance, with ingratitude seeping from my pores, lazing as opportunity after opportunity wafts past, acknowledging their departures with a flippant wave, you think. and you’re wrong. i love you, but you err. i drink this in and i try to untangle the thousands of thoughts tugging at my sleeve, each ready to link elbows and lead me to its own emotional evolution, and i look as many as i can in the eye and say, okay, let’s do this. show me what i know. perhaps tomorrow i’ll see more of what Tiburon has to offer, but today, i’ve been looking at the haphazard assemblage of thought and feeling that is me. and that’s enough. 

i hope you’re thriving, and i can’t possibly know when i’ll have anything to say next, but you’ll know, when i do. i’d love to hear from you, of course. 

with fondness,

suzi. 

am i even interested in classifying this as progress or regress?

these past few days have been perplexing; off-putting. change, that implacable force (of whose presence i can usually be counted on to be aware) slips in and out of doors with no regard for the standing organization therein. this isn’t to say i’m a mess, you understand, because it’s hardly so dramatic as all that. in any case, many of you would know, were i in danger of dissolving. and thank you for the informed involvement of your presence (something i *could* repeat often enough, but i won’t tempt your ire by stating and restating and stating until you’re ready to do terrible things to my phone to prevent me from broken-record-ing).

so many plans have fallen through in the past few days, which has left me to my own devices, to mixed ends. after years of clinging to what i thought was a refuge, it seems i’ve realized that the air’s not great in there and the books on the shelves are, in fact, fictional. people flake, mis-schedule, and overcommit not because they’ve finally “discovered” one of my character flaws and no longer have the time of day for me, and not because i’m not worth staying for. things fall apart. the human condition prevails. how narcissistic am i, to require a me-centric motive for what are only happenstances and manifestations of basic fallibility? it’s not worth my energy to foment self-degradation, and it’s not worth anyone else’s to disprove my assumptions and to mend the resulting damage.

for reasons undiscovered (at least, undiscussed) (we’ll save the analysis for next week) (shut up, guys), i operate with a deep level of feeling for the people who appear in my life either with regularity or with meaning, and i am comfortable expressing said, an act that seems foreign to a depressing majority out of the couple/relationship/amorous love context. What This Means for You is that i care, simply and sincerely. it’s rare enough that i become “done” with someone’s presence in my day-to-day unless i have been deceived, manipulated, or otherwise mistreated on a grand scale. from this fact, another has sprouted, like those redwood trees featuring saplings growing from their gargantuan trunks, fifty feet from the ground. i fear the day when Others (my title for “friends/people in my life/etc”) grow tired of me. i analyze myself to shreds to prevent the occurrence of anything that might further this end. i worry and wait, worry and wait, and begin attaching weight to situations that were only meant to blow away. and i am tired.

so no more. people come and go, and i need to let them, if they choose to, without assigning blame.

euphoria

my life is filled with people of QUALITY. those of you who are more than mute observers are, obviously, included in this evaluation. god, but when things are going smoothly, they don’t pull any glorious punches. just the way i like it. thank you all for being.