driven by feelings

Summing it up perfectly, with words and beautiful imagery.

Once, I saw a wolf in broad daylight. It had been a horrendous day at my first new job, and I had been caught up in the last whirling leaves of Autumn’s wake as Winter kissed my face just long enough to remind me I had yet again dressed inappropriately for the weather. I was walking to the derelict bus stop when he danced out of a shadow and leapt casually onto a decorative statuary. He was caught up in something and didn’t see me as I shivered past, too astonished by the sight of him to remember not to stare.

I should have known better than to remember him, but I kept looking for him for many months following, until he became something of a mythical creature, until years passed and I saw him again.

The second time, he certainly saw me. He was prowling round the edge of an old dog park, with a couple of bitches and an older mutt. He didn’t seem too interested in any of it though, he circled the old bench where I sat quietly, terrified, and took a couple sniffs my direction before snapping at me and sauntering off. Silly me, I thought myself lucky to have seen him again.

And then, one evening he found my doorstep. It was strange, opening my door to a wolf, but like I said I had convinced myself it must be a blessing, and though I know that what is wild is also unreliable, I myself had narrowly avoided being feral, and so I let him in.

During the evenings he would visit me, and though I fed him and he came closer, he would never eat from my hand, which is just as well because I was kind of on my own terms then too, living for the first time in my own place, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about where this might be going, only that it isn’t every day a wolf finds you interesting and tolerable, and decides to hang around. I didn’t care then, that our meetings were so cautious, that one might spook the other away. It was understood, at least to my human mind that if I respected his nature, perhaps he would continue to be a blessing, and maybe someday I would discover what that was, so the promise of someday, and a might-be was enough.

After a good long while, we did become fairly domesticated to one another. For example, though he came when he wanted to, he came on the regular and was no stranger to napping on my hearth. He had his expectations of me, that I wouldn’t crowd him, and was always pleased to see him, and I had begun to anticipate that he would continue to trust me until perhaps one day I might know a name for him, or that he might rest his head in my lap. I already knew that he chased things in his sleep as all dogs do, and of course I wondered at the world he held inside him…

*to be continued

Illustration by Lauren Nassef

(via iwantmybearsuit)

When I was 10 years old, I was an avid reader of Stephen King, having dog eared every paperback my mother brought home, whether she was aware of it or not. I don’t think she worried about the content so much as keeping me from annoying her for more books. We lived in a remote part of the Oregon Coast, and books were my only extravagance.

So, in 1990 when Stephen King’s “IT” came out, we of course watched it, my brother and me, fearfully glued to every terrifying moment as all of our worst ideas came true. Being the slightly older sibling, I understood the value of fear and proceeded to convince my brother that the blinking fish eye of water that you sometimes see down the drain was in fact an eye, and then he became convinced that “IT” was going to climb out of the toilet and eat his ass, and eventually became so constipated that my mother had to take him to the doctor.

Regardless, we were both terrified by the concept of a horrible evil, only I had hidden my own fear by turning my brother into a red herring. In reality, neither of us ever really got over that scary clown, and to this day I still get the heebie jeebies when I look down a drainage grate, or climb through the culvert that leads to the beach at the Gorge…

But right now, I’d like to talk about that same fear, encapsulated perfectly in that ten year old body. That same fear, exactly as electric as sticking a tongue to a battery, never really went away. It has somehow been stored in the dollhouse of my mind and can be revisited as easily as seeing a lost balloon floating away from the imagined scene of some terrible abduction.

That same fear, younger still, of the door to my room being closed, for certain that whatever it was inside my closet or under my bed would have me then. That same awful loss of safety when the light was clicked out and I was hushed for the last time and told to grow up, and I realized I had been thrown to the inevitable death by hideous clothes-pile monster.

That same fear, even younger, being lost in a maze of look a like humans in a busy shopping mall after diligently following the wrong pair of legs. Losing my mother and crying in a shoe-store.

Fear is perception and perception is reality, and can be revisited. Try it now. Try and remember that same childhood fear of the dark, remember the awful paralysis between staring unblinking toward a horrible shape you were certain would move if you blinked, and sliding, heart thumping beneath the covers, unable to breathe your own hot, smelly kid breath, but unable to emerge until sunlight turned your blankets into painted veils.

I have somehow become stuck in that same fear, childhood body and all. For three weeks I could not escape the manifestation of what amounts to the adult equivalent of the Boogie Man. And while I lay there trembling on the floor, or against the wall of the shower, and eventually in the acute behavioral ward of the public hospital (where the put the poor ones) none of the grown-ups could see it but me. Everyone turns the lights off, shuts the door… says grow up.

I’m at the beginning of this journey, and will write more about it soon.

 I am 19 years old. My head is so full of the moment that I can’t see past the way I feel, past the plastic sieve of the rotary phone that siphons my worry towards Boca Raton, past the curdling of my voice as my heart becomes acidic. I can’t do more than I am, and what I’m doing is cutting the lifeline. Severing the cord that binds me to Garret, that taut line of red yarn between our tin cans that never fails to thrum when he’s sick with wanting to use. I’m coiling the line around my finger, which is purpling. I’m heavy with pressure, my throat clots…Garret’s voice is thick with a sickening truth. I can’t be his island anymore, because what he’s got is somehow catching, it’s a toxicity of despair that feeds on my optimism. But I’m not doing this for me if I’m honest. I’m doing it for Michael, because he’s just as sick but closer to home. I cut the line loose from one love to tie around the finger of another, because I’m needed. It makes me necessary. Michael who beats me with words and then cries in my lap like a child, Michael who locks me away from the world with his jealousy, Michael who inevitably reduces me years later to a pale shade of nothing that only looks like a girl. For Michael I put out the candle for Garret, and will wonder for nearly ten years after if he is dead or alive.

I am 29. I am at a familiar bar, waiting for ten of my friends to show up, to save me from the awkwardness that is certain to accompany this reunion. I stir my comfort, pink straw, green straw, and focus on the clink of ice and glass, the red and blue of neon captured in the greased reflection, the strangely delicate ball-chain pull of the humming sign that taps against the window when the door is closed. Just beyond the sign a car pulls up. A fancy, upper income number all in white, and there is a ghost in the road. Under the oily too long hair, the indentation of a hat band or a doo-rag, under the seven layers of cheap ink parlor wall flash, tinted prescription glasses, rumpled boxy bowling shirt, underneath the mess that just walked in is a minor glint of someone I think I used to know. I say think because I am beginning to regret the invitation, because I never trust a person who wears sunglasses to a conversation. Garret exaggerates his appraisal of me with a wide armed gesture, hugs me for a little too long searches me for an old familiar smell I was careful not to wear. The hope was we are not the people we once were anymore. I am guessing I am easier on the eyes than he is on mine. I look for clues to his new identity while he kicks himself openly and with gusto. The sense of having done the right thing begins to balm old wounds. I am much better off for untethering myself. We clink twin shots of the brown stuff and as I struggle with mine his is gone in a wink. Foreshadow, forewarned. His arm begins to creep around the back of my chair as he fixes me with a stare that used to be pure teen magic. It puts into contrast the virgin wonder I had then with the sad knowledge of men I have now. Friends are found across the bar, I excuse myself and join the party as his sad Christian Slater act dissolves into a drunken Shatner. He chats up a black girl who agrees to a rondezvous, he swaggers to the table and laughs too loudly, he orders two more shots and doesn’t notice as I slide mine to a friend. Now he leans in to slur something meaningless and I worry that he may have tried to run his mouth along my shoulder, he puts a hand on my knee, confirmed. I stand. I ask if he would like some water before I call him a cab. He insists he is driving. I am saved a few moments later when he falls asleep. We leave him there…ten years of wonder, alone in a stupor in a crowd of finger-pointing.

…And what became of Michael, my near death experience? Only an overweight, overwrought, babbling schizophrenic. My days of being haunted by intimations of my own unbearable ways were ended the minute his glossy eyes devoured my face and he announced insanely that I was immortal and deified. The youth that once obscured his flaws had worn off like fairy glamor. His hair was thinning. A dumb expression that used to pass for charming was now a permanent stamp, broken only by an obstinate thought, paranoias of conspiracies, hands inside his head and secrets he could only tell to me. The person who nearly suffocated me in a closet, who used me to within an inch of my life…was nothing more than a pudgy lump of weakness. I look down at my crooked pinky, the only visible reminder of that fight. I look down at my hands which are more sure of themselves. I remember the way it felt when I finally slapped his face, and how it was worth what came after. All my ghosts of winters past have come and gone. There will be no more dragging about of chains. I am free.

*Illustration by: Audrey Kawasaki

When you have lost

it is as if a hole suddenly appears in your life, but the hole isn’t stationary.

a spot on your retina that appears wherever you look.

a marred lens scarring all of your memories,

intuiting a meaning beyond what is seen.

This left behind shoe. This coin with a hole in it. 

It is awhile before you stop guessing at strange hairs,

longer still before you are ready to go through that bag you took camping,

and you’re not really certain even a week after that if you should throw out what you found inside. 

An old raffle ticket with a note on the back.

An important looking form.

A birthday card.

So you make an arrangement to give it back

and you meet 

but they aren’t there because they aren’t them anymore and that is sort of the point of it all.

 I think…

we are a colony of the departed, on a strange new planet not unlike the old one, haunted by the pictures in our wallet, and widowed a little.

*Illustration by Jennifer Poon

when i got up this morning

i just sat there in that t-shirt for awhile

staring at a jungle of indoor plants

sitting on a thick duvet

looking out the window onto 23rd

so

not knowing what to do next

i just made the bed

wandered into the shower

stole a sweater and a hat

left a note

and continued thinking

as i walked through the leaves down my street

upon approaching the house

i saw myself from far away

and wondered if i was ready

im not a girl anymore

i realized

but is it time for more than this?

from a life of running

adapting

and living from moment to moment

i had to teach myself patience

i had to learn to stand still

because change comes more slowly when you’re settled in

and it’s good to have roots

but there are still times when i feel change calling

feel it rattle-ing the fillings in my teeth

feel it aching in my bones

my feet start tapping ready to run

she’s been outside my window for some time now

pressing damp fingers to glass

low moaning destiny

she knows my name

and wants in from the cold

some nights i can’t sleep

i let her in

we shiver together and she tells me things

she can’t get warm unless i let her be closer

and i can’t let her any closer,

she’ll have me then.

tonight she wrapped her arms around me

and looked me in the eye

“open the windows”

she said

“let me in.”

one way or another

i think

she’ll find a way.

*Illustration by Me

Giant squid, which normally exist quietly in deeper regions of the sea, recently came closer to shore this week to harass and attack swimmers and divers. Reports describe their long and tentacled arms snaking out to tear away diving gear, hurling their bodies against the backs of heads, pulling swimmers off course mid kick.

A large hairy black blob spotted off the shores of Alaska has also been identified as “some type of marine algae” though seasoned residents and fishermen in the area say they’ve never seen anything quite like it before. Nicknamed “Filamentous Algae”, any attempts to explain its presence or where it might have come from are speculative at best.

Meanwhile, closer to home

Philomena Eransdottir climbed through a small door in the back of her closet to find herself inside one of the giant support columns of her building. Etched into the wall was the two dimensional profile of a man in a pork pie hat. When she put her hand against the grainy cement of his cheek, it felt warm, as if from the sun, though when she looked up she saw only as far as the darkness rolling towards her. Crouching on the dirt floor, which was by no means level, she could have sworn that just before the lights went out and she was gathered into the folds of his three piece suit, she made out the ever so faint smell of pipe tobacco. 

*Illustration by Javier Pinon

If you give me enough time I will find you a wife.

She will be the parts of me that I’m not 

and the parts of you that I don’t like will like that about her.

*Illustration by Joshua Petker

i begin to understand

in the sudden religion found midway through this

( Oh God, fuck, Jesus Christ! )

and the way the bull comes charging

one horn lowered to the red 

sheet 

that one fine turn of the hip

to meet the bull arms open

to catch the rose in my teeth

my bloom stained arena

(and we held very still then

very very still

heart beating out of me into the earth)

that pounding of hooves

the weight of O Touro

his heaving breath

and that heat and the smell of it

dampening the air

until nothing existed

but the very shock of life

that ought to have come forth in a yellow scream

but purple moan instead

a kiss for this epiphany

between the eyes.

*Illustration by Fernando Vicente