tonight, the center of my heart is still

.

my bedroom window in open.  i can hear my neighbor flirting with a girl on his front porch.  and every so often, the thick click of a new can of beer being opened overlaps their giggles. 

this is the dance.

i think of my newest banner stitched to the cold pole of a stop sign in front of a wasted, graffiti covered warehouse.  the words wail out in black in white: THE WAY YOU NEED TO BE LOVED.  isn't that the only search?  isn't that what we're all up too out here?  isn't that the dance?

the voices next door lower.  they're speaking softly in spite of the beer.

the way you need to be loved...

i've been asking myself this question for a while now.  we all crave that beautiful sense of security that tends to proliferate romantic partnerships.  we all want that sense of security and belonging, of being understood.  i'm no different.  those things feel good and sometimes in the middle of the night the deepest seed hunger in me begins to ache and twist.  i think of eyes locked in to one another and hands lost in hair.  i think of eager mouths and eager hearts and sweat flying.  i think of all that gorgeous softness, all that fantastic hardness and sigh.

the way you need to be loved.

i think of the words i bang out across the keys.  i think of all my scribbles, the pages i fill, another volume of the diary nearing its end.  i think of the images i've made and the images i need to make.  i hunger after their creation.  i want them in front of me.  i want them to exist.  i want them to be seen and to be known.   my value dwindles in their absence.  a day passes and i haven't drawn and so i begin to feel the worthlessness of my life stand tall.  if i can't do this, what is my life for?

the way you need to be loved.

i remember laying awake next to the snoring body of a man who no longer touched me.  i remember waking up early to run and sweat.  i'd pretend the pounding rhythm of my feet on the pavement was the pounding of hot, delicious sex.  i was young and alive and i wanted to express those qualities, luxuriate in the beauty of them, but i was in a relationship that no longer provided for such things.  my heart broke over and over again every time he rolled on his side away from me in the bed.  i would gaze at this dark outline and try not to cry as i felt the worthlessness of my life stand tall.

the way you need to be loved.
the way you need to be loved.
the way you need to be loved.

i miss my siblings.

i miss our mother.

i thought about her a lot in Germany.  that was her fairytale land.  it's a place where anyone can fall in love.  it's a place where spectacular heartache and spectacular beauty rest side by side.  one morning as we cruised through sunrise in the most uncomfortable bus i've ever sat/slept in, i looked up right in time to see the sign for Hannover.  i thought, "that's your Germany, mama.  i'm heading back to mine; my rough and tumble Berlin"

i'm more schooled in what i do NOT want than what i do.  i look at myself in the mirror and realize that i'm simply searching.  just searching.  i've still got so many unknown corners within myself to explore.  i don't want to backtrack.  i don't envy the relationships i see around me.  all the locks.  all the ugly names.

i took this photo in a mirror inside an exhibition at the Foam Museum of Photography in Amsterdam a few weeks ago.  It's half-frame photography that ended up in an accidental double exposure.  it's actually a very accurate self-portrait.

the images collide and waver.  the outlines are indefinite.  i am searching.  must it feel like sadness?

that seed that twists itself like a knife within me is trying to tell me something but i've not yet learned its language.  i have to listen closer.  i have to get the static out of my ears and the anger out of my heart.  i have to pay attention and make room for the unexpected.  i have to pay attention and i have to be brave.  i have to use my two hands and build a life for myself that fits me.  who i truly am, not who i've been expected to be, nor the dream others have of me.

i like this moment...  laying in my bed alone listening to my neighbor flirt with a girl.  soon, another beer will crack open and i'll raise my cocktail silently toward my open window in cheers.


the way you need to be loved
the way you need to be loved
the way you need to be loved

.

settling in

i'm sitting in bed under my white quilt with all my clothes on, even my socks.  it is a cold night.  my bra is digging in to me but i don't care about getting undressed.  i don't care about getting comfortable. there is a cocktail on the nightstand to the left of my bed.

when i was in Europe my phone didn't work.  no voice and no text.  i could connect to the internet and use it as a mini computer if there was wifi available but it was freeing to know that it wouldn't ring or buzz.  i no longer spent precious time worrying if so-and-so would text.  i was on my own in so many ways and, for the first time in a very long time, free to stop worrying about Time.  the only actual responsibilities i had was feeding and cleaning myself.  there were no other obligations to satisfy and no duties to respond to.  the only Duty i had was to myself: to live as forthrightly and bravely as possible and to open my notebook whenever i could manage.

i haven't looked back at those pages yet.  i want to but instead i flip through the photos i took and enjoy the sweet fermentation of memory that has already begun.  the images of bridges and building in my mind are more romantic tonight than they have ever been.  Berlin is a city of fairy tales.  while i was there, i marveled at the great luck that had found me.  there was a moment when i found myself half asleep on the small deck of a rowboat and thought to myself is this really fucking happening right now??? to me???  it was all so inexplicable and yet somehow easy.  i felt at ease the second i got on my flight to new york.  i felt even more at ease when i landed in Berlin a week later.  i felt so secure and safe inside the world.  i wasn't afraid of anything.  not once.  it felt honest and good to simply walk along old cobblestone roads and take pictures of the fresh graffiti that cropped up overnight in Kreuzberg.  it felt honest and good to share my beer with strangers and follow them to a bonfire on the west bank of the Spree.  it felt honest and good to sit at a cafe for hours and just move my pen...  all my lofty thoughts and the rhythm of my heart inside this new place, this old world.
 
it's hard to believe that i'm already back home, already back to work, already learning a new menu and new wines.  it's hard to believe that another semester of german awaits and that it is already august.  3 weeks in europe was not long enough.  not nearly.  not for this soft and eager heart.  i fell in to the tempo of the place so quickly and felt at home so instantly that my life took on a feeling of timelessness.  then suddenly, i was back at the airport trying not to think of the fact that i was already leaving.  i'm glad i had a few days in new york before coming back home to california.  it was a buffer of sorts.  i could still pretend i was entirely free and that no timelines existed for me.  i saw the Ellen Gallagher show at the New Museum my first day back.  it was strange to walk through the large rooms and gaze at the work of an art heavy weight and think i'd just been at the Martin Kippenburger retrospective in Berlin 2 days before.  and in the rear room of that museum, i saw the large lead airplane Anselm Kieffer constructed flanked by two of his huge paintings.  it felt important and special to view his work IN germany.  so laden with guilt and history and horror.  it felt important and special to see Joseph Beuys' felt suit and violin case.  it felt important and special to view this work with a german friend.  and this all a few days after having visited the Anne Frank Haus in Amsterdam.  such a heavy moment.  such a heavy memory.  those empty rooms...  so small.  i felt honored, especially as a diarist, to walk through the rooms where she lived and wrote.  i felt honored to see the pages of her diary on display.  the pages, so thin and so fragile that the room must be kept very dimly lit in order to slow the rate of their degradation.  a man behind me started crying.  i wanted to cry too but i didn't because i don't think she allowed herself to cry in those rooms either. 

everything felt important and special.  everything. 

i have so much to say but it's all out of order.  it's all mixed up and crisscrossed.  maybe chronology doesn't really matter.

i thought when i got back i'd instantly start saving money in order to move to new york by the end of the year but now i can't think of anything more important than getting back out in the world and doing it all again.  and next time for much, much longer than 3 weeks.

whatever you do, don't pinch me

at a quarter to 2 in the morning, we pulled the trigger. we bought our tickets to Europe.  Becca and i are going to Berlin.  7 weeks to wait.

my mind bends in half at the thought of this. i can't believe i have a ticket with my name on it that will take me all the way to Germany.  i am stunned when i think of it.  it can't possibly be real but IT IS REAL. 

holy shit! hahahahaaaaa!  

today i was all in a frenzy: studying and cleaning and filling a box with clothes and objects i no longer want which will be left on the street in front of the house.  something has changed in my life and within my being already and i haven't even gone anywhere yet.  simply buying the ticket and accepting the massive and beautiful reality that i am finally going to travel to Europe changes so much.  my being is a strange mix of such a deep calm and tremendous excitement.  i have no clue what to even say!  i have no clue what to think!  i'm just going to work on a yarn bomb and have a cocktail and watch "Wings of Desire".  ha!