Posts tagged with "memories"

I'm taking back my weekends

The prob­lem with work­ing from home is that you’re nev­er real­ly off. There’s always some­thing you can be doing, so it’s hard to detach and just relax. The days of the week lose their mean­ing. I haven’t had a vaca­tion in about a year, and I’ve been at home almost that whole time. It’s left me feel­ing burned out. Lisa and I are both going through the same thing at this point in our lives, and we’re try­ing to fig­ure out how to pick our­selves up from prob­lems that seem insur­mount­able when we’re liv­ing them by our­selves.

But baby steps first, and today was back to a greasy break­fast. I watched The English Patient, cause I’ve been in the mood for epics late­ly, and I’d been deny­ing myself the plea­sure for too long. I dis­cov­ered the part I used to place my kiss­es is called the supraster­nal notch. Now I won­der if she ever sees the English Patient, whether she’ll think I just stole some idea from some movie, or whether she’ll remem­ber and gen­tly fin­ger the val­ley my lips claimed as their own.

At the end of these movies, I always feel a mix­ture of emo­tions, the same when step­ping out of the Shakespearean plays I saw in high school: deject­ed from all the tragedy, yet amazed by such pro­found per­for­mances and pro­duc­tions. It was the same after I fin­ished read­ing Doctor Zhivago. Maybe cause I iden­ti­fy with the poet-war­riors, the themes of their love, the depths of their emo­tions, and the trap­pings of their fate. No mat­ter what the emo­tion is though, it makes me sit in the dark and write about things the way I used to.

And that’s enough for now.

i miss

try­ing new foods with my Uncle Joe and the fas­ci­na­tion I used to have for Six Feet Under and being able to sleep more than four con­tin­u­ous hours and gui­tar lessons and the sound girls make when you squeeze them just right and the idea of camp­ing but not the actu­al act and remem­ber­ing how to play Sunny Road and Trolley and Steph already and snow and peo­ple-watch­ing when tak­ing the bus and long-term rela­tion­ships and

two girls and a baby

these kind of moments before we all par­take and

the smell of rain in Paris and make­outs and know­ing what to say to peo­ple when they ask me how I’m doing and being led by the hand to the bed­room and being called Jeffy Bear and hav­ing a rea­son to wear Classic by Banana Republic and get­ting real­ly excit­ed and being pur­sued by some­one I’m not try­ing to avoid and the time in my life before all this med­ica­tion and hav­ing some­one I could call my best friend and cud­dling and walks and old /b/ and Bruce Springstein before he went rock and no one I should­n’t and hav­ing a Tai Chi teacher and

bums like this

lit­tle bums like this and

know­ing how to play piano and pounc­ing on sur­vivors with Dave and Tyler and hav­ing a sta­ble source of income and being part of her life and hav­ing her in mine and Hawaiian sun­sets and find­ing sales for clothes that fit me and play­ing songs for Antje and the inti­ma­cy of oral and simul­ta­ne­ous orgasms and sex, obvi­ous­ly and hav­ing some­one to spoil and new episodes of Reno 911 and host­ing big par­ties and the way Leonard would sleep on my neck.

hay. been a while.

You must be sav­ing the world as I write this, mak­ing it a bet­ter place for the ones like me who nev­er seem to care enough to make a dif­fer­ence. Aside from the easy things like recy­cling and sav­ing my laun­dry for large batch­es, of course, but that’s what you’d con­sid­er bare min­i­mum, and it always felt like you used some­thing like that as excuse to keep us at a dis­tance.

Maybe that’s why I’ve nev­er felt as in the way as when I was with you. It hurt to think I was only slow­ing you down, when I’d already planned so much. There were more shots to take, more cheeks to pinch, and parts of the world to explore togeth­er.

I know you need­ed a fight­er to match your heart, but that’s not why I chal­lenged you. Not cause I was a skep­tic either, but because I want­ed to be con­vinced. I want­ed to be edu­cat­ed. I want­ed you to change every pre­con­ceived notion I had of agri­cul­ture and cor­po­rate farm­ing and sus­tain­able growth with strong argu­ments and sound log­ic. But instead, you mis­took it as apa­thy and con­flict, and just gave up.

That’s why I won­der why you tried to kiss me last time, when things had already fall­en apart. And whether I should have turned around; if you would have seen you get­ting in your car and dri­ving off, or whether you would have lin­gered to see me wave through the glass. But I could­n’t look back, cause I’d had enough of you hav­ing enough of me.

The only things you left me with were a huge pur­ple bruise and three songs in my col­lec­tion, but I still need to thank you for some­thing rich and ful­fill­ing. Something that made me stronger, cause you were the only per­son to ever call them beau­ty marks, the only one to tru­ly make me feel impor­tant and desir­able and val­i­dat­ed.

That’s prob­a­bly why I think of leav­ing some­thing in the Dropbox fold­er to find one day. Something sweet and nice and com­plete­ly hope­less. But I real­ize it’s not cause I still like you. It’s cause I miss the idea of lik­ing you, the idea of hav­ing some­thing oth­er than all this mis­spent love.

don't let the past remind us of what we are not now

It’s been anoth­er crazy week. Between the appoint­ments and the hang­outs, I haven’t had a night to myself.

One thing I wish I had more time to appre­ci­ate is the weath­er. The most recent bliz­zard draped the city in snow wet and heavy, and all I want to do now is go out and shoot with a nice piece of glass that goes wider than f/2.8. I keep promis­ing myself I’ll do it next snow­fall, but life always seems to get in the way.

baby playing peekaboo

The over­stim­u­la­tion has left me with my guard down, and I’m stuck in my mem­o­ries again. Left remem­ber­ing old con­ver­sa­tions, nights lost to the sens­es, and my regret at not men­tion­ing how much I liked those nails done up in white and nude.

It’s not my fault. Honest. I get pulled into it in the most inno­cent ways. That song will come over the tin­ny speak­ers in the pro­duce depart­ment when I’m pick­ing out toma­toes. Or I’ll be on the 12 home, going through ran­dom songs in my col­lec­tion to try out my new mon­i­tors, when I catch some­one shar­ing what I always saved for us.

I’m start­ing to under­stand how help­less I am to change the past, but at the very least, I can change myself. And that’s often good enough nowa­days.