you are me i am you

you are me i am you

            Free-Write

Thursday, August 23, 2012 at 12:20am ·

 

Be with me-
Be with me now please-
come on-
close the door-
shut the curtains-
be with me-
in my darkness-
no-
in my small hours-
in my nightmares in my in my-
embarrasments-
be with me in my-
sweaty clothes in my-
unworthy thoughts-
don't avert your eyes don't leave-
don't turn on the television-
don't check your phone-
just sit-
sit with me in-
in my box-
in my cage my dirty tissues
my running-
my standing still-
be with me in this room-
too small room-
my low ceilings -
my crumblings my peeling-
my fading- no no!-
be with me in my tunnelling-
must get out!
in my stagnation in my nowhere
in my going nowhere-
in my sickness-
no! no! don't be the cure
no no - hold the vigil
light the candle, sing the song
no no no no no
be with me in my chest-of-knives
be with me in my cowering
my fear, my jealousy my
NO
backwards-looking
be with me in my scars
no sorry sorry no
be with me now where I am
no escapes and no beginnings
don't even crack the window
be my proof
no no no
be my witness
see me see me
the kind of world the world
doesn't want to see
bury yourself
no no no
bury yourself with me
velvet, soft like a coffin
stay with me
no no no no
must get out
stay with me
stay-
until you are me
and I am you
and you are locked
and I am free

End Station

First free-write in ages... Need to get back into the habit of doing it weekly as I first intended (part of my 'Free-Write Wednesdays group on facebook'). It's a good way to keep my courage up and stay in the habit of sharing. An antidote to all the creative hoarding that's become my specialty (piles of metaphorical decade-old mind junk piled up to the ceiling.) I would appreciate any feedback I might have.
I was listening to this when I wrote it.  Check it out.

Enjoy.
Soon,
Gxxx

People get off
people get on
train speeds blind towards end station
we sit in dumb acceptance
of the technology
hurtling us forward
we read quietly
we chew over more immediate concerns

but moments
when reality separates
when you, through tired human eyes
steal a glimpse of sweetness
near terrible

hugs exchanged between children
man opposite reading a newspaper
he is somebodys boy

a heaviness in the chest more
honest than sentiment
an awareness - in your crossed legs
in the roots of your hair
in the noise of the underground
blood knowledge that
everyone is born
and everyone will die
between those
a heady constellation of
thoughts and practices

all these bodies - fragrant - churning
growing , degenerating
renewing themselves in
the bridge of smiles
the bridge of tears - the bridge of gazes
and knees touching
empathetic shrug and grin

sometimes - sometimes
we are doors left open to each other
we glimpse the uncleared kitchen table - coffee stains
and bills
and all the paraphernalia
of a repetitive yet
uncertain life
the train speeds blind toward it's destination
we sit in dumb acceptance of the miracle of technology
reading quietly
chewing over more immediate concerns

Love takes off the masks...

James Baldwin is a huge inspiration to me always - because of his great compassion - because of his ability to maintain a ruthlessly steady gaze - piercing right through the beauty and ugliness - into the heart of what it means to be human.

There are no shortcuts. It's a way of living, to cut yourself no breaks, to live with an expanded heart, to pursue - personally and creatively - what's true instead of what's easy. To see beyond the daily transactions of our own needs into who we are and who others really are. To not edit the complexity and the mess, but to embrace it instead. Whenever I start feeling a bit too excited about myself, I read some Baldwin and get a dose of humility. :-D ("You thought you were getting good, is it? Ha!") ("How did he learn so much in his normal-sized life? Mystery!")

Love you, James.

Gemx

The burden of making sense.

It's after 2am. The T.V. is on and I'm not even watching it. When did silences start making me so nervous? Silences and the dark. I'm going to eco hell. I'm not sure what I'm afraid of.

I tire of the burden of making sense. I keep waiting for things to be neat in my head. They will not be.  I'm swindling myself.

Life is not particularly reasonable. I'm scared of what will happen if I stop being scared of not making sense for at least as long as it takes me to put hand to laptop. If I just let go.  If I just leap full-weight into the gumbo of memory and trauma. If I just tell my stories. If my thoughts quit stalling and finally get naked. What forces in me will be unleashed?

I'm a little bit embarassed about my recent posts, not because of my opinions, which I'm pretty sure are the same, but because they're about my opinions. Opinions are important but they seem so small once they're out of your head. And then you're just waiting to see who'll agree. Which is also important, but small. Everybody thinks this and that about everything.  I'm so tired. I want to write about more than that. 

People aren't their opinions, are they? The opinions are just clothes, and underneath a mysterious, miraculous body firing with thousands of simultaneous processes, histories, tics, insecurities, projections, terror. I'm more interested in that.  I look at my son's face sometimes and I can't fathom it, how much design there is in that face, and how that compares to the anaemia of my thoughts.

If we could just look at each other like that, see that design, see that beauty and terrible vulnerability, what kind of world would it be, if we didn't see what people thought but what they were?

Zen Exhaustion or Help! Idealism Is Making Me Hate People

One is in a very off-key mood today.

The official (not-really) scientific term for this particular brand of angst is Zen-exhaustion. One finds through serious study that liquorice allsorts do not help, and neither do macaroons. (what is my obsession with coconut, anyway?) One has the urge to send angry text messages, or make tearful, impassioned phone-call speeches that begin "Why are you being this way! All I ever try to do is be decent - *sniffle* - and fair and kind and decent and it's not fair because....!"

Ah, fairness! Why are we born with this expectation? Sigh. One can only ever reach real maturity when one realises that the world is Frequently Unfair but it is an uneasy admission. Where does one draw the line between calm and activism, between acceptance and the drive for transformation? Between holding ones peace and speaking up? Between biting your tongue and punching someone else in the gob?

And how far do we take the idea that we are creating everything in our lives?

Is it possible... gasp... just sometimes, that other people are being BastardAssholes?

I am of that unfortunate group who makes themselves accountable for every thought in their heads and tries to keep it spotless in that old noggin, sunny and sweet and clean and clear of all debris. By debris I mean: irritation, annoyance, loneliness, anger, boredom, frustration, envy... all the uglies. When I say 'unfortunate', I don't mean to say that such mental/emotional hygiene is a bad idea. When I say 'unfortunate', what I mean to say is that for such a person, Zen-Exhaustion comes along and makes one very, very uncomfortable. And when I say Zen-Exhaustion, I mean the point at which a relaxed, rumi-guzzling, hippie-type female Finally Gets Pissed Off.

It descends like a flood. The crap the landlord hasn't fixed yet. That Knob who won't return your calls. The book that won't get finished. The crappy weather. The chores that must be done. The chicken that must be seasoned. The forms that must be filled. The selfish family members. The crappy weather. Did I say 'the crappy weather' already? Let me say it again: The Crappy Weather. And Other People! Why are other people such bastards all the time?! Ok, some of the time? (another sypmptom of Zen-Exhaustion is chronic hyperbole) And beyond all of this the great ontological questions which are usually abstract and candy-floss-like that suddenly densify into something far more tooth-shattering - questions like: What the actual f**k is this all for? Why is everybody so weird (including me)? Why don't people all just say what they're thinking? Why are all the really evil people doing so well? Why are all the sweet-hearted and vulnerable people suffering so much? Why are so many horrid things allowed? And what Can I Do About It, anyway? Everyone has a theory on everything but - for goodness sake - which are the right ones and what is fixable and what should be fixed and what should be left alone?

And one is so used to being the person everyone can rely on for a smile that the least bit of angst makes one feel... well... so dirty inside. And then one feels guilty and annoyed that one must always be smiling, even though no one has explicitly asked for such a service. And the great irony of it all is that the times one most needs to talk to people are the times that one is least inclined to do so. Because one is Pissed Off, and has not much sweetness to share. Especially when God Knows if anyone is Really Interested in Listening. Yeah, I'm capitalizing a lot of words right now. So sue me! (no, actually, don't do that. I really don't have the extra).

Anyway, the big problem with trying to Be the Change You Want To See in the World and all that positive crap is that, invariably, one raises ones standards of behaviour and then - inevitably - begins to expect more of other people. And then it all become somewhat counterproductive when you start to think...

Help! Idealism is Making Me Hate People.

If any of you can figure out what I'm trying to say, please give me a shout!

Love you all! Please be nicer to people, you bastards.

Gemx

Goodbye Whitney :-(

The night gets a little broken and
a little of the stuffing comes out

the first thing you feel is old. The second thing you feel is robbed
some people are more than people -

an era -
a cocktail of longago moments
a snapshot of you in pastel-coloured legwarmers
earlyyouth and innocence
her death is not
one nervous system stopping
its more like giving up
your childhood walking into your present and
saying "i give up"!

(But wait! Before you go - tell me
where do broken hearts go?)

Whitney was the one
who taught you about love!

from whom you memorized every vibrato
every voicecrack of heartbreak
before you'd so much as held a boys hand

taught you what it meant to lose
what it meant to long
in a way that seemed beautiful - in a way that felt
safe, as if being a woman would be no different than being a girl
but more fun!

mountains of curls
a face impenetrably happy,
a face too pretty and not beautiful enough to be tragic
the face of a girl who's voice knows everything

Every line from the top of
how do I know! to the bottom of I wanna dance
made you want
to feel that quality of pain - because love
would be worth it!
that was the promise in that voice
that voice that always seemed to have a whole lifetime buried in it!

not the type of voice that dies at 48 -
before you know what happens to broken hearts!

Its a voice that's been holding your hand
since before you knew what music was

it mattered not if she was a genius
not judged and critiqued like MJ
just complete and whole and far away
like childhood

you shut your mind to what she had become
as far away from herself
as innocence to cynicism -

the stuffing gets knocked out of the night a little bit
you are thinking of how sad it is
you are thinking of her daughter

but you are also thinking of yourself
thinking

in her songs

both of you
are the same forever

Euphoria Skank!!!

1.

When I get a good idea

going like this.. MAN! Ah - just like this

all juicy in my head like some kind of bomb - some kind of bomb made out of good shit like penny sweets

when I'm like this i gotta tell you - I have to do a funny dance!

I'm gonna tell you about this cos it's time I start sharing this stuff cos real talk

I am peculiar! And if I don't tell you about peculiar stuff pretty soon I won't be saying anything at all!

So let me tell you about this dance man -

i get a GOOD IDEA and I start walking like a

chicken all the way down the hall to my kitchen and I jerk my shoulders up and down

shuffle side to side and cackle to myself

and I might clap my hands in time to some rhythm of my thoughts coming down like the kind of rain

you make with a xylophone - I might actually spin round like some kind of Michael Jackson

one-woman tribute (bandless) band

I might do something really mad and

make a cuppa tea with two bags - one ginger and one black

and NOT EVEN MEASURE THE SUGAR - just drop it in! Just WHATEVER

cos something is HAPPENING TO ME!

And its the feeling I'm always waiting to feel - when I am

finally delivered of that promise - always idling away inside me - ticking -dividing cell after cell - the promise that I might make

something beautiful - real - that I might grab reality by its head - and hear the scream

and cut the chord! - that I may fling myself across my floor and

with pen and notebook and throw my chest wide

wide open like a skylight and the heavens might come crashing

through me - this poor wretched funny-dancing little single mothering bag of peculiarities - that all this stuff - this stuff that's TRUE - and real and human might come through - might coming crashing through me like a mob

a tumult - a chaos - a hurricane - a riot - an apocalypse of diamonds!



2.

Oh yes. And I'm bout to go hit that page again like some fool that owes me money.

I'm painting again!

Talking heads says it best in that track 'Artists Only':

I'M PAINTING! I'M PAINTING AGAIN!!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfYZFS7JvT0)

That cry of euphoric weirdness and doom... Just substitute 'painting' for 'writing'.

I'm painting, I'm painting again.
I'm cleaning, I'm cleaning again.
I'm cleaning, I'm cleaning my brain.

Pretty soon now, I will be bitter.
Pretty soon now, will be a quitter.
Pretty soon now, I will be bitter.
You can't see it 'til it's finished

I don't have to prove...that I am creative!
I dont' have to prove...that I am creative!
All my pictures are confused
And now I'm going to take me to you.

Sitting in bed in two pairs of trousers and two tops layered up and been sitting here for the straight 5 hours that constitute my workday (there is also the 3 or four hour worknight later once maternal duties have been taken care of). I am quite wolfishly happy with myself. My hair is a mess.

I have much project at the moment, probably more than even discipline can get me through, but we'll soon see. I am simultaneously in a sturdy frame of mind and also away with the mystics. I am all emotional about everything. The snow. D'angelo being back. My boy having lost a tooth already. All kinds of crazy-eyed joyful and also Caribbean-ly practical. I am still fully of happiness that 2011, that dirty old smelly vagrant of a year, is over. Oh yes. 2012, bring it on. Whats the worst that could happen? The apocalypse! Pfffft!

ANd I am writing a book (2nd draft) and a play (first draft) and an album (just to keep shit impossible, the way I like it).

I can't share actual text from any of my official projects (that would be crack-ish), though I shall no doubt be back to whinge about them. Instead, I shall share this little free-write (that of course has nothing whatever to do with my life or anybody I know or have ever met) I posted on facebook today during my break:

You and I are eternal
eternally
eternally leaving
stuff behind hoping
we'll have a chance to come back
trying to outwit the days that faster and faster
push us along
wrenching us
from one adventure
to the next so fast the road tangles
up in itself
and trips us
into each other

and we are wily as hansel and gretel
traces must be left
so tomorrow remembers yesterday
a pair of glasses - a scarf - a book
a bracelet left idling behind the broken television
we are forever
forever leaving ourselves places
so we can come back
to the times we were loved
that we smiled all over
and felt home
home.

we leave ourselves behind and go
with a smile
and a kiss that has medicine in it
a prescription for loneliness

a silent request that you
keep me close against your dreams
wrapped tight in all your corniest
white picket fantasies, so you don't pick up one
without the other
I am forever
forever leaving
myself with you
in the hopes
I will one day
be free
to stay -

In other news: Some people have angelic timing, don't they?

Back soon with a blog that's actually, like, coherent. Promise.

Huge gigantic whale shark-sized love,

Gemxxx