superpowers in not so super humans

If you had one, what would it be? To fly? To have laser vision? Maybe you really just want to be able to turn back time.

What about things that aren't so absurd, being able to type 100 wpm, never having a bad hair day, being able to play the piano like Beethoven.

And me? I can read minds. Not every mind or every thought, but I can tell how people think. I know what those looks mean, what your eyes are trying to hide. I know why you don't want me to come. I know why you invite me with no intention of a real invitation. At least, I know why you think you do these things. Telling the truth is not my power.

I stumbled across an old recollection of mine, I went back, years and years. I scanned through my own thoughts and I remembered the feelings. The old bog that pulled on everything. The corners of my mouth, my heart, dragging everything under. But then the old familiar songs came back and all the old loves, all the old things that used to be love. What happened to it, what happened to me, why can I only remember happiness with pain?

And I'm reading his thoughts again. From a hundred miles away I can still hear it, from ten thousand miles away I have always known those thoughts. But this time they aren't mine anymore.

The snow isn't as cold when you think about it, there are much colder things. Colder people. Colder nights. Colder thoughts.

Finally Finals

Semesters come, and semester go. Sunrises dawn and sunsets fade. And no matter how excited we to begin them, full of life, excitement, and new plans, there's always a sense of excitement and anticipation to finish them. Like closing a novel you've been reading for four months. It doesn't matter how good it was, you want to complete it.

Over. Over. Over.

Things we really aren't

Tell me about yourself. No, what would you know, really, few people know themselves really well enough to be able to tell me who they are. But I'm sure you can tell me who you aren't. Let me start. I am not:

• Elvis Presley. This is self evident if you've ever seen me on the dance floor, I can wiggle and jiggle just as good as a bowl of jell-O but I will never be able to have those beautiful blue eyes or those hips, oh Lord love a duck, how I want those hips
• very tall- this is emphasized by everyone else
  
• a ballerina- refer to number one
  
• an airline pilot
• a guru
• Asian
• very skinny
• homeless
• unemployed
• a boy
• originally from Utah
• African American
• a brunette (am I?)

Healthy Perspectives

While I was attending a lecture the other day by Daren Brooks, I reflected on health and health businesses. He brought up a valid argument that I have thought about for a while now, who is the authority on health. He mentioned his experiences after graduate school when he went to 7 seven different health officials (herbaligists, doctor, acupuncturer, psychologist, etc) and got 7 different diagnosises (he actually had made up his symptoms). He then went on to talk about how if we are creative with our health knowledge then we don't have to find ourselves stuck in a health department, but that we can do what we want to and get paid for it.

He then had us list topics we were interested in and threw out some ideas of ways that we could pursue that area that were maybe non-traditional. I mentioned patient education and he mentioned that you could create a program, with a manual and maybe some CDs and then take it to a hospital and propose it to the hospital administration. Me... little old me... teaching other people something that I don't really have any "experience" in, but have heard lots about. And yet, why not?

If I know something about anything, shouldn't I try and share it with others, shouldn't I try and help people out? I can't profess that I know everything or that I have some amazing proliferation of knowledge, but I can help set up a program for patients on their way to recovery so that they can make habit changes and instead of having to come back for subsequent surgeries can enjoy their lives and their changed lifestyle.

It was interesting, as Daren was leaving, because he mentioned that we are the only ones going through our experience, we are the only ones that know what we are feeling, so even though we can get advice from doctors, herbaligists, mother-in-laws, etc. it is always up to us to ask ourselves what we need and to reconnect. So in the end, the health professional is not just the guy who went to school for eight years, but it's you and it's me.

And that is what I would call a healthy perspective.

Feeling the vibrations

Someone once told me that in our smallest particles we are made up of energy. Everything we are, everything we do, is a vibration of particles of energy inside and outside of us, whether we are doing back flips or if we are stuck on our back. I think this explains to some degree why we resonate, like guitar strings when things seem to be true. According to Webster something is true if it is “consistent with fact or reality; not false.” We can feel truth because it is part of us, it is something we have known, we do know and we will know.

I think this carries into music, not necessarily the truthfulness part of it, but the way that we can relate to music can be much more than on a “like” or “dislike” basis. In fact, we can listen to something until it begins to cause our whole bodies to vibrate, until we not only grow accustom to listening to it, but until it becomes part of our beings. Is it possible that we can listen to music, to sounds and vibrations until they have changed the way we resonate and the basic structure of our beings?

I know that simplifies things on a grand scale, but sometimes when I listen to someone singing, not just through speakers, but when I hear the vibrations through the air straight from their vocal chords I can feel it. I can feel it seeping into my arms, legs, filling me up until it begins to leak out of me. Often times I can feel it even in the hairs of my arms.

Croatian me Crazy

I have returned, prodigal and wonderfully happy to return. It was intense, to say it was entirely enjoyable, 2 & 4 year olds and all. Pictures to come.

Prop me up on that one

I'm not a very political person, I'm not even very politically correct, but the other day I learned a little bit more about California's Proposition 8.

Here's el dealio, I couldn't understand, why would the church want us to vote for Prop 8 so badly? I understand that homosexuality is a sin and that we shouldn't condone it, but at the same time, don't people have their rights to believe whatever they want to believe? And then I read this.

Also, check this out

Glomerular Apparatus

Tell me about your expenses, sing me a lullaby of taxes, stocks, and all your investments. I love listening to your money talk and hearing all of your thoughts on stock. Give me hope and give me love, wrap me up tight in your green dreams. I'll sit you in the corner and I'll spin you round and round and round.

Baby, business is my business and babies are my hobby-horse. So baby, let's go for a ride.

Nostalgia

The feeling of my hair blown on my face, in my ears, and around my forehead is something unfamiliar, but this bench, the smell of exhaust, and the anticipation are not.

It has always been a journey, before I steppeed out my door I could feel it. It was the rush, the distant beeping, the only difference was the increase in gas prices. The store window displays are advertising the same things with new names or else have dissappeared with the window panes. The shady Mexican restaurant, the smell of grease, and fries and grass clippings.

The mountains? They're as constant as, as unmoving, as immovable as my Grandpa's constitution. Don't expect them to reflect the look of surprise I see on your face, they've seen it.

The screech of the wind through the windows has been there, but I just never realized before what it was screeching about. This time I want to join it.

But in the end, what really changes? Is it the people, the places, the weeds? Or is it only our opinions? The shoes we wear are a different brand, a different style, maybe a different color, but the same size, the same foot. And why does some change feel natural while other changes rip us apart?

Cry a little bit

It was white. With brown and strawberry chunks scattered about it and shattered glass shards spread sporadically across the floor. It was yogurt with granola and fruit. It was a mess that I now had to clean and I was going to be late for work. It was a safety hazard for those walking across the kitchen with bare feet.

It WAS my breakfast.

Daze

Sometimes you don't know what to do next.

Or maybe that's just me.

Ridiculous

This time I'm going to include the moral before the story:
Don't get yourself in a dizzle, it's not that important.

It's Thursday evening and I just got back from Institute and the lights were out and the door was locked and I did not have my key. I had looked before I left my house and was hoping my cute room mate would be home to unlock the door for me. I called her earlier and she said she was anticipating coming, but never showed up.

So after sitting on my doorstep, calling my some what flakey room mate and her boyfriend for ten minutes, I decide to go visit teaching. An hour later I return to discover she is still not home, but my cute pot of a friend Juan and his co-worker are sitting on my stairs wanting hair cuts. I continue to call my no-good room mate and her no-good boyfriend who don't pick up their no-good phones to no avail. Instead we go upstairs and use the dining room of the house above us and I give hair cuts for an hour and go back to see if my prodigal room mate has returned. To no avail. I am grumpy.

I do not like to stay awake this long.

I am hungry.

I am angry.

Where is my dirty room mate and why am I not asleep? *grubmle, grumble, grumble, I'm going to bite someone's head off*

I see that dirty rotten boyfriend, bumbling my way... with a key...

He opens the door, I walk in, turn around, lock it.

I'm going crazy, I can't find my dang key, I'm losing everything, my keys, my socks, my books, my pamphlets, my mind. Why can't I find that key, I've looked in the couch, on the floor, under my pillows.

My friend Dale comes over (I'd called him when I was locked out) and here I am inside my house looking silly. He convinces me to look one last time in my back pack and low and behold there is my key. There. the entire time. My key.

You have to be kidding me.

I'm going to bed.

11 o'clock the pumpkin hour

It comes like a killer breeze, the deadline for the quiz. The deadline for my life. The deadline for the money. The deadline for the submission. The deadline for work. The deadline for the papers.

I'll never understand what it means to be stress free.

Birthdays and things

Today is my birthday.

I don't usually like my birthday, for some reason when I was little I got it into my mind that people ought to know when it is my birthday. In my head if people really cared then they would somehow figure it out and then tell me. This rarely happened. I also don't like making a fuss about it generally because... it just seems selfish and silly, if other people do it, I don't really think it's selfish or silly, just for myself, don't ask me how that makes sense.

My birthdays have usually ranged from bad to worse, but there'll always be one or two people who care, such as my sister Anna or my best friends. I don't know what it is about birthdays. Why do I seem to care so much yet try to hide it so much? Why do I expect so much yet say so little?

I'm not a teenager any more, does that mean my chance for good birthdays has passed? I sure hope not. Today I am going to take pictures, have fun, you know the drill.

Touch Me, Hold me, Brush me

I touch people every day, with the start of the new semester there are more people and more hands hanging by more sides and more times for me to "accidently" brush against them. I wonder if they receive the same sudden thrill, instant chill.

Tommy, can you see me?
Can I help to cheer you?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Can you feel me near you?
Oooh, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy.
Tommy, can you hear me?
Can you feel me near you?
Tommy, can you see me?
Can I help to cheer you?
Oooh, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy,
Tommy, Tommy, Tommy.

Why are we so phobic of touch? Why can't we just touch each other? I want to feel you and be wrapped around by your arms, your legs, you hair brushing against my face and my back. Let's be hispanic and then we can kiss each other and no one will stare, no one will glare, but they may just join in. Let's be children and then we wont care about manner, we wont stand back, but just caress.

Caress me.
Address me.
Bless me.
Dress me.
Make a mess with me.

Work-a-holic

I work a lot, I realized today that since I took my new job, I work 7 days a week. That's pretty intense, huh? Although, neither of my jobs are all that difficult and I generally have quite a bit of fun when I am at them.

Also, my hair is really very long. I'm not sure what to do with myself any more.

When it's quiet I can hear the swooshing of the fish tank and the constant whirling of the fan near the aloe plants. I can't hear myself think though, that would require thinking to begin with.

The Weeping Willow Tree

If I'm tardy again then not only will I be even stinkier from not having a chance to bathe in three days, not only will I be more hungry from not eating breakfast, and not only will my hair look like a rat's nest, but I will also probably be fired.

Come on alarm clock, do your job.

Guideposts

How is it that we can still think ourselves so far removed. And yet so close to home.

I have to move, I packed this morning until I ran out of boxes.

Everytime I pack I wonder how much of my stuff I actually use. And everytime I throw something away I need it the next day.

French Thoughts

We made a deal, with the devil. We closed our hearts and our minds. We took red die and colored ourselves, just in order to eat some pie.

We danced with pygmies and house elves. We stood around the plum tree and waited for them to come out, to threaten small children back into their homes and then wait until dark for to carry them away.

We caroused in the most scandalous alleys and drank with the sailormen. We loved each other and tried to pretend that we would never be unfaithful, but then we looked into each other’s eyes and knew the truth. But it didn’t hurt so bad, knowing it was mutual.

Then the devil came to take his toll, to wrench from us our souls. And now every morning at half past ten we wake up and then start it again. It’s days like this that make me wish my life were mine once more.

Like Unto a toilet

It's broken. It has been for a while, but I think our land lady's phone has been as well since she never picks up or replies to our calls. I think my nose is broken as well.

Toilet Paper

I can't stop blowing my nose.
On my sleeve, on my bed spread, on my co-worker's jacket.
My throat doesn't want to believe that it's time to be awake.
I can't swallow, I can't cough, I can't breath.

Dizzy.

Dis
connected

drawn into the back of my throat like so many walruses and so much snot.

Squash me

I went to the garden this morning. It was wonderful. I scratched my legs and cut down weeds.

And now I have fresh vegetables.

General Concepts of Disease

I went looking for my rusted over bicycle in the darkness under stairwells and hidden in bushes. I didn't find it, but a lesion in my search led me to a pile of old text books and loose clothing. Covered in dust and discarded carelessly, I opened the pages and found a wealth of odd diesases. Lung carcinoma, fibroadenoma, cervical polyps, and so much more.

It makes my blood boil.

It makes my skin crawl.

I am so intrigued.

Oregano

Sometimes it's best that I don't speak Spanish, then when people say embarassing things to me, it doesn't phase me.

I am almost done with:
-the summer
-my sister's cook book
-The Promised Land play
-transcripts I started at the beginning of the summer

So much fulfillment.

Ode

Ariana, your bum is so cute.
You love all of your friends
You love to send toots
Your friendships wont ever end
Even when they don't call
And it is your birthday
Because they were eating dinner
You wont bawl
You'll say hooray
And you'll never be thinner.

Colors

I ran again this morning. Beating of my feet can't compare with the beating of my heart or the dramaticm with which my face hits the pavement.

We ran up the mountain. We kicked the soccer ball back and forth, rythm as consistent as a pendulum.

He said he will never talk to me again. I called his name outside the dressing room and he only glared at me and spat out Spanish sentences of how we would never talk again. I cried for a while, but then I died inside and everyone knows dead people can't cry. I wiped away my tears and memories and kept on walking right beside him.


After the sun peeked out from behind the mountains the valley lit up splendidly. I watched trees leaves turn green in seconds and grass go from an indistinct dark mass to sharp blades. Apricots showed their true colors and the red of my shorts again matched the red of my shirt.

It was beautiful.

The Benefits of Puking

I love wikipedia. Some days I wish I had invented Wikipedia, or written an article on it that lasted longer than 5 min.

If I could learn Spanish by osmosis, I would be proficient from sleeping on so many Spanish books by now. Since I cannot, I instead have to smile, nod, and act panicked when I am in a room with only Spanish speakers.

Hola, como estas?
Bien, y tu?
Consada
Por que?
Por que tu as corres en mi cabeza todo dia? hehe hehe hehe... uh...

Dorky and incorrect Spanish can make me laugh.

Carrots

I don't like left-overs. I don't care for microwaves, warm and soggy is not my ideal for food.

I do love:
-rose bushes
-fresh fruit
-getting things done
-biking to the library
-making birthday cards
-searching for good deals
-yard saleing
-taking pictures
-reading
-apprender espanol
-packing
-sleeping
-eating breakfast
-making lists
-organizing
-cutting out magazines
-brushing my teeth

Windows and glasses

There's a window at my work that is always stormy. It's two paned and somehow condensation is trapped inside and no matter how hard we try and clean it, we will always feel like it's raining when we sit in front of it.

I know a girl like that.

She used to be clear, nice, understanding, but got it into her head that her life was hard, she didn't deserve the hardships that came her way, and now she's right.

Jokes that are funny

If you have to explain them too much, they are not very funny.

This is much like the one song I have written, most people smile and nod, but don't understand a word, so instead I sing it to myself, calming myself to sleep. I sit and read by the fireplace and giggle in my dreams.

I think it's funny when you can't find your glasses, you think it's infuriating.
I think it's funny when you make that thinking face, but you just don't understand.
I think it's funny when can't make up your mind, and you just get mad.

It's okay, it's an inside joke.

Dreams can be Deceiving

But it was nice for a while.

I journeyed to the moon and watched little animated boys gets scared journeying through passageways and tunnels trying to stay where there was light, until it all went dark.

I sat in the arms of someone I love and to help dig up buried treasure. I felt his eyes watching me, I felt his breath on my neck, I felt the strength of his arms and then I woke up buried in Cami's armpit.

Dreams are just illusions, but sometimes life is too.

Glass Bottles

It's funny the way some things work out. Or the way they never could, never would, and never want to.

It's funny the relief we get when we finish something, a book report, a shower, a meal. Completion, a feeling so desired and yet so fleeting, seemingly impossible to really achieve. We come so close before it evades our grasp, done with one project we look up to see the stack that has piled up in the meantime.

Stop.

Ignore the seething pile of dirty dishes, half-pages, and damsels in distress.

Re-coop.

Breath.

Close your eyes and be at peace.

And you're closer already than you could have been working away busily for hours on end.

The Repentance of Paul

13 years in the desert. Intense walking and fasting and desert winds blown in his face. But worse still the remorse. Better still the joy.

How do you get humility? Is it like the slap and the face that you just have to wait for or can you try really hard and hope it will come?

Breaking Point

Break down, break through, break out, break away, breaking, broke, broken.

It's funny how hard it is for me to cry during the "sad" scenes of our play but as soon as we're done how easy it becomes. Like a leaking faucet you thought you had fixed. Like so many flowers falling from a tree or turtles from a log.

And up the next morning before dawn, ready to do it all over again.

See shale

Sally sells sea shells down by the sea shore.

Sell me something sally, s'il vous plait.

What is it about them that makes you so intrigued? What about lifting each and every abandoned exoskelton to your ear for a hopeful glimpse into your past, longing for the ocean we say we can hear. I had a basket of them, mostly broken into pieces and none of which pretty to look at and suddenly I discovered seven beautiful faces starring up at me, begging to listen into my fantasies.

"Can you hear it?" they ask innocently. I smile and pretend they still hold the same thrill, the same fascination.

Why is it these are useful?

"Exoskeletons, as hard parts of organisms, are greatly useful in assisting preservation of organisms, whose soft parts usually rot before they can be fossilised."

My grandparents collect them. Every winter when they migrate like the birds and return like cats with their prices from their mouths. When they leave forever, their shells will still remain.

"Throughout the history of humanity, shells of many types and from many different kinds of animals have been popular as human adornments. The Moche culture of ancient Peru worshipped animals and the sea and often depicted shells in their art."

So it all boils down to this. Our past, our lives, whatever we leave behind will all be recycled in the great play of life until we're nothing but a necklace, a bead, a button.

Backaches

I think he just made it worse. Every Tuesday, for free, come get it, come one and all, for the snap crackle pop of your lifetime.

Play practice ended at 12:30, but my back ache will go on forever.

Why did I see that chiropractor, even if it was free and sounded good?

Recipes

Fun in the sun
Prep time: your lifetime
Cook time: 10 seconds
Ingredients:
-1 lime
-1 coconut

Directions
1. You put the lime in the coconut.
2. And shake it all around

I have been typing up recipes for my sister. I generally just clean her apartment, water her garden, prepare small appetizers for her meals, and hand wash her laundry, but recently she has pulled out a large Victoria Secret bag worth of recipes which she wants typed up and organized. Two words can describe my experience with this: In-tense.

So we fire up our stove and gather all our friends. Spend some time in the kitchen and on the table and in our cupboards. There's a reason we call it the kissing closet after all.

Bereft

What is it like to have your life plans change? To try so hard, to slip and discover you have not just scraped you knee, but you have fallen off the cliff. Who knew you were so close? Something so simple where you can't even look into people's eyes. You can't tell your friends, but you can't hide it. I wonder what that would be like. I have a cousin who is pregnant and due in September. She's keeping the baby, but has already lost her respect and her parent's acceptance. I have a friend who has been bulemic, anorexic, and addicted to drugs since we were 14. She's lost plenty of pounds but gained lots of problems. And what would you say if you were them, it's not so bad, it's horrible, it's no one's fault, it's mine, it's my parents, it's over, it's only just begun? What would you say if you knew them? What could you?

Healing

It's still there and it aches sometimes, mostly when I remember it and go over it again and again, just to check. However, it doesn't constantly pain me, reminding me I've been hurt every time I move, every time I eat, everytime I breath. Things do heal. Vitamins, exercise, de-stressing, and mostly time have set the process in motion and now I'm on my way. I'm not sure if you ever know when it's over, whether you realize it or not, usually you've stopped thinking about it. But when you realize you're healing, all you can do is anticipate, whether it's cold sores or old loves.

Dancing around in Sequence

I climbed a mountain and now my calves hurt.
I ate falafel and now I smell like garlic.
I met a Peruvian and now I'm looking at plane tickets.

Discoveries

I have a cold sore. It is in my mouth. I do not love it like I love French toast. I do not love it like I love fresh tomatoes or garden peas. I feel it though every time I talk, every time I smile, it's the aftertaste to my orange juice and I can't resist from sticking my tongue to feel it every couple of minutes. Every minute. Every few seconds.

– An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.
Mark Twain

except it's a cold sore.

It's not even cold outside, the sun is shining, and we went to Mimi's for breakfast, the first customers. Although I do work in air conditioning. No, it is still not cold.

I am not particularly sore either. No exercise beyond normal, no bitter feelings, no soreness. Just in my mouth.

At least it's not contagious.

Hairy

It's odd to have hair. I can see it even when I'm not looking in a mirror. One tendril shoots striaght from the side of my head even and then curls conspiciously into view next to my eye. I can feel my bangs creep down my face ever closer to my eyebrows as I shake my bushy mane all over the back of ny neck. Like the rest of me, it is rebellious and stubborn, choosing to be unique and unattractive rather than conform at any cost. Much like my thighs, grey elbows, or pouty stomach, it demands to be seen.

Flashing back to Middle School and the insecurity accompanied by such length, my hands unconsciously reach for the scissors. But like everything that happens in my life I resist for a time and just hope this time it will be different. Things will change. I'll be different. It will be different. Things will be better, we just needed time.

Persistence

Clammer clammer clammer
clackity clackity clackity
tippity tippity tippity
jab jab jab

Is there really a reason to treat the keyboard like this or do we do it just for fun? I type until my fingers are just one blur. I type until you can't see the letters, pasted on their squares, and until there's really nothing there but the dust beneath the keys. There's a reason they are called that, keys. They not too different from the kind you use in your doors or your mailboxes or your journal locks. Just different shapes for which to unlock emotions instead of kitchen cabinets or childhood scribblings.

Somebody's eyes

My mother called me the other night.

Eleven seventeen.

My ringer was too loud and I answered it quickly.

"Hello?"
"Are you alright?"
"Yes."
"Are you safe?"
"Yes."
"I just had a feeling to call you?"
"I'm fine"
"What are you doing?"
"About to go to bed"
"Okay, well, be safe"

I quickly remembered that when I came home the doors had been unlocked so I sent my friend to search my house for intruders and although they found no one I still lay in bed tossing and turning all night with visions of darkly dressed men approaching me silently. I could feel their hands creeping around my neck, over my dresser, through my things. I could smell their breath on my face and down my back. As soon as I would open my eyes they would jump behind me and I'd turn to find them, but they'd be gone only to torment me later.

The next day when I saw her I asked

"Why did you call?"
"I just felt like I needed to. It's strange, a long time ago I had a lady in our ward who called me three weeks in a row and asked me if I was okay. Each time I said I was fine and then the third week, something really bad happened"

Before I could ask what our conversation was cut short by my joyful niece, but the fear ensued. Instead of calming me I became panicked and for the first time in my life began to understand my mother's paranoia attacks and our mad midnight run aways from my childhood.

"We have to go, grab your things children, we're leaving" We'd scurry into the van as silently as we could and sleep calmly, vaguely aware that there may be someone after us, but too uninformed to be truly scared. Always more a misconceived memory than a reality in my life and never the same in the morning. Generally in a different place when we woke up than when we went to sleep.

Are fears transferable like 25¢ tattoos? Or once you recycle them do they come back the same, yet different? Will I be scared every night from now on when I used to roam the streets fearless and brave and naive? Who can really say...

Searching

I thought about it for hours before I went to bed last night, but my subconscious still didn't help me to find it this morning. Instead I languished on the couch, crawled across the floor, and kowtowed my way into the bathroom without a sign of my lost one.

"I've had things stolen from me before, I'm used to the feeling" the comforting words of a friend when you realize you may have to purchase something you could never find. One last look in the oven, another glance in the couch cushion, adjusting the curtains and bed sheets, and a frantic panic in the attic.

Gone.

We are gone.

You are gone.

But the memory is not. And neither is the fine.

Thoughts Remembered

6:00 "Should I wake up or enjoy my sleep..."
6:30 "There's something I need to do..."
6:40 "It's 7-11! Free slurpies, I'll just jump in the shower, take my bike and----"
a door slams
the shower can be heard to start
my bladder is about to explode
6:50 "I'm going"
7:00 "do you have any more cups left?" "left? I haven't even opened them yet"
7:11 "take my picture! take my picture!"

The Wilky

Today I thought about getting a jamba juice from the Wilky, but then I remembered I did not grow up in the sixties and probably didn't have rights to call it that, so instead I made pancakes and ran to work with my hair still wet.

Mornings are such interesting things in the way they change from day to day, but always hold a place in my heart. The hardest thing about mornings is getting them to start. They're quite quick once they actually get going, but you always have to poke and prod and yell in their ears to get them from those high beds in the sky. We used to try to lure them down with sleepy eyed children to tease and lawn sprinklers to run through, but after time these just weren't incentive enough. So now we scream and yell, waking up hoarse in our efforts to get the morning to come. Finally the morning beams will stream through your window, ignoring your curtains and creeping along the sidewalk stunning runners and sleeping reptiles.

And although time is consistent, the clocks are not. Once I saw three hours pass in a minute and I felt my heart beat quicken with it. I had to reach up and hold the hands that determined my fate in order to calm their nervous fit. But just the next day the clock wouldn't budge. I watched it all day, but not a single second passed. Instead it sat taunting me, teasing me, telling me I would never leave. But I am always where I am, which testifies that time is always now, in the moment, when I am writing this, when you are reading it, it's all the same time. Time doesn't pass or fall behind, it's always there, stapled to your side like a Wal-Mart greeting and never leaving you alone. Time is the child that whispers its secrets in your ear like a buzzing fly and although you swat and swat it never goes away.

A Quick Tip

Lines of advice found in the sidewalk and from grandparent's foreheads:

-Always eat your ice cream quickly, it's never as good once it's melted
-Toddlers are more fun if they are upside down
-Animals never belong inside when they are angry
-Leaves make the best crunch in mid-November

Beginning

In the beginning there were no trees, no honeysuckle, no morning breezes to wake up to. In fact it was all just one awakening. There was no coffee waiting on the table nor was there a table, a chair, or a rug, there was only you and I. We stood face to face waiting for something to happen, a lean, a reach, a grab, a touch. That, of course, was the beginning.

Now it's been days, months, who can really count the seconds? Some of my most vivid memories include my grandpa at our kitchen table. I can still see his dentures on his plate of unfinished banana peels and sardine sandwiches. I can still smell the sardines.

"Just last week- " he begins, then pauses to check his memory "or was it last month? Well just last week I was down in Vegas" he will explain, but you know full well that it's been at least six months since he last visited your cousins. I suppose in the end he was right. Who can really tell you what has and hasn't happened in the past or when it did or didn't?

In the beginning there were no people, only a vast expanse. A vast emptiness waiting to be filled and even still we can feel it- when you are standing next to the one you love and they have no idea, when you breath as deep as you can and you find that it's really inside of you. I feel it sometimes when I'm sleeping, it lies right next to me and holds me until the morning.

And in the beginning it wasn't meant to be permanent.

In the beginning.