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.