twitching with the flies

like skin wrapped around a void,
the hollowness of being a vessel-channel
today the echoes are loud

it is a beautiful day,
the lady came by to confirm that we demolished the greenhouse
and filled in our poop hole.
we did a good job
even where the rules don't make sense.

fox found some huge zucchinis in the garden
and i have stopped twitching with the flies.

i am having a hard time, feeling really unclear,
broken record player on repeat,
ungrateful for the chocolate cake of my life which has been placed before me
because what can i do about trayvon martin
what am i doing about international human rights violations
running through, could i be making more of a difference if i offered my body and my spirit somewhere else

but, there's also,
today
here,
this is my life.
intricate, spiralling, not totally consumable-comprehensible,
watering the garden, smoothies, empathic,
learning myself and learning this place and signed up for a course on anatomy and physiology
because i never want to stop learning
because there are so many books in the library...

i can walk barefoot, i can

hi friends, hi sneezing cat.

i have been spending a lot of time in my house, it is quiet quiet here. i awake to the sounds of quiet voices and coffee grinding and when i get up i can play loud music and dance around half-naked and there is no one home, or so i think--cats wandering around doing their cat business, books lying luxuriating waiting to be read, worlds and jars of beans sitting quiet.

i am not sure what i am doing here sometimes,

sometimes i am not sure

i watch the sun slink around

the moon's fingernails grow

last night i saw a dance show about love by hand2mouth

it was called "something's got ahold of my heart"

it had four parts--greatest hits, stories, dance, concert.

i did not see my kinds of love there.

there were lots of old songs, lots of dissonance and interruption,

people dancing to adele on their headphones while old love songs blared loudly

straining in opposite directions with their arms clasped around each other

very few kinds of unmediated moments.

i thought, i could do this or something i'd like better.

i'm not sure on days like today if it's still winter, it is so sunny and warmish outside. am i in california?! i'm pretty sure not

cause things aren't free

most things

except for bike rides

and because over and over i find myself surrounded by people

mumbling about fermentation and their sourdough culture and soaking grains

and their gardens and occupy

and buying eco-friendly cleaning products

and their cool co-op whatever

and their new diet where they're not eating any of the bad stuff

geez

portland

i have been in clownface more often than not.

sometimes it is a mask, sometimes it is to say

"yes i am here and i have interiority and you can feel strange sitting by me"

at new seasons the cashier giggled and averted her eyes

i imagined that it was because i am jesus christ

yesterday when i was in bed

masturbating

i imagined i was huge huge huge, sitting atop buildings

someone was getting me off with a wrecking ball

bouncing off my clit

i was talking to my mom yesterday about polyamory and said something like "i return often to something you said when we were kids--like 'why does it hurt you for that person to have that [crayon, experience, new toy, etc.]? it doesn't hurt you.' she laughed and said, 'eliot, people and hearts are different than boxes of crayons!'" but then she got it too. she is a good carrier of reminders to not be so hard on myself.

i want a break from taking a break

i am ready to work really fuckin hard

stop having my heart and mind be the source of all of my hardnesssss

i want to get my hands dirty

feel things growing slowly

stories that run with blood and hair

water the only thing that stagnates

and what am i looking for and will i know when i find it?

here's a little gem i encountered today, though who knows if this is what you´re looking for--

"Life is hard" signifies a certain degree of fatalism, it must be admitted. But as an all-purpose saying, "La vida es dura" soaks up a variety of meanings, a range of nuances. The vagueness and abstraction of "life" is set against the concreteness of "hard." Most certainly, such a phrase is the simplest possible strategy for linking the particular to the general, the personal to the social. But is this equation an assertion that things must necessarily be so? Or does it not carry the possibility, the implication, that things might be otherwise? As a coda set to the rhythm of life's frustrations, this maxim can relate the duress of social and economic crisis experienced as personal conditions. It marks, too, the duration of the crisis that renders life so very hard. Its pessimism, its fatalism, can plainly serve as a sort of alibi, and excuse that relieves the individual speaker of the consequences of his own actions...at the same time, this proverb can bring to light the strength and endurance of the people who survive life's hardships. It marks, by turns, the banality of suffering, the intimacy of power, the comfort of resignation, and the resilience of the oppressed. (from p. xvi of "Life is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua" by Roger Lancaster)

oh and me, i was stranded on an island yesterday and today i'm back in a town that, given the options in this country, feels pretty familiar--
becoming-familiar like sweaty shoulders and bug bites
becoming-immune to bug bites.
i go in and out of being uncomfortable with being on vacation. so many feelings (always feelings!) about white tourists, whether anything in my pockets would serve a too-skinny begging boy well (chapstick receipts bandanna..?)...
it's probably been good to become reacquainted with boredom, to miss, to commit wholeheartedly or at least mostheartedly to sticking around for the flourishing of a little familial culture, to think and think about projects i want to be working on without a pen to write anything down--
what is traveling for, again? and am i heavier or lighter now, and does it become easier or harder to recross a border once-crossed? and how much am i seeing, and how much do i want to see?
anyway, little bubbles of thoughts and loves have been flourishing in this faraway,
little messages that aren't quite drowned out by the market flies
relearning rethinking pride and humility, probably not through seawater
but i did see a BRAINCORAL and a blue fish. (life is hard, and not so hard.)

anyhows, i'm missing the sticky sweaty communtarian raw-haven of the bao, looking forward to seeing some of you tomorrow evening and most all of you in my dreams.