I recently went on a quest for an answer to a question I had not even asked. There was no map and no starting point “A” in which I needed to get to ending point “B”. It was a series of small miniscule events that shaped my journey.

It started with the unedited and “raw” copy of my second book. To hold in my hands so much history of once self, emotional highs and trenched out lows, I couldn’t but help be rocketed back into a quick tour of the past few years. Words once scribbled out on the back of a receipts in haste now had meaning and life. Notes that were meant to be sent but never made it now had postage. And there is only one word for that, powerful.

This morning the undefined starting point “A” was a quote.

“The purpose of all relationships is to create a sacred context within which you can express the fullness of who you are.” -  Neale Donald Walsch

But who am I? Who are you? Who are we are all?

I did not wake up this morning, tossing the sheet off and make a conscious choice of who I wanted to be today. No I lay awake 10 minutes before my alarm went off trying to pull out of the emotional fog that seemed to settle in. I lay pondering last night’s information. I had taken a guess that it would be “heads” and the coin flipped to “tails.” I had lost the bet.

And thus I sat I staring at a picture of a chalkboard with one word.

Be______.

Blanks. Silence. Unanswered questions. Journeys with no beginning or ending.

One word.

Life.

One word.

Powerful.

……

sleepy eyes 

The writer
And a blank page,
A consuming relationship,
Endless.
The hesitation before pen meets paper,
Like the brief seconds before a first kiss.
Drawn from grief,
Or beauty.
Like leaves falling signaling the coming of a dreary winter,
Or the vibrant colors blooming in spring time after the first good rain.
The loneliness when thoughts allude the lines of the paper,
The confusion when all jumbles,
And that which you could once easily articulate, hovers out of reach,
One inch too high.
Desire to be heard,
To let out the intimate or to cover the stabbing pain,
Both of which keep you up at night,
Your ceiling replicating the space of the page you just can’t seem to fill.
The hunger that gnaws at you to be filled, only when all that is in you is allowed to come out.
With hope that once spread out and rearranged,
Pieces will come together like a puzzle,
And perchance others will see the picture you tried to paint.

Sleepy eyes march 2012

“Evaporated Cane Juice.”

I focus on each letter like I am playing scrabble and it’s vitally important to study each letter individually for some meaning I am presently missing… 



 

Flipped side of happiness

I started writing this to you in the bath. The bath that I neither needed because I stank or needed to shave, its waters merely drawn for the comfort. Accompanying me was the dragon mug from starbucks, blowing a small tuff of fire, filled with calm tea and a healthy dollop of Baileys. Pandora serenading me through the walls of my room and the invisible notepad (waterproof) I wish I had so I would not have to try and memorize this whole letter before I got out. My “Ginger Float” bubble bath providing an almost battle ship game of poking up my finger and popping the bubbles like a distracted seven year old. I ended up have a flat and bubble less surface before too long.  This thus hastened my exit out of the water, something comforting in being covered in a layer of fluffiness. I then sat wrapped in an oversize towel on the edge of tub dangling my feet over, studying the pruning and finishing up the remaining tea, feeling warmed from the inside out, thanks to the Irish. I waited for the song to finish, before I stood and let the towel drop, tip toeing out till I found my sweat pants and sweat shirt, ignoring the posted notes of things to do and snuggled in. The spider web of my endless thoughts trying to catch me as if I was the fly for dinner were cut strand by strand with memories of you, I tried desperately to dwell in. Sometimes it’s hard, where does past meet the present and create the future? The love triangle of time though will not be one I figure out tonight, and most likely never will, the reality boiling down to just how much I miss you. So think of me love tonight before you close your eyes, reach out and find me on the shores of dreams where we are together and fight the first rays of sunshine, where once again we must part.

Tomorrows one more day closer …

sleepy eyes  

Rain fell right before midnight,
Like the sudden realization that tomorrow was much too close.
The pitter patter of drops meeting the roof top, rolling down, collecting in the gutter, rushing out back to fall to the ground was nature’s pandora of night time playlists. It almost timed out perfectly with the pounding in my chest. But even darkness is not enough to keep the slide show of emotions from repeating.

Sleepyeyes dec 2011

I used to put glow in the dark stars on my ceiling as a child. As if the confines of my room were too much and I needed the illusion of the grand world in the very square ness of my room. I would lie there imagining all that was beyond the constellations I had meticulously picked out.

I ended up laying sprawled out on the carpet of my room tonight. Wishing I had those stars again to put up with careful thought, as if by designed the prudently laid out stars could mimic a plan for my life. A self-declared horoscope on the roof in which I hid out, seeking shelter. This time though I was hoping to bring the world in and not expand out. The diminutive time I have already traveled this world has lead me to a few conclusions that sometimes a set time, minutes to dwell in your own presences of mind was as needed and as necessary as exploring unknown trails.

But then as my eyes wander haphazardly across treasures of previous journeys, my spirit grows restless: from the serious stone statue from Belize to the sketched woman from France looking as perplexed as I feel. This world is just too limitless in all that it has to offer, and I will neither have the ample amounts of time to explore every corner of it or be satisfied in moments to reflect or learn enough from all that I saw. So I will have to contently sit tonight drawing out constellations with stars I no longer have and count from memory the footsteps I have already left behind.

sleepy eyes dec 1st 2011 

Construct me,
Word by word,
With letters written in the past,
Poems smeared out with pain,
Pieces sown together by love,
Until you understand me.
From this you can paint a picture,
A snap shot of who I was,
Who I am,
And all that I can be.

Sleepyeyes nov 2011

I have come to the conclusion that I write to understand this world. I lay thoughts unto paper like a mason might lay brick to connect point A to B. Words create the pathway in which I follow, in hopes of some further depth and understanding of that which had previously lay in heaps before me. The mass and height of the piles vary in which I decided to conquer them; perhaps I should have an elevation limit. 

This brings me to my second point, that the recent “pile” has inevitable turned into a mound, formed into a small knoll, grew into a hill and now I stand at the bottom of a mountain that I have to summit in order to continue my forward momentum in life. 

As I am working though on my approach, packing my ice ax just in case of any needed self arrests; I recognize that this is most liking going to be a mutli-pitch climb. 

On Belay.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my friends and family, near and far. May your blessings out weigh the negatives and may we always remember to recognize the little, silent and “common” blessings in our life, the ones we so often forget to count. 

sleepyeyes nov. 2011 

Rivers of leaves flowed through town before summer officially faded. Transformation of one day was all it took before the cold winds of the west blew in. The morning was her, summer’s, last breath. The dying of one season to another. She let go and into the depths she plundered. The silence, the calm before the clouds grew too heavy like tears held in too long. And within the hour they fell. Fat and yearning for understanding. Some gazed in wonder, others tore around in anger, some just sat waiting. Two hours passed and minutes turned over until all was covered, blurring my vision as if I had gone blind. Then it thundered as it snowed. The peaceful “Christmas” like snow interrupted. “Thundersnow” the rare and uncommon storm. And through the secrets of the universe and the hidden most mysteries of all the living, God was talking.

Sleepyeyes Oct 2011

I miss the smell of your skin and the way your fingers draw out your name like a tattoo across my skin. Hidden in places few have ever seen; a claim to the hours you made my skin tremble, a memoir of our love. I wonder how many times you have traced it over and over, searing it to the very edge of my soul. Yet so delicate am I inside, you made certain not to scar. Ever so lightly you merely brushed your lips to my being. My darkness learned to understand the coming of dawn as you lay with me. Hope beat between our chests as one and turning your eyes to me, I knew you could see…  You saw “me”. 

sleepy.eyes.oct.2011

She cracked a beer at 30,000, with hands older than her face showed and bent with arthritis.
Fluffy clouds that make me think of cotton balls, speed by at what should be an alarmingly fast rate.
The imprint of peace on my neighbors pale white skin from her bracelet as she finally closes her eyes the last half hour before we land, match her bag.
Wonder what my mother will say about my ear piercing?
Behind me his foot played footsie with the back of my calf. Long legs or just a lucky guy? Perhaps he never knew, fates a capital “b” sometimes.
San francisco rests on his knee on seat F row 18.
She smelled like Philosophy, chuckling to my self I wonder if she likes Socrates.
Go now or hold it till we land. I debate, window seat, both my neighbors eyes have fluttered closed.
I try to add the miles my backpack and I have had together as “all electronic devices” must be turned off.
And like the frantic writer I hope to one day be, I contort my body to find my favorite pen and scribble this all down between lines in the magazine.

Sleepy.eyes.sept.2011

Oh how time flies… The minutes and hours hurdling towards weeks I spend without you, collecting and pooling into gross inadequacies of my days I wish you were near. I wish you were close, for my good times would only multiply and rough ones would only divide in half.  Yet the clock ticks without hesitation and every passing moment is written down in my history book.  I gather thoughts to recreate with you later, like the collage of cars and trucks that litter the neighbor’s driveway and street corner or how Bonnie at work gets in her car and drives randomly at night; someone else who understands the comfort of the open road, the lack of any particular direction and the beauty of solitude. I started scribbling this letter to you on the brown surface of my empty Chipotle bag and it only caressed the lacking, for how creative it would be to pack your lunch in the morning and send you off, the anticipation of the moment you would notice my love letter. But alas I am left only to stare at the bag with longing and transfer the original content, into an instant form. Type in the address that I already know by heart and push send, leaving me yet with one more day to sit and compose you a letter, one more night to sleep alone.

Miss you ~  

sleepyeyes aug.2011