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Indigo Vales

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Tag Archives: journal

Impatiece, Truth Coffee, Newton’s First Law, & Meeting Henry.

06 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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coffee, Henry Rollins, ice, impatience, journal, not staying safe, stasis, travel, truth, winter

Much to do this morning in a hard, cold world that makes all travelers, all the living feel the world is against them, waiting to thaw, hoping to thaw soon, wondering where has everyone gone post-blizzard Grayson? The birds are still flitting past icy roofs and trees, streetlamps, bannisters. They do not land, only flitting, asking, “Where, where, where?”

I watch the ice cube melt in my blue and green coffee mug knowing that this moment defines me. Holding it warms my fingers but too hot on my lips and throat, I will not wait for it to cool in a cold, hard morning. I will force it to cool with ice I wouldn’t invite into my house, but I want to drink it and must have it now now now. 

I think of my son who negotiates his responsibilities, everything is tied to everything else. I can only write in green now. I won’t write with anything else, my thoughts won’t come in black or blue. (This isn’t true, but it was an interesting thought that flitted through my head, “Where where where?”) 

I sprinkle cinnamon in my coffee grounds and it makes the house smell heavenly. I can drink mouthfuls of you but you will soon be gone, and I will stammer in stunned cold deciding if I want another, and pace and taste my mouth to see if it is dry, note the time, scribble in green pen, watch patches of snow melt and drop from roof flashings, when I should be packing getting ready to meet Henry in Raleigh.

(I will only go if the roads are safe, I don’t know if the roads are safe, how will I know)

I will meet Henry Rollins tonight for my ticket says I’m VIP. I will meet his eyes, say nothing useful, he’s heard it all before, perhaps he will be chatty and not run for the door as soon as the gig is done, back to the hotel where he will pace and sip water and read and write and think alone, carrying small memories of us back to his room for he is all he needs.  He’s not afraid of icy roads, I’ll bet, but oh, he carries his own demons, and I wouldn’t swap concerns with him today. 

My coffee is almost too cool to enjoy now. God bless microwaves, heroes of the impatient, we who don’t have all minute to sort out which way we are going, let alone what color underwear to put on after a hot shower in a cold room, gathering speed to go forward. Or just pace and check the parking lot to see if the magic snow plow came in the night, or sit down and read bad news and lose all the goodwill the magic green pen brought me. It will be sunset soon in Raleigh, Henry does not await me, and my blue and green coffee mug pulls at my sleeve, saying, “Really? You gotta do this now?”

Solstice at the Thirsty Camel

22 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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darkness, fire, friends, hope, journal, light, music, pain, Solstice, Thirsty Camel

There is glitter on the table and salt in my book
gritty on my arm as I press down to write.
I sip and lick salt from my fingers.

No one sits in the center of the room
bodies huddle at the bar, hug the walls,
so I sit at the back where I can see you all
Ballcaps, hoodies, Santa hats, sweaters
Blondie in a ballgown texting who knows what.

I claimed a table for friends tonight,
brought a candle and journal to fill the time until their faces appear.
One by one they come and we make the ‘howdy stranger’ talk
over light beers, battered onions, and speakers playing a bit too loud.

She came in last, her withered body wrapped in sagging jeans
and a pretty white sweater made of cloud,
her face tells me her kitchen is on fire.
We danced around her fire all night trying to douse it with smiles
and talk of the sunlit moon, Saturn in transit, but
she wanted to sit in her kitchen fire.
We left her there watching as she poured old wine into older skins
wondering why everything in her world leaks
pushing hope away on the longest night of the year.

Lenny came on and gently, so very gently, plucked strings in the dark
to tell us about that famous blue raincoat, the one torn at the shoulder
and I knew we were meant to be here

and that we should always carry hope like a lighter in our pocket
for those nights we go astray.

Committing The Rare Feel-Good To The World

10 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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dog, fight, grateful, happy, journal, naked, ocean, truth, writing

Writing, committing thought and wonder, questions and desire, hope, longing, confession and manifesto leaves one naked. You are naked when you write, and if you’re afraid to let the world see every lovely ugly, then the “enter” key should not be allowed. Hold fast your pen, keep your files hidden. Wait until you’re ready to slam it all down, unlock your door, let the stranger in to see you emerge from your bath, wet, bloody, home, and real.

I’m not writing so the stranger can rate me on some fixed scale like exhausted figure skaters or boxers who throw their fights walking away with millions.  I’m not writing for your approval or to raise eyebrows or cause trouble or to make history.  I am writing because, as a wise man said what seems so long ago, I can’t not write. It’s a driven and it’s a given that I will have pen juice on my fingers, that I stare long and lovingly at journals in the bookstore and have a hard time not buying binders and loose-leaf like some kind of kid going back to school. I love the smell of pen and ink and this laptop hardly creates the same kind of vibe, but that’s all right.

September has come and somebody turned the cicada’s song switch off: their voices are gone. The north wind brings a scent of flowers which I cannot explain. A hurricane comes and I am tired of figuring out which way to run. I colored my hair and bathed late, very late last night, and I wonder if my neighbors heard the water running.  My hair is clean and smooth and fragrant. I woke smelling its scent on my pillow feeling more content, happy, and pleased than I have in a long time. The moon is full and bright in my bedroom window again, which tells me what season we are in. I slept with the windows open beneath piles of covers so I can be warm and still hear the wind in the trees. I think your name and I can smile and write it in the sand, I can even allow you in my bed as I coax sleep once more, instead of fighting, fighting, fighting you, waking feeling like every little thing’s gonna be all right.

This morning’s beach is scoured clean by north/northeast winds, maybe 10 knots. Small, round rocks perfect for skimming peek out from the sand and I see no crab burrows.  A large, dead fish. It looks like something began to devour him and spat him back out, leaving his body on shore. Why?  A dead turtle, a kind I do not recognize, his small clawed limbs point southwest. I am sorry he died and hope it wasn’t because of plastic.  A black dog running wild on the beach that for some reason, no reason, for lack of anything I can explain, I do not trust him. Sea glass seems extinct since the beach restoration, but I found a little bit of blue and white ceramic that I put in my pocket.  On the final few feet back to my trail, I found a piece of shell the size of two fingers. She is deep blush-colored on the outside, and mother-of-pearl within, and she looks like how I feel when I hear his name.

I feel alive and well and ready to write. I feel grateful for everything that brought me here, what good, bad, strange, and otherwise. Time to commit the rest to paper and ink.

March 11 Dream

11 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

death, dream, journal, look, story, walking, writing

He is a nondescript man walking with a backpack, a day pack a college kid might use.  He is walking through desert terrain, my dream wants to call it Route 66, but there is no road here, just red earth. No mountains or trees, no creatures anywhere.  I can hear his feet trod the ground.

Then he comes to a place where some green grass is growing, it seems out of place.  He takes off his backpack and all his clothes, then puts on a dark blue suit and tie and shoes that he’d been carrying. When he is dressed a crowd of people come and take him by the arms and drag him away. They put him in a cage with bars, wide but not wide enough for him to squeeze through.  The people are just people, nondescript, but they are carrying large wooden poles and they begin to beat him through the bars.  They are beating him. He is on the ground, motionless, and they walk away carrying their poles.

The scene changes and I am in a brightly lit department store, standing between two rows of maybe the stationery aisle. I am looking for something, perhaps.  A man comes and puts a large, cobalt-blue journal down on a safe. I look at him and he looks at me and he seems to want to say (warn) don’t look in that book.  I know this book, I have one exactly like it, and I wonder what he wrote in his.  He walks away and I know I’m going to open his book while he goes off to look for a wall mirror for his wife.

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