I found out that you were a liar, and now the town where you live is on fire

This weekend it started to get really cold. Me and Belle went on walks, and even some runs, but all just here around the house and the ballfields. We see things: graffiti, deer, football practice, Orion, frost on the grass, that same woodpecker, dugout sleepers, van sleepers, shopping carts, nice looking trees. Sometimes I try to take a picture, sometimes I don’t bother. Sometimes I get a picture of me trying to get a picture, and sometimes those are my favorite ones.

This was week 9 of my songwriting group. The prompt was “what I have to do.” Last week, I thought it was the final prompt of the semester, but it turns out there are 12, not 8, so I have three more to do after this. I am glad that it isn’t over yet. I worked all day yesterday on this song, which started with a chorus and then went all over the place before ending up like this. Now that it’s done, it feels kind of remote and sad to me. Forgiveness feels like that. I didn’t want to have to forgive you for anything, and I was so super mad, but now it feels like maybe something can grow back where it all burned down.

Help me make up the difference

It was Thanksgiving this week, and I had four days off. Four days feels like a fortune of time, but now it’s Sunday night, all the leftovers are gone, and I have to go to work tomorrow. It was also the last week of the semester of the songwriting group I am in, unless I’m mistaken. I can’t say how valuable being in the group has been to me. Time is tyranny, but I guess I can use it to my advantage when it comes to songwriting deadlines.

The prompt this week was “25 dollars.” Every time I get a the prompt it feels impossible. I never know how I can make it fit in a song, like not just fit but actually belong. A song is such a complete animal when it’s finished. Seeing a prompt all on its own is like finding a bone on the ground. Out of context, it’s pretty but it can’t walk.

After almost a whole week rattling around 25 dollars in my brain, something happened that made it seem more relevant. I distractedly drove over a curb, popped a tire, bent two rims, and broke some parts of the alignment of my car. Belle was with me, but neither of us got hurt, just scared. Now I will be paying for that mistake for a while. I wrote the lyrics for this song in Les Schwab while I was waiting almost all day on Saturday for my car to be finished, then I recorded it today on my boyfriend’s phone. I feel really lucky that I could do that, when I could have easily hurt myself or ended up in jail doing something so stupid.

Money is just a way to measure things. Time, food, space, work. It ticks out in increments of dollars and cents. I feel like I’m borrowing against tomorrow to make it through today pretty much all of the time. I know we will all come up short eventually, and I guess that’s got to be okay, but I’m glad that it hasn’t happened to me yet.

November 10 - my life had stood, a loaded gun

I’ve been trying to be disciplined. The days are getting so dark, it’s easy to just want to curl up protected and give up on extra things. I’ve been eating a lot, sleeping a lot, doing meditations with nice ladies on youtube, and reading the news. I started running every day again. I got on a good program when I lived in Port Townsend because I was lonely, and I’m not lonely anymore, but it’s hard to know what to do with myself every day unless I give myself a job. This songwriting group I’m in has been a big help with that. The prompt this week was “pull the trigger,” which I found to be kind of difficult at first. I hate guns. My brother is a veteran and had to live with a gun for many years, and I don’t like what that does to people. He’s a wonderful person who deals with his reality in a stunningly strong, brave, honest way, but I wish he didn’t have to. I wish none of us had to. Thinking about this prompt though, I remembered a poem that’s never been too far away from me, Emily Dickinson #764, here it is:

My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -

And now We roam in Sovreign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him
The Mountains straight reply -

And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let it’s pleasure through -

And when at Night - Our good Day done -
I guard My Master’s Head -
’Tis better than the Eider Duck’s
Deep Pillow - to have shared -

To foe of His - I’m deadly foe -
None stir the second time -
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -
Or an emphatic Thumb -

Though I than He - may longer live
He longer must - than I -
For I have but the power to kill,
Without - the power to die -

Tonight, I went to a vigil at the courthouse for the victims of the Tree of Life shooting that happened in Philadelphia last week. I got there late after turning in my song to the songwriting group website, and stood by the door while a Lummi man spoke about coming together as a community to stand against hatred. I met a Jewish woman named Miriam during the break who was new to Bellingham, and we talked about music and traveling and life. I heard a Sikh man read a prayer in Farsi. I heard a choir of sweet people singing a Pete Seeger song about leaving the earth behind. Belle was in the car because I thought the vigil would be outside, but it wasn’t. We were warm in the courthouse and they had specifically not asked for a police presence, because they wanted us to be together in safety in our own group. I don’t know for sure what any of this has to do with Emily Dickinson, or the song I wrote today, but it all happened at once and it seems to be slightly related. I want to be a part of the world, and I want my songs to be part of the world. I want them to bump into things and get changed. I want to get changed.

October 21 - Build a house on the painted line

This morning I woke up early. I went to bed really early last night too. Things are going pretty well and I don’t want to push it, so I’m usually happy to cash my chips in at the end of the day and not give myself any chances to mess up. I’ve been thinking about holding onto all the different truths and demands in my life, all at the same time. Sometimes you have to cheat two ideas a little bit just so you can have them both - like the way a piano isn’t actually in tune, or it would be locked into one key. All the notes are cheated a little bit closer together so they can work in any key. They say that it’s “tempered.” That means a cheat. Just a little cheat. I wanna be well tempered, but evenness is so hard to maintain. It’s not uneventful. It’s like spinning plates, it’s like living in between. Those are the spaces I want to be in.

I wrote this song today for my online songwriting group. Week three down. Five more to go. The prompt was “At the intersection of _ and _” and I didn’t find anything to do with it until the half moon the other night while I was walking Belle. I feel like there must be a real place on the moon where I could stand and be totally in half, light and dark, but I know that if I was really there it would just be twilight, same as here on Earth. I wanna get to that place where I’m two opposite things equally at the same time. It seems so beautiful to me. As soon as you choose one thing to be, all the other options are blown away. When everything exists at once, there is possibility for anything.

I ran past the cemetery this morning, and the sun was slicing the fog down throught the trees. The headstones and markers crowded all around under the beams, and it felt like they were enjoying themselves. I’m glad I can feel the sun and I’m glad I can feel the darkness. It’s not too hot today, and it’s not too cold. I’m not too lonely, but I’m lonely enough.

October 20 - you put yourself apart

It’s almost Halloween. I feel like a ballerina spotting one random point in space to keep from getting dizzy. Today, when I was walking with Belle under the big elm trees by Joe Martin Field, the leaves were falling and spinning to the ground, lodging themselves in cut blades of grass, green and orange. While they are falling, they are in between, just the briefest part of their existing. That’s what this fall feels like. It makes me think of being a kid and how I always had a sense of impending doom right when I was supposed to be the happiest. Wanting to stay in the fall, wanting never to land, knowing that as soon as the leaf hits the ground it turns ordinary.

In just a couple of weeks we will have to make the clocks fall back. It feels like a retreat, and maybe it is. Just a retreat inside, saving the heat and light that we have. The leaves know. They leave. That’s why we call it leaving. It’s so beautiful watching them fall that I have to stop until Belle snorts at me and keeps me from getting all weepy. I don’t know what I’d do without her. I wish it was easier to deal with the way the time speeds up. I want to slow it down without feeling like I have to hide from everyone. I want to stand in the falling leaves and know they’ll be falling forever.

October 14 - The diary's been busted open

I got rid of three big boxes of clothes today. It feels so good to cut down, to pare, to shave, to winnow. I want to get better at giving in and letting go. This week was week 2 of the songwriting group I’m in, and our prompt was “unconditional.” All week I was thinking about unconditional love, but this morning I woke up thinking of unconditional surrender. I finished the song in time, I’m handing it in. One more week, I’m sticking it out.

I GIVE IT AWAY:

Erase history from the beginning.
We quit cause we don't feel like winning.
Got nothing to say before we go.
This surrender's unconditional.

Perfection comes in unexpexted ways
when you empty out your days.

The diary's been busted open.
Our hearts have been totally broken.
That's how we can pour all the love out - 
we got nothing and nothing to cry about.

Perfection comes in like a prayer.
It fills you up when nothing's there.

I used to keep lists of my losses
so I could recover my crosses
with everything I couldn't let go - 
I give it away.

October 13 - Would you be an outlaw for my love?

We got some October sun this week. It feels like a do-over of the smoggy, smokey summer. I’ve been cleaning house and selling off things that I don’t need. I also opened all the mail that I’ve been piling up and avoiding.

I’ve been listening to this Big Star song about being 13 over and over for weeks. Autumn makes me feel like school is starting and gets me nostalgic. I can’t remember the first time I heard this song, but it was probably because I heard someone cover it. Elliott Smith covered it, and I didn’t learn it from him but I do tend to listen to him a lot in the autumn. I wish I could tattoo this song all over me. I want to cover myself in it like the ball fields have covered themselves in fallen elm leaves. Those elm leaves are perfect, scalloped, the most intricate, the most familiar kind of beautiful. Like falling in love for the first time over and over again.

I’m starting to see that my life is more like circles on circles than some kind of ascending line. As I get older, things feel brand new because I can go back to the beginning. I can go back to the beginning of being angry, or sad, or in love, and have a chance to feel it over again for the first time. Maybe I can feel it better than I did the last first time, so I can describe it better and learn something from it.

I guess what I’m saying is things are going good, and I’m trying not to break it.

October 4 - Giant Splinter

September was hard on me, but it was also really beautiful. I was feeling heavy and sad, but I was also getting so much love, and I’m feeling really lucky. I don’t know where that heaviness comes from sometimes. I wonder if I just inherited it. September it’s been 5 years since my dad died. I can’t believe he’s been gone that long. I still forget that I didn’t just forget to call him.

I just joined a songwriting group that gives weekly prompts. I have to write a song that’s at least 2 minutes long using the prompt each week, or else I will be kicked out. The prompt this week was “concrete” and within an hour of seeing it, I was already recording this song. Dad poured concrete when I was a kid. He was always pointing out sidewalks and buildings that he helped build. I remember him wearing Pre-Mix concrete trucker hats, and I wish I had one, because I feel like he had a dozen and I can’t imagine where they all ended up. I wish I could ask him. I don’t feel very poetic about this right now.

Belle and I have been going out in Ferndale a lot for walks by the river, because I’ve been bringing her to work. It’s nice to get out in the sun at lunch, just a 2 minute drive from away. I don’t take it for granted that anything is gonna really last, and this sun was really, really good. It unwound me a little. Bell hopped around a lot, probably murdering things, but it’s okay because she’s innocent, she’s not a human like me. It’s still beautiful.