here I am, here we are. vibrating like a string held at both ends, taut, with the middle flexing. I am vibrating, buzzing, trembling. here we are.
when things end, or threaten to end, or end, then it seems like the end of a universe. it feels like the world as you know it might collapse. and to some extent that is true. it's the ending of a world, and the beginning of another one that was next to it, or outside of it. there are many worlds, an infinite number of worlds, but there's only one I'm living in, and it's the one in right now. so having this world pass and to accept the transition into another one is so painful, like molting, shedding skin, the alteration of a self. what lies on that other side? well, it's uncertainty, loneliness, curiosity, sorrow, excitement, regret, melancholy, change, nostalgia.
I am not there yet. but I see that I am heading there. I haven't been on this specific path but I've done this before. I'm not sure if I want to. I'm hurt and hurting. I know what this is like. it's like a scab, being pulled off halfway. do I stay and repair? do I tear it off? where am I? where are we?
the disappearance of a we. so sad. so heartbreaking. the dissolution of a shared collaboration. the ending of a join. are you sure? I want to ask. are you sure sure sure? do you know what you're doing? do you know that we'll never be the same? we'll never get to see each others' deep homes again? or that we'll enter, as a visitor as a guest, politely sitting on the couch, looking around, saying "oh hi, it's been a while, I really love what you've done with this room?" the warmth of being there, but not the messy wild energy of moving in together, together, together, together.
I miss being together, the creation of a together, of a living together, of formulating together. I will miss it. I miss it and I will miss it and I feel it breaking, stretching, asunder. it tears at me.
my self hovers, orbits around the center of my heart.
what do I want? am I here feeling this because I don't want to lose something, or because I want to build something? there is for sure a kind of sad curiosity. as if I was told that I can't live in this city and move elsewhere. yes, for sure, I turn my eyes to the rest of a landscape. there are mesas and plains and boats and oceans and forests. these all are interesting. with departure comes a choice, always; it's always a choice not to be here, to move elsewhere. what I am remembering so suddenly that I had forgotten (and regretted forgetting) was that staying was always an active choice, it's always an active choice to stay here, to hold one's self.
and now? why not fling myself, my hurting heart, elsewhere? live in los angeles, san francisco, in the desert, oakland, london, hong kong, korea. settle for a bit, travel for a bit. where do I wish to be? I am aging but I am also younging, and who cares, I am me. i'll be wild.
--
ultimately this is a two way street, a dance, these are all collaborations, willing movements. I am here to move with someone, and if they do not want to move then that is how it is. I am here in my center, and in the in-between. I am here halfway, ready to be met. if I am met then there is a meeting. if there is no meeting then I will try to be more than halfway. but I cannot lean over, cannot tip over, cannot have the center of my gravity overextended.
I am here, trying. the question: do you want to try?
from me to me: yes, I want to try with myself. maybe that means for me to leave. or for me to stand where I am and to collaborate. in some ways, this is the hardest test of all, the test with myself, the test to accept what will come.
sometimes I recall what I wrote here in 2011:
and there's just time, and change, and of course -- we will no longer be what we could be, but you know what? the most important-remarkable part is: we will no longer be able to even conceive of thinking about whether 'we will no longer be what we could be', you know, you step outside yourself and become totally anew, a not-you, like traveling, like letting yourself loose and lost in the sea of not-knowing-what-to-do and not-doing, and it is like you are raw and amorphous and malleable and just needing to formulate yourself into a being constantly, all the time. you're squeezing playdoh in your hand, you open your palm and the thing totters there, like some sort of egg with mountain ridges lining every which way, palm swirls rivulets gyrating on the surface, and it titters there.
we will not be here, we will not thinking of being here, we will not be thinking about thinking about not being here, and one day we will not think about even thinking, no longer conceive,
the scariest thing of all, this, again, is that it will close off not like an impossibility, but like something-you-don't-even-think-of, something outside the realm of the dialectic of possibility/impossibility, something like the question such as: "can a person eat the sun?" or "does light sleep green?". not unthinkable but not-thought-about.
here you are coming, time, I see you in the distance, coming, I see what you will do, will have it and have this all, will laminate it, plastic oozing between our pores, seeped into our very being, replacing our living-and-lived-ness.
ah, ah. I fear this. but this is also what happens, in life. maybe I will get older and friends will start to pass away, and I will recall this more.
==
a taste in my mouth. what is this taste? I feel a distinct taste in my mouth. moving back into times. recalling a certain time. endless green. what's next? a lot of unknowns as to what is next. what's next? I don't know. what's next? the curling universe. I was fourteen and I really didn't know.
now I see myself a little bit different. I see the expectations, the shape of ways. I grow, I change. I spit some stale gum out of my mouth. I drink more water. I try a new taste, a sharp one, a hot sauce that shoots into my mouth and punctuates. I care for others. I make deep mistakes. I adventure. I find myself doing things that I didn't expect to do.
I let my body decide. all of a sudden, my body does this. in stillness, my body moves of its own accord. I am doing something, and testing out my desire. moving with it. moving with it by not expecting anything from it but letting it do what it wants to do, which might be to not do. and then I wander.
mostly I just want to reach out to people I care about but haven't seen in a long time.
--
so. where are we? trembling, moving between. something has ended, that is for sure. something ended. maybe I know that and am trying not to tell myself that. but something has ended.
does something start? who knows. what does my body say? my sorrow, my care, my hope, my love. what does my body say? what does it want?
I know what I want, but what does it want?
i want to let the soft animal of my body love what it loves. to love what I love, to let my body love what it loves. to follow my body. to be curious. what will it do? what will we do?
here, there, there's a new we, a new us. you know, us. we're in this together. let's go somewhere, me and me, you and you, me and you. maybe someone will come along. maybe they're someone we met before. maybe not.
i'm so happy to be in this together.