May 28, 2013

Sands

santa monica, california, may 2013 (photo credit: kb, instagram credit: kb)

I'm in a mood. *I KNOW, NO SURPRISES THERE, INTERNET.* But I'm actively trying to better it. I'm also *so tired* right now that I could burrow into my blankets and sleep for maybe, oh, the rest of my life. But it's only approaching 8 PM, and if I go to sleep *anywhere near* before 10 PM, I will wake up at like 4 AM, force myself back to sleep, dream some wild and crazy ass shit, and then feel like a complete garbage can at work. (I've seen this pattern a number of times in me, trust me.)

Here are, before I launch on, lyrics to a song that make me smile widely, and of course, make me want to wail from the bottom of my lungs:

I say out with it, you're not drinking
I say out with it, you're not drinking
It's not for me to know what you're thinking
'bout people staying home locking windows
Outside the basement
A texan stranger
With a rope and a straight razor
Is getting impatient for something major
It's in his nature

Two more years to go
Then you're supposed to know
How to get back home
Someplace near Waco

Let's just laugh
We can never do anything about anything, anyway
Whatever will be, I guess we'll see
So let's just laugh

War is sacred as rape and hatred
And we're just aphids in hell's half acre
In the dark and on TV fires
Just a country on rims for tyres
Excuses tired

Someone fetch the piano wire
I hope you're tried and fried before you're finally fired

Two more years to kill
If you want I will

Let's just laugh
We can never do anything about anything, anyway
Whatever will be, I guess we'll see
Let's just laugh
Let's just laugh
We can never do anything about anything, anyway

I don't *think* I have posted these yet, but if I have, oh repetition is life's best education, isn't it? Anyway, since I admittedly copied and pasted these directly from the Internet, there may be misunderstood/translated ones, but the best part is the chorus, because *YES*...we can never do anything about anything, anyway...or can we? I think it's two halves of thought that conflict with one another, and I'd say one day I wake up feeling like I can change, and the next morning I think we can never do anything about anything, anyway. So let's just laugh.

The weekend was really, really nice. My dear friend Anthony rolled into LA on Friday and picked me up at my office and we dropped luggage off at my apartment and headed out for Mexican down Sunset. We sat there for a nice, nice long time, and it rose to the surface that his wife has opted for an alternate lifestyle (and I won't say more than that, to protect the innocent.) And it was this *nice* moment wherein Anthony and I surpassed cube mate status (both at Citi Field and at Barclays offices) and transcended to friendship (although, I will say we've always felt like friends - he is one of the nicest men on the face of the earth.) Then we went to a Dodger game, and in the morning he traveled out for a phone charger and came back and we headed out to Santa Monica in his rental car to scoop up my J Dog. (Nilla was kicking Johnny out for some Nilla time/Johnny time, respectively.) We met J at this taco joint (the tacos were fantastic) then took a cruise to the Santa Monica Pier, parked, got out and wandered. (See above photo for reference.) Snapped photos, laughed at hippie California gown-clad hippie dancers on the boardwalk, then moved on to Hermosa, where Anthony's friend was deejaying. I had held back some hardcore pee after Santa Monica en route to Hermosa, so when we landed a parking space in Hermosa (LUCKED OUT) I was like, Let's go grab a quick bite (and I can pee!) and a drink before going to the insane dance/deejay party (which, it *was* insane.) We found this totally Californian organic *come get super healthy* dive place and sat in the back and ordered, well, healthy organic stuff, and all that. Had fun topics of conversation, etc.

Then, heading out to the beach (unless this happened in Santa Monica? No, no, it was Hermosa) J had a joint stashed in his wallet, so we let Anthony know that we were going to run out to the ocean and smoke it, and Anthony, being the ever clean and sober dude that he is, but non-judgmental IN ANY WAY, was like, No, no, go for it, I'll be back here waiting. So J and I hit the sand, and I was in a skirt and there was sand flying up into my shoes and I was just laughing and OH MY GOD, LA is fantastic. It brings out this spirit of mine, mainly when I'm with friends I stoically trust, like J. So we landed ourselves at an empty lifeguard stand and smoked and stared out at the majestic Pacific. And I smoked *very little* because that toxin affects me very hard, since I rarely do it, but that was still and will remain a nice Johnny/KB memory.

Then we went to this club where Anthony's deejay was...um, doing what deejays do. And Anthony hooked us up with a VIP booth (place was violating occupancy laws, I'm certain) and he danced and danced and danced, and J and I drank Bud Light and stared off into the crowd of what felt like frat party eternity, and cracked jokes, and high fived Anthony when he would stop to take a break from dancing. And it was all just...really nice. And I felt safe. I felt emotionally safe. Like all of my other ill will feelings had been squashed temporarily by the comforting walls of these two men who have loved and known me long enough to have seen the damaged frayed edges of me yet have gone on to keep loving me, anyway.

And we sang in the car, between destinations. And we sang at the club. And we just basically had a terrific time, much needed for me.

The rest of the weekend for me was much more tame, because since I don't smoke the weed so often, it hit me and I needed recovery. Anthony headed out West again to meet his deejay friend for brunch, then to hang for a while longer at the next beach parties, then came back here, packed up, and headed back that way because his flight was god-awful early out of Long Beach the next day. And Monday, even though my friend JD was blowing up my phone about going to the Short Stop to meet up, I decided to bunk up with my couch and movies, and honestly, it was so very needed. So I did that.

Life plainly and openly has its ups and downs. I'm relieved to say that I take notice of both extremes fairly well. Sometimes to an extreme that should be deconstructed and puzzled back together. Sometimes to a fond extent. It varies. As life varies, constantly.

May 26, 2013

Loves

Dear you. Look at us.
This is a love letter.
Remember how falling in love like that felt like standing under a massive avalanche of *unbelievable.* And remember how many times we traveled up and down together?
Remember that instance where you grabbed me and said, "You need a hat"? We were in an alley of New York City and there were bear hats at a kiosk and you insisted that we both had to have one, and this was the last night before I left for LA? And how seeing Once turned everything upside down, for us.
And we had Thai tea and coffee that night. And rode in a sad cab, back to Gramercy.
And how we piled onto that couch together, somehow, as we had grown to do, and how our bodies somehow figured it out. How we wrapped that white sheet around us.
How that next morning, the reality stood facing us like a dark shadow and how we would try to deal with it: you would ride with me to Kennedy, and we would part ways.
And how you would tell me quickly, with my flight coming soon, that you had started to consider to me to be your girlfriend...and how that would make my pulse increase.
And then, every trip following, G.
Yours in January, mine in February, the two amazing ones in March, and the *highs and lows* one in April.
Now, it's late May, and I miss you so much I could just die.
This is a love letter because I want you to know how very much you affected me, and that I love you way more than I could ever say here, but I do, and I am genuinely positively affected by you every day.
My heart beats differently because of you. Harder, stronger. You are such a force.
I love you.


May 15, 2013

Minds

photo credit: ge, april 2013, brooklyn, new york
 
My priority for the next post was going to be to begin a series of Camp Gramercy Goodbye and Thank You for Everything narratives, however something else right now in my life deserves mention, instead. Camp Gramercy posts to follow suit eventually (Rob is moving out at the end of May and Camp Gramercy, 240 E. 21st Apartment 6RE will no longer be "in the family," as I've liked to call it.) So, as this online journal is well aware, I fell deeply in love over a seriously short span of insanely amazing time before my relocation to Los Angeles. Granted, we had been off and on since April...well, May, after encountering each other by chance (through Lit Crawl) and wound up talking for like 7 hours that first night, and established a brilliant and beautiful connection like none other I could dream to establish (it was unexpected, unreal and rather under appreciated, at first, given the circumstances on how I'd given up entirely, at that time, on love ever happening to me.) (And oddly, he was rather in the same position having suffered a fairly serious recent-ish break up himself.)
Through a series of off and on encounters, deeply embedded emotions rose to both of our respective surfaces, and at one point there was a sobering encounter he experienced with his ex that basically required him to not only have buried her once, but a second time, and that disaster happened at some point after we had met, resulting in some radio silence between us for a while (and understandably so.) Life trudged, or hammered on me, or hit me with hard blows or however you'd like to envision it repeatedly through the year, with work, with issues outside of work, and so forth. And then the Los Angeles Announcement Train left the station to yield him standing figuratively with his arms at his sides, helpless and with little to do. I don't to this day know why I contacted him in response when he sent me an almost immediate note of request for time with me. What did I have to lose? Why not? Sure as anything he remains to this day the most impactful connection I made in New York City in my many years there, so why the fuck not entertain a short run of time with him before flitting off to a different coast?
Well, that short run of time sent us both reeling with unanticipated emotion for one another, all leading to the moment he stood at Kennedy gazing at me before my one-way flight to LA and offered that he hoped I didn't find it "creepy" that he had begun to consider me his New York Girlfriend. I mean, aww.
Then of course as these things unfold, there were visits, January, February, twice in March and then a long term visit in April. And through the course of all of our time, emailing long, long outpours of who we are, jumping on Facetime to "see" each other, long distance perpetually reared its often ugly head and turned me into an angry, embittered and often foolish person (along with all of the other fears and pressures outside of just *us*, including miserable attempts at establishing quality LA connections, which runs its course quite deeply with me emotionally especially having just glimpsed a teasing look into the red hot fire of such a fantastic, ridiculous, absurdly beautiful and quite rare connection with Greg.) In doing some reading here recently, which I will touch on in more depth at some point, I've read that in Shamanistic belief there is the notion that during times of life trauma, part of the soul exits the body to protect itself and through Shamanistic ritual with a healer, that soul can and will be returned. This is all life meaningful practice that I'm in the process of investigating because I am in desperate need of healing, right now.
I've been posting here recently about a steep pile of pain. And with work so slow and spring in full force and my recent experiences with Greg *such* a complicated collection of high and low points, we've been, in order to avoid conflict, rather quiet with each other. My initial reaction was obviously one of searing pain. Somehow we had been managing to remain *so* communicative over the last few months that oftentimes it felt like he was right here with me. Take, even, for instance, last Thanksgiving, before I even left New York, while I was in Indiana and Chicago with my family. We texted with each other, G and I, *so* frequently that at times, it's hard to believe he *wasn't* there, or I with him with his family. And not only that, but to that, he is *extremely* challenged at his career and staying focused is pivotal for his successes day to day, and he has expressed on many occasions how difficult it is to pop back and forth between our seriousness and his work tasks. I *try* of course to be mindful, and understanding and respectful, at times to great triumph but at others, not so much.
But in all of this, I have discovered some very serious life action that must be taken on my part, for me to be a positive force in *anyone's* life, ever, at all. And for as many times as I bitterly wanted to walk away from Greg, handing him over nothing but angry silence on my end, the giant pure heart in me is refusing to shut him out (which is, in KB history, a miracle, believe me.) For a couple of weeks now, I have been sharing *a shit ton* of my darkness with him, ignoring the infrequency of response, trying to fully respect and admire his needs in terms of dealing with this. Oddly, I would hand him possibly first place in the sensitivity category between us. Wait, no, we'd fight to the death for it but my point is, he isn't taking this easily, either. And there is life sized void in me during this struggle that really, genuinely can only be filled with my words.
Today, I admitted to him:
And that is another thing I want to confess to you, if you didn't already know. I hide behind words. I just do. I cower behind them. I am such an afraid person, Greg.
So very many times do I just write and write if nothing else to stabilize my brain, keep my mind moving so that it won't stop to spend time with itself.
But why I'm writing on this today, is this: somehow, G has arrived at a more comfortable place where he feels (though he still fears) that we may not be tempted back into what he called today "emotional collapse." And he wrote me long, long emails, so typical Greg fashion beautifully crafted, and even yesterday, he did, taking significant time from his commonly swamped work days to not only respond to me in such fullness but to also continually express how much belief and faith he has in my recovery process. And tell me how beautiful I am as a person. Repeatedly. It's incredible what taking time to tell someone that can mean to the recipient. And while I'm on a road with a vast volume of twists and turns ahead, I feel him near me somehow, despite the division. I feel as though we can continue to access each other for spiritual uplifting, which is, in this process, going to be of utmost significance to my head and heart, and the retrieval of my departed soul.

May 06, 2013

Rains

There is no harmony, here. Experienced fleeting bout of it Saturday when Facebook taught me the above referenced (post-it) passage and I proceeded to plow into my office work with a vengeance all the while finding new tunes on Pandora radio (one song influencing me tremendously called "Orange Ball of Hate" whose adorable lyrics are as follows):

When I hear the screeching weather vane
in the wild wind and the hissing rain
I know that one of us, I'm not saying who,
has got rocks in her head
as the rain comes through the open window
But you don't think so

I sure do love you
I sure do love you

When I notice that the radio is broken
I see you standing there in the doorway soaking
The water drizzles off of you down to the floor
and I say that I don't want to live in New England anymore
Some flower petals stick to your skin
I grab hold of your hip, and I pull you in

When the building establishes control
When the thunder from the north begins to roll down our way
I know I've been right all along
and you start singing that stupid children's song
You think I don't know it
but I just don't feel like singing it

I sure do love you
I sure do love you


Wait. I take back the absence of harmony. It is raining ridiculously hard right now in LA and those sounds are soothing, almost as if the Universe is pouring down its heartfelt sympathies for me. Weeping, weeping, weeping down from the sky, saying, Kristin, we hear you. We feel your sad pulse.

Over the weekend, I did meet some outstanding new friends. When I say "outstanding," what I'm meaning more than anything with that adjective is that they temporarily made the pain of being me go away. I thank them for that temporary measure of light, and ideally I'll see them again soon, specifically John and Aaron, both who made me laugh on repeat numerous times. Oh, and Ricky, who has such a contagious smile.

I'm so exhausted. I just came to this realization in this moment with the rain hammering out its intentions on our office roof, with my heart so heavy with sadness that it feels like its dropped from my chest cavity to the bottom of my belly. I'm very, very much in hurt, with it, cradling it like a broken bone in my palm. And I barely know what to make of it or do with it other than drown it, suffocate it, put it out of its broken misery. Send it down the river, naked, unable to breathe.

How this works is this: today, I stare at my computer awaiting some form of communication, anything. It isn't coming and I gather that, but no thought or emotion in me will will me away from awaiting. I actively try? I pull my mind from one corner of ailment to another, say, stare down at the endless pile of proposals requiring my red pen mark-ups? But my eyes drift back to the emptiness that rests there, cavernous nothingness. It's not new for me to have such uncontrollable weakness. It's aged, actually, probably about as far back as I can remember, this has been here with me.

He tells me things.

But all I'll say is it's not like with you and while I know I shouldn't give up my adventuring because it's a part of me, there's no adventuring like with you. Ours are epic. And I couldn't help but think of them, and what you'd do if you were part of yesterday's, if you were there too. I would have been different. And more ridiculous.

How do I force myself to really see and believe these words, from him? Logically and in my semi-halfish-intelligent brain, I know he isn't a liar, and I know he speaks from genuine tenderness, and meaning. But somehow, there is some dark red streaked gutteral anguish which chooses more often than not to rear its ugly head at me and convince me that all people are untrue, and unkind, and it's only a matter of time before all people turn their backs on me, despite the number of times I'm asked if I'm okay? What happens when I stand up on a chair with my fist raised and announce, "EVERYBODY, I AM NOT OKAY." The room fills with silence and then gradually empties? Because, frankly, that is what I'm afraid will happen. Fuck, it may happen now on a recurring basis for all I know. Plenty of rooms have emptied because of the dread of my nature, because of my openly exposed delicacy. I hate it. I hate this part.

For the time being, I imagine the best solution is to continue to find small life gems like the song I referenced above, or the post-it note sentiment (although, the latter is harshly ironic given the current state of things.) Ultimately, I want to run far, far, far away. From me. Get away from myself before I fall too far in to ever clamber out. How do I do this? How do I continue with one foot forward, keeping in motion with life as it proceeds all around me? Can I just...decline? The answer to that is obviously no, for many, many reasons, but I am observing a sadness in myself that somehow far and away has beat the experiences of the past. How can that even be possible? Is this all real? Where is the life support in this massively oversized empty room?

May 01, 2013

Splits

Every time I turn around there are bad things. I mean it. Demons, rearing their ugly heads. Sounding so cliched, but it's quite true. Above captured is someone's lyric tribute to Elliott Smith...here, in LA, near me, is a mural on a storefront wall of a place called Sound Solutions(!) (I think) where he used to work when he was aspiring to be a musician, and at some point this mural became album cover art for one of his more impressive works. So what happens is that this mural gets tagged with Elliott lyrics by mourning fans and also gets brutalized by regular wall artist bullies. So it goes. This particular fan tag struck me because it is also what I do...burn bridges, trying to find some beautiful place to get lost. I wish I could find someone to help me get lost.

Or get found. I'm amazingly seeming so religious in this post (while I'm anything but) but I'm so filled with sadness right now, that if the sadness police were to show up, I'd be arrested for being The Most. And it would suck, because how does one (uh, insert religious word for not doing it anymore) (memory loss, Age 36) come back to the Light? And not be sad? And not feel heavy weight burdened like lyrics scrawled on a mural devoted to a guy who committed suicide at such an awful young age?

I am crying crying crying today, with no reprieve. My eyes are spilling over with this blend of red, sad, blue, fear, and ultimate sad. And I do not know what I did to deserve this. Nothing, I guess. I am a good person. I'm worthy of better than this.

Sometimes I think the Universe invented me to make a point. And that's fine...only, when it hurts, it's hard. But I appreciate the Universe's effort of placing me here to do what I've done, which is impacted certain people that have needed impact. Etc. But now I'm just basically lonely. And wishing to affect more people. How can I do that?

Love, me.