15.03.15 :: 21.03.15

1.
The crows speak. I turn my back on the town, the people, civilization and look at the stones crammed side by side in what would have been neat rows but 200 years has worn their order. In the winter trees, the crows speak words I almost understand. I want to unfold my wings and fly up among them but people are waiting for me and I'm cold and sore so I put away my wings and limp along the cobbled path to the town.

2.
My dreams are of betrayal. Not the cinematic overtures my subconscious usually performs, but less nuanced. More basic, standard tropes.

3.
I told someone once that home is wherever I'm not, and that is very true. I always look forward to going to my parents', and I like being there. It's a break, in a lot of ways, but I also look forward to going back to Canterbury. It's different lives. I don't know if I'll ever be able to stay put. I know I need stability - familiar people mostly - but six months and Canterbury is already beginning to chafe.

4.
I dreamt of New Orleans, except sometimes it looked like Paris. I was visiting, but decided to make it permanent.

5.
Do I send Caleb to Atlanta after Derek? It's not far. It makes sense for him to go. Though, could he afford it? Does he even have a car? Who would he go with? Would he tell anyone, or would he just go?

6.
I would like to get a job, for a lot of the same reasons I'd like to have a car. Feeling a little more independent, a little more in control of my situation, would help. I have a thing about control. And I feel so restricted now. Tied down. Confined. But I'm worried I won't be able to handle it. That it'll turn out to be too much and I'll end up right back in the hole I just climbed out of.

I have a tendency, I know, when I start feeling better, to jump in headfirst and sign on to all the things I've been wanting to do but couldn't, and inevitably it blows up in my face. Even a normal person can't do everything, and I function best at a more relaxed pace.

I don't want to make the mistakes I've made before. I want this time to work. I want to stay better. Maybe I should just give myself more time instead of running off at the first sign of light (literally and figuratively). Summer doesn't last forever. Especially in this country.

7.
I should call N. It's hanging there in the back of my head. Has been for weeks. Call N. But what would I say? From thousands of miles away I hear you, and this is the only way I know how to say, I'm here. I'm listening. I see you.

Be careful.

8.
Today I decided to quit smoking.

9.
The people of England need to learn to appreciate cinnamon in candy. Or at least gum.

10.
I miss the fire. The soft little cracklehiss as the paper burns down.

11.
Just before bed and just after breakfast are the hard parts because it's wired into my rituals and I don't deal well with change. I've considered giving in to myself just for those times, but my stubbornness balks at any leeway. I've made a decision so I should stick to it. Besides, give an inch...

12.
A long time ago something in me split in two, and it never quite readhered. So now it's me, and the Other. Sometimes it stays quiet, so I only feel it sitting just beneath my skin. Sometimes we talk, like friends who leave nowhere off limits. Sometimes it rages so wild and strong it takes all of my will and focus to just not let it out.

Sometimes I hate it. I want to be rid of it. Everything about it seems horrible and wrong. Other times I wrap around it like my only comfort, my oldest friend, my constant companion.

But it's always there in the back of my head. Waiting. Shifting. Watching everything I do.

Ex-Pat Independence

I woke up at 3:40 this morning with "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" running around in my head for absolutely no reason at all. 

Vive la Revolution

National holidays are always a little bit funny when you don't live in the nation that celebrates them. For the most part, you can cobble together something similar, but it's not really the same. Like having work and/or classes on Thanksgiving or fireworks deprivation on the 4th of July (no, we don't go around calling it Independence Day; you're lucky if you even get the 'of July' bit).

I have to say, though, that this year was a bit better than last - all of the citizens of former colonies (US, Ireland, Venezuela, Scotland) waiting on the English guests in ridiculously hot weather (for NE UK); the irony was overwhelming. Though, to be fair, once the English people left, we had a great time sitting outside being distinctly unproper with food, music and general silliness.

We didn't get to do any sort of official thing because of the move - yet another thing that got postponed while we waited for other people to make decisions about our lives - but we went out to lunch to mark the occasion and returned to set about packing up the belongings we intend to take over to the new place ourselves tomorrow (official people come in to do the rest later).

Flags were thrown out the window (to be immediately rained on, thank you, England) and we declared the village conquered.

The New Toy

I also acquired a Pentax K1000 from my step-dad, which I am all kinds of excited about. Apparently he got it for his 21st birthday, so I was informed to sell a kidney before I sold it. I promised I would. The original price tag is still on the bottom and there's film in it. The film is in pretty bad shape, but I'm still going to see if anything can be salvaged from it. Then I need to go about getting the camera itself cleaned up and in working order. The whole thing damn near took me away from packing entirely, but I settled for wandering happily around the house fiddling with it for about twenty minutes before forcing myself to leave it with my Olympus Trip while I finished wrapping up my assortment of odds and ends (which included soot-stained wings, a wooden Buddha, half a plaster skull and a silver flask among numerous other items) and stuffing them into boxes.

I am also no longer sick. Or at least, no longer immobile-y sick. I can deal with not being able to taste anything and coughing fits every ten minutes; I am a smoker, after all.

At some point later there will be another bit of flashing in the form of a supernatural support group. I think. At least I stick with consistent themes. I started writing it on my phone at 4 AM and haven't looked at how coherent what I wrote is yet, so there may be some re-evaluating of my early morning genius before anything actually gets accomplished.

There's always that one that gets under your skin...

House-sitting for my parents means knocking around a too-big house with just myself, some cats and a dog for company, with the added curious discovery of how ill at ease and oddly reassured a born-and-raised country boy can be plopped back in the middle of nowhere. 

No matter where I've lived, though, it's always the lights that keep me.

There's a man I know who has this way with words so they dig right through your soul. And maybe the real power is he knows when not to use them, so when he does, you can't escape the meaning. 

Every time he does it my typically unflappable self is quite thoroughly flapped and I spend at least a day or so rolling them over my tongue and shifting the weight on my shoulders to see how they feel. Every time I realise too late I didn't say the right thing back. I would worry about that more, except I know for the most part I don't have to, because he knows what the coded statements mean, but just once, I think, he deserves to hear what should be said and not just what my fear produces. 

I've developed this practice of keeping relationships just far enough away I can cut the tethers if the ship starts sinking and just close enough they never know.  Because I leave places (and consequently the people in those places) behind too much and there really are only so many times your heart can break before you start losing pieces. Because once upon a time I was far too trusting and fought with everything I had for all the wrong people. Because I suppose to a certain extent I'm just wired that way. The reasons don't really matter (this is going to be a recurring theme, children: knowing the reason doesn't necessarily fix the problem). The point is: I do. 

Except this one. The man with the words.  He is and probably always will be the most important person in my life. I can't cut him loose. I've tried. He's tried. We always swing right back into orbit, and there's something reassuring about that. The constancy of him as a feature in my life. But the missing... The missing sometimes can be too much. Because I can only listen to him hurt over choppy connections and try to describe the world I'm in with useless language and wonder if we'll ever see each other face to face again. 

The connections are interesting. People. I could say we have x things in common, and y, q and r traits  but that doesn't really explain what draws certain people together, or makes certain relationships survive hurricanes while others crumble at a light breeze. Out of everything in life, relationships are the things that tug me toward the idea of some sort of destiny. 

I know there's that argument that with hindsight you can add significance to even the most insignificant moment, and randomness probabilities and names for things I never remember but all my science-y friends like to throw at me. Half the time I see the world that way, too. The rest of the time, logic and reason just don't seem to cover all the bases. I still think there's a logic behind it all, but don't discount the possibility that it's a logic we haven't discovered, or won't discover, or just can't understand yet. 

All of this from the fact that a man as squeamish with emotions as I am managed the words 'I miss you,' and wrote a poem that punched me in chest, which left me very, very homesick for the closest thing to a home I've got.