poem from night hammocking

What if you could reach out and touch the clouds? And what if you could eat them and they tasted like cotton candy. What if you could pluck the moon right out of the sky and it use it as the big marble, rolling it into all the little marbles, watching them scatter across the floor.

And what if you were ok. What if you were ok with how your life is. right. now. And that if it remained exactly the same for the rest of your life, you’d be ok with that too. It didn’t matter what you didn’t have. It didn’t matter if you were alone. If you were ugly or broke or childless or homeless or loveless. You were alive. You could still choose to love others, even if it’s in the smallest of ways and even if that person you loved by smiling at them when most people ignored them, or held the door for someone who always does the door holding, or saying a nice thank you to drive thru attendant that gives you your food; even if they all didn’t even seem to care. What if that was enough. Not for them because you can’t control them and what they find as meaningful to them. But it was enough for YOU. It was enough that YOU chose to look up from your phone and love and spread something other than hate and bad vibes from behind that very phone. I’m not saying I do or the proverbial “you,” but some do...too many, sometimes.

What if you accepted life as it is and that it’s ok that it’s not what you thought it would be. It’s ok that it looks nothing like the thousands of women your very own age. But at the same time you can believe that anything is possible. That soulmate, that child, that Home, that love you crave. It’s both impossible and possible. 

Just like that cotton candy cloud and marble in the sky, you can both know that it’s impossible and yet hope in even the smallest of ways...that it is.

when you want it to mean something

I first heard this song, or more accurately- spoken word poem by Mary Lambert, when I was walking the streets of Hollywood. I don't know if that means anything or not, but I kid you not, just now, right now when I started writing that first sentence about this "song," it began to play on my shuffled music on my Amazon app! I always find it cool when little things like that happen. I used to think it was a sign, but I don't anymore. I still do find it pretty cool, though. Like how when I was writing my own version of Orange is the new Black and when I wrote the ending about my character and Poussey's life together after prison and how she met this old rich white lady named Fran who helped her when she first got out. And then when I did too, we helped take care of her when she was dying and she left us money for Poussey to open her own restaurant and then when we had our own daughter, we named her Frannie, after her namesake. Well when I was looking up the meaning of her name, wanting it to be something cool and special, that means something, I found out it did! It means "free one." And we were the free ones, being that we were out of prison and I had already talked about that and how we were raising her to be a free-spirit. It just feels so cool and weird when things like that happen. Almost as if your brain knows something that you don't. Your sub-conscious is SO strong that it tells you to do things you shouldn't know to do. I wish that when I went to places that sort of just fall into my lap and just how I go and do things and take opportunities that come to me, that it would mean something too! That because I went to L.A., a place I would never just choose to go to, but because I won tickets to The Walking Dead premiere; that it would just MEAN something. It would mean I went because I was supposed to meet someone important in my life. I was supposed to met THE ONE. The girl that would change my life forever. Sometimes I feel like I live in a movie or fantasy world, but then I look at all the couples around me and they met "the one." It's not a fantasy, it's not a movie, it's real life. They met someone that changed their life and that loves them so much that they can't imagine a life without that person. They are their whole world. And there's no better word to describe that it hasn't happened for me and I'm almost positive that it won't, than the word- "sucks." It fucking sucks. It sucks balls. Of which I hate, both literally and figuratively. It more than sucks but even as a writer, I can't find the word to describe what it feels like. I feel hopeless, but not in a sad way. I literally feel like there's no hope left of me ever meeting someone. And that's just a fact. It's not a depressing, sad thing. I mean I don't feel great about it, but I feel like I have to accept it and I do to a degree. Because I don't live my life locked away in my house just because I don't have anyone to do things or go places or take vacations with. I go everywhere and I do everything by myself and that's fine. I'm used to it. I know plenty of people that would not go practically anywhere by themselves. Certainly not a vacation. They would drag a friend who they haven't even been friends with for a decade, only to torture them with making them do everything that they wanted to do and not letting the other person just chill out at the hotel. No way. They couldn't possibly go have a meal or go to the zoo by themselves. Those people are actually the ones that probably will have somebody someday. Because they can't function alone, so they'll rope some lonely guy in who is just happy to be noticed. And THAT is what's sad and depressing. It's like because I'm so good at being alone, I don't get the option of having someone to love, to hold me to kiss me, to be there in that hotel room on my 10th trip alone. And that really really fucking sucks. Just because I'm good at it, doesn't mean I don't want that partner. That lover. That girlfriend. That wife. Man if I could have somebody that feels about me the way this spoken word poem song says... I could die. 'Cause I'd already be in heaven. I want to feel about a girl the way Mary Lambert does in her song, "Dear One."
"Where did you come from, bright star. What heaven did you leap from, dear love. How can I spell your name without the sound of Autumn underneath my tongue. Without acknowledging the lovers who bent me in half. Bless them for bringing me to you. How can I say your name without also breathing the words, 'my God, I found you.' How can I ever speak again with this mouth when it has found where it belongs. When you touch me I am a bed of calla lilies. I will make a house for you and fill it with evergreens. I will paint sunsets on every wall so you can only see beautiful things. How can I say 'love' without wanting to fold myself into you, like a thousand paper cranes, dear one. I was halved the moment I was born. The other piece of me is inside of your mouth. And I was found whole the moment you spoke."
Isn't that the most beautiful thing you've ever read? Its even better to listen to, so get on that. I listened to it over and over while I walked the streets of L.A. Passing the Grauman's Chinese theater and the tourists taking pictures of cement hands. Passing the constant smell of cigarette and pot smoke that fills the air that I walked through. It was chaos, but in my mind, it was peace. I was floating, walking in slow-motion past a blur of faces that I would never talk to, nor would they ever talk to me. I think I wanted the crowds to part and for her to be standing there. For once for this moment, of hearing this spoken word song for the first time, despite the whole album being in my music playlist for weeks, to mean something. For it to come true. For life to imitate art for once. For MY life to imitate art for once, instead of the other way around. Instead of me creating art from a life I want. A life I dream of. A life I see on TV even though it's not real. I could make it real. I wish for it to be real. But here I sit. Still here. Still alone. Still unable to reach out and touch anyone. I've always felt invisible. I've always felt different and out of place growing up, although I didn't know why at the time. I thought I was like everyone else. I thought I was going to be like all my girlfriends growing up. I thought I'd be just like them, marry a guy and have some kids, all before 30. But 30 is long gone in the rearview mirror and I'm not attracted to guys. I'm attracted to the life. The normal life of marrying your best friend, whom you love with all your heart and having a child that is a piece of both of you. But it's not what I'm given. It's not what I can make come true. To quote another Mary Lambert song, "I can't change. Even if I tried. Even if I wanted to." But the line I really want to come true is her next line in that song- "My love my love my love, she keeps me warm. She keeps me warm." That would be the best life I could ever imagine.
I know we all want to find meaning in things. It's a Universal Desire. We want things to have meaning. We want to know that our life, even when it doesn't feel like we are the ones making the choices, still have a reason. They mean something. I feel like in the last 10 years nothing has meant anything. Nothing has changed anything. No decision I made, no path I followed, no "going with the flow." Nothing. Nothing has mattered and nothing has changed for me. But it doesn't mean I sit in a dark room and do nothing. I still try. I still look for meaning. I don't know that I take signs seriously anymore or take them at all, but I still try. And that's all that matters. All that matters is that I still choose to live and I still choose to not sit in a dark room and no nothing. Everything else is up to... well, I don't know who, but it's up for grabs I guess! If only I could get my hands around it...