Every ending

"If this is an ending, it's a better one," I'd said on the last day I saw you. 

If we'd left it there, maybe it would have been. 

But I don't think so. 

"Endings are foretold by beginnings," I've said several times

To no one

To hear how it sounds when it lives in the air

It sounds profound

Which is why I mistrust it. 

Sometimes a story takes on a life of its own.

And we have to decide to persist 

Or rather, insist,

That this is not Our last page. 

relics

Scouring the globe 

Ocean to desert

For trinkets, charms, amulets, fetishes, talismans, minkisi

Whatever bits of captured magics that have survived 

Pool them together 

in a forest glen 

next to a moonlit lake

Chained with copper wire

plates of hammered zinc

Voltaic piles

under the right Star Signs

ancillary

perfunctory 

futile 

probably 

still, it's something to try

I've tried doing nothing

and that didn't work 

All that's left

is everything else

pain goes somewhere

Surely it goes somewhere

playlist

I made a playlist for when you end it

Wean you off me like a drug

Our suns will set in separate valleys

And we'll pretend it's just begun 

You let me go, once, when I asked you

Now we're even

Carouse

I was not prepared for the loss of you. It's been 48 hours without your voice in my head. I'm happy you're on vacation and I'm also not happy without you. 

Fearful also, maybe. That a few days without me will feel like you're free of the shackles of my attention. 

Not that I don't think you love me. You do. It's the difficulty of the thing. The hyper-vigilance and the distance and needing your touch. 

I suppose we're both familiar with these things. It still feels different now. 

Before, I think, we didn't have clear boundaries. There was a lot of me hiding my feelings for you. It's a cruelty I've regretted. 

Writing Learnins Notes

"I thought I was looking for someone who was like you. Turns out I was just looking for you."

1757. Thursday. Airport security was easy. I'm at that point where I'm in between a 36 and a 34 waist so my pants are a little loose but good for traveling. In case I gotta do a jump kick. 

My flight is delayed a bit. There's a large fire at some part of the US and I assume that's why. Everything's connected. 

I smell food. It's dinner time around here and there are plastic containers of pastas, salads, french fries, and chicken strips. Not all together. Although that would be awesome. Wrap it all in a tortilla. 

The Nashville flight is boarding. It's completely full. I am not going to Nashville. But it's so popular. 

No. My writing conference is not in Nashville. 

I've filled my water bottle. That's important to me. If the plane crashes I'll at least be hydrated. 

I didn't bring a pen or a laptop to write with. I may look pretentious writing on my phone. But it's practical, dammit. My hands are clumsy and I really dislike typing on my compact laptop. I use an external keyboard at home. But it's longer than the laptop and it defeats the point. 

And I'm not sure if this matters but writing like this is mostly silent. TV shows always make the tic-tic-tic noise, but I can't recall the last time I heard someone around me texting. 

I'm starting to think TV is not like the real world. 

I ate my usual bowl of oatmeal after work. I also had some toast. I can go a full day without eating with no ill effects, but it's not my preference.

1612

1636. A woman weeps in the corner of the terminal. She is sitting on the ground, against a kiosk, and has draped her coat over the handle of an upright roller suitcase. A fabric shield against the world. I wonder why she weeps. 

The flight to St. Louis is missing three people. Where are they? I should take the case. They must be somewhere in this city. But no. I have a writing conference to go to. It might change my life. Or my life's already changed and this is just locking it in. 

The fight is boarding. I'm in the middle group. I am prepared. I also have a coat to tent my emotions. And a neck pillow. And a seat cushion. That's new for the trip. My butt gets sore now that it's more muscular. That's what I tell myself. Maybe I just don't know how to sit right. 

2024-03-01. 0722. Free breakfast at the hotel. Hungry writers descend like locusts. Which I call grasshoppers. Cuter, not as biblical. 

1039. The conference is fascinating. Many writers with no marketing understanding asking all the questions I didn't know I had. It's similar to what I say about doctors: they know medicine, and I know everything else. How to get the treatment, I mean, to the patient. We can write? Great. Do that. Here's how to help the people who want to make money off your writing do that, because they get more money by getting your book sold to more people. 

It's pretty similar to any other business-building. The similarities to the movie industry is striking. 

1226. I'm enjoying it. The guy leading the conference is very good at cutting through our writerly nonsense. We can all ask questions but much like a comic convention panel, most questions start with a rambling backstory about the person asking. He's quick to ask 'What's your question?" Professional and direct, with a subtle acerbic edge where you notice it but yes, you're wasting everyone's time and you should stop thinking about yourself and ask your question. 

I'm learning a lot. Or at least the shape of the challenge. It's not as hard as I expected. That is, it's much like any job interview process. Write a bunch, and make it good, and then condense it in a way that an agent (who sees thousands of these) will be able to identify the elements that resonate with them. Or at least sell it. 

I feel a great deal of relief, really. The writing is hard... But this? Selling the books? That's a technical skill, and learnable. 

The person at my table has been gone for a while. Hope they're okay. 

They're back! They're from Missoula. There's a writing thing there too, and also the Sibbits. 

Except I have to actually write a manuscript. 

I suppose I better get on that. 

Wow I am just falling apart.

Oh drat

Sleep: Part 37

There was a lot of not sleeping happening last night. I woke up every hour, like a military-style punishment. At 4 am, I contemplated going into work, you know, really get a head-start on my day. 

That's how insane from weariness I was. 

I focused on enjoying being cozy. Lots of people are miserable. But how many of those are miserable AND have a teddy bear and two body pillows? Not nearly as many, is what I choose to believe. 

I'll try again now. 

I've got a pretty good feeling about it. 

cars

I purchased a used car

It's dark dark blue

Almost purple

Look a new bruise on an old

It's larger though

Than my bright yellow hatchback 

And it is good for traveling long distances

With all my things in the back

When it became time to negotiate 

I would not give up my little yellow car 

In exchange for percentage Discount Over Time (DOTS)

Where I held you once 

Where I can still imagine the scent of you 

keepsake

She promised she would tell me 

If she was going to leave me forever 

Although now that I recall that moment

(as I can recall every moment spent with her) 

She never specified exactly how

Puffy white cumulonimbus shaped like an anatomically-correct shattering heart?

Sliver of moonlight breaking through a blackout curtain? 

A recall on my exact prescription of antidepressants?

Clever girl

She must have known I'd know her anywhere

And march on

Despair sucking my boots into the mud

Can't stop moving

In case I'm wrong

(as I've been wrong so many times before) 

And she's still there, somewhere, waiting

the deja vu

In stress awakens deja vu

The illusion that I've already lived this

Perhaps it provides a sense of control

Defense Mechanism 

Or it's torture

Meeting the same fate every time

a Merry Go Round 

into a brick wall 

That would work

At least, that's what I would do

If I were trying to torment me

A future of aphthous ulcers

I heard the cure for canker sores

is to grind salt into them

I've got salt

And a lot of time

At least twice as much

If this deja vu means I'm going around again

My lovely caldera 

almost tomorrow

Just kidding; it's never tomorrow. It's only always today. 

That isn't true. Time zones exist and so for some people it is tomorrow. Not for me. 

Wait that might not be true either. 

I'm in somebody's tomorrow, today. 

At least I hope I am. 

It's a good thing time is made-up or this could get pretty confusing. 

That isn't true. Time is real, it's just probably not exactly what we think it is. 

I can close my eyes and travel through time. 

Speed ahead to where I'm with you again. Oh wait, no. Then what would we talk about? Time travel? No thank you. I better proceed the regular way. 

If we could fast-forward through all the hard parts in life, what would even be left?

haunted houses

They exist, I'm sure, and will exist

Not that it matters much

What is time, to a ghost 

Nature will reclaim all houses eventually

And ghosts don't seem to haunt glen or vale as often

Property perhaps 

An imaginary bond

Spectral fingers clutching phantom deeds

Signatures binding fates 

Absurd 

That death would shackle us so uncreatively