Are they at Denny’s? No.
Are they at Carrow’s or Coco’s or any other place I’ve ever heard of? No.

These tasty little morsels are at some place called Perkins. So of course I Google it, and click the locations tab and

www.perkinsrestaurants.com/locations

yeah. the closest location is a mere 17 hours and 37 minutes away.

1.098 miles.

I’m crying bitter tears of disappointment.

One bite at a time.

“Sometimes I go whole days listening, bored, half asleep
I won’t say anything that’s worth a thing to me
One day, suddenly, time took a turn that once felt so brief
I blinked to see polite ghosts fading quickly”

He made me a mixed CD last April when I went down to San Diego. I stuck it in my car stereo on the drive back home, and that is where its remained.. because it got stuck in there, for good.

Fitting.

The last track is “Half Asleep” by School of Seven Bells [http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=1An2pjS4mKE] and today, it was the only sound I could bear to hear.

The past few weeks have been a jumble of emotion. my best friend is now 16 hours away, instead of a manageable 2… I’ve walked away from another failed relationship… and this morning, I found out a friend from high school had died.

I cant help but examine my own daily existence, what I force myself not to feel.. and what I let course through me, unchecked.

“What begins as an unguarded train of thought slowly can become
An addiction to the slumber of disconnection
And the resonance of memory that no longer has a shape
But keeps you numb through the hours till gone is another day”

I’ve become so fearful of pain through love that I refuse to compromise my heart any longer. Its so much easier to not feel anything at all, when you’ve felt too much. I smoke myself into numbness, I deny that I feel anything at all. But then it all catches up with me, and this torrent of mismatched energy just comes spilling out.

“Be aware, my darling these things I say I mean
Are just traces of something I long to feel again
I see our time expand in the air almost forcibly
Spreading thinner till it dissolves completely”

But of course, the mirror has two faces, and there is the side of me that longs to know true love again… not to merely chase the ghosts of love long gone.

I havent even had time to wax poetic about my new apartment, and here I am already having to pack up, and move on.

Anyone who has known me more than a few months knows just how much I hate moving, and how this gypsy life is wearing me oh so thin.

More to come.

Three postcards (the fourth arrived too late to be put up) A sunset shot. Summer, Winter and the Moon. My piano girl, my bottles…..And one of my favorite shots of the summer.

He’s looking off into space, I’m ready to  fight (and fight I did. Tooth and nail) Forget a thousand words, novels could be written.

Against the white walls, in this room now devoid of almost all that made it uniquely my own, the colors glow brighter than ever. The moon is blowing me her perpetual goodnight kiss and summer trails her toes in the stream, smiling gently, her appetite for adventure, love and beauty satiated until next year. Winter waits with the promise of numbness, of burial in the purest white… reminding me that even the barest branch will bloom again, come spring. For now, I shroud myself in her elegant gowns of ice.

Moving from my moms, to casa ocho was a breeze. It was a joy to pack up, knowing I was moving on to greener pastures. It took me a while to get settled in here, and I honestly never thought I’d be having to go back to my moms so soon.
My emotions are translating to total apathy and ambivalence about everything that needs to get done. I know full well that I should be packing, even now.
But here I sit, smoking and letting the thoughts steep a little.

Does the fact that I never threw my move-in boxes away speak to a subliminal acceptance of the gypsy trails that run though me?

All I know is that this space was mine, and losing it means a lot more than losing four walls.

Saw the mail key hanging by the door, so I grabbed it on my way out. I look forward to checking the box these days, with the boys both out on the road. Often times there is nothing more than an avalanche of junkmail, but two times so far, that thin little square of old fashioned communication was waiting for me. San Luis Obispo and Yosemite. Scrawled words and smudgy stamps.

Sam had mentioned putting one in the mail recently, so I’d been on the lookout. Yesterday, nothing. Today, the Portland skyline, bright and shining.

On the reverse “life is great. just hold on and it will pay you back I promise.”

Two lines. fourteen words. Such a simple act of connection that ended up being the hug I needed to feel from the universe.

Just like the phone calls… everything I needed to hear, so much beautiful joy just waiting to be shared.  More comfort than I’ve had since everything turned all topsy turvy.  It always seems to come, unbidden, and from the most unexpected sources.

This ones for you, Sam.

i often describe life as circles and cycles. like ever widening orbits, still following essentially the same axis but gradually widening with each pass. every time i come around, i know i’ve been past something like this. these circles hold more truth about me in their circumference than i care to admit.

certain things always remain somewhere within the pull of the center of me.

music – I love making it. I love watching it be made. It fills my heart and soothes my soul. It has the capacity to transport, transcend and transform.

photography – I call them my impulses. The moments of observation that turn into a white hot need to capture. Mason was driving my car in SD, I probably scared him half to death as I gasped and demanded that he stop. I jumped out of the car, ran into the street, and snapped this shot. 

My trusty little digi (I really should name her) is always with me, forever extending the reaches of my memory and imagination. The photos I take serve as emotional bookmarks…as snapshots of what I see on the inside, and try to create on the outside.

the written word – As a child, the largest piece of furniture in my bedroom was my bookcase. No petite affair, it consumed an entire wall. As first, the shelves were filled with the staples of a suburban 1980′s childhood library with the extra space taken up by toys and such. The first book I remember reading on my own was the adventures of tom sawyer. My mother bought it for me at the supermarket near the house I grew up. I couldn’t have been more than 7. Soon after, I discovered the Little House on the Prairie series. I lost myself in those 8 books, over and over. Looking back, I can recognize the impact that they had on my life. Lessons in humility and patience… Lessons in resourcefulness and perseverance. I even learned a few practical things, lessons in basic farming and a taste of good old fashioned courtship.  I talked to my Mom about this long standing love affair recently. She remembers me being so enthralled by the world contained between those tattered yellow covers that I wouldn’t hear her calling me for dinner. I admired the pluck and courage of laura, the sweet simplicity of the time. Even now, part of me longs for a simple farmhouse, with a cottonwood swaying gently in the breeze outside the kitchen window, and a good man coming home to me. Even all these years later, I’m fairly certain I could tell you all the stories woven so lovingly by that brave girl who never let the lonesome expanse get the better of her.

By the time I was 18, every shelf was crammed, shelves bowing with the weight of my beloved books. Fairytales and science fiction, rescued encyclopedias (an elderly neighbor passed when I was about 10, and I rummaged through her things when her kids put them all out on the curb) anything and everything was lovingly scooped up and hoarded. Even then, I knew.

Now, it’s the forgotten ones that call to me. The formerly beloved books, careworn and smelling like … like… like yellow and tan and mystery and history and something that can’t even be explained. Its like trying to describe to another how the warm skin of your lover smells like sleep in the morning. Please, if you’re reading this and you have no idea what I mean, do yourself a favor and go sniff an old book.

I’m serious. It’ll make so much more sense once you know what I mean.