"my useless, uncalloused hands"

title from Cristina García's The Agüero Sisters.

The tension between intellectualizing and acting pervades my skin (until I'm crawling) every time I vere to some dyadic end. Wholeness in living requires some balancing act that is inevitably ungraceful. Maybe liminality (between work and thought) is like vulnerability in relationship; uncomfortable, but necessary and enriching (when you don't fight it).

I've had a perpetual layer of dirt under my fingernails since Saturday.
And I haven't been writing.
I swear, my body's been going through detox.

Tired of its "useless uncalloused hands."

Tired, too, of being by itself.

(The rabbithole is bright and magnetic, but best shared--lest you find yourself lost, and in danger of losing head).

Anyways, I'm off to ride my bicycle.
And Thursday, I'm going back to Good Earth Farm.
Farm-magic reminds me how simultaneously small and big I am,
and when I ride my bicycle, it always feels like I'm flying.
I like that.

Always,

L

weeds//sidewalk-cracks by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

insides

("Shadow Dance" by Martin Lewis).

("Mother and Child" by Gustav Klimt).

For every route, could haves/should haves/might haves in infinity.

It's a dangerous game: the either/or, the re-writing of choices.

There so many pulls inside me.

So many entryways, leading to new entryways.

fixed my "give a damn"

and just in time.

Riding for the Feeling.

[thank you, Adam, for giving me something to muse me through my constant separation anxiety with space and relationship. Love ya, Ricky].



It's never easy to say goodbye
To the faces
So rarely do we see another one
So close and so long

I asked the room if I'd said enough
No one really answered
They just said, "Don't go, don't go"
Well all this leaving is neverending

I kept hoping for one more question
Or for someone to say,
"Who do you think you are?"
So I could tell them

With intensity, the drop evaporates by law
In conclusion, leaving is easy
When you've got some place you need to be
I'm giving up this gig for another seaon

With the TV on mute
I'm listening back to the tapes
On the hotel bed
My my my apocalypse

I realized I had said very little about ways or wheels
Or riding for the feeling
Riding for the feeling
Is the fastest way to reach the shore

On water or land
Riding for the feeling

What if I had stood there at the end
And said again and again and again and again and again
An answer to every question
Riding for the feeling

Would that have been a suitable goodbye?

30-loves list. (for Dale). (and also for myself).

1. Love of family.
2. Love of friendship, that becomes a kind-of family.
3. Love of the way we can be many different things to each other.
4. Love of farm stillness.
5. And farm movement.
6. And love of knowing that I might plant the garlic, but I do not make the garlic grow.
7. Love of service.
8. Love of the humility that allows oneself to be served by another.
   
9. Love of the capacity for reinventions.
   
10. Love of second chances, with things right in front of you.
11. Love of saying sorry.
    
12. Love of music, and the way it shares things between people (the way it shares things between the multiple people in one person).
    
13. Love of moments when I recognize I'm human.
14. Love of my cat Comet.
15. And my old cat Chewy (rest in peace).
16. Love of the people who have passed--physically, or emotionally--from my life, for they are and always will be a present part of who I am.
17. That is, Love of the way Love lingers, even when bodies and hearts do not.
    
18. Love of functioning in a Communion of Saints.
    
19. And of the Joy and value in little pleasures and safeties.
20. Love of my body (on a good day).
21. And my spirit (on a good day).
    
22. Love in strength and flexibility (but not malleability).
23. Love of the way I am big and small in a world that is big and small.
24. Love of warm things.
25. Love of the intimacy allowing one to speak a coded language, that only one more understands.
26. Love of spending a lifetime, almost knowing one another.
    
27. And the way that people return to each other after miscommunications to try to communicate again; their persistence shows a caring language cannot capture.
    
28. Love of deep peace.
29. Love of not taking oneself too seriously.
    
30. Serious Love.

"There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, a eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest."
-Anais Nin.

(Wholly honest; I am terrified).

Just one near-perfect thing.

"If I could do just one near-perfect thing, I'd be happy.

They'd write it on my grave, or when they scattered my ashes.

On second thoughts-- I'd rather hang around and

be there with my best friend if she wants me"

-Belle and Sebastian, from IF SHE WANTS ME

..

Dissonance: n. A tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements.

Meta- Meta- Meta --- dancing.

Have you ever been simultaneously a character in your own dream, and a third-person, omni-present dreamer? Not a dream where the dreamer is a character, but a dream where the dreamer is distinct from the dream and you are the dreamer but also in the dream. I have them often, and oftentimes they carry over when I wake up-- so I am experiencing and watching myself experience at the same time. Self critiquing while being. Fully engaged in my actions, and their results, but also fully distinct from them.

This is dissonance; sometimes land // sometimes ocean. This is the artist's tension. The observing hand. This is the lodging between ethereal and corporal: suspension somewhere--ambivalent-- in-between. --

Like mid-winter springtime.

Like on-the-brink again.

....

I'm gonna go buy some yogurt. (That's exactly my point).

Hunger is as corporal, but also as real as it comes. And thinking, no matter how precious

doesn't taste like Plain Greek Yogurt with Strawberries.

And I plan to be forgotten when I'm gone

[when I die]
can it be in the midwinter springtime?
(but not this midwinter springtime)
and will you let me burn before I'm buried?
before I'm scattered?
and will you celebrate my life?
(because funerals are morbid, and--, oh, and--)
will you play "Rollin' Back" by My Morning Jacket?
and will you laugh at my earnestness?
and will you laugh at my awkwardness?
and what will you remember?

(because I am sometimes land//sometimes ocean//sometimes land//sometimes ocean//sometimes land// sometimes--)

Østers i Vest from Sebastian Schuster-Rossel on Vimeo.

Oysters have pearls inside, you know.
(and our bodies do, too).

vibrations.

Am I going manic?
Have I been manic?

Flip-book flashes:
Exile, liminal suspension, permanent transience.
And I'm hanging to André Aciman's "compulsive retrospection" like it's: involuntary, irregular, inevitable (?), and BODILY.
Signifying lack of agency, even in memory.

And I wish I spoke French, just so I could read Michel Foucault, untranslated. Because I'm self-surveiling and contemplating madness.
And I wish I could channel all these whirling thoughts.
(I swear, I'm on the brink again//oh, have I gone backwards?//oh to be on the brink, on the brink, on the brink again--)
Flash: the-absent-I, Flash: language is laughing, Flash: corporations as "generational voices" and ah, postmodern-disenchantment Flashing like: having answers is the wrong answer.

Been drinking dark roast, straight and black, for the past week. And I swear a collection of recent situational occurrences have some undecipherable interconnection. Like the world is screaming, but the words are mute, and all I sense are vibrations.
vibrations.
vibrations.

(What the hell is up with me?)

vibrations. by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

so many epiphanies.

not enough language for them.
yeah, and I get it.
yeah, and I'm happy
yeah, and it's beginning to show.

so many by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

10 Laws

lyrics by East Forest
photo mine.

1. Always see the dangers first
2. Always protect your feet
3. Always be ready for cold
4. Always be ready for heat
5. Always know where a good water resource is
6. Always master the skills necessary
7. Always get the job done
8. Always know your place
9. Always disallow foolishness
10. Always rest whenever you can

veiling.

Jordan laughed at me over bubble tea; my depiction of the plateau was pretty bleak. And he had a point: jumping off is futile, unless you have a damned good pogo stick, and even then, you're still going down. Better to propel up, he said. Now I've gotta go invest in an ice pick. Or I could just grow some intense cat claws. Kidding.
(I've gotta stop with the cat jokes/references; people are gonna start thinking I'm serious).

Old-school Southeast Engine's on repeat and everything's still. Nattada and I feasted on steamed, local spaghetti squash tonight. I don't think I've ever made a better marinara sauce--chocked full of amaranth. We had peas, too. I love peas.

Food is funny. When shared communally, or consumed with gratitude, there is almost something sacred to it. And there is nothing more rewarding--nothing that requires more patience--than growing your own. Sometimes I get lost in looking at my own hands, in imagining my skin--the creases at the knuckles--shaping and shedding and replacing with each new amino acid I swallow.

I should make a self-rule to focus on my hands more--to take time to consciously imagine my food converting to energy--my breath to spirit--within the confines of my own body. Because sometimes I get caught up reading old words and staring at old photographs until I can't recognize my own voice--my own face--in them. And I think it's a loss but it's a pseudo-loss; I'm rendered a fool by my own veiling.

I won't know the difference until I begin to honor stillness. Sometimes contentment is a euphemism for apathy, but not always. Sometimes contentment is just as imperative as the discontentment sparking revolutions--both internal and external. Yes, contentment, too, can be revolutionary. Stillness can be revolutionary.

And in recognizing this, I can stop worrying altogether about how to get off the damned plateau: by laying on my back and being flat--watching the scenery around me shuffle, as I stay motionless.

veiling. by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

leaping.

Sometimes I feel like a horse with boat shoes, where the land wobbles and the water sinks.
And then I kick 'em off and remember: horses are excellent swimmers.
Oh, silly ebb and flow; you've frayed and faded my puzzle pieces.
Oh, silly ebb and flow; I don't mind.

leaping by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.