Accomplishments for today:
I resisted a major hangover and went to play basketball in the park this morning. The cold air making the top of my head smoke like a cigarettes as I sweated out the alcohol and breathed in pain. I must quite smoking.
I watched the last two episodes of Sex and the City. While I understand the power of the series, and also understand the critiques. I cried two times in the last two episodes, which is strange. Playing on emotions is all too easy. It's why we have great entertainment, but it's also why we have war.
I downloaded Firefox again. Hopeing it will keep the hijacking at bay. So far so good.
I downloaded The Night Of The Living Dead. Which is free to download because of a lawyers error or something.
I took a shower. Nice one.
Last night was a dream. Making food for several friends when I get a call letting me know that Tamara's mother has had a brain anyrysm (sp?). Tamara is going to the airport with some friends to attempt to get a flight booked. I gather Dusty and we make our way to the airport to sit with her. It was a glorious sight, truthfully. Sorrounded by some of her closest friends, we hugged and talked and laughed about so many different things. The source of us flowing deep into her like water flowing uphill. The strangness of love is often unbearable to witness for me. The beauty of seeing her friends with her in the darkest of times come up into her so that it's clear that support and love actually matter.
It's not such a give-in that support and love matter. Think of the constant stream of messeges we recieve that indicate to us that it is not. We know all the right words, and have learned all the right jokes. But to know that we matter to others, and to let others matter to us, will the the challenge of our generation.
Our great war is to know love more than we know Ceasar. That is to say...know more about it that its name.
We walked her all the way to the gate, and sent her out into the air with as much strength as anyone could possible have in a similar situation.
I was there. Mark me on the walls of things. Take my name down and feed it into the machines. I knew love and possesed life right in my hands. No mystery, no long slugged battle for positions and beginnings. Just simple scrolling happenings. Just the push and pull of the feeling on my tongue.
Discussing it later with Dusty, we both confessed that had a similar thing happened to us, we would have done it alone. We would have staggared half blind with confusion to the airgates and went to each counter alone. We would have booked the flight alone. Sitting alone at an airport coffee shop we would have waiting the 3 hours for the flight to lauch. We might have called somebody, simply to tell them what had happened and where we were going. We would not have thought to ask for anyone to come stand next to us for as long as they could.
I don't know how to ask for help.
Last night we all had roles to play. Without thought, we were ourselves. Natalia calling and organizing and reporting and cultivating. Taking care of details and holding hands. Dusty being irrelevant and hilarious, divinely off topic. Laughter dwells at the bottom of every well, and he will dig to find it. Kerith was quietly and unobtrusively loving...softly and soundly sturdy. She made a mountain out of air, so that Tamara might lean on it.
I don't know how to describe my role. Except to say that it was as effortless to get to as sugar glass borders are to breach. It was important I was there. I echoed.
Dear self:
Wrapped up in the stink of things, your outstretched hands feel as though they're shifting through mist. Life is always happening, but somehow it doesn't feel like such in the traffic jam, or when you're flipping through channels. Life only feels like life in the bedroom, in the hospital...in the forcefield of a hero's eyeball. When you reach through what feels like shifting mist, try to know that what you're grabbing (and have always held) is most often the fruits of labor you never knew you were undertaking.
Every smile you make is a plank of wood passed down onto the earth. Every kindness offered shapes the world. Every angry retort and clever biting critism pulls apart the seams of things.
Make a habit of knowing the love you give and the love you get. Make giant streaming pillars out of the respect you have and who you have it for.
Life flaking off by the edges.
I sit here in the cold steel night. The Night Of The Living Dead was playing on my computer. Just the highlights. The clock on the wall ticks in time to the beat of the cursor on this page. Seconds float over me. Floods and floods of time under me. Everything evaporates, it's true. But it must first move through you.