leaving was never

it’s been a struggle most of the way
i say about this thing called grad school
to joolie in the kitchen
while something like gilian welch or philip glass or tegan and sara or otis redding or nina simone plays on the mini speakers
she at the oven stirring the potpie sauce and me chopping lettuce at the cutting board
but leaving was never a consideration
and it was completely worth it
(perhaps especially because of the other humans and ideas it has connected me to)

and perhaps it is something about the combo of the things i say with the music that is playing and the reliving this old old ritual of moving around a kitchen together to create a feast that does it
but there are tears in joolie’s eyes when she said
see, this is why i wanted to be here for your graduation
because i am so proud of you for all of this
and she puts her arms around me and we
kitchen hug which brings tears to my eyes too
which makes me laugh in that half-crying kind of way
which is perhaps the best kind of laughing
and the best kind of crying

and as i wipe off the table i hear me telling myself
i am a fighter

this expansive

the woman at the fair trade store says
when i tell her i am leaving in mid july
we’re going to miss you
and i hear in her tone/her voice that
she really means it
even though we just met in a
shop owner / patron kind of way
and this moment
is something like a motif
stamped on my three years in this city
we’re going to miss you

_______

old town taffy in a wax bag in my backpack
joolie and i take turns choosing
on the coaster train headed north
ocean throwing the sun back into sky
in the west

_______
and then
the rise and pull of salty waves (sometimes slush)
foaming in around us at d street beach
ocean, you make me trepidatious today
but blessed and new in your swells

_______

i sat here for at least a half hour
trying to unspool the words
of reunion
and the power of knowing/witnessing/growing alongside
joolie, who has known me and whom i have known
since age 13
which comes out to be 24 years ago
which is well over half of our lives
and i have had to come to the conclusion
that sometimes the magic is in the knowing
and the inability to tell/narrate
because there are no words in this language
to tell this expansive story
but one approach would be to mention the way my laugh
rings inside the sound of yours
and vice versa
and how our ribcages risefall in unison
and how i get to keep learning/knowing you
when i ask you things like
are there foods you are not eating right now?
as i prepare the dinnerplanning
and you respond w/ fish and celery – not allergic, i just don’t like them

two zones down from the o-zone

backyard lavendar and lantana
clipped and ribbon-wrapped as a
welcome-to-san-diego gesture
offered at terminal two
in the q-zone
(two zones down from the
o-zone)
and in the back of the car joolie talks about
how there is no ozone layer over australia
the australians (friend of joolies housemate) talk about it often
and so many people there have skin cancer and
my housemate’s australian friends…. they look olllld
_______

all the cab names i biked and passengered past today
i forgot
but hope to pass again
in order to re-remember
i wonder if there is a name
for how hard/how consciously i have to try
to hold the names in my memory
(mostly be repeating them over and over again
until i get to my destination where i can
finally deposit them into a pocket-sized notebook)
_______
for the first time in 8 years
i go to the dentist
who says i take good care of my teeth
and believes me when i say
it’s only been two years

the blue-gloved hans of the  hygienist are deft and precise
with the metal hook scraper and mirror at the end of a handle
coniferous trees (spruce?) slight swaying out the window facing north
because it has been 8 years and the last time was at a dental school
that might as well have been in the 1950s (as in archaic)
i am fascinated by the panoramic xrays (instant!)
and the video camera at the end of the want so the dentist can show me
where the enamel is wearing off and where the pits have begun to grow
plus there is a tv screen in place of one of the tiles on the ceiling
that i refuse to watch because the spruce grove is more interesting any day
plus i drop into a sortof meditative state
to the scraping and the deep breathing i put myself through and the
movement from one side of the mouth, tooth-by-tooth, to the other
i can see the blod out of the corner of my eye that she wipes from the scraper to her
little cotton pad
and i am ok with that

on the bike ride home i cross paths with tiph and christine
one of whom tells me about her wisdomteeth removal
were you conscious i ask, squirming
and i am not a queasy squirmy person
but because teeth are so bone-like solid
and rooted deep into our jawbones
and there are holes left where the roots were
and you can’t suck from a straw during recovery
because you might suck one of the blood clots up and out
from the cavity where a tooth once was
i react with my hands over my mouth
saying no
saying never

_______

it’s already 8pmish
and even though we could buy pizza dough at the market
i insist on mixing it from scratch
why? jenn asks why don’t you want to buy pizzza dough?
because it is sad i say to make homemade pizza with store-bought dough
and everytime i knead that yeast/flour/oil/salt/water creation
i am paying homage to my grandfather
who baked by day and nightschooled by night so he could learn english
so i press the dough into the marble-ish countertop
thinking about how much better life is
when we make our own bread
how it can practically change the quality of light around us
as we press and knead

 

the hum below

the other day i completed a post at my guest curator gig
at nola studiola
and i forgot to tell  you all

_______

i am almost floating around campus and wondering why
it takes several hours until i realize
the lightness is perhaps several things
(the gray sky
the last week of the schoolyear)
but it is most likely largely the fact that i left my computer at home
in order to begin my ascent on grading mounting

_______

dana (donna) and justin
i promised a shout out
and here it is
to your showing up
to your commitment to thinking and learning
to your warm and kind presences
to your finding me here

_______

mosquito bumping against
shuttle bus window as we hurtle south
along the i=5

_______

in an english accent
after the inclines
i deem the profane song a sortof poem
while the unpredictable cars and their too bright lights
could never be one
(a poem, that is)
i also sing a mini-opera
pedaling over the 805
the hum below, a backdrop

_______

you have to try really hard to get/give a hickey
someone says perched on a table
insinuating it is a conscious choice everytime
to which i respond
not in my experience
_______

sound of smashing glass next door it sounds
like a break-in but it is only the landlord
working on the place
and reminds me of the dream i had
where i was walking barefoot and didn’t realize until i looked down
i had been walking barefoot on glass shards
one of which peirced (perpendicular) my foot
and i had to pull out from inbetween my metatarsals

plus sambusas

it is an appreciation gathering
at the college i TA with
and i don’t know his name
but i know his face from the east african food booth
at the ucsd farmers market

he carries food in foil pans
plus sambusas in pastry boxes
and he recognizes me
(me in the doorway him outside)
and there is light
(his face is always an arrangement of brightness)a

his surprise
because he hasn’t seen me in so long
and it’s true i say
i haven’t been by the farmer’s market for
at least a year or so

if you, dear reader, could see the size of the line and the
number of folks that red sambusas and catering
serves in one day at ucsd
then you would also be broken open
by the fact that he remembers you
and not only does he remember you but
asks how you are
in a way that makes you feel less like the customer you have been
and more like the human you always are
in a way that makes you feel like
maybe he also sees that your face is made of light
maybe that thing that you often try to get across to the people who make money off of serving you
(that they are human and you are human and you are truly grateful for their service)
did get across

that it is really our light that recognizes each other
and it has nothing to do with our faces
and the only thing you regret is that when you tell him how you are/
that you are graduating
and he congratulates you and then you ask him how he is and he says
working
that you wish you would have insisted
on asking him more
and by offering questions
acknowledging that he exists in ways outside of
other than cooking and serving food to people

not only that i am remembered
but that we get to be human together in that doorway for a minute
that we get to pass this light back and forth
gold gilding the air around us

work with that light

the way the light floods in from the ceiling windows at cecut
and the way the artists/writers mix their work with that light

last year, it was like this:

a kind of relay handoff
passing book from palm to palm saying
next year you’ll be the one reading/performing

_______

217 and i split a pastry (gigantic doughnut with sparse [not too many not too little] rainbow sprinkles
in the back of a cab
passing it back and forth across lia in the middle)
sometime after noon
as we roll from centro cultural to la linea
(which happens to be curving around and curving around again
longer than i have ever seen it before, but i have usually been lucky in my late night crossings)
i have been seven times now
but i recognize the man who is torso and up
perched on something like a skateboard with a paper cup for collecting coins
i recognize the all white coffee can near the end of the line
with its slot in the lid for collecting change or rolled up bills
the woman holding it might change
but every time she is dressed nurseish or nun-ish and i can’t quite distinguish
and i do not know the name of the charity she holds up the can for
i recognize the candy stand with mini piñatas strung outside it
while everyone else stops for tacos
churros
slices of fresh fruit
extra sweet coca cola in a bottle
i opt for the candy shop
and pick out orange fizzies
dulces de leche
tamarindo dulces
coconut bars in red green white
mango lollipops covered in chili spice
we pass around the cold coca cola
we pass around the can of pineapple juice

and the chances of hearing someone/anyone call out my name
from that ever-winding line are sub zero
but it happens
in a sound as bright as the sun
david, thieny and joanna
just returning from a pre-finals overnight in rosarito
so we sortof lean in
meld into place several curves ahead of the end
and i am normally not a line-cutter
but we need to get one of us home soon
so she can pack for a week and a half in rome
(where i hope she will say at least once
when in rome…)

and there is that regret
(that is the main thing wound up in this larger-picture looming leaving
of this city)
the way joanna, thieny and david and i have been colliding
like, not quite community, but something more than acquaintances
or at the edge of acquaintance and something else
(i mean, we’ve been through some things
this being one of them)
and even though they’re all taking off from this city anyway
a kind of regret anyway
that this is as familiar as we will become to each other

_______

the story has been told/read as
how mom was so upset (over her brother’s death)
that she took a valium
before she realized she was pregnant with me
but tonight for some reason it struck me
to rethink the narrative and angle it this way:
my first weeks/months growing
through phases of her deep grief
as my mother mourned her younger brother
who passed away after an overdose

this story has been told openly my entire life
but i hadn’t thought to think of it through this lens/reframe
until now
a new way of narrating old information

the wonder at how it takes me 37 years to get there

at an incalculable force

sometimes the dreams are hours away
and sometimes i wake, almost still in them
(the difference between standing on the ground
and flying in the canopy
something like that)

this morning i woke in the canopy
and it felt like this
(not the sound of the song so much as
the layers of everything overlapping
when this song came into my life
heart time capsule
shredded and in burst)

which means that when i arrive at yoga this morning
it’s not long on my mat before the tears
are pulleyed up from the wellchest
wooden bucket brimming and hauled up on rope
and to add to that, alyssa talks about courage
courage is not being scared she says
it’s feeling fear and doing it anyway

in the dream i crawled into a bed
up north somewhere
maybe mountain maybe rainforest maybe river
definitely winter / spring
one hour before morning rise time
because of bad dreams
it was a mischevious crawling into
with the precision needed to not touch
and with a casualness that covers this precision
(what would happen if i just put my body here?)

in the dream, you were restored
to an antique name
to a time before a ceremony that looked nothing like a blanket fort
to the mist – water broken open – at the top of the cleveland dam spillway
(snowmelt airborne at an incalculable force)

the grief i have cycled through
resuscitated via dreams that mine sadness from the bones
cells, vessels that have not yet replaced themselves
serving this ache up in the sleep canopy
and rustling me awake there

in contemplation of
a fraction
how many years until
cells, (musclememory) have completely replaced themselves
therefore shedding the body that knew you

_______

last week, the cards gave me a timeline for the longing
_______

edmundo brings us free kombucha
(orange slices hung from the glass
blueberries afloat)
a hotwarm cinnamon roll
and sneaks off for kava on his break
we do the wave at the table
and the slow clap and then
the six of us on the sidewalk
make a tunnel out of our arms for pedestrians to pass under
and most of them do
to which we can only respond by cheering and more clapping and laughing
i think of kate (and send her a slice of this) when i steep in how good it feels
to play again

_______

jen tells us about a leak
and i wonder how that would fit into the water collection