” I can’t control the part of me that swells up when you move into my airspace. “
— Interpol

It’s 4:08 in the morning when the rest of our weary party finds comfort in the limbs of someone or other and departs to bed. He and I, we’re left awake. Wide awake. We barely know each other but we certainly know of each other. And we struggle to find words with enough weight to keep us in a foreign space as a black sky grows lighter, warmer, more familiar. Neither one of us wants to leave, a strange need to remain still keeps him in the lounge chair less than three feet away from my tangled mess of long reclining limbs. This is the first time we’ve shared an airspace that hasn’t had the hunger of other lungs involved. And its when my set of breathers craves tar that the ice is broken. He makes fun of me for my choice in cancersticks. The smell of Marlboro Menthols sully up what could have been a clean air space but next thing I know, he’s got a Parliament between his lips and we’re making idle conversation. “Everyone smokes Menthols in London,” I correct him. Yet he’s the one with English lineage, and I’m just a poor old American girl playing pretend. To think this all started because I was trying to find something to stop my nervous hands from fidgeting with the hem of my shirt. By the end of our night, the seam would be frayed.

Talk of cigarettes and other inhalants grows stale slowly. We play verbal tennis, volleying stories of younger days that echo the sentiment of tonight: the desire to sleep no where to be found in the capitol after-dark. As the earth awakes, we remain there. Still. Words shifting from stories to questions and I have a more than million of them. You see, he’s a musician and while I’m not unfamiliar with the breed, he’s a particular type. Quiet. Reserved. Talented. I actually enjoy what he creates on a consistent basis. He tells me how the dynamic between he and his older brother unfolds when I ask; sharing the same air space with someone, anyone, especially kin, has the potential to go sour every once in awhile. But they’re best mates, separated by eighteen months and I start telling him about my brother, whom I haven’t spoken to in months.

But before the conversation can shift too much to my side of the court, I begin to pry. The process of other artists will always fascinate me as someone who fancies herself a photographer, illustrator, writer, musician, sculptor, collage maker… a creative. I confess quietly how much I respect his body of works, and he surprises me with the news that he’ll be releasing a solo effort. More often than not those words tie my stomach in bow knots, but there isn’t even a flinch or flicker of discomfort. If anything, there’s a smile trying to conquer my otherwise steely gaze. “I’ll send it to you, for sure,” he promises. To note, I have yet to receive these tracks but I’ve often found that extreme patience proves to work in one’s favor when it comes to the cutting open of a vein and exposing truth (in the form of one’s art).

It’s 5:48 AM when I feel comfortable enough, fuck even ballsy enough, to tell him how his product makes me feel. How his music has the ability to capture all of my attention — a fate proven hard in this day and age of instant gratification everything. The bold entry of the first track, “it caught me,” I say with my eyes sending a direct line to his telepathic side. He smiles, nods, and agrees. “That’s exactly what we were going for. It’s like our way of saying pay attention…” and he’s right, because for the past twelve minutes that all I can do. I listen to him explain the unfolding process of how he creates and I stop him before it can all get too far. I don’t want to know all of his secrets, but rather just enough to be smug enough to assume I can read his mind.

“So tell me.. what inspired you to write the last track?” my voice is strong, unusually strong, when I get to the root of my curiosity. This time he takes a minute to think before speaking. It’s almost a minute too long, as I start explaining to him how the song makes me feel. “It’s like… it’s like you’re battling someone who just refuses to see reality. To see what’s been conveyed so many times. Blinded by their own desires.” He approves my hypothesis but shows me its not the only one that makes sense.

“I think I wrote it as a piece about myself. Two sides of me, conflicted, talking to one another about choices I’ve made and desires I have.” His words shock me. I hadn’t thought of that. I was so hooked by how I felt that I couldn’t see how clear his vision was. “But it’s one of those songs that wrote itself,” he says finally before we are reduced to sitting in silence, marinating in the past hours of conversation. Revelations weigh heavy and a newfound interest in another human being arise. Attentive eyes grow tired at the thought of all the time just spent getting to know each other through our living means.

It was 6:17 am when we parted ways. The sun, showing signs of its face and the moon falling back to its hiding place. Like his song, there’s a duality to the way time passes and to the way our airspace collided. Since then we meet, like clockwork, and talk till sunrise about our art and the art we love. It’s connection without expectation and I find myself itching for the next time we can get swelled up inside our creative airspace.

” I ought to be rich enough to have a secretary to whom I could dictate as I walk, because all my best thoughts come when I’m away from the machine.”
— Henry Miller

There are burn marks on my thumb and index finger, carefully cultivated from too many nights chain-smoking while at the behest of this machine. I wish there was a way to record my every thought, play them back at the end of the night, and elaborate on what made me feel the most… connected, confident, loved, scared, whatever. Whatever hit hardest. Whatever sparked neurons and axons to fire and respond. I’ve tried too often to carry a pen and a moleskine with me in an attempt to record some of these blips of life on an otherwise dull radar. But that’s the problem with living in a moment, you can’t just stop and start it up again. There are no pause or rewind buttons built for my main desire: reliving certain moments as accurately and as inspired as possible. I want to tell the world how I feel, but only if the emotions are raw and real. Not if I’ve had time to over think and analyze, or to dilute the situation to make my being seem more… acceptable or normal.

And then I dropped a menthol cancerstick on the ‘N’ key and I forgot where I was going with this…

I found myself lost in the sharp lines of a masculine jawline the last time I felt like a poet. There was vodka on my tongue that had made its way to his, and the smell of nicotine swirled between both of our exhales. I could have wrote a 1,000 words or more about the forty-five degree angle between his chin and cheek. And the haze of smoke and lust and something realer than just sex could have given me lyrics for a lifetime of songs and records. But there was no pausing what would become another intimate moment shared with a mess of blonde hair and brilliant blue eyes. You can’t just stop in the middle of a daydream, in the climax of an epiphany to jot down all the frenetic and frantic words that percolate and boil over in the heat of one’s mind. I couldn’t just tell him to “ hold still, don’t move, try not to breathe… you’ll ruin it.” Because in those seconds where I felt like Thomas Pynchon, crafting and deciphering all the twisted words of emotions I never felt before, I was caught. He had me. And I wanted him to enjoy his victory. It was only then could I accurately use my tongue and linguistics to explain every nuance.

Reflecting upon the dark, hazy memory with a flashlight and a magnifying glass doesn’t make it any easier to explain. But the moment’s over now and all I can tell him is that I enjoy his company, that the space we share means something to me. What that something is, well, I can’t explain.

There were lines in front of me, white ones of power disappearing quickly and yellow ones of asphalt rolling into view when I felt inspired to write this. I tried to bring back that fog of mind and soul with the aid of hot hot heat and scalding water. Suffocating on air that was so thick it reminded me of the atmosphere when greedy hands stood still and my serpent’s tongue didn’t crave the alkaline taste of blood. But it didn’t work. He wasn’t there, naïve in just how much the curve of his chin affects me while sucking on the end of one of my cigarettes in a shirt he’d later give me as a parting gift. I’d burn my index finger and thumb the first time I’d wear it, all in hopes of conjuring up a spirit of a moment I can’t just move on from.

I think about the ‘N’ key, the letters freshly burned.  We’ll have that much in common in several days time.

The only thing I’ve learned from all of this, well, the spaces where I find my best thoughts… they’re unconventional. There’s no way to record these deep emotions, moments of genius or blurs of elation. Perhaps that’s why they come to me. Because I know they’ll never be evidence in a trial. Because no one will hold it against me for feeling anything. Or everything. Or nothing at all.  *

history of loveinstant livingfailurecigarette burnscancer stickslines that go byhenry millerunconventional thoughts for unconventional spacesthe smell of smokethe forty-five degree angle between his chin and cheek2010

My favorite vision of you is replaying itself on loop in my mind, as silent tears drag mascara down my cheeks. It’s late and I’m walking a friend’s dog through the abnormally warm winter night in this capital city. All I can think of is you…  you hunched over my macbook in your signature blue hoodie, a smug expression captivating your mouth while your eyes illuminate like no one else’s can.  You’ve found a new song you want me to hear.  I know what this means.  I’ve become an expert in translating you, and you’ve found a tiny part of yourself you can expose under this guise of musical appreciation. You’re reaching out for connection and I can’t help but get all-sentimental about moments like these. Moments when it’s just us.  These moments are rare, if only because eyes we know and faces we don’t constantly flux around us.  It’s been two-years to the day that you walked into my life, too busy for conversation but that didn’t matter because I couldn’t speak anyway.  What I wouldn’t figure out till one very long year down the road is that’s you.  Always too busy for everything but moving forward, thinking logically while keeping your emotions at bay.  But I’ve known levels of intimacy with you that I’ve felt with no one else, like the first time your fingers brushed mine last October.  Electric sparks in my heart, or so that song would say. But in this vision you’re just a few beers drunk, and your tired eyes are evermore exhausted from the long day you had trying to make the world a better place with your special brand of sarcasm and your obsessive attention to detail.  And you’re still smiling, as I remain silent, too busy focusing my tipsy pupils on the way your long fingers tap upon alphabet keys.  You never sit still.  I’ve noticed we both stroke our chins when we’re restless.  We both bite our nails when we’re unsure.   But before I can decipher the lyrical hieroglyphics, I’m drawn to your profile.  That jawline is one I am going to miss in the coming days.  Always held so taunt and yet your Aquarius nature is so cool, ever conflicting with my Gemini angst.  The song will be over before I can bring myself to meet your gaze.

(And when I stare up at you with wide, sullen eyes you have no idea how much it kills me that in exactly six days you won’t be here any longer.)

***

Losing you has made me an emotional wreck, unstable and teetering on the verge of hysteria every time Bon Iver tells me to be patient. It’s atypical for me to be so open but with a wound this deep, I have no choice. In the two weeks since you told me, I have crafted four hundred and thirty five different goodbyes and cried eighteen times.  Both have changed with my moods ranging from excited for you, depressed for me, and hopeless for us.   How can things stay the same when so much is changing?  The separation anxiety grows deeper and thicker as each day passes. What’s a girl to do when the one person she seen or at the very least talked to everyday for the past two-and-a-half years will be oceans away in less than 140 hours?

I know it hasn’t always been easy knowing me. I think too much and yet not at all. I let my heart dictate everything and then disown that very logic one-two-three blinks later. I blame you for everything that goes wrong (but never tell you that you’re always the root behind what’s right).  I never tell you everything I want you to know because I am afraid it’s going to change everything and anything that’s solid between us.  Even now I’m stalling as I write this because the fear is so familiar and comforting, even if it’s overwhelming and suffocating all in the same breath. I mean, there are so many things I want to say to you, in these last days before it all changes.  Before you’re not within reach, and before I can get my fill of you. 

But the only part out of all of it, all of these goodbyes and apologies I have rehearsed and reworded night after night, subway ride after subway ride is that I love you. I’ve never uttered those words out loud while in your presence, but every night I tell you, whether you’re listening or not, that this damaged heart of mine is yours.  It will be yours.  I want to invent new ways to express this old sentiment just so you will get the picture. I know you don’t speak or think in anything but analytical facts, witty retorts and appropriations figures.  In fact your brain is math and mine is art class.  I embellish everything with pantones and swirls.  You calculate the quickest distance to my heart, and then divide it by all reasons why stalemate was always the better option.  Because of this I’ve found patience I never known before.  But it doesn’t apply now because I am so afraid this is the end of the line.  You’ll be over there now and I’ll still be over here, left to clean out your empty apartment alone.  The new us won’t be convenient.  And I know you well enough to know the risks associated with this move.  The chances of making it are slim, as your ever logical mind will soon phase out the old parts of you that no longer compute in your new life.

Sure, I realize I’m too brash sometimes (especially about your departure), and try as hard as I do to fake it this does not equate to bravery.  But I’m smart enough to know that when you find someone that shakes your core so deeply like you have mine, well, it’s not easy to let that go miles away.  For all the moments you’ve made me unsure of myself, unsettled, uneasy, unintelligent and untrusting of my own thoughts, it’s been worth it because in the end you have made me feel alive. 

And I’m really going to fucking miss you. *

old memorieslossaquarius vs. geminifact or fiction?Electric sparks in my heartoceans awayskinny lovei was never any good at mathfailed logicwords