IN FIVE PARTS
55 ENTRIES
SUBCONSCIOUS PROJECTIONS
The whole ordeal is shrouded thickly in nostalgia, a twisted web of memories and happenstance.
LOS ANGELES
Littlerock
With each passing day, the acceleration quickens, my heart slows, peace grows.
Mojave DesertAmidst desert sands and raven calls, quail cries and past refuse, I’ve glimpsed the realization of my truest and wildest dreams; I’ve found the distance separating that reality and this to be a matter of perspective, patience, and practice.
Coalinga
I glimpsed all that is possible and momentarily lost myself in the haze of Nirvana; awaken here in this moment and reclaim authorship, accountability, freedom.
Lost Hills
It was just then that the drugs wore off. I had been waiting so long for sobriety that when it struck, I immediately dove nose first into the nearest mountain of dopamine. Out here in the doldrums, the one thing you mustn’t find is yourself.
Sun Village
Awoke to a dead bovine just behind the car; it seems like such a short time has passed since I was last here but this deer has witnessed an age rise and fall from its final resting place on this plane.
Mojave
One sunday morning, I awoke once again in this body which treks this planet with fearlessness, a disregard for disappointment; I can fly if I but open my eyes, appreciate my surroundings, and let my love ride on the rising tide which consumes and renews all. Each day more closely resembles my dreams, days whose coalescence felt years away. I am infinitely astounded by the sheer beauty which surrounds me.
Littlerock
A serene morning in the desert amongst forgotten vineyards and buzzing power lines; sage perfumes the breeze wandering between the Joshua trees. When last I saw them, they were bathed in the cool splendor of the witching hour, silhouetted against a grinning moon.
Mojave Desert, California
Never be anyone but yourself in your entirety, your complexity, your intensity, your brightness, your kindness, your gentleness; love.
Palmdale, CA
What do you know of god? It is the zealot who understands the least; holy men spend their days in a practice of self-worship — masturbation disguised as holiness. The beggar, the victims of holy wars possess a deeper familiarity with the presence of god.
LOCALE ⎯
SAN FRANCISCO
Apt. 716
I am continually seeing the richness and abundance of the life and identity I’ve built. This is a farewell tour of this land of possibility. The lack of uncertainty that I have in the content of my character and consciousness sets me apart from the majority.
Apt. 716
We are made of story, this planet is the page upon which we write our narrative. The sea no longer rushes to shore with the urgency and terror of uncertainty. I have no need to move the world, only to move myself, to be moved. My heart and soul soar on the wing, bounding across the sky as our consciousnesses play in the world of dreams.
Might the world know peace when once more, our villages echo with the music of children’s laughter, not the clangor of machines which so rigidly tap out a death march.
Apt. 716
I am finally grounded in love. As I became who I’ve always been, our universes began to converge and now, we find ourselves at the threshold of all we’ve ever wanted.
Stanford, CALIFORNIA
Donning her coat with a sense of reverence; a deep inhale brings with it her scent and my being resonates with her frequency, bits of memories in every sensation — her favorite pen, these colors, this texture. I adore the appearance of her character on my own. Falling in love is colored in shades of the Earth: raven hair, a coffee-brown jacket; I am immersed in the soil from which all will be grown.
Peace and clarity coalesce in the chill of the early morning, preceding the sun’s crest over the Diablo range. The tightness in my chest is the point of origin, a starting gun; from here flows everything. Such an ease to forget; what recklessness, what a journey.
Apt. 716
Home is where I make music, where my dog snoozes peacefully under the armchair. I’ve been looking everywhere for this feeling — of homecoming, a heartbreaking nostalgia erased in a grounding touch, a familiar smell. Home is where my heart soars, unbounded, to embrace all.
Apt. 716
These feet have blazed such a clear trail through these thickets. I am reluctant to allow the foliage to again take over, I know it will grow more thickly, that I may never again walk this path. I am both relieved and regretful — I await a change in scenery; perhaps these feelings and memories are captured in each stroke of the pen. I must remember to live during this time, to not allow my vision to glaze over with desire for a future still under construction. I mustn't neglect these details if I am to bring memories with which to adorn my home.
LOCALE ⎯
DELAWARE
The Blue House
There are realities that versions of me are trapped in. When I dream, I am shown countless fates that might have been but are not, or at least, they are not to be lived in the conscious realm. Somewhere, I am trapped in a timeless oblivion — I am grateful to awaken here.
The Blue House
A nocturnal silence birthed a quiet and gentle awakening in the full light of the morning sun. Today, as always, remains unclear, but I will carry on and search for the pieces missing from this reality in which I find myself.
The Blue House
The silence is more deafening, more disturbing than any dream. Dreams left unseen feel like words caught in the throat of my psyche.
Killen’s Pond
Silence is a blessing; peace is an unobtainable, expensive luxury.
Cape Henlopen
I do not wish to outsource the care of my body, mind and soul to anyone else. For too long, I have been reliant on, addicted to, and disappointed by others who have tried, and failed, to assume that charge.
The Blue House
I must find my own way, blaze a trail through thickets of misery and loneliness in hopes of discovering a sunlit meadow where I’ll find myself surrounded by a garden of self-love I am only beginning to plant.
Trap Pond
The desire to find new horizons is strong. Today, I would set my feet on unfamiliar ground and expand my consciousness to meet with, and understand, those who call this land home. I’m searching for my resting place, my center, my home.
The Blue House
Old friends haunted my dreams as new lovers and made me wistful for a time that never was. One day, I will be loved fully upon my return with the tide. Until then, I remain watchful and practice patience.
The Blue House
I have cast off the shackles I once so lovingly bound myself with. The manacles no longer fit around my wrists, the chains have rusted and weakened — the steel so soft it crumbles at the lightest touch. I am free to explore any realm I choose; when the limitations of consciousness are lifted, I no longer cower within the dream world, I brave the seas of uncertainty with reckless and glorious abandon. I am all that I was ever meant to be.
The Blue House
While unconscious, the mind’s eye is blind to self-observation, rescinding all scrutiny, judgement, and desire as the subconscious drains from itself the baggage of conscious existence.
Every so often, the heartbreak returns and I’m left in an empty wasteland conjured from the graveyard of my memories.
Big Stone Beach
Brisk wind tousels loblollies and phrag, their rustling whispers a symphony across the morning marshland, coming alive in the rising sun.
─
What are the intentions of stones? Do they not also contain desire, our origin in their molecular makeup?─
Objectivity comes at the expense of free will, of extinguishing experience. The world becomes ever more top-heavy with each day we focus on design flaws and ignore structural integrityLewes
I only find myself in peril in those moments in which uncertainty seems to threaten the integrity of my foundation, the bedrock of my consciousness.
The Crossing at Felton
Alive, hopeful, watchful, calm, quiet, sated, hungry, eager, restless, exhausted, happy —
Killen’s Pond
Where there is great pain, there are fundamental truths; the luxury of comfortable joy is rendered destitute without suffering.
LOCALE ⎯
NEW YORK
Delaware River
The world is water-logged, the galley windows are fogged, letting in only a gray light and the occasional drop of cold water that freezes my skin from the leak above. There is no life here, only tarnished steel and diesel fumes. Crammed into a tin can surrounded by the pallor, fog condensing on the exhale. This place feels hostile, lackluster, guarded. Whisked along the Delaware, the only vision a haze in the windows, the only vibrance in the orange of my life jacket, the only sound a beating engine, the only words stuck in my throat.
Adirondack Mountains
Reflecting on that trip, this past year, the whole ordeal feels shrouded in thick clouds of nostalgia, a twisted web of memories and happenstance. I was there — I couldn’t be anywhere else — my mind bound up in the intricacies of the mountains and conifers that lined I-87.
The New York landscape felt locked in an eternal, sleepy winter — full of life if you but scraped away the upper layer of snow.
I found myself parked on frozen mud, the cold in my extremities a reminder of the price of the greatest moments in life. Ephemeral, they slip through our fingers while we lavish our attention on the insubstantial. Their greatness is found in their remembrance, like an obituary long overdue. There is no mourning here, only a twinge of longing, of hope that the future might prove as wondrous, that the present might become as lauded in memory.
ROUTE 66
Lake Austell, Arkansas
Nestled under white oak; woodpeckers chatter, jays cry — quiet and calm settle over a still winter day. Onward to the grasslands, open plains, and roaming game of Oklahoma.
(road)Tripping in the American West
The crumbling of an empire, the ashes from which rise hope, love, and healing — a quiet. Remember to listen. There is power in silence and tact.
Palo Duro Canyon
Profound quiet blankets the air above fiery ground; I have returned. A few run-ins with CIA men — something about a missing person ten days gone, lost in bitterness. The gravity weighed on me heavily atop the plateau. Thus, I descended upon Cadillac Ranch in a cloud of dust and palo santo.
Diablo Canyon, New Mexico
Gentle snow fell upon Diablo Canyon, sun shone through the haze, verdins crowd around; a quiet, profound calm.
Gallup, New Mexico
A terrifying brush with law enforcement; arriving at the blockade, I kept my gaze blank, hands jittery from caffeine and mortal fear.
Lupton, Arizona
No federales at the border, I crossed into Arizona without a backwards glance. Dammit if I don’t spend every penny on textiles — I NEED MORE CLOTH! Racing like mad in search of alien crash sites and turquoise symbols nestled against blazing rock.
Meteor Crater, Arizona
Lights from the interstate — traffic somehow distant enough to be silent beneath a cloudy haze outlined by rocks, punctuated by glimmers of stars, distant bits of consciousness scattered across time.
Cottonwood, Arizona
A serene sunset in Sedona. All that follows is the result of everything I’ve been. Onward, to California.
Bloody Basin Road, Arizona
Floating listlessly at four in the morning — stuck between planes of reality, feeling that the world is on the brink of collapse. I need to make a mad rush for the border; who knows how long my crossing will be sanctioned. If I am to become a fugitive in my homeland, so be it. I want no part of the broken hellscape that this will become — nothing will be saved. I hope that this is merely a last-ditch effort, the death of a tyrant whose doom is long overdue. Still, it is no simple thing to dance upon ash where once there was earth unbroken. We will carry on, we will create what is to come, to build beauty out of a reality fragmented by hate.