change always comes silently,
like the gust of wind that suddenly staggers you
while standing on the sidewalk. I feel something
stirring, and will not brace myself – I’m ready
to let the winds blow right through me, unafraid.
Author: Cameron Martin
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march 5: today I endured the wind
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march 4: today I rekindled karma
I’m forever seeking comfort – prying it out
of all my passing minutes, as if they are gifts hidden
and neatly tucked away in dark corners, trampled underfoot.today is a day when your mind has exhausted you
and you’re done talking when you’ve barely spoken at all.
I’m seeking that moment of silence under covers,
just the right amount of loneliness
that brings warmth with it.
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march 3: today I watched the swans
tonight two swans drifted down the channel,
the goslings from the summer grown, now,
into a full, round white. diligently, they cleaned
their feathers, oiling them against the cold.
for a moment their discomfort was my own,
even if they didn’t show it.I knew we all were suffering, the three of us
aching from the cold – it was their first winter.
the pair looked lonely – quietly preening,
they didn’t even bother to swim. the current
was enough, a gentleness they had settled into
that would carry them like a home through the night.
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march 2: today I wanted for words
park avenue is painfully vivid as six o’ clock settles,
formless clouds casting their silhouettes against the sky.
I’m writing this in a notebook, my hand finishing letters
with a flourish to commit it to paper and memory –I feel as though I don’t fit in, as if I’m merely dabbling
in the act of living, like any of my hobbies that lie
neglected and underpracticed. harmonicas, sketchbooks,
folders full of photographs, half-remembered memories are
all placed into drawers to wait for me, for my will to grow
to equal the profound aspirations that I carry like a burden.
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march 1: today I looked for stars
it feels strange to say that I miss the stars
when I’ve only really met them a scant few times.
huddled in a new hampshire cabin, eight years old –
they were just above the pines –
and so, so many of them.I pick out the brightest, the flurry of potential
is only a memory. neighborhood houses are painted
sickly green through the night time haze –
a muted sky over rooftops haloed in dull brightness.I believe that I miss them because I am part of them,
and it’s the kind of thinking I should fall into more often –
I forget to think small thoughts. I am star dust, assembled
in a shape for this short while, tumbling through space, and
this makes me feel small, and this is a good way to feel.
always, the better part of myself misses the stars
like a child misses its mother.
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february 28: today I remembered glee club
I remember singing, the microphone hanging
fifteen feet somewhere past where our notes just were –
the spotlight reflected off my shirt onto the sheet music.I could never read it, anyway – the notes went up
and my voice would follow, simple work on mad wednesdays
when my bag was heavy and my feet were tired. six o’clock –
watch the sun go down through the branches our the doors, see the campus shuttles drive
round the circle.they’d take me home later, read my sheet music in my
converted nuns quarters, place my mug in an asinine sink.
I hung my favorite words on the wall, hoping somehow
that they would leap out at me at an opportune time.
I spend my days waiting, watching the sun do down
through the trees out my window.it’s one o’ clock now, remembering two years ago when
the notes went up, and my voice followed – we hung notes
on the microphone, a mad rush of order forced with baton
onto the chaos of our voices. I remember how it was here
where things made sense – where the music and the very
worthwhile thing inside of us
came naturally, the way I remember –the way I remember, while sitting in the cold morning.
I’m alone with my thoughts and the words don’t come easily.
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february 27: today I listened to the silence
the sun sets over the rooftops and burns the sky orange,
I feel the earth warming – the light brilliant on my skin.
the evening comes on peacefully, bathing the room in
a more serene kind of atmosphere, and I listen to the quiet
that settles in the hallway, all the corners of the room.
there are no whispers, no secrets to make waves, nothing
to unsettle the silence. the evening comes on peacefully,
and I welcome it.
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february 26: today I took in fresh air
I don’t want this taken from me, these –
my midwinter moods where the fresh air
filters inside me just the right way, not
even the depths of my sadness that can
weigh on me alongside my anxieties.
this makes me who I am.leave them be and I’ll take care of them,
allotting them enough time to surface
for a while, to let them taste the wind outside.
leave them – they do not trouble me any more.
I’m weaving them into a bigger picture,
and it’ll all turn out more colorful in the end.
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february 25: today the rain passed through
the fog and the rain
wash branches off the plaza,
and the feel of my sweatshirt
as it rests sure and heavy on my body
is just enough.
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february 24: today things fell into their place
believe me when I say that I’m trying to tell you
how coffee warms me the right way –
we both craved it this morning and cherished it
as the heat dissipated into our hands.
I’m trying to tell you how I find my routines
uncomfortable, like my leather shoes with the soles
that are coming loose, the rain soaks my feet
but I cannot bring myself to part with them.
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february 23: today I convinced myself
I miss the sureity that carried me as a teenager,
despite the gaping flaws in my prized logic
a sense of control is an intoxicating thing.
the gentle chaos and nuance of the day to day
is just as revitalizing, or so I tell myself
from the moment my feet leave the covers,
as the weight and the atmosphere begins
to press down, to turn my drawing breaths
soupy in my lungs – thick with portent.
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february 22: today I watched the moon during the daytime
I used to watch the moon, always finding the face
empty – it haunted me, hanging impossibly silent and gray.
there came a certain point – the wonder couldn’t grab me
with its kaliedoscope stare, and I no longer sat rapt with attention.
I haven’t lost anything, not even my way. It’s more subtle, like
a growing fondness to dismiss my former elation and thrill
as the fantacism of my college days, a temporary psychosis
that all twenty-something english majors endure.
I convince myself that I’m coming out of it – as if any day now
I’ll see the daylight in it’s proper cynicism, when the truth is
that it’s all the white noise of a tired and apathetic muscle
I’ve neglected to flex.
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february 21: today I regained a facet of myself
snow shouldn’t have been unexpected
but the neighborhood was beautiful this morning.
eight o’clock I spent watching people out the window,
and the day unfolded in a simple joy.
I sat and ate the fruits of our labor, ginger cookies
and curry that filled the apartment with aroma –
it’s a very human impulse, isn’t it, taking satisfaction
in what we can create with our own hands,
the quintessential act of feeding ourselves lost somehow
and I’m regaining it, and a piece of myself in the process.
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february 20: today I spent the afternoon in the kitchen
I can cook passably well these days
so I lose myself in it, today – knives
and a half dozen burners demand attention.
this is the simple magic, a timeless alchemy
I welcome wholeheartedly into my life –
my focus is rapt on turning bits & pieces of
wholesome and pure into something
somehow better.
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february 19: today the wind spun me around
we are a society of tools, we build and transmute –
it is in our nature to never be satisfied, we keep ourselves
wanting. it might be this same impulse that drives me
and keeps me questioning, the best and worst of my humanity,
the reason my mood will peak & valley a dozen times over
down the sidewalk with each sight I see –
the smell of bread, the plodding, steady sound
of melt water runoff from the subway platform
the homeless man’s blanket below, and I know
his feet will not be warm tonight.
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february 18: today I reveled in the scent of soil
I am tranquil and wearing a blissful smile like a beatitude
when my familiar suspicion that I’m doing it all wrong
tinted the preternaturally warm breeze suddenly cold –
much the same way just one small drop of blood
while shaving this morning turned the sink sickly red.I suspect I’ve forgotten where to look – exactly which stones
to gently overturn to find those fragments and nothings that
add up to a monumental sum – unaccustomed to daylight,
like the nightcrawlers and pillbugs that delighted my
five-year-old afternoons – they lie in the soft dirt just beneath
strangers faces and flower boxes.the thought nags at me that I used to be better – expert, even –
at bringing them out and turning the mottled grey carapaces
to just the right angle to let the sunlight refract and multiply.
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february 17: today I couldn’t shake this nausea
my mind doesn’t take the same maddening leaps it used to.
I read other amateurs work and feel it well up inside,
envy spreading through me like nausea, a burning rash
that is not easily quelled. self centering has become a new
full time occupation for me, as if my days aren’t full enough.there is a better way. I know this, feel it as surely as the aches
in each of my joints – predictive – not sensing air pressure, but
rather a front of kinder fortune. there is a better way. I’ll stand
in early morning and breathe – the right time, the right place –
there is a better way. I wait for it and work toward it.
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february 16: today I remembered dandelions
reading anthropology texts I come across the phrase
mystery of childhood and I realize it’s one mystery
I’m trying to unravel. driving home I watch the lines
and dividers dripping past in the rearview mirrors
and think on this. it would be easier if we were living
through those grass-stained mysteries again,
when dandelions and berry bushes were enough.
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february 15: today I looked for secrets
I’ve been keeping secrets from myself, shards and gems
accidentally kicked out from underneath my mental leaf-piles.
instinct tells me I must have kept them secret for a reason,
especially if hidden from myself – so I don’t look. casually
I drag my foot and they are swept from view.but I want to look. it’s instinctual – the growing book pile
shows the weekly casualties of all the text I’ve consumed.
my need to know is reflexive and insatiable and exists
entirely outside of a need for a ‘what,’ I just must know
and the knowledge has yet to better me in any tangible way.maybe it’s the secrets I’m looking for – buried too well inside
but surely they must exist elsewhere, stumbled upon by some
other poor desolate case who was braver than I, enough so
to etch it out onto the pages – maybe the very same that
I have on tomorrow’s slate, a revelation in waiting.
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february 14: today I threw out paper scraps
valentine’s day in a civil office
lacks the hearts, reds and pinks
and the cards. it’s been a peaceful monday,
quiet and unassuming. the only celebration
of the holiday was brought with me, what I took
from a morning embrace before
I stepped outside of the door.
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february 13: today I danced for rain
the air grows thick and warm rolling past noon – and
I feel something ethereal inside me reach past the rooftops,
my aspirations and belief evaporating from my pores
to condense, I hope, into something that can rain down over us.
I want to stand on this same sidewalk, lost in a crowd,
in a torrential downpour, an ablutionary rite that will wash
everything down past the gutter – I will step inside the foyer
with my clothes heavy and forming pools on the tiles
and feel much better about the world, for a change.
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february 12: tonight the hot water ran out
I’m like a furnace that needs to be fed
with all warm things, even now, on saturdays
where the font on the screen is enough to satisfy.it is about us, about four years of hand holding
on to each other. I want to write those minutes –
I’m ready to go back to read and relive moments again
with you. twenty three together, our lives blooming out
like a wineglass, our stem ballooning out to the cup
full of potential – I feel it electric in our breath.the cat rolls his ball through the track, places
his paws determinedly around it, trying
to pry it out with clumsy mittens.
I like to believe I taught him this.
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february 11: today I bled out the afternoon
But I pulled you and I called you here
Didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I?
And I caught you and I brought you here
Didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I?– excerpt from The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned), by the Decemberists
bleeding out the afternoon with a mechanical tranquility,
wearing headphones because that’s what it takes now –
to drown in redeeming chords and verses that stab like knives
just so you can feel as awful as you need to.but you’re always the stranger in my daydreams,
standing in shadowy corners, behind me under the sheets –
you’re always present when I need you. orange sun as
the clock hands drip down past three o’ clock, then five.i’m searching music for what I’ve already found in you.
we commiserate, you smile with me on the couch,
as if you wrote didn’t I? didn’t I? comfortably on your lips
curled into perfect curves – what I carry through the hours.
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february 10: today I drew mandalas
Drawn with ballpoint pens on cardstock i draw pseudo-mandalas behind my desk
and mull over them, consummate circles
across a page, I detail and draw fine lines
until my fingers ache. monks who make them
meticulously from sand will destroy them
once finished, their entire purpose just
to be made. I lose the will to detail any further
and consider crumpling the page but I keep it
instead, and any significance in the decision
is lost completely on me. this is significant too, I think.
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february 9: today I thought on squirrels
while driving home I watched a squirrel survey three lanes of traffic
before eagerly throwing itself under the wheel of the car ahead.
I carefully swerved – I couldn’t bear to strike it a second time
and immediately wished I could have written the whole scene differently.it was a stupidly morbid bit of small talk to bring up at a dinner table
so I didn’t. The split second of its body going limp was indelibly written
on some obscure wrinkle of my brain, and I ate my casserole.
that was how I finished that night, feeling foolish for choking back sobs,
for the sadness I felt for the impermanence of squirrels.
