Take pictures for me, okay? Wherever you are, I want to know what the sky looks like.
I’ll take them for you too; of the streets, of the clouds; of the people who smile and frown as they walk. I’ll capture freeze frames of stray cats and pruned dogs and monkeys at the zoo. And the sunset, and the sunrise, and the rain as it falls and makes the ground shiny and wet.
Take pictures of your hands, the veins in your arms, like blue railway lines. Take me to your heart and don’t ever let me leave. Photograph that sapling tree, and the cherry blossoms that float down past your window. Show me the mess that the petals make on the pavement, like a crime scene in the park. Mother nature can be deadly too.
Some wise guy once said that a picture was worth a thousand words, and I know that you’re not much into poetry. So I’ll get started on a sonnet, and pick up metaphors and diction and syntax as I go.
And while I’m doing all that, send me a picture, okay? I’d like to see the sky, and the bakery at the end of your road. Show me everything, or anything. I want to see it all. I want to see it wherever you are.
S.Z. // Excerpt from a book I’ll never write #187 // A picture a day. Send me a picture a day. (via blossomfully)
Moi aussi.
Please, this is why I beg you,
Why I’ve begged you Always
To take pictures for me.
And you take pictures for you,
For your vanity, For your myriad of friends and lovers and adoring fans;
Always worth it to have tried, even if you fail, even if you fall like a meteor forever. Better to have flamed in the darkness, to have inspired others, to have lived, than to have sat in the darkness, cursing the people who borrowed, but did not return, your candle.
People need realness, reality. People can sense when someone is being pretentious or fake. It’s because you feel it; you see it in someone’s body language.
(noun) A Japaneseuntranslatable idiom, aienkien is defined as an expression used to describe an uncanny relationship. It characterizes a couple who met by a quirk of fate, but are strangely happy and deeply bonded by their unusual attraction and course of destiny. (via wordsnquotes)
When animals express their feelings they pour out like water from a spout. Animals’ emotions are raw, unfiltered, and uncontrolled. Their joy is the purest and most contagious of joys and their grief the deepest and most devastating. Their passions bring us to our knees in delight and sorrow.
Marc Bekoff, The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy – and Why They Matter (via wordsnquotes)
I can’t ask to see you, anymore; I’ve taken away that possibility.
I mean: I could write an email to you, as I still have your address… or I could send you a message on Facebook, and hope that you respond…
But I won’t. At least, not yet.
It’s not as easy, now, without your phone number.
…My head still aches, like your spirit is still calling me, is still pulling at me, is still trying to get in, to speak those words you refuse to speak, to let me into the dark crevices you refuse to admit exist, but that I see, that I feel so easily. I wonder if it will stop, or if I will somehow become linked to you through some spiritual-psychic means. I wonder if I will be able to forget that you have meant so much to me, except in quiet, bidden moments – like with the other men I’ve loved and lost. I wonder how long it will take…
…Or if you’ll come back to me, as you did this year; if you’ll hunt me down – or I, you – and we’ll run into each other somewhere in my hometown or amongst our mutual friends and haunts.
It was too good to be true, someone might say. Or, it was a fairytale romance, and this great angst is the demon we must face before the obligatory storybook ending.
All I knew is that I loved you. All I know is that I love you… and that you’re the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen, so perfect in your lithe movements, in your arrogant stance, in your handsome demeanor, with your penetrating stare from your captivating eyes. All I know is that you’ve owned me, and I am still yours… and somehow thrown through the looking-glass into a world where I may not touch you, where I may not speak to you, where I may not hear from you… where love is silent and distant, where true lovers never make love.
All I know is that you love me, and that your words will never speak that truth; and your protection haunts me, stalks me, would save and murder me in the same second…
And all I have left are memories.
I miss your skin. I miss the way the light shone on it, and the way the clouds and sky looked behind you as you stood and paced nervously, restlessly in front of me. I miss the way your hair falls upon your brow, and its silkiness between my fingers as I stroked it. I miss your gorgeous, gaunt cheeks and jaw… your slender neck and jagged Adam’s apple, and the rough stubble on your chin beneath my lips as I so often drew them over your features like a blind woman, memorizing your face with my most sensitive skin.
I miss your eyes, when you would look at me with quiet, surprised vulnerability; when I would look at you with the same openness, and we would take in each other with so much startled love, like two beasts unfamiliar with each other, yet sensing nothing innately harmful….
I miss the way you’d lay your head on my shoulder, near my neck, like a boy burdened with so many thoughts and responsibilities, asking silently that I take some of it away, taking my love in unhurried draughts as I held you, gave to you my strength.
I miss the way you’d react so deeply to my caresses, aching to return to me the power of my touch with your own capable fingertips.
I miss our kisses, all of which were fumbling and afraid – despite our respective skill. I miss the questions that would pass hurriedly through my mind as your lips found mine, as your heart sought out mine, as your mind hunted mine, as mine hurried away in terrified desire for you, for your hands, for your lips….
And, most of all, I miss your heart. I miss being your Sugar, and I hate myself for ever being otherwise. I want to pound myself back into a pulp, to squeeze myself until I cry sweet tears, to boil in my own rage until I am again refined and clear and sweet… and acceptable, again, to your palate.
For I am lonely for myself, and I am lonely for you, who loved me enough to see me; who saw me for long enough to acknowledge, to ask for me. And I am lonely for us, for that unspeakable love that passes always between us, that is so hard to grasp and so strongly uncontrollable.
May I never be fool enough to forget you; may you never be fool enough not to forgive me; may we never be fool enough not to return, one day and always, to each other.
You cannot bear the challenges I seek, you say.
How was I to know, when I consider you an equal
When I have been you, so afraid;
When I am you still, so stupid, ignorant?
You run, retreat to flashing screens
And you wonder why you do not visit unknown lands
Why you do not love or have returned a love so great
As I have had with you, or so many times.
You beat upon yourself, as you have done
For years, beneath your table, so afraid.
No stories? No imagination, even, to keep you safe?
No walls, even, to shield you from view…
You are a grey mouse, shielded by a table’s leg
Your heart a thousand beats to my every one
Am I the great cat, ready for my prey
As you do make me out to be, cruel and unafraid
Or human, baiting a trap to snap your neck
Or blonde mouse, as timid in my ways as you,
Stepped only moments before into Paradise
And calling unfamiliarly back to you?
Can you ever know, from that small place?
Can you know, behind an immobile shield?
Can you ever know, when calling taunts
And pained insults into an abyss?
Try. Step out. Release your inner lion,
Or be, at least, a man.
I do not talk down to you. How could I?
When I am you.
“Because,” I explained with faintly childish impatience, “you’re a MAN.”
He laughed and grinned in his boyish way, and asked me what I meant. "…Because,“ he explained with resonant patience, "that means all kinds of things to different women.”
Of course he’s right, but my arrogant self-assurance in my appraisal says that doesn’t mean THEY are correct.
I grew up with a principled father who loved his family beyond measure, whose love for his parents, for his wife, for his children has meant all kinds of things to him, but meant so much more to me.
When my dad was away on his frequent business trips, I indulged in books, in exploring the creative aspects of my mind, in learning as much as I could, in playing outdoors and swimming at the neighborhood pool, in helping Mom with cooking and cleaning and generally trying to keep out of trouble so, when Dad came back, I could get giant hugs from him, follow him up the stairs to his room and watch him unpack his bags, chat with him about where he’d been and the people he’d met on planes while traveling across the nation.
Dad’s life was an adventure, to me; I thrilled in his tales, imagined vividly the places he’d been, embraced his life so thoroughly. On Saturday afternoons, I’d sit on the floor in his room, watching, as he polished his shoes every week, until I was old enough to ask if I could help. I took so much pleasure in working the dark creams into his shoes, carefully polishing and buffing out the handsome leather until they shone. I loved the big, metal watches he’d wear and would pass to me while sitting in church when, in my boredom and curiosity, I wanted some distraction from the very-adult-oriented speeches. I’d snap and unsnap the clip around my small wrist, letting it dangle and fall like a bracelet as I tried to balance it on my childish arm to examine the large face, my eyes following the tiny second hand perpetually ticking off time. And, when I was cold, with the smallest word of complaint from me – and sometimes, with only a shiver as my fair hair lifted in goosebumps on the backs of my arms, he’d slip his giant suit jacket off and wrap it around me, still warm with his body’s heat; and, when I still shivered, he’d curl his arm around me and cuddle me close.
Perhaps we don’t understand the impact of our fathers, of their natural and subtle ways of being with us, when we’re children; and perhaps they, too, don’t quite understand their impact while it’s happening.
For my impressions of men, of the beauty of men were formed in the music Dad listened to, by Simon & Garfunkel and their melodious tunes, by The Eagles, by tales of Dad’s history as a bassist in a band, and of the mother-of-pearl-inlaid guitar that he’d sold in exchange for taking care of us.
The idea of handsome, honest, honorable men was reinforced while watching his favorite movies with my dad: gorgeous black-and-white and early-color films from the 1940s and ‘50s with tall, gaunt, well-built men who danced lithely with glamorous women and treated ladies with respect and adoration, showering them with classic romance. The variants melded and intermingled in my analytical mind as I subconsciously came to understand that men were simply… men: strong, independent, honest, conscious, deliberate, courageous, caring, noble, self-respecting male humans with individually-chosencharacter.
My dad is still of the men who always open doors for women, who scolded my dates if they dared show up in jeans while I was in a dress or skirt, who loved me, no matter what.
He admired my mind, respected my beauty, treated me with a kind and gentle and serious hand, surprised me with flowers every Valentine’s Day and brought home little gifts, when he could, from his adventurous trips.
So, whether I knew it or not, whether I could help it or not, my desires for love come well-attached to the man who raised me, who treated me well, who helped move me to Midtown Atlanta (and back again), who helped move me to Cincinnati (and back again), who came to visit me time and again when I moved away to Canada and left my family and friends behind.
Yet, I have never fancied myself as looking for my father in my loves.
Still, it was with my dad that I enjoyed meals most frequently, going out for work-week lunches and dinners at his favorite diners and delis and, occasionally, at out-of-the-way restaurants. And it was my dad who introduced me to the restaurant world I’ve come to love so much, making a go at running a small diner in Florida when I was only three, and my older sister and I would “take orders” for our family. It was because of him that I decided, at a precocious age, that I wanted to be a waitress – which I later came to be and love.
It was my father who first expanded my palate, introducing me to freshly-squeezed orange juice on a trip from Orlando to our suburban home in Duluth, Georgia, when he halted his cherry-red Audi Quattro at a roadside stand selling freshly-picked citrus, and I tasted the sweetest juice that had ever touched my tongue. And he taught me to drive, and to love driving: on that trip and on so many roads, in that beautiful Audi, letting me shift through the gears as he worked the pedals; sharing with me his love of sports cars through so many conversations and tales and photos of hot rod shows in his youth.
And my father who taught me, first, to be honest and true and sensitive. He may not have said everything he felt, but when my dad spoke, I knew it was honest and true; and though he may not have been completely open with his feelings, my dad was sensitive in his dealings with all of the children, with my mother and with his colleagues and employers. He was gentle and aware of our feelings, always; and he always responded to us with as much warmth and affection and kindness as he could muster – while still being rational and honest and true to what he knew.
I was never “Daddy’s Girl” – there were too many daughters for him to ever choose or isolate one; but I was Daddy’s girl, and when I was with him, I knew I was loved. How he managed to love each and every one of his eight children so profoundly that we each, to this day, feel an individual relationship with him is quite astonishing… and his love taught me to love just as infinitely, just as individualistically.
So, in years hence, I could not help but be the girl he raised me to be:
Honest.
True.
Sensitive.
Loving.
Pure of heart.
Strong of mind.
Rational.
Reasonable.
Gentle, but firm.
Kind, and generous to a fault.
Adventurous.
In love with nature and the world.
I took everything I learned and loved from my father – in fact, from both of my parents and from both of my grandparents and from everyone who loved me – I took all the goodness I saw, cultivated in myself what I wanted so I might be as purely as I ever considered a woman might be, and looked for the purest culmination of these that I could find in a counterpart…
And that was, to me, a man.
Why do I love you, my dear one?
Because, unbeknownst to either of us, you have somehow fulfilled my dreams of the perfect man: a heightened amalgamation of the principles my father taught me, added to my girlish ideals of exploration, adventure, truth, honesty, romance and love.
I love you because I am my father’s daughter, my mother’s fascinated little girl; because my grandfather loved the sea and my grandmother was so infinitely giving and understanding; because my parents left me to myself, to determine my destiny, and my siblings paradoxically let me alone and challenged me.
I love you because, with every man I ever loved before you, I was honed and tempered by all that they loved and all they could not tolerate in me, becoming stronger with every part that I knew myself to be and softer in the parts I did not know I could be; because my mother taught me to follow my heart and my dreams, and, through that, I loved and loved infinitely through pain and heartache and confusion, through depression and fear and misery, and I learned to learn to love and accept and cherish every drop of love that was given me – which I am yet learning to love and accept and cherish – even when I do not know why I receive it.
I love you, my darling, because I am me, and you resonate so perfectly with me.
So, thank my parents for all they taught me, for all they are; thank my siblings for loving and hating me; thank my loves and all of those who loved me – whether they love or hate me now; thank my children for showing me new parts of myself, and for teaching me to love more greatly…
For they are all the reasons I love you, and all of the reasons you love me.
I mean: it’s easy, but so many things can get in the way, distracting us from love, from letting ourselves fall into the flow of loving, of giving everything we are to the act of caring for another person, for the knowledge of them, for the knowledge of what impact they have upon us, for the responsibility of our impact upon them. So many things can hold us back: pains from past experiences, confusion over lost loves, rules and cautions given by well-meaning others.
For years, I’ve fought those rules, those cautions, those fears; for years, I’ve sought to find the truth of my impact, to see who people truly are, to understand why they behave in all the ways they do.
And I’ve loved.
It’s actually the easiest thing in the world, to love. To give of oneself; to listen beyond oneself, to watch silently as someone moves in their native – or adopted – ways. To take in someone else’s essence as quietly and non-judgmentally as when looking at the ocean water push again and again in rippling seafoam upon the shore… to marvel at the patterns and at the way those patterns make us feel, rippling even into our own hearts and minds.
To know that one may not be able to affect those waters, aside from having them slide around us as we wade into them, to allow ourselves to be embraced, surrounded, loved back in the ways natural to them while we stand, basking in the warm sensations of saltwater washing on our skin, kissing our cheeks in sudden splashes, filling our sinuses with cleansing seaspray.
It is enough, sometimes, to bask, to take in the beauty of a thing again and again. That, too, is love.
And, yes, there is more, should we wish to go there: there is protection of those things and people we love, ensuring that no harm comes to them, that we may indulge again and again in its beauty, that others too may share in the beauties we value.
But, imagine the fear and terror of something so benign as the sea, should we have waded in too far when we did not know how to swim, if we were pulled under by a current to strong to resist. Imagine the fear we might concoct of even wading in shallow waters, if our fears grew great enough.
And imagine the beauties we would miss, if we let those fears take hold and rule us, instead of facing our fears and the reasons for them, if we did not learn correctly from our life’s lessons: if we understood incorrectly that the waters were life-taking instead of life-giving, if we concocted tales of monsters pulling us under the seas instead of currents from which we could actually, in growing stronger, swim.
Imagine if we decided not to love, simply because we were afraid, because we had been pulled under and choked on a love stronger than we knew how to handle. Imagine if we tried to empty ourselves of all the waters within us, simply because they resembled those waters of the sea.
It would be a crime against ourselves, and such a great error in our understanding – and yet, this is the conclusion too many draw from the pains of love, of loving: To withdraw. To stop. To die. To fear.
There are some waters in which one cannot sink, in which the salt content is so high that it is impossible, even when one cannot swim, to fall beneath the water’s surface. There are some waters so clear that one can see straight to the bottom of the sea bed. Would we want to miss these beauties, just because we had some painful, incomprehensible experience at some time?
I would not; I do not.
Love is only another mark of life, of living; and, to love, we must know what love is, how it works, from whence it comes.
But no one has taught us love.
I would say: As with anything worth knowing, as with any skill worth learning, keep trying. Keep living. Keep learning. Keep loving.
To me, love is the final magic, the infinite unknown into which so few deeply delve, from which there are inevitably the greatest rewards.
That has been the question for so many years as I’ve observed the Internet filling with so many posts and blogs of minute-by-minute exploiters-of-lives, discarding thoughts, feelings, moments in the same way we toss refuse into the garbage.
Writers, especially, are expected to join the slough, self-publishing and -promoting to show that we can, indeed, write.
And that is what finally drew me back, though resist I have. Jefferson never promoted his writing, so why should I?
In the end, Jefferson’s first love was farming; mine is to write.
So I write here because I love to write, because I love finding that passing interests and readings arise in timely and well-suited fashion, because I love the rhythm and timing of well-chosen words, because the world is a curious place and I love to share.
Take this for what it is, then: an online résumé and profile showing my ability to write, showing the ways and rhythms of my mind.
I aim to write as voluminously and with at least as much interest and passion as T.J. – since he did not even love this so-called “drudgery.”
Oceans of Mine 