karamea

We're at the top of the West Coast. I've never been here before.

Last night being a de ja vu of 10 years and one month earlier - strange humanoid shapes in the sand this morning. A full metallic moon arching over the vicious waves. Short shorts that do nothing to keep the sand from the creases of my skin. With an almost/not-stranger and much more self-awareness, more assertiveness. Still a healthy dose of youthful naivety. Running away in order to arrive home. Your friend inadvertently tagging along. Jumping in when it's cold. Walking towards bonfires (real and imagined). History repeats.

And actually, there was the start of the words. Not the very start, but the conscious beginning. Deciding to write. The first of what would morph into hundreds of moments inscribed, thousands of secrets etched. It began with a list. How very pedantic.

Not a list of things he finds difficult about me (which could include: the destination; mumbling; refusing to say "pardon?"; speaking cryptically; slapping; being forgetful / taking for granted) - but a list of self-improvement to-dos. Similar but not the same to those existing in my head now.

... You keep referring to a future. Maybe ours. You're worried - but for yourself, not for us. "I hope you don't become sick of me." I find that peculiar. I've always needed the ones I can't quite figure out. I'm not sure if this is problematic. It's probably self-sabotaging.

Maybe that's why the other, for all his honesty, doesn't quite sit right. So beautifully transparent in his goodness.

But then, glimpses of the palimpsest himself. In which I see a self-certain mystique that I like. Maybe it's his elusiveness that is elusive.

rules for sleeping with flatmates and colleagues:

1. its going to happen

2. don't be weird about it 

away

It's because going somewhere else is like taking a step back. It's like pouring your thoughts onto another's ears so they can speak fresh words into your hands. It's like showering the day's chaos from your surface before entering the nightly catafalque. It's the same as stepping into the ocean so you can forget land for a while.

It's like pushing that tiny triangle under your tongue to both leave this place and sink deeper into it. It's like gripping someone else's back and learning the etchings of their skin, so your fingertips remember them when they're not there. It's like recalling sixteen and aching with your future self's nostalgia for now.

In the end, time and place are nil. They are not anything except arbitrary configurations of our desperate, grappling minds. They are paradoxically the most quintessential and least tangible things we have. And yes, those of us who bleed are the lucky ones - we're not sitting below ground. We're melting into the same universe that the world's air is snaking its way through. We're necessary to everything else as everything else is necessary to ourselves.

Without us, there is no world. We're the stars that guide the earth's orbit, and we're the gravity of our own souls. Indeed, if it weren't for the hollowness of my body, I might float away, and see it all for what it really is.

from and to

Remembering being with you sends that warm, melty feeling down my legs. It's not just sun. I've felt like this with you in the dark - and in the rain. I feel like this with you inside four stark walls. I know that there's something in the waves matched with my memory of you. I'm very aware of the distortion and I'm okay with it. I suppose because I hope there'll be a future where these two circumstances co-exist. It is certainly moments which I fall in love with, and with recognising myself in others. Even just a glimmer. It is in our mouths inhaling the same breath that us lives. We should bleed if we are to know where we are. Otherwise, I am here on the beach's edge alone, falling in love with the sound of the waves, permeating a final sunset.

dreaming of sleep

All the bodies that were ever present on this earth are still here on this earth. Body-less bones sit strewn across the land, underneath its skin; or are pelted into dust and carried whistling along desert air.

The only bodies not still here on earth are some belonging to astronauts. But mostly, the earth is a vast gravesite. It absorbs the bodies living here, continually; it feeds on them and then feeds them back to us. We are sustaining ourselves via long-distance cannibalism.

All the bodies that ever existed are still here.

When I die, I will join them - all those bodies held captive by our God mother earth. One of them will be me. Maybe it will be soon. I feel my flesh weary enough to become voluntarily battered. The lumps of me are gravitating towards the outside edges of me, trying to escape each other. My body doesn't even want to hold itself together, or to hold me inside of itself any longer. It's too exhausting. All of me wants to lie down alongside the world's many billion other skeletons. It would be so easy to lie still and reset a while, rest a while, rest white.

All the world's bodies are lullabying me to sleep. They mouth wordless words gently into my eyes, lips curled around my sockets, a few hours into each day. I begin living and then I am tired, and they are so courteous beckoning me to sleep. They are the earth's hosts, recruiting permanent guests. Most people don't have ears, but I've spoken their language since I was eleven. I hear their invite. I'm ready to lie down.