I wish he would have told me that to learn his language would require a tongue wet with a certain desire to love those who will one day leave us behind. I wish he would have told me, before today became too late.
It takes hard work to know how to be sad. It's like learning to drive a car...that drives your life to it's next destination. And with so many stops along the way, strength and courage can roll down the window...let some air in. But it takes our entire being to get out of the car, and take in the view. And it only matters when we're ready. And we're only ready when we let our love consume us.
You can let fear embrace you in an uncomfortable warmth, until it loses its feathers and covers you in false death. Or you can ride your fear. Let it take you to the center of your dreams where safety is a perfect mirage not too far ahead. But remember to let go when nothing makes sense...and be still for longer than you can stand. And watch as the undiscovered colors mold and meld into stories. Sooner or later you'll look back and realize that... you've lived. Fear is just a parked car in the home of the loved and lived.
The days when he or I would come home, I'd jump into his arms and we'd kiss our way to the room where families begin, never happened...after that day happened. That day when everything became a question. "Our love was a different kind of love," he assured me while we held each other only halfway between where we last left our hearts, on that day. We had sampled the longing and lustful kind, the sad kind, the agreeing and smiling kind, the meandering kind of love. And after living two chapters of life hoping the lasting kind would arrive, I ran to the forest where trees of an entirely different kind grow, trees with flowering blossoms of dreams that don't need to come true. Where promises don't exist. Where obstacles are Gods way of bringing us closer. Our universe may be filled with the shadows of our own abandonment but the forests are where we find rest, make believe, truth, and love.
I don't count sheep. I count the curves of the swaying flamingos. I pause to watch them bury their heads in their reflections along the soft wet sand. As I count the just-hatched chicks, soft and white in a sea of pink, my heart closes my eyes. I count the days since I fell in love with Fuente de Piedra, hoping to return in my sleep.
Spirits can be scared of promises
and creators can regret. Yesterday at high tide, Jesus rode the waves in, disappearing the moment the white water touched the sand. Proving that time is irrelevant once again, Jesus rode the waves in like a storm, early this cold morning. He cradled the sand in the palm of his hand, letting it slowly slip through his fingers, a time-lapse of a million years, and a few promises. By the afternoon he rode the wave out, to the desolate heavens that we created for him, and he carried this world on his shoulders asking, "who is Jesus?" A guarantee every now and then isn't so bad. The cholas had it right. Just a little hairspray to keep things in place, the way everything is suppose to be, and to keep those pesky fly-aways down. In a world where nothing is guaranteed, and where everything vanishes as quickly as the dust takes to settle...a can of heavy duty Aquanet is the perfect companion. Not to keep us down, but to keep us from flying away...to keep the inevitable from happening.
Most of us call it "living," settling in a space with furnished memories manufactured to place a new history where cobwebs once created shadows. Los Angeles dines on those cobwebs and lives in its shadows. It can be impossible to live in this place without a proper map. This place woven together by fragments of unknown pasts and make believe roads ahead. Meet me at the four level interchange, where the past catches up to the 110 and the 101, and where dreams slow down to talk about today. Meet me there so that we can talk about what living in Los Angeles means, and if we remember to wear white we'll be able to see where the cobwebs and shadows call home.
I'll tell you the secret to love making. But not the kind that involves bodies getting lost in each other. First you have to grow wings. When midnight comes you let go, of everything you knew. Your wings embrace what you were once too scared to say hello to. Wings as strong and safe as home, as delicate as where he last kissed you. And I promise, when he wakes in your arms he'll believe there is a God he once prayed to.
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