Chaos is a good story, if you can wield it.
Sometimes my mind is all over the place. In the low places, tiny tasks seems excruciating. In the middle places, myriads of conversations and articles are all fascinating and distracting. In the high places, the feeling of accomplishment is tied to even the most mundane of rituals. One year ago on March 14th, I tended bar on a Saturday and haven’t since. One year ago on March 21st was my last shift selling wine and beer at The Girl & the Vine. One year ago I had big plans that are no longer.
“The worse thing you can do in a fight is stop moving. When someone attacks, they create force, movement, momentum, but you’ll be okay as long as you can see and feel the direction of that force and travel with it.”― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound
MOMENTUM SHIFT
When one settles into a stillness, momentum is derailed. I remember our car idling before getting started in the cold winter months in our snowy Buffalo suburb. You had to warm it up and let it sit there rumbling before you drove anywhere. To begin from nothing was an impossible outing. Engines and all. And if you stayed idling for too long…well, that’s just eventual death.
I’m trying real hard to not lose momentum. Sometimes it feels like walking in the snow. You’re warm while you keep moving. The world is so cold and so pretty. It does not take long at all to feel the chill creep down one’s cheeks to spine and feet. Stopping is a mutiny of spirit.
“People will pay any price for motion. They will even work for it. Look at bicycles.”
― William Faulkner, The Reivers
READING MYTHS, a tangent becomes a tale to practice our pronouns:
Ambivalente is an amazing empath. When interacting with others, she knows just what lights the fires and chills the bones in our minds, hearts and souls. She loves a good Scotch, but he also enjoys a layered fruity cocktail, on fire. And of course, they never turn down a spicy Margarita. On the flipside, Ambivalente particularly enjoys reading in near-secret libraries rich in scents of vellichor, where only tea and Sherry and Madeira are available.
They have many names. He/she/they is intentionally hard to nail down, spirit of all and lover to none but then again, perhaps also to most. Shadow to wild and wonderful Oya, foot soldier to a thunderous multi-tasking Kali, kin of transformative and sage Circe, builder of secret doorways to two-headed Janus.
John Waterhouse, “Circe Invidiosa,” 1892
Ambivalente might catch your interest with a surprising topical conversation about human rights or a shared appreciation of staring at waterfalls under starry skies. He may ignite your curiosity over a land rights dispute or over an appreciation of an exquisite operatic tenor. They might get your nerves charged regarding an absurdly personal controversy involving a sports franchise or perhaps whether or not bears have rights in less than 1% human populated natural areas. Or perhaps pronouns and topics are all just another guise for Ambivalente because the moment she senses you are on to them, they swiftly change channels, modes, forms. When youth teaches love, shared memories transform swiftly. Impressions leave footprints in various shoe sizes. An older tutor blindly catalogs the bitter with the savory, the sweet with the acid and relishes each changing sip.
COUNTERPARTS AND COUNTENANCES
I.
I once knew a lass
Amber shining hair flowed like cherry juice in blossom spring
Only once, maybe twice, did I catch her eye
And on the moment I heaved the breath of courage
She became a whisper of a friend from lost lives ago
A kin of a sister long passed.
II.
He would haunt my dreams in want
A ready nod could destroy my soul
I stole a moment alone with brash ill intent
Like a dervish from ancient myths, he turned on me
And I found waiting, a mild sermon of chaste.
III.
They cannot all love the same
They cannot all feel the heat
They proved themselves one day
Amidst a bonfire when resolve melted like a marshmallow.
IV.
And so like the wind scattering scents on trails
A notion in a crowded cafeteria
One’s tiny beauty leaves no trace
Except in a poem
Perhaps in a long lost memory triggered by scent
Or simply buried deep, overladen in ivy and moss.
A person becomes an idea
An idea becomes a plant
A plant becomes a friend
A friend grows distant
Distance becomes a ship in a storm
And life becomes dangerous.