Full

There's playtime in the air as the holidays tumble on in. Suddenly old names are ringing on your phone, and things just get pushed aside & forgiven-in the nighttime celebrations. Without explaining, without making time apart known, and without taking up the quiet tones (and longer minutes) that should be devoted to important conversations. 

But the glasses are full.

...Oh, the lights are going up on the trees along the road! I see Christmas trees, menorahs, and bows in some windows! Oh, it seems like the new night's twinkling is a cure, is hope bottled, or, is something of an excuse to smile....like walking hand-in-hand over a bridge and through the streets.

Window displays, home-cooked feasts, parades/games on TV, shopping splurges, revamped mall. The first snowfall falls early and piles, and we adjust to feeling full. 

Full to the cup/waistband's edge, full to the brim with something that grows sickly later---Maybe that extra serving wasn't a good choice. 

Maybe no one has a clear mind, when they feel so full.

Maybe the celebrating, and the road, turns dicy-and we make it so? 

Maybe there's something slightly forgotten/abandoned (besides diets)?

                                 The other weekend I sat watching a friend's band play a rare acoustic show, and sitting indian-style on the same carpet two little boys sat memorized for the entire 20min set. One watched motionless, they other air-drummed to the beat. They sat-to my amusement, completely riveted in their tiny frames and tiny experiences, at the idea of something magical. Just for that moment. Just for that moment, at five years old, they were full with something that gets lost on us young adults. They seemed inspired, they seemed collected, they seemed safe, and somehow...thankful. 

And me, I almost forget to be thankful for what I'm thankful for now, I almost forget who I'm coming home to. I almost forget the safe routes. 

In all the movement, the choices, and the busying dizzying ideas trying to formulate; I almost forget where I am.

I almost forget next year I might be very far away from Baltimore-without the chance to even come home to the 410. 

So where do we go when the first break ends and we wait for the next? 

You can remember the past year; smile at the good stories made, shiver at old caresses, go forward after mistakes... and really, you can only be so very thankful that in all your searching, all your filling, you don't destroy yourself.....or someone else. 

Then, when your hands shake with cold-unlocking the door so late and disorderly, forget how different home becomes each year....because Dear, 35th street will always be lit. 

And every year the season will come like squelling children. The finals will end, the papers (hopefully) finished, the sanity (hopefully) saved, and the great traditions (hopefully) kept.

We're getting closer to a fresh start, caught-up sleep, dressy occasions, and more days off! 

...we go home in so many ways, because next year can't be known. 

Daily headphones: The Fray's "Dead Wrong", an old classic from the Pretty in Pink movie-Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness", and Kayne's "Coldest Winter"

(Poem-Something On the Wind)

In honor of the revamped layout, I will brave sharing one of my poems.  Newest one at the moment (need to get back to writing more frequently), and the title is still a working one. Hope you enjoy it. 


The wind is calling the names of lovers not yet;
Like the motion of shaking sheets,
On the grassy ground above a cellar-
That grows mossy with the dripping bacteria.
And I'm cold inside.

Those Inquisition candles now burn only a reader's mind.
Stimulating particles growing macabre,
Growing sad with the waking, darker hours.
I'm stung a hundred times in one dream;
Waking confused within the buzz.

So I roll, upon the safest convent tile-
Smiling insanely between the moss
In thoughts of my own novels.
And reach, to caress...
The place for listening beyond refurbished windows-
For names upon the wind.

And reach, to caress...
In a hushed encounter by the door.
Followed separately by premature ice
thats grows like mold

Cluttered Rooms

There's a room that's overstuffed to the very top, and every dust-crammed corner seems to hide something. Every stacked, crammed, and shelved book holds the oil fingerprints and strokes of reader's past. And the inhabitants never notice that the fox-hole pathways are growing smaller, and the tile is getting black and cracked. 

I've never walked barefoot in that dwelling. 

But I've been waking as if it makes up the particles of my brain. Coming down the avalanche of back-to-back migraines. Trying weakly to scratch the cobwebs from my eyes, while so many falling books (of ideas un-defined) dent my skull and seem to reverberate. 

I'm forgetting to stop and decide, unable to commit what'll bring the right returns; running back and forth between the swells of weekends. 

And outside in the misty cold there's postcards, posters, and fliers stapled upon the same telephone poles. They all seem so stenciled, so emphatic, so inviting, I'm almost convinced they've already been lived. 

The pencil bleeds into planner pages, begging not to be scratched out - so much could happen in a night. It's that intoxicating feeling in the sight of orange street lamps, and excuses to find your breath visible.

Baltimore itself is stiffening up between swells. Like a feast it's bracing for holiday returns, hiding the invites from public view, and pulling us together; closer into the dark where the airplane lights don't reach. Where the visitors never look. 

It'll be a little more overcrowded soon. It'll hustle and bustle, and smell like cinnamon. 

It got to be winter so quickly this year.

And everyone is saying "I'm tired" like its something new. Tired. Tired. Tired. They're tired. We're tired.....or are we just exhausted by our endless to-do lists? Are we bored?

There's a jittery alternative; the addictive, provocative notion of organizing the chaos of ideas into creation. (if only you can make it through the rooms, and over the sore muscles). And holidays approach with time to sleep.

So, smile at a fine semester, and the events of its close! Keep adding stories to the shelves...even if they wind up in a heap---they went written. 

Daily headphones: The Script's "We Cry". And for added fun...clip from a Guy Fawkes party a few friends took me to last weekend: 

Video Break#3

It's amazing to live through events that will be written into history books; that we can recap in whispered excited tones when all the hairs are grey and the bones tired. And here, it feels joyous this time. 

New things approach; with the 44th president, the year 2009, and all the sparkling of the holiday season.

Wish I could have been at this celebration. Cya Jan 20th in DC!

A Vote, a Name

There's a huge weight of anxiousness racking the brain waves right now. It's been hovering and making the conversation failed. Now add on top.... outside there's a catastrophe - of an entire nation waiting in suspense. Opposing sides. Nothing left but to wait, for the future of the next four years. For the invisible future of ballots cast or un-cast. 

For change. 

But what are we voting on? What do we cling to in the last minutes before midnight?

Sometimes it feels like a machine of jittery results. A camera flash. A shaking-head motion that doesn't provide any more answers than a tease. 

In the end we reach for answers, for rationalizations, for soothing thoughts. Ache to feel satisfied.

But we reach. Putting trust, faith, and even our hearts in the hands of people we may never completely know (or even meet). 

It happens a thousand times in a lifetime. 

We vote not just for lying politicians, but for lies, love, and humanity.

"Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!" -John Proctor, in the Crucible

And maybe that's all that survives...a name. 

Maybe that's what we vote for -  the name itself. 

Or do we pick, jittery, in the hopes of what the name could posses to our lives? 

It's the name that survives. The name backs itself.

Then, terrifyingly a reputation could prove infinitely weighty. It could destroy and save, just as the soul does, the art does, and the soft touch does. 

I wake to my own name.

But in the last minutes before midnight - does any of it matter beside the feeling you're left with? 

Does any of the facts really matter if you're left feeling teased and deceived, confused and baffled, stressed and pressed, or most rarely; adventurous, blissful, and understood? 

It's a risk worth taking. It's a reach must extended. 

There's always a winner, a loser, and the one who didn't vote at all. 

Tomorrow we'll have the results...but not the answers.

Daily headphones: Katy Perry's "Hot n Cold", and Metro Station's "Shake it" (love that they joined the party this weekend) for hyper-relief. And New Amsterdam's classic winter-approaching song "Hanging on for Hope".