It's always something

Someone once told me that. There's always something. Damn it, why?

Memory

Napa Valley Wine Train, 10 years ago today. How I always wish to see us.

Today's writing

She and Gary locked glances, held. He was her partner in this, always would be. He was half of that little boy sitting there, half of the endeavor that it took to raise this child. No one else so clearly understood the rigors of her pregnancy, the toll it took on the mind and body. When she was five months along, she’d gone out with a friend who was maybe a month or so behind. Men don’t get it Friend said. They don’t know.

Ruth thought about the previous night, how Gary had rubbed her back when the pain grew to exist throughout her body, radiating. I’m here he said. I’m here.

Yesterday she betrayed him. A breach in their marriage, a dropped stitch in the quilt, unraveling. And he didn’t even know it.

Now she looked at them both. Her boys. To be without them in any way would be to walk on hot lava without shoes, the burn a malignant quickening beneath her soles. Good morning, baby, she said, speaking to them both.

The rest of the morning felt more low-key, running along the river of tasks at hand. While usually this annoyed her, today she was grateful for the mundanity. She made it a game, a meditative practice: packing Lennon’s lunch, the leftovers in the blue Tupperware, the one with his name on the lid. She hadn’t written it, neither had Gary; Carol Vulture labeled everything. She was lucky her kid didn’t come home with his name written on his schlong.

Indigo Girls, "Ghost"

There's a letter on the desktop
That I dug out of a drawer
The last truce we ever came to
From our adolescent war
And I start to feel the fever
From the warm air through the screen
You come regular like seasons
Shadowing my dreams

And the Mississippi's mighty
But it starts in Minnesota
At a place that you could walk across
With five steps down
And I guess that's how you started
Like a pinprick to my heart
But at this point you rush right through me
And I start to drown

And there's not enough room
In this world for my pain
Signals cross, and love gets lost
And time passed makes it plain
Of all my demon spirits I need you the most
I'm in love with your ghost
I'm in love with your ghost
Dark and dangerous like a secret (don't tell a soul)
That gets whispered in a hush
When I wake the things I dreamt about you (don't tell a soul)
Last night make me blush
Then you kissed me like a lover
Then you sting me like a viper
I go follow to the river
Play your memory like the Piper

And I feel it like a sickness
How this love is killing me
But I'd walk into the fingers of your fire willingly
And dance the edge of sanity
I've never been this close
In love with your ghost

Unknowing captor
You'll never know much you
Pierce my spirit
But I can't touch you
Can you hear it, a cry to be free...
Oh, I'm forever under lock and key
As you pass through me

Now I see your face before me
That would launch a thousand ships
To bring your heart back to my island
As the sand beneath me slips
As I burn up in your presence
And I know now how it feels
To be weakened like Achilles
With you always at my heels
And my bitter pill to swallow
Is the silence that I keep
It poisons me, I can't swim free
The river is too deep
Though I'm baptized by your touch
I am no worst at most
In love with your ghost

(In love) You are shadowing my dreams (with your ghost)
(In love with your ghost)
(In love with your ghost)

Damn

That feeling when someone writes about you. I mean, what the fuck. I can't put any of it here because it would be a breach of trust. But Jesus.

The friendships that can't

Some of the closest friendships I've ever had can't exist any more. The reasons vary, but the result is the same: it sucks.

Ice Cube on longevity

Life ain't a track meet
It's a marathon