the old-school guestbook archives
my amazon wish list... my favorite astrologer... my favorite artist... yerba mate revolution! erowid: a travel guide for interior journeys... no more war: MoveOn.org United for Peace and Justice True Majority seek the truth: Common Dreams Unamerican Activities The Nation people I adore, diaries I read: rev.raikes ariana cubiclegirl epiphany glitter333 laurakay wammo the music: the asylum street spankers backyard tire fire blue highway bill camplin wendy colonna freedom tribe joules graves guy forsyth band hamsa lila hanuman libby kirkpatrick leftover salmon pamela means medeski martin & wood the motet the nice outfit nickel creek open road rose polenzani railroad earth south austin jug band string cheese incident taarka tha musemeant the devil makes three tim o'brien band trolley wild sage keller williams yonder mountain string band |
home. ~ 2001-02-23 - 20:03:21 it's been a long road from taos... long and strange and startlingly beautiful... there is so much to write that I don't know where to start. I'll start with last night, and work my way back. it was raining last night when I rolled into berkeley, still smelling of woodsmoke from my campfire the night before, giant snarls in my force-of-nature hair from driving through the southwest with the sunroof open and the window down. I love southern winters. the familiarity of berkeley was almost disorienting. I stopped at the gas station, the berkeley bowl, the wild oats market (they didn't have my favorite vegan mayo at the berkeley bowl). I ran into a poet I knew at the wild oats. what are you doing here? I just got off the road...the cashier, a brother named tree who was a bit too stoned to be handling money, tried to get my phone number. he was kind enough but with a bit of a self-righteous flavor I knew I didn't want to hold at the back of my tongue any longer than I had to. let me get back to you on that... I just came off the road. let me be home for a while. home. I said it without even thinking about it. thousands of miles of road and I've been thinking about home, about what that means. I've found home in the smiles of strangers and in the corners of their living rooms. in bare dancing feet and music that sings the journey of my heart. I've found home in an '87 peugeot, in a tent in the woods, in the arms of friends who let a road-weary angel land for a moment before sending her fed and rested on her way. I've found home in a handful of poems, curled myself inside and peered out at the world through their waves and peaks and curlicues. home, wrote ariana, about me, a word she didn't believe in. in LA, I stayed with becka, and we spent the night making stir-fry and catching up on the four years since we last spoke, since antioch college, since the time we danced together topless on a tabletop at a dance, just because the mood struck us. I told her about boulder creek and my people there, my poetry family. ariana. she said, you're really brave to leave all that behind. and I opened my mouth to tell her that it wasn't as if I had a choice. that sometimes when your heart says go,you do it, you just do. it's not as if I would have traded this time on the road for anything. it's not as if, even now, I'm not planning for the next stretch of road. but I've got a moment to rest, to get my bearings and regroup, to tell stories and write and dream and plan. a moment, and it looks like this: I park in front of her building, collect the bare neccessities out of my car, unlock the front door, which sticks. the light is still burned out in the elevator. the hallway to her apartment still smells the same. I unlock the door, the living room soft and quiet in the glow of the white christmas lights that are almost always on. I put my vegan mayo in the fridge, next to the questionable, three-months-and-then-some-old jar still on the bottom shelf. I put the quart of ariana's favorite mint marble fudge soy delicious in the freezer. she'll be home from class in an hour. I make myself some food, add my dishes to the pile in the sink, peel off my clothes and take a hot shower, washing my hair with the shampoo that smells like her. when she comes in the door, I am still in the bathroom, clean and wearing nearly clean jeans, a shirt of hers from the closet. I am putting sweet almond oil in my hair, finally almost free of snarls. she puts her arms around me and we hold each other tight. how are you? we ask each other, and giggle, and kiss, and hold each other, and kiss, and kiss, and kiss. it's some time before we make it out of the bathroom and into the living room, where we hold each other, and talk, and kiss, and eat, and hold each other, and kiss. the smell of her skin, the texture of her hair, the warmth of her arms around me, the softness of her voice when we talk like this. when we talk like we two are the only ones in the world. she has to make a phone call, and somehow we disentangle, fight the gravitational pull, and while she's talking to a poet friend of ours who she's doing a show with tomorrow, I fall into a sleep so deep that when she finishes the call and comes to me to invite me off the couch and into bed, I have to swim up from a long ways to reach the sound of her voice, calling my name. I stumble down the hall with her and into bed, too exhausted even to make love on my first night back, but we curl in close and hold each other all night long, dream of each other, and wake up in each other's arms. we sleep and wake and sleep and wake through many alarms and her first class of the day, and when wakefulness has drawn us both from sleep, we hold each other and talk and kiss and talk and kiss until it's time for her second class, which I take her to. come back here to write in my diary, let myself in with my key. I'm home. for now. home.
(((rings))) |