wine from a jam jar

redefined by never was
a stranger to this history.
sweet sweat we wore
like armour,
sword and sheild
to could be.
night wounds
hurt the guilty,
rusted scars of fidelity.
leave your potential with me
it lingers, it stings.
i've written this before,
same sound, different pen.

heartcenter

there are some people that you will always recognize.

i took the span of last week to go back home. not home like my house, home like the place that shaped my person. my sense of self and purpose. (i went home to Dance)

as i had hoped, the people who shaped my person, self, purpose, also came home. and it was better.

i saw, in a small window, what i had and what i loved. and losing atmosphere and interpersonal connection is a lot like losing yourself. it took me a long time to realize that there is a mourning process for that - you can mourn the loss of familiarity, you can mourn change of self and place and people.

it's a condescending balance.
the give and take of change and resentment.


i saw it, for a few hours a day i could fool myself into thinking that nothing had changed. the delusion of familiarity gave me a profound amount of clarity that i would have otherwise assumed would set me back three years to a person a barely know.

funny thing, things weren't the same, not at all really. sure the people had grown, taller/wiser/more bitter/less optimistic, and that atmosphere was a skeleton of what i should have been - what it was.

and i am a skeleton of what i was. but that even remote recognition made me feel what i was missing, what i was looking for. it cannot be recreated, it cannot be found elsewhere it just is. was.

acknowledging that is somehow now enough. because this time i left loving where i've come from, not hating what it made me. what it destroyed for me.

so yes, sometimes people are enough;
if you let them be.

sing me to sleep

you know those times where words come so easily out of your mouth you don't dare say a word? well that's where i am - and i don't know why.

normally when i am in these moods i retreat to my front porch with a cup of tea and a pen and paper. but my porch is miles away and my inclination to put pen to paper is dwindling. though, worry not, i do have the tea.

i'm at that point where no music, whether it jo stafford or the carpenters, sounds right. where i can't even stand the titles of the songs let alone the songs themselves.

and it took me one very little movement, the slightest nudge, to get me here. maybe it's the guilt of giving up on someone who's been a someone in your life for 5+ years. maybe it's realizing you never should have put effort into him to begin with. or maybe it's just feeling so detached.

that reattaching to something new detached. where you don't know what to define as familiar and what you should recognize as different. transitions i guess.

transitions of feelings? right - that's unfair. setting your mind for something new. well old new. familiar new. that's it: calculated risks.

that's all i am. i read situations too well not to know what i am getting into. its a dance with boundaries. the fred and ginger of free falls.


(billie holiday's "misty"? a song my indecisive self can hum too? this will be nothing some corona and an audrey hepburn marathon can't cure.)

decisions are for mondays and i have just given myself a 4 day weekend to seclude all prospects of emotional strangulation.

dirtiest clean i know

i'm gone.
i'm sorry
for all thats left of you.
this flame faltered
was fake,
like your need.
i felt,
you stained my hand.
burned low and steaming
you're drunk, i'm leaving.
here's to the last time
i write for you.
i'm running
frost's forks,
golden; thawing.
here's to the most of me
you never knew.
you choose, you choose
futily,
like your scripted to.
i'm sorry.
i'm gone.

cracker jack tattoo's

i would rather be someone to fall back on, than someone.

in the throws of water cooler conversation today i had a profound thought (suprised?)
i noticed that inorder to need people i push them away.

consequently, i thought, one can keep someone at bay with need. because once you have attained what you believe to be needing you have to own up to want. being wanted and doing the wanting. and that there makes for a breeding ground of actual emotions and tangible relations.

because lets face it, needs are much more justifiably in the face of large quantities of whiskey and "for-old-times-sake" two night stands.

if your only defense mechanism is to need then how does one recogonize the development of sincere attachment? they don't.
so then they are sitting here staring at the phone like i am - calculating the chances of getting voice mail vs. an actual person and a miriad of awkward silences.

i guess these past three posts have lead up to this ultimatly profound and anticlimactic thought. but now that this concept has been conqured - or if nothing more called out - i can take the appropriate steps to finally pick up the damn phone.

fences

what is enough?

not love obvously, any great movie will tell you that - ' sometimes love is not enough' (one of those reality meets cliche moments that we can all roll our eyes at)

but how is something enough to motivate us? satisfy? fulfill? convince? inspire? we cannont be convinced in enough - not truely, or for long. because convincing comes from an element of actuallity. one has to draw from the present or from present potential inorder to concoct something convincing.

so can potential be enough? can we subsisit soley on potential. no,eventually it must become an actuallity. because potential evolves into goal evolves into attainment or failure. either way potential is not a constant.

so then, neither is enough. we constantly need more - more of enough?
i feel like i'm in over my head.

you don't love, love is not your enough, and is has not been for a while. but 'enogh' does not even need to exsist in the realm of earth shattering emotion. what if need is enough. needing someone, something, that can need you back? is that a circle or a one sided battle?

i need to be enough for someone. so is my need to be enough intern enough for me? on a personal level?

i feel as though its more like walking up a down escalator. enough for an external variable is redundant until one is enough for onesself.

right.

so if enough is an obtuse concept than how do we fulfill ourselves with potential? if i cannot rationally need to be enough for someone else then how can i fulfill any personal sanity by needing enough.

so really what i've come to after all of that is this: if one cannot acheive fulfillment through the irational search for 'enough' then it is unfair to expect someone outside of yourself to be enough for you.

i just shut up, pick up the phone, and call.
then maybe i would get some sleep. or maybe not.

just stay the night

i feel as though i have a problem distinguishing between making my self happy and 'saving' others.

i use the word 'saving' sparingly because i, as anyone, realize that one cannot save another; the only person you can save is yourself. regardless, i tend to lose sight of this fact when in the thick of everything. this too i guess is partly my fault. - look at the feild i have choosen.

still . . when it comes to the sure thing or the instability of the wild card, i place my bets niavely. what mechanism in my head does not connect securtiy with happiness? in what way have i been happy watching people walk away from me?

but part of me has been happy, because i know each one of these people has heard me. heard what i am saying outside of any clinical boundry. the raw truth and attention to character in an intimate relationship draws you into a different part of a person. unfortunatly that is the part of a person that is skiddish. thats the part that runs. i'm personally aquatinted with a blur. (20,000 blurs and all i'm looking for is alittle clarity.)

so why do i feel like i am failing myself if i take a step towards simple, unabriged, black and white happiness? to easy? i have to work for it? or is it that i don't trust black and white - gray is safer because gray is familiar. it gives you leway, and time to think, time to run if you choose.

but searching for the part of someone to save is also familiar. i'm taking risks but i'm cowering at the same time. if i keep you so close to me, emotionally, you'll never stay. you are miles away on a different plain. delve into someones character, figure them out and know them like no one has tried and you'll be lucky if they stay around a month.

but i know this, and because i know this i am the coward. i keep people so close that i can;t touch them. so when i see someone who presents himself to me, time and time again, as selfsuficiant and uncomplicated. (he needs to be saved from nothing) why can't i take a step?

why can't i advocate a different familiar? a happiness perhaps. a satble routine to build an escape around. i could disapear from the 'resuce me' fucks and late night java hut sob stories and just be happy. maybe have a life outside of my personality?

it's not me. i can't leave a part of my person at "work". and i know this, that is the whole reason i know i am on the right carreer path.

really? is it so much to ask for just someone to step infront of me and say let me take the control for a bit. don't worry, i'll 'save' you.

yes it is. because i'm the only one to get me out of this rut. and if someone just steped in then obviously i would learn nothing about self.

fascinating, truely.

what have we learned jo?
"be an advocate for your own happiness. . step outside the box"

good.

'73 pinto

goodbye to the person i thought you could be:

i never knew what you were running from, though i had a multitude of theories, i still don't know. but i see it catching up with you, and that should scare you. or the little piece of you i can almost see. ( i know i'm scared for you) but i owe you an apology, because i fell in love with saving you, and i held on to what i thought you could be.

regardless, this is me walking away. maybe now you can see yourself as you truely are, or maybe you'll deni it. but it's no longer me in the way of you getting the help you need.

i can't save you, i never could.

not quiet love,
most of me.

i discovered, last night while fending off a piss drunk ex, that maybe i have always felt that i was never enough to one person because that one person was to much for himself. i so wanted to save him, so much that his problem became mine. . and it took me seeing him weak and pathetic, begging me to keep loving him, to realize that not only do i not love him any longer, but that i was so consumed with saving him from himself that i prevented him from gettig the real help he needed. i thought that if i turned my back on him that i would be kicking the chair out from under him, after i had already suffered through watching him tie the noose. but i realized, and heaven only knows why it took me 5 years, that my constatnly picking him back up, listening and advising, giving and giving, that i was preventing him from seeking the help he truly needs. whats more, my being there to reessemble his pieces ment no one saw him as he was when he was broken. no one see's his problem because he saves it all for me.

well, no longer.

how is he different from any of the other AA clients i've worked with? why is he suspect to treatment that is strictly unprofessional? is it because i "loved" him? (or loved his disaster)

or better yet . . because i loved who i thought he could be. i saw his potental, i saw the him he didn't want to know. and that is what i could have loved. and last night i looked at him and for the first time, and couldn't see that person. and i knew i had lost.

lost? it was a fight i could never win. it was never even a fight i was able engage in. it was always between him and himself. i just didnt want to see it.

now i see it. clearly. and i am no longer scared for me or my emtions. but i am scared for him, and what comes next. because one thing is certain: i will not be there to pick up his pieces.

dans la gare

fresh off AirFrance from 9 days in london/paris . .



removed
your replacement
spans of language
beg "enough?"

we spoke in movements
damp, together tones.
sane infringment
of consious action

strong and subtle clutch;
a poetic nomade
i carve, escaped,
a mental spotlight

for you, your own.

while you were gone.

it is no secret that perception . . and interpritation . .varies from person to person. i guess that would be part of that whole induviduality thing, of course.

but where is the line drawn from personal perception to the perception of other peoples interpretation? where inlies the beauty in art if one cannot get past the differance from induvidual to induvidual? perhaps this is where art is lost.

i hate to say that this thought came to me while talking to my mother, yes the touchy subject that is parent/child relations, the tense loathing that inhibits too long a stay at home. i had my last performance this weekend: there seemed to be a lack of empathy towards the fact that this was potentially my last show, the atmosphere also happened to be devoid of all artistic apreciation. appreciation towards one of my featured pieces depicting the "origonal sin" (you know that over synthasised 80's chant from the cinematic thriller "shadow")

my, not so bornagain, interpretation was of a corruption, a death in the purity of love, possibly the evolution of deception. still a fairly controversial piece. my mother and her fellow on lookers saw a 5.28 minute dance about a snake, a couple, and horrible brown spandex. why?

why can some people see that and others be moved to tears by what i saw. how can such literal art be lost on people. it comes back to perception; whether its literal, metaphorical or religious. it should evoke emotion. that is why i'm an artist, because as a dancer my job is to evoke an emotion. truth be told, i have yet to comprehend whether or not i just walked away from that job.

so maybe that is why i see the heaviness . .maybe because i see the coruption of my art in the evolution of deception. andhow could anyone else see that, i can't expect others to feel that. yet alone comprehend it. besides, to people like my parents, the only reason they experiance art is because for some mirical i have a proclivity for it.

and i forget too that appreiation is personal, and to share it is one thing but to expect it is another.

to expect it to owe you something is another. ones passion does not owe them anything but fullfilment, so when you are no longer fulfilled, is that a personal growth, or loss, or is it just a phase: to hate your passion.
"they" say love and hate are close emotions, so i can only assume that it is natural to hate what fulfills you. but what if you feel that inorder to maitain apreciation you should quit? stop while you're ahead.

then there must be something wrong? i never want to dispise what i think is beautiful because i feel like it gave up on me. but how do you not feel that way?

dancing owes me nothing, just like my performance owes nothing to the audience or their perception of my art. but then why do i feel like the only answers i value are from something that owes me nothing.

and therefore it won't give me any answers. is passion generous, or are we the genrous ones to it?

i'm supposed to be able to come up with these answers by now. but i'm just too close, to0 emersed, to even see it. if it's even there.

nothing to one

with poison pen

your addendum inked

an epitaph carved in rhyme

sweat black down the page

my fatal sent

choked by veils

shear, revealing

a Mata Hari and her monster.

a long fairwell to the hunger strike.

i'm a prisoner,
cuffed to familiar
with an almost belief
not a enough for religion.
you're the quicksand
of expectation
suffocating under skeletons,
the weight of wasted time.
i almost meant
what i didn't say
to save this place;
rescue possibility.
what we were in the mirror,
neither adequate nor compatible,
clowns among traitors.
we were always dancing alone.

keep me without chains

some one asked me what the difference between being alone - lonely - and isolated was and how could one escape it. i couldn't give an immediate nor decisive answer.

is isolation a byproduct of loneliness or just being alone? and then, is alone something you choose or a circumstance?

it seems to me that isolation is a choice. people don't choose to be lonely, or the feelings that go along with it ( ie. desperation, self pity, etc.). where as i would view isolation as intentional.

on the other hand, some may say they are forced to choose isolation because they force themselves to be alone (this i observed from one of 'my clients'). when one is so (self)absorbed with invisible "demons" how can one maintain a healthy connection with those on the outside. and how can those on the outside be expected to understand?

the conclusion i came to, when answering the above inquirer, is something i learned from one of my mentors when i was interning. ' when people hurt enough, they will change their own circumstance.'

that concept struck me profoundly: when people hurt enough. profound because "enough" is a measure of personal discretion.

enough is a finality, hard for the human conscience to accept. a point that many avoid. because realizing that something that has sustained you is also hurting you - and there for the pain you are feeling is self-inflicted - is debilitating.

but if you can get someone past a certain period of self loathing, or guilt then you can get them to the point of self healing. and is that not the ultimate goal? whether it's addiction, abuse, or simply desperately self inflicted lust or loveless love.

it always strikes me how all encompassing human complexity is.