the grotesque hints at its own cure.

"But the grotesque hints at its own cure, the speculative creation otherwise known as 'hope.' We hope when the odds, no matter how good, are still that: odds, chance, a gamble in which the rules may change at any time, for any reason, with or without our acquiescence. We hope when we understand that circumstances are beyond our control, when will is not equal to effect, when we are not the subjects of a story but its objects. Hope isn't optimistic; it's the face of despair. My grandmother taught me that, not long before she died. 'Despair,' she said, was her favorite word. 'It's not a bad thing. It's a gift. A recognition.' It's the opposite of dread. Perception, not speculation. You accept the facts of your fate rather than reading them as evidence of a judgment or a moral. Some people might call that quitting."

- Jeff Sharlet (Born, Again)

broad arms.

There are times when there seems to be little to say. I know there's nothing to say, you reassure everyone. The path is long and you don't always know where it will lead you. The path is long and sometimes you must go it alone. The path is long and it is also very short.

I don't know terribly much about Natasha Trethewey, but that she is the new poet laureaute, comparatively young, and has something beautiful to say about patience and art.

"I turned to poetry to make sense of what had happened and started writing what I knew, even then, were really bad poems. It took me nearly 20 years to find the right language, to write poems that were successful enough to explain my own feelings to me and that might also be meaningful to others."

Love is good and compassion makes the broad arms that hold us all. I am quite guilty of forgetting that. Sometimes we need to be those arms and sometimes we need to let them hold us. Say I love you. Say it again, again, again, again, again. Never stop.

other home.

Over the course of one week, the course of my life has changed significantly. I knew it was coming, more or less, but it has taken a good few days to get my head around it. In three weeks, I'm moving to a new city. I'm going for a new job I'm thrilled about and a new life with someone I love. I will be leaving behind four years of friendship and good life in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts was my first other home. It was the first time I set out on my own and made a place in the world for myself, where the good grace of love and community found me and a family of people chose me. That is something beautiful and precious and difficult to let go of. But there is more of it out there and, after a lifetime of moving, I have at least learned the valuable lesson that you never really leave behind the people and places you've known. They are always a part of you. And the ones that matter, the ones that inspire you and make you stronger and better, those ones last.

For three years, I lived in a big house full of people, in the woods of Wellfleet, where there are also beaches and ponds and tourists and long, quiet winters. For those three years, once a week, 14 people sat around a table and had a meal together, cooked by two of us. Sometimes the meal was late and everyone sat in the living room, crabby, waiting, and watching Jeopardy. Sometimes the nights were warm and we sat outside at the long picnic table until the mosquitoes drove us in. Some of the meals were terrible - soggy grilled cheese sandwiches and giant pots of plain white noodles. Some of the meals were epic. There was always the threat of scarcity. When you cook for 14 people, there is always the danger of not making quite enough. Some weeks, I'd had a long day and I could barely tolerate the chatter and noise and press of bodies around the table. Other weeks, I sat down, looked around the table and saw family. I think I will carry forever the beauty of this group meal. The urgency of being together, on good days and bad, the necessity of connecting with the people in your life. The love of food and the gratitude for a gift.

birds & escalator.

I am always cringing over my way of writing so abstractly. It is the safest and easiest way to write - it is also far removed from what is real.

I wrote a very long post tonight, in a word document, and it was crazy and about absolutely nothing. It was very pure stream-of-conscious nonsense. I had the feeling, which I get sometimes, that there is something something SOMETHING that I need to be writing about, but I can't seem to hit it. My hands shake, my arms clench, my shoulders get hot from all the muscles working. My heart races at the desperate need to create, though I hardly know what.

I deleted it all. It wasn't writing for the sake of a product, it was writing because my fingers just needed to move. But I bargained with myself, agreed that I could only delete it all if I wrote something else, here, for people to see.

But I'm not sure quite what to tell you.

I'm finding my voice and it feels right.
I'm noting stories that need to be told and I'm getting ready to tell them.
I am looking for my tribe, a lovely thought someone shared. My people are out there.
I am learning how to live through change and make the life I want.

death shudders.

There are some places that I live my life in. There are a couple of offices, the kind with humming fluorescent lights and fans and refrigerators. There are trains, the cars on the red line and the orange line and the green line. There's the bus home at night. There are low-lit rooms, a bedroom, a kitchen. And for the time being, these are the places that I am living out my days. There will be new places, different places, other places, coming days. I will carry some things along with me and others I will lose.

The clouds broke just now, just outside my window, and it has lightened my mood. The clouds have been very dark here, for days it seems. I saw a pink sunset over a church and I felt a little peace seep into my bones.

I have always had a strange relationship with place. I have always been desperate for it, but I'm never able to quite own it. If that doesn't make sense, I'm afraid I can't explain it any better. If it does, then our souls have the same longing and that makes me feel a bit less alone. And hopefully you the same.

What is strange is the goodbye. When I leave a place, I feel the same deep sadness each time. It is a sadness fueled by knowing that the next time I see those features, the landmarks, their light will have changed. I know well the feeling of looking at place where you were and knowing that you won't be there again. When my own sense of loss is so fierce, I often wonder how anyone can say goodbye to a childhood home or a place where they have lived for years. Perhaps it's only because I can't imagine it.

tell me about the good things.

Here's a task for you: lean back, wherever you are, and tell me about the good things. You have them and so do I. We should talk about it for awhile because there is quite a lot to be grateful for, here and now, and I don't know what else to make of life but to sit back and be grateful for it. My life is very good right now, but it always has been so.

I have been young and lonely and without purpose. In their own ways, love and passion and purpose have found me. That's what I'm talking about. Tell me about the good things.

A lot of people suffer in this world in ways that I cannot measure or understand. My very keen sense of justice makes me feel guilty at the great love and friendship and passion that have filled up my life. I feel guilty at my paycheck and comfortable bed and good food. This is a struggle for life, I believe. I will find my own ways to make peace with the evil in the world and the human suffering. In the meantime, the best thing I know to do is to be grateful.

My family has taught me to be curious and generous and to work hard. Good friends have stood in a kitchen with me over wine and food and talked about hurt and love and struggle and life. A good man has believed in me, sometimes more than I have believed in myself.

I wish I could conjure up something more eloquent or artful to say to you tonight, but I can only muster this: my life is good. And I am grateful.