Where The Moon Is Full

I hope you dream tonight,

find yourself in a tangle of twilight

illuminated by anything you’ve ever wanted.

Stand small beside a mountain;

steady by a lake;

the wraith next to you having a name I’ve spelled every day.

Edges of the universe,

lapping at your toes,

soft blonde strands puffing away 

from your lips,

catching the wind for a midnight calvary 

of extinct pirate ships.

I hope the words who tucked you in 

float through you,

making grins from fiction that

seep into the dark while the wraith with red lips 

beckons you down,

“Enter a cloud,

I’m where the moon is full,”

she whispers through space

you’ve never seen.

“When you find me there,

pause me and ask me,

‘of what do you dream?’”

Carolina Just Shrugged

I’m going to repost what I wrote months ago, because the sound of salt and taste of Carolina teases not just once, but always.  

———————————————————- 

Last night I dreamt I was in Carolina, 

the trees all twisted to the coast. 

The ocean sat steady and

the roads were never ending. 

“I’m only back for six months,”

dream Carly said. 

“No,”

an unmarked face and outstretched hand replied, 

“you’re here to stay.”

With salt on my breath I tried to say it wasn’t so

but Fate just smiled and walked away. 

Orange light broke through a canopy 

as I desperately tried to follow, 

but the shadow faded into

the steam of endless summer…  

I couldn’t understand why I was back. 

Clarity blurred and the landscape was a hill, a tree, a flower, a beach. 

A bridge into sand stretched ahead, 

bricks to a river beside, 

and columns upon columns

upon porches upon porches. 

“I have to get back!”

dream Carly screams, 

but Carolina just shrugged. 

Carolina Just Shrugged

Last night I dreamt I was in Carolina, 

the trees all twisted to the coast. 

The ocean sat steady and

the roads were never ending. 

“I’m only back for six months,”

dream Carly said. 

“No,”

an unmarked face and outstretched hand replied, 

“you’re here to stay.”

With salt on my breath I tried to say it wasn’t so

but Fate just smiled and walked away. 

Orange light broke through a canopy 

as I desperately tried to follow, 

but the shadow dissipated into

the steam of endless summer. 

I couldn’t understand why I was back. 

Clarity blurred and the landscape was a hill, a tree, a flower, a beach. 

A bridge into sand stretched ahead, 

bricks to a river beside, 

and columns upon columns

upon porches upon porches. 

“I have to get back!”

dream Carly screams, 

but Carolina just shrugged. 

The Inner Outline

“I just feel like you know who you are.” 

The words are innocent and sincere, but they dive head first into me and my subconscious is knocked to the ground. I can see it trying to pick itself up from the pavement below me, struggling to understand this alien body looming above it in front of the city lights. 

“I just feel like you know who you are.”

The concept is so foreign to me I can’t accept it. I’ve spent most of my life wallowing in insecurity and self doubt, and the notion of becoming a confident, in tact person always seemed an unobtainable pipe dream. 

But here it was, right in front of me, spoken by someone who doesn’t even know me that well. 

I get in my car and immediately light a cigarette - nicotine in, stress out. The irony isn’t lost on me either - it’s funny how a compliment will rattle your cage. Steering wheel in hand I could barely pay attention to a tune, all I could wonder was: is he right? Have I finally gotten some of this down? Impossible. I fully prescribe to the theory that we may never really know who we are. How can we when life’s events are constantly shaping the direction of our beliefs? Tomorrow is far away and everyone, including you, is moving towards something you can’t predict. I came home once and found myself in an ICU an hour later with my heart on the floor and my sanity ripped out. I was someone before then and someone else after. The evolution only continues the more I ramble on - so how can I define something that doesn’t let dust settle?

“I just feel like you know who you are.”

Maybe some parts… maybe. But if I were to try and verbalize them, I couldn’t. The only thing I know with certainty is that nothing is certain. The only steady thing I know about myself is that I’m unsteady. The only thing that makes sense about me is that I don’t make sense. Those truths about me are self-evident, and in a sense they’re my guidelines. I don’t think I need a completed outline, and neither do you. All we need are those loose little bullet points to steer the course of our actions and get us to the places we need to be. If you can just have it figured out a little bit, the rest will fill itself in the more you see, the more you go. Sure there will be rewrites and erases, cross-outs and corrections - but editing is what makes a story perfect in the end anyway. 

             

Misdirection is Direction.

I envy people who have always had a dream - something that has resonated through their bones and called to them from the universe beyond. You hear those stories about the make up artist who would break in her Mothers room and paint her face brilliant shades, or the policeman who would go around giving people fake tickets with his little notepad.

But me? I had abstract hobbies. Those one’s you can’t commit into something tangible. I read like a nerd and made beanie babies talk to each other. What the fuck does that turn into? A children’s show host? 

I used to enter (and win, thank you very much) little creative contests. I’d write cruedly put together essays or photograph my dogs in costumes, yet somehow I don’t see that as my foreshadowing to a Pulitzer.

I envy the dreamers’ sense of direction. I look down and see four million arrows sticking out under my feet, each pointing to a different horizon; they look down and see one arrow, one horizon. They take one calculated step after another towards the clear figure in the distance, and I stumble like a mad woman towards an obscurity of a mirage.

The ironic thing is my only sense of direction is to go in all directions. I crave adventure. I’m dying to see as much of the world as I can possibly take in. I give some of this credit to an Aunt of mine who travels the world in wide, Goliath steps. When I was seven she began sending me post cards, each one a small photograph of my fantasy. Up onto a huge world map a sticker dot would mark their origins, and underneath it’s shadow I’d pour over the post cards, astrally projecting myself to streets of Paris and peaks of the Alps, trying to imagine my perfect sense of wonderment as I turned each new corner. 

So far, misdirection has taken me in the right direction. I’ve lived in a place like this: 

And this: 

Have seen places like this: 

And now, go on to live in one like this: 

My quest is over. My next home has been marked. T-minus 38 days, and my urgency for flight will have me touching down in another frontier. One so foreign to me that my mind drools over the thought of such new material it shall gather. Yes, off I go…  

The False Factors

While there are many uncertain things in my life right now, there is one question that weighs upon me most: Where do I want to move? 

If you’re one of the few people that have tracked this for awhile, you may wonder: what happened to New York City? The place where dreams come true and the sky is an architectural awe? 

 

Well, I’ll tell you what happened. My desire to move there was fueled by three things - my best friend, my cousin and the lure of easy street. 

My best friend lives there. It was her dream; work in fashion and live in New York City, a lofty goal that she accomplished by fasting on Ramen and holding 12 stepping stone jobs. It was appealing to think of moving somewhere and automatically being handed back my best friend, someone that when the stress of a new city crumbled in would rush over with a pint of ice cream and complete empathy. 

My cousin… that wasn’t as innocent. My relationship with her is deeply rooted in my psyche; gnarled veins I didn’t know to lay coiled on my spine until recently. With a 14 year age difference and her fabulously wealthy lifestyle, I idolized her. I didn’t think about her money coming from her parents - all I saw were the Manolo Blahnik pumps and a care free smile. I thought she was wise, and now I see this for what it really is: naivety and stubbornness only found in those who have always get what they want. A Manhattanite to the tee, she urged me onto the decadence of the city.

And then there was the lure of easiness - a thing no one equates with New York. But I, a hood winked fool, thought that my cousins connections would let me stroll into the door of whatever publication I may so choose.

HA.

I received some hopeful emails, a promise of a spring meeting or two, but the funny thing about the most powerful people in an industry is that they are cunning. And they can tell when a girl like me, whose emotions are usually smacked across her face, is confused and doesn’t know what the fuck she wants. Which leads to another funny thing about them: they don’t fuck with uncertainty.

The factors added up, and with nowhere else on my radar they were the only one’s that could accumulate into any type of sum. They seemed the right path to follow, even though in my gut I knew New York wasn’t going to be the place for me. I remember eating at a restaurant there with my best friend and mulling over the thought of moving.

“It just seems like a place where you’d fit in and do so well,” she pointed out. I looked out at the street, a never ending stream of cars and people and noises and light, and all I could say was:

“I just don’t think it would ever feel like home.”  

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