The positive pelican push

moments of aloneness, some filled with opportunistic moment.
a van full of strangers returning home from trips around the world. a couple, newly engaged, returning from Disney World, glowing with settled, filled, visions of a home, fenced in, a dog, a new baby, a family to view their life as completed. myself, alone returning from a weekend with half my family. newly divided. feeling divided.
and a man sitting across an aisle of division. his smile big, his eyes pleased and genuine. the driver says, Mr. Thomas, we are please to have you with us. he says he tried to be a nobody, but he accepts her attention and appreciates her friendliness. I find I am sitting now, without an isle any longer, closed from conversation, a local celebrity, a news reporter for Detroit. he speaks about his love for his life, his job and the couple beams behind me. I beam for all their happinesss, everyone's. and he tells me to watch him on the television, I look him up on the internet. I find he is more than a happy, gifted and privileged news reporter. he is a struggling man. I learn about his story. Born an African American, now a disease, turning him white, slowly. Once an attractive man only noticeable for his smile and confidence, now noticeable for his atypical skin and fame. Watch, be inspired as I was, and learn of the privilege most of us have. solid skin color, solid to our existence.

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/about_us/personalities/Lee_Thomas_Bio

vagabonding blogging

so without a voice, as it is lost to overuse or anger or a tightened throat from unbearable stress to the body
and without an extension of this natural life into the life of others so far, or maybe just across town, as the obsession with plugging and charging and attaching electronics to your pant pockets is forgotten
and without the companion that calls you to check in every day, or to give you a hug every morning, or make you tuna fish for lunch
and without a home where others know your face on a passing by of the street, and smile into your solitude feeding your for hours
and without knowing your own face, or your own hands, or your own loveliness.

to exist in this world, substantiated by these expectations, of what a day is filled with. In the vagabonding there are strangers who tell you who they think you are, and there are alone moments were memories seep in from a past life, a song comes on, and you are in your first apartment, lying on the floor, with someone you know loves you, for a moment.

I listened

I listened to a man speaking on the radio about forgetting who he was. Standing in a train station in an unrecognizable city, not knowing how he got there or where he intended to go, looking at other strange faces. All he understood was that he didn't understand. Searching for a mirror a reflective. Piece of his identity. He spoke about looking down at his hands wondering how many years of his life he had lived, seeking some remnants of what that life was to him, he sifted through his pockets. When and where did he put these pants on, how many days had he been living this empty way. The extreme notion of losing one's identity, by losing consciousness of our actions, missing the signs of our moment to moment existence. And perhaps the fog this man spoke of could possibly replace our conscious mind, the identity we hold so dear as it is ours and ours alone. Or perhaps it already has. The forgetting of yesternight's dream, the distant memory of dancing with a friend on that one night that felt so special at the time, that pivitol conversation that seperated you and another, and the flight of excitement that ran through your body when you chased the purple butterfly in your 5 year old heart. It is the smells and songs and touch of our present days, if we are mindful enough that can take us back to this joy. Not so much in the memory, but the feeling, as without our identity, without our history, we are feeling and feeling alone.

A new Post of an old Writing

I told you that in my throat I felt a thickness
In my throat, our lives
sharp roof tops and honeysuckled honey and cream and sugar of salt and whiskey that they drink
They drink separately miles apart
They live with imaginary friends
Ships sailing opposing grounds without the breeze of this evening
No more music of them or music of their colors of red and snowfalling white and lanolium floor coating
Of kisses on the hand
And punches to the jaw I sewed back in my nursed vicariously fanstasized mind
Because we can’t swallow
Sourness disinigrates our teeth and we don’t call those people that wait for our voices they pretend they
Recognize
Because the numbers are stuck in the condensation and the heaviness of these days and hours in the fog and dark fog that they put you in
And I’m getting older too
And now I should understand and they should too and
What the dictator of passing time allows is only this
Grudge
Grudging teeth of grit and ore and wafered bread and half touched wine
Driving north to a place of escape with como estas bonita senorita
And capes and watered streets of enlightened empty encounters
To complimate the radiant side of finding people who you must replace with imaginary friendships when they are gone.
Finding a place of placement in every place you go you go to find these new
Families
We find we make we consolidate and protect and neglect and reject
In embracement of the souls between, the space between we find heavenly and sweet heavenly space to swallow.
We can swallow around the lumps and folds of fear of losing of regretting

Burlington, VT 2006

a year of new

the new of the year in hours, or more, a year of new words, new seeings, new touches, new bellow laughs and new sunsets. a new finding of the simple days of waking when dreams are over and the belly aches for nourishment, wakings where the day meets you and sleeps when the stretch of the day swadles you in sheets.

to begin the new year.
yes.
things of new:
1.) a cradle for sorror
2.) a kite of reveling
3.) a sheet of soaking
4.) a beat for dancing
5.) a tree for carving mind's melt
6.)______________________

rain sounds

It sounds like the critter that used to run up and down our rooftops that summer we lived in the cabin. No electric wiring, no connection to anything external, to ourselves. Today the sleet slides and shimmies and the white carpet of the ground bewilders me. As though, I don't remember the season that is upon us. Do I feel this every year? Midwest, flat heart, not a sleet/rain pitter patter. Tonight I wore my Nana's cameo necklace and all the stranger friends who danced with me loved my jewels and, Mary, the older woman who sat beside me earlier, between her man-friend and I, to watch her granddaughter perform an African dance performance after mine, told me about her loves and her loves lost and the continuous Swedish dance of her days. The rain in her eyes reminded me. The loss will not dissipate,but the drops will turn to flakes in time, and cover and fill the emptiness that follows. Continuous movement- of thoughts- of body- of energy, this woman told me that she doesn't see an ounce of anger in me. She said I onlly had good love to give to others. I want to believe her. At the moment, with stagnant eyes, dry and drowning, there's an ache. To keep a step, to keep the walk in the sleet and the snow and the rain with those who kept the stride before and for those who will keep the stride after me, I will move along. I will keep dancing.

Expertise

My first day of expertise. I'm beginning to find, through my studies, through my meetings of new people and observations of new situations: expertise is a frame of mind. No one person can be identified as an expert without their consent to this level of referral. An individual may be deemed an expert, but the pivotal moment of their acceptance or declining of this naming decides the longevity of their honorary value. Today, sitting in the hospital clinic room with a 7 year old girl in a hot pink sweat suit and her loving family members staring and watching my ever move... I waited. Through drawings of hearts and stories about playing computer games... I watched her small back. Eventually shifting to my view, I got a smile. I got a smile from the youngest person I would encounter all day. After hours of speaking to physicians and nurses and people who spent years writing and reading and testing themselves and testing others and publishing their work, I stepped into a room with the wisdom of a 7 year old. She brought me back to the wisdom of simplicity to the foundational roots of what makes each person in this world human. Feeling. And she reminded me of the essence of human interaction. feeling. It was the moment she smiled at me and drew me a heart on my pad of paper and told her mother she "could stay with 'the doctor' Emily" while the rest of the family went to dinner... or better yet... asked me to join the family for dinner at Hungry Howie's that I had recieved, all the validation in the world. If I could help a crying small girl with her back towards the world invite me to Hungry Howie's, I've got the ability to alter Feelings. I've got something. worth. giving. I have got. expertise.