I Squint to See Love

Snow happens softly in Oregon. 

We finally know what the cold rain looks like

when the white appears.

Solid.

But so soluble. 

It is a comfort to see the falling of the snow. 

Like so many desires

waking up and finding themselves suddenly tangible. 

Bleary-eyed but here;

present. 

A voice asking you to go on. 

Or the touch of a dreamed-up lover.

When I walk out in the snow

I am among the presence

of fully realized dreams. 

Squinting,

creasing my eyes; 

the only way to look up and see it all.

I am reminded of photographs in the family attic.

Within them all is a small child; a daughter.

In one she is sleeping; her head rests on the belly of a house cat.

In another she pouts with her arms crossed in mock adult-hood.

You get the picture. 

The daughter is the picture

until you squint your eyes.

Only then can you notice a constant companion, 

always a bow in her hair.

Colors combed in with exact precision.

Intentional softness.  

I am reminded of snow when I see her bows;

tangible evidence from the dreams of 

another.

Let the Rhythm of the Snoring Carry You Away

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There are surprising positive consequences inherent in being the eldest sister.

For example, I always get the place I want to sleep in the hotel room. Not counting the master bed if the parental units are present, of course. But a pull out trundle? Right side, two pillows. Only a couch? I'll take that. In a family of three sisters one girl is always ousted to the floor, and it is my job to make sure that she is never me. Call me cruel, but I don't need no treaty of Westphalia to practice sovereignty, yo.

Actually don't call me cruel. I've had rough day - insults are not desired here. Another philosophy in how to obtain the best sleeping arrangements is to have a reputation for being the "best sleeper." In other words, I do not kick, bite, steal covers, and/or snore.* Bailey, on the other hand, is violent. If she ever wants to be a pacifist, she will first have to confront her sleep-self. Don't be fooled by the cute button nose - underneath the facade is a dreaming round-house kick to your sleeping face. Coincidentally, she is sleeping next to me right now. Tonight does not promise to be too crazy, but do pray for me. Never let your guard down. Let the rhythm of her snores serve as your reminder. I think I will build a pillow wall for safety.

Maddie, luckily, is not a threat tonight. She was bumped to the couch. At this point a collective sigh of relief is released everywhere. You see, Maddie is a sort of "viscous koala sleeper." It's a real thing. First she takes your covers. Than she wraps her arms and legs around you. Then she sleep talks in your face the rest of the night. This may sound cute to you, but rest assured that I know better. A Posteriori.

Thus, maybe out of pity they allow me to sleep where I want. They are self-aware. They know their powers. Oh the collective force of sisterhood.

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In other news, my day has not been rough. That was simply rhetoric I used earlier to illicit pity from my readership. Forgive me for showing you the man behind the curtain, but I wanted to enlighten you a little on my weekend.

I'll make it short and sweet:

Beach.
Sun.
Oregon.
Family.
Coffee.

Notice that essay-composing is not among the list of features present during the weekend. Um. I'll fix that, I promise.

Good thing blog posts like this exist in 198 miles, or people might start to suspect that I have literary intentions.
... But you and I know better.

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* comparative to others in my life; They kick, bite, steal covers, and/or snore worse than I do.

Like a Landslide

How do we learn to recognize?

My eyes work over the lines of your face and I immediately know I've seen the grooves of it before. Memory must live in the grooves of life.

Grooves of all sorts; ditches and dimples, cracks and corrugations. 

This weekend I drove over the pass of I-90 into eastern Washington. To a little town of Quincy, if you are familiar with the area. There is a canyon filled with the Columbia river winding its way past the town. It was good to behold so much space in a single landscape. I'm always too tucked away into my corner of Seattle. 

In a poem written from the point of view of a mirror, the great and terribly parlous poet Sylvia writes; 

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.

It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

I find that many people are mirrors. And many people are continually frustrated by opposing forces in their attempts to reach out and touch something. In that frustrated distance, however, exists a reflection. Pitching itself and folding in, our parts reflect a landscape. Always. 

As a teenager I would drive a specific route to high school every morning. Many early mornings would see me putting a fleetwood mac tape into my cassette deck and rolling over the Mollala River bridge to Canby High. Every clear morning would reveal Mt. Hood - a white peak set against the rose-tinted clouds of 7 am. 

It was a sort of liturgy for me. I would clear the little hill and immediately the visage of the mountain would be beside me. And in my head, I would repeat; "I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart. I have looked at it

so long

I think it is a part of my heart."

Until it was. It is. 

Whose visage are you seeking, my friend?

Of whom is the reflection in your heart? 

Who Knows What Will Happen Next

I came home to Canby this weekend.
In what might be termed an overdue visit.
I've been crying over phones in the seats of my car
and neglecting the folding of clothes on my floor
my iambic pentameter is poor, no doubt.
but unintentional, so don't fuss or shout.
Most importantly
I can't seem to see
any flashing car lights
or noises from planes;
a simple silence of crickets pervades
I am at peace, I claim it for me -
a small step for mankind, one big step for Lyndsay.

Timshel

My mouth opened with the flare of my nose

My nose closed with the fall of my chest

My chest rose in time with my knee

My knee left a rose on my thigh

Movements may never lie.


My eyes would not believe my bones

My bones disagreed with my skin

My skin fell in love with my hair

But my hair was cut and left in the sink

Whilst I remained on the brink.

A Phone Call After Dinner

I am trying to substitute your face with this phone.
But let us be honest --
No Nokia, no Verizon 3G smart-berry has the capacity to replicate your contours.
Not even the Iphone, with its HD image capture and its smooth and silky touch screen, makes an even veritable trade.
You know, all these letters piled together can be simplified. 3GHDR2D2.... though the acronyms have taken on new meaning through repetitive cultural use, they can still be simplified into single, fully-telling words.

Accompanying your face is a name, but your name will never be able to fully tell the story of your face.
To know this story you must experience it - like one of the Spanish words for knowing. They say conocer. To know. To experience. The Spanish always understood the multiplicities of knowing far better than we.
So in the spirit of the conquistador I have held the smooth ridge of your cheek to my palm, I have wiped away tears from your eyes. As the eldest, I admit I am protective. There are pores in your cheek that I can see when I have sat across from you in the past- it reminds me that you are human and open to the world. (Though your 15 years of life would like to close itself off from everything, at times.)
I miss you, more than midnight poetry can suppose.

And for those that insist that cell phone vocabulary will never pass as poetry, my only reply is: The things you spend the most time with become part of your heart. And our heart, friends, is the only example of living poetry that we have.

Tonight my heart reflects only the screen of an Iphone, as your voice travels one hundred and ninety eight miles to fade quickly in my ear. I can't grasp it; sound has no pores. Tonight my heart reflects only a screen; smooth and without any opening to the world. It does not open to me.

There is a word in this post that isn't real

Oh girl imbued with a volatile nature!
Why do you neglect your little blog?

Some questions, dear friends, can not (or refuse to) be answered here on this 2 x 4 of internet space.
My little stake of cyber space, etched out here. 23 followers. 23 followers who subscribe to the jibbering foggy notions of a 3 am brain. March came and went, I thought it would make more of an impact this year. But I thought wrong; March is always surprisingly quick. What irony, when March finds its namesake in Mars, the god of War. Wars always take a long time. (You can argue that sentiment if you want. I admit there are loop holes. Loop holes everywhere, and I am overwhelmed with them!)

The twin's recently married friend is here, sitting on our living room couch. He is finishing out his bachelors at some  university here in Seattle, I forget which. He is a nice guy, I saw him drum in a band once in Canby before I knew him. That's when I first met the twins as well, though we would forget about that meeting (embarrassing for me) until three years later during a conversation in their house in Seattle.

I bring the married friend, Tommy, into this post because his conversation has inspired me into a bit of transparency. But, being a girl of volatile nature, that moment of inspiration is already passing. Basically I will summarize: He mentioned his new wife with such sweetness, respect, and consideration that it jolted me, for a moment, out of my stolid insistence on independence.

I would like to be considered deeply. Does that make sense? I would like some one to ask me questions and actually want an answer. So many people, and I am guilty of this too, flush out so much information via the web and life in general. Tumblr, Tweets, whatever. It's the mating call of the 21st century. Look at this video, look at this picture, look at this thought I'm thinking. Cute, right? Date me.

Goodness I have been going over this thought a lot lately. I want to keep going, but I'm going to let it alone for now because I have an 8:00 tomorrow. It is possible that I have been conceptualizing a lot lately, and am just realizing it. Maybe thats why I haven't been posting. Too much time has been going into generating thoughts, very little into writing them down.

But who cares about this, right? Whenever I tell people that I blog, (There I go, flushing out information again.) the response is always, "Oh I could never blog - no one would want to read what I'm thinking or doing - how boring for them!" Then we chuckle and I insist it isn't true and life goes on. But really those instances are always downers. What did I say in this post? What have you gained from this? 23 readers, forced to tag their names onto a mass of ever-evolving, well-intentioned bullshit.

But I love it. I won't stop. This is for me, not you. Get over it.

Oh lonely girl in your Seattle apartment,
Your getting lazy and translucent in your blog writing.