One need not be a chamber to be haunted;

One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
~Emily Dickinson, "Time and Eternity"



The brain is strange. I know that everyday I'm forgetting more and more, growing farther from the memories I made ten, five, two years ago. I remember graduating, but no details about the day. I remember the first time I said 'I love you', but I don't remember anything about what prompted it, just where I was and who I was with. I remember turning 21 (surprisingly) but not who all was there, or where we went. I remember lots of things, as in remembering they happened. You tend to lose the details.

Why is it then that the brain decides to remember every single little detail of the days of tragedy?

I was in Bed, Bath, and Beyond the other day. All of sudden I was frozen with the strangest panic and anxiety. I immediately went back to August 8th 2009. I was on a marketing assignment with Melissa for Kildares, and we stopped in Bed, Bath and Beyond so that I could buy a wine opener, since I had lost mine during the move to my new apartment. I hadn't been in a BBB since that day. I still can't wear anything I wore that day. I remember everything about that day. It had been one of those wonderfully average, warm and laid back summer days. I worked all day with Melissa, had dinner with her at Subway, and then we had one of our chill wine nights. I remember us discovering the creepiness and awesomeness of Toddlers and Tiaras and how much we laughed during the marathon of episodes TLC was running. I remember catching up on the True Blood that I had missed with Patrick later that night. Walking home because I refused to make Patch move his car to take me home, because I am stubborn. I remember walking down Bernard, contemplating a Taquito, and then ultimately deciding I didn't want to feel like crap in the morning. Remember not having any food in the house. Remember losing on of my contacts in the sink when I took them out. Watching a history channel special about prostitution in ancient Pompeii. Turning off the TV. Hearing the noise. And then seeing and feeling and screaming things I will NEVER forget.

It sounds twisted and maybe dramatic, but I will never forget how his hands felt on me. How my stomach churned up through my esophagus and my hands tried to pull and grab and push and stayed painfully immobile. How it was like watching myself scream, like hearing myself but not really believing I was the one making the sound. How even in those brief moments I was at once denying it was happening and also knowing very well what he could do to me. Looking at the window and screaming louder. Wondering how I could run outside even if I got free, being that I was only in my underwear. Feeling like I was going to die.

And after, breaking free, watching him run out of the room, the realization that my heart was beating so fast and hard that I thought for sure it was going to beat right through my chest. Like it was going to explode. My head pounded so hard that I was sure I would pass out and that my brain was going to fall out of my skull. He was gone but I continued to scream still hoping that someone would hear. I looked for my phone and could barely hold it. Calling 911 and realizing I had no idea how to describe what just happened to me.

As the months pass I get farther from it. Less and less I have to talk about it, unless its to the lawyer or the detective or someone on the case. Somedays it really does just seem like a bad dream that I can't shake, like something I remember very well but never really happened. Other days, like the day in BBB, and I get transported right back to that exact point in time, and I feel it all, all over again. I had never until that point, and not since, ever felt pure, true terror. And its weird. Because I don't really want people to know. Because I'm not some freak and I'm not going to break and no one has to tiptoe around. I'm ok, and I'm lucky to be here, and to not have been hurt. There's not a lot more I could ask for. If it had to happen, it had the best possible outcome. The only thing I want is to able to feel safe again. To be able to sleep and not run through all the possibilities in my mind every night. To not double check the deadbolt on my bedroom door 10 times a night, or check the window locks every night, or freak out that the fire escape is next to my window, or obsessively make sure the window alarms are working. I want to be able to go downstairs at night and get a goddamn glass of water if I want to. I guess when it comes down to it, I just wanna feel normal again. Because there is a sense of myself that is gone that used to be there, and I miss it severely. It'll be four months next week. Everyday it gets better. Everyday it will get better. I'll always be cautious, I know. I just don't want to always be afraid.

-J

Songs From The Roof

The return of the Cool Night,
come, to sit and talk a while
hold my gaze with Your gleaming eyes
like crystals, gathered, strewn in the skies.

You brush Your wind
To lace my hair
like the touch of a lover's
sweet breath: Your air.

year to year I still succumb-
I revel in the moments, few
when Cool Night, fickle in his favor
quickly bids adieu.

to let it's ripe-breath pass, unheeded
to waste into bitter ice
though Your sweetness be unfaithful, Night-
I make the sacrifice.

For like the love that passes on
And drifts away; cold, obscure-
Cool Night, you leave your memory
For I,
I need not more.

-J

Vicissitudes

The dark November
stark
raving mad cold,
tonight the trees feel old
bend and weep in an icy sweep

It is this night, I know
I do not love you-
but oh, how I once loved you
in the blanketed arms sheltering
late autumn's sting
and the wind would sing,
not morn.

I do not love you,
but how I once loved you
in my season,
smiled on you
like the golden shards
that green the trees
and fuel the summer's balmy breeze

Now the green has gone
and golds and reds and yellows fade
to grey, then bare
like the day that follows tomorrow,
I go from loving you
to not loving you,
to naked branches, starving, cold.
Tonight, I will feel very old
Remembering how once, I loved you
And you loved me, too.

The sun lowering out of the sky
stealing the last warm breath from day,
to know the loss of the sun's favor, into night
and that once, I loved you-
to know that I have lost you.

-J

Abe Lincoln Will Call You Out For Talking Shit on Other People

I was doing some reading on Lincoln for a class. We're studying a play in which Lincoln is indirectly a central character. It's a very difficult play to grasp (The America Play, Suzan Lori Parks) and I've been searching for the past few weeks for a way to get a good grasp on it. I was reading some of Lincoln's writings when I came across a passage in one of his letters to an Allen M. Ford, during his run for the Illinois congress, concerning rumors being spread that he was a religious scoffer, among other things. This is what Lincoln said:


"But there is one lesson in morals which he might, not without profit, learn of even me -- and that is never to add the weight of his character to a charge against his fellow man, without knowing it to be true. I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him." -Abraham Lincoln


I think those people who get so extremely caught up in gossip, rumors, drama, etc...should check out some Lincoln. If I judged everyone on what I heard about them, I probably wouldn't have any of the incredible friends that I have. I live and work within circles that are prone to this, and people wonder how I'm still sane. It's both simple and complicated: You can control yourself, you can't control other people. People will, for whatever reason they wish, try as they may to destroy you, bring you down, slander you, taint your character, and put you into a box. You only let them if you give credence to their insecurity by stooping to their levels or letting them dictate your actions. The best thing I can ever do is live my life as I always have, openly, in plain sight, and be proud, no matter what falsehoods are wrongly attributed to me.

And so it goes, my admiration for Lincoln's elegant calling out of the shit-talkers of ages past. I wish politicians these days could be so eloquent.

-J

The Landing

(Written 7/2/07 - for M.P)
Sunlight dying
across the Delaware
breeze brushing bare shoulders
as creeping dark climbs
clinging to the trees
greeting tiny boats not far from shore
I dangle my small feet,
river air prickles the skin.

I should like that only the sound
of sighs whisper in this music-night
I am chilled
and calm
and I know nothing,
but your eyes are three colors.

The tiny toy boats float
you smile to ask, may we come aboard?
and laughing lightly
at the absurdity of the thought
not of sailing a stranger's fleet
but how my guarded heart now dangles
like my tiny frozen feet.

-J

Oxytocin Blues

(or a silly little song written to make a lot of funny sounds)

beat beat beat beat
drop sink boom
curled up in my room

can't even show my face
or paint my toes
cause everybody knows
cause everybody knows

tornado in my torso
hurricane in my head
you're a natural disaster, baby
leaving me for dead

there goes the neighborhood
along with my heart
there goes your big big big
blue eyes
throw me back to start

thudding in my sinoatrial node
my ventricular cells are about to explode
help me help me doctor boy
before I go to code

beat beat beat beat
drop bam boom
beat beat beat beat faster now
its gonna kill me soon
beat beat beat beat
baby don't you know
there's just no other way I'd rather go, oh oh oh

-J