Archive for the 'explanations and things left unsaid' category

Circumspectral Evidence

Apr 16 2012 Published by under explanations and things left unsaid

It is not the specifics of you. Though your voice creeps down my ear canal with cello-string stealth and leans arms-crossed smirks against my tiniest bones. Though your mouth twists from cynical symphony to delighted melody in unexpected wit. Though our words bounce in complex rhythms against the dried taut skin between your mind and mine. These are not why.

You are part of an awakening. I blame the spring, the green, the shedding of insulation. I blame new eyes that are old eyes. I blame the stretching, strengthening muscles that mean less than an unfolding of a reconstituted heart. I blame sounds and songs and remembering how to play. Like this. I blame eyes and lips I may have loved once upon a time and never reconciled.

You are catalyst and coincident. Forgive me I can’t give you more than that.

Comments are off for this post

At the end of a long day

Apr 04 2012 Published by under explanations and things left unsaid

I have lost the poetry of dealing with today. A day spent taut and sparring within and without. I am done. Weary and restless and knowing that tomorrow will leap at me again. I wonder what I’m doing. Not here. Amid the cherry blossoms I am home. But I cannot find the voice of my imaginary companions. And overheard conversations no longer amuse. I grow shrill and shouty in the re-telling. So we sit in silence, vying for distraction.

I was acerbic, angry, and anxious. All at the front of the alphabet crowding out the rest of my time. Avoiding later adjectives as if they might implode against the pounding of fingertips. The aversion to sleep hums at grasshopper pitch. Though, of course, I am far away from grasshoppers and have to remember frog song in the evening.

Today is without sense. Without structure. Without song. I miss former lives, former loves, former dreams. These years are my reality. And I can’t bring them into order.

Comments are off for this post

Letters home

Mar 19 2012 Published by under author's notes, explanations and things left unsaid

My dear friend,

I am always intending to write you of large and small things. The words I horde in treasure boxes and the secret phrases of magnolias in bud. The world moves in ways I don’t accept, and so I’ve moved my heart into Victorian England, hoping for more than it can give. These barriers of time and place make no difference to a sentence, though perhaps I don’t connect it to the subtleties of dialogue. Streams only flow into larger rivers and can’t receive anything back. The mechanics of tributaries stretched into wispy metaphors.

Because it’s late, and in honour of the occasion, I’ve made myself a cup of camomile tea. And in my impatience, I will burn my tongue, unless some thought hangs on its expression until the steam subsides. The weather has been moody, bearing the burden of peevishness for me. I find myself opening in the lateness of March, the promise of a slow climb into warm weather. The smell of dampness has changed, and though I have stepped to spring attire just a touch too early, the morning chill remains less penetrating than it was. So my heart eases into the new green that lies just beyond the cherry blossoms.

I do not apologize for the opacity of this letter. I think you, of all people, know the meaning of these turnings of my mind. The chaotic sacrifice of sense on the altar of sound. Because this is me at some hours, just as the woman you knew once upon a time is me, and the uncertainty of tomorrow is also me. However you are, whatever you wish you knew, may your journey bring you occasions of peace. And always remember with love this woman with a pocketful of whimsy at the ready. I am yours faithfully,

Jessica

Comments are off for this post

Sinking in

Jun 12 2011 Published by under adventures, explanations and things left unsaid

What a long week it has been. I relax in my own comfy chair next to an open window in the corner of my living room. I watch the tiny movements of the maple leaves and listen to the traffic on Granville and beyond. The chirp that accompanies pedestrian crossings on either end of my block. This feels like the first moment of stillness in months, but we only arrived on Tuesday.

I’m surrounded by boxes after four days of a near empty apartment. We had a miscommunication with the moving company; our stuff was not delivered when we had expected, so we had to make do with what we had crammed in the car and what our new building manager was kind enough to lend us. Sleeping on an air mattress notwithstanding, it was nice to get to know our new living space without our possessions.

The building is old. A little run down, but comfortable. Charming and colourful and compact without feeling cramped. A nice change after the soulless townhouse in Edmonton. Oh, it was a decent place to live for the time we were there, but it had no mystery. This place already feels like it wants to be home.

It has been a week of motion. By car, by bike, on foot. I’ve walked kilometres this week. In sun and shade and cloud. Walked down to surprise tall ships off Kitsilano Beach. To an excellent sushi place. To Granville Island. Up and down the shops near our place. Re-learning my feet.

Tomorrow, I start work. I don’t know if the ordinary style of permanence that a job gives life will tip me into the reality of my situation. Because it still feels like I’m just visiting. Even though everything I own in the world is here. I’m not really here yet. Because if I’m really here, almost everyone I want to share this adventure with is too far away. And I’m not ready for that.

Comments are off for this post

Older posts »