re-collecting

change is a measure of time, Barbour says.
and i linger at the side of my road
to watch your instant
expand into the infinity of my motion.
of my course forever altered
because you moved me.

 I have been reading my old poems today. The after-Andy poems. I was looking for... something, inspiration, lines to jerk awake again the need to write something that I could share with other people, here. It's funny, to me--Not funny-"haha" but funny-"curious," the places inside me that those poems touch. The strands of memory they find so easily, pluck and pull. I divide my life into befores and afters of significant life-changing... turmoils? Emotions?

It was my first real, broken heart, you see. And even after all these years, the centers of it are still that tiny bit tender to the touch. I see myself, at 19, in those lines. Was it really almost 8 years ago? It was. In ways it feels like yesterday, in others it feels like several lifetimes have happened since then.

For as stupid as 19 year-old Chels was. For as silly and shallow and self-unsure, she didn't flinch when it came to baring the open wound of her emotions. She was less... cautious... about pouring the blood from those veins into those many, many notebooks. She was less distracted by computer, xbox, work, being an adult, etc., and spent all that time just writing. Up all night, unloading onto paper all the things she couldn't say to anyone else. And of course some of those lines are ridiculously amateur - hell, the stuff I write now is still ridiculously amateur most of the time - but there are others that hit me, that hit truth. And that is what poetry is, isn't it? The truth of one's experience. Of one's ingestion of the world.

you, the axis, 
the fulcrum, 
of my past and growing.

my life in measures, 
before or
after the coda
of you.

 The coda was a good metaphor for it. She was a careful writer. Did it so often, her words seem more particular than mine do these days. Part of the reason I made that resolution to write for an hour each day, and to read a new book every week, to get back to that wordpool that I used to be able to drown myself in, or at least to dip my experiences in and have them come up soaked in some bright, better understanding.

set fire to these walls, 
and hope to scourge
the pestilence of your leaving.

Isn't that how it is? A few more broken hearts later, and I still relate to that line. Still know exactly what she meant by that. That hole that someone leaves truly is a disease, it makes you sick, could kill you some days. I'm not here to say "look, look at what I did, isn't it great?" No, I'm here because I was pondering the changes, the billions of instants that have brought me to this version of myself, to the point where that Chels seems like a wholly different, distinct, stranger of a person to me.

This is what growing up feels like, maybe. Curiouser and curiouser.

So, from now on, I am just going to write. I am going to write and then post it and not stop and think about whether or not I need to edit myself, because I don't. Anything worth doing is worth doing half-assed, as Jonathan says. And looking back through those old poems was testament to me that it's true. Despite how bad those old poems are as far as artistic merit goes, when it comes to data capture, they are far more valuable than I ever could have imagined. And that's what this bloggy-type journally dump-thing is for. Personal data capture that happens to be where other people can stumble upon it. Which I am ok with. It's my vested interest in being more open and honest with everyone, and not just selective groups.

(Although I still won't tell my parents about this blog, because I have too many swears in it, and I am trying to keep their coronaries and aneurysms at a minimum. So ppbbbbth.)

Anyway, song lyrics, for today's song "I'll Be Here When You Wake" by The Reindeer Section

leave my bed warm and i'll breathe in your smell
we shouldn't tell a single soul you know it's right
i want to shout it out it's killing me to hold
hold it in my head when there's barely room for me
and i say your name in the darkness like you could be there
and i miss you more when i'm coming down and i fear the door
leave my brain in knots that i'll never quite unfurl
i can't make head or tail of this fizzing on my tongue
both my hands are tied so i can't pick up the phone
even if i wanted to, by god i don't
and i say your name in the darkness like you could be there
and i miss you more when i'm coming down and i fear the door