On losing things

I am shedding objects. Moving in, moving out, alone, with friends, with family. Everywhere things get left behind.  My passport in Madrid, sunglasses on the cruise, shorts, earrings, and flip flops in Ibiza, makeup in Brussels. Several lighters, a pack of cigarettes in Barcelona, a pipe, nice marijuana, some hash, a nail clipper. Many pairs of underwear stolen from off my bed in Amsterdam, along with my primary bag of toiletries. Two leather purses, an expensive digital camera, a notebook with a week’s worth of drunken and drug-addled notes regarding the meaning of life written in Brussels and Amsterdam. Late for my train to London and in a sleep-deprived fog I left a bag behind.

I am saddest now about the notes. The camera is insured, I only lost a day’s worth of pictures, money comes and goes like the tide.

This is a moment to reflect, to get my shit together and see more thoroughly: through my pen, rather than so obsessively through the lens. I will remain open to magic and adventure and I will write more dedicatedly, I will strive with more passion to sort out my dream and make it real. I will get more of it up, out, and on the net in case another notebook or this laptop are lost next.

I don’t need these objects, I don’t need these records any more than I need any thing. All I need is experience and language. To sharpen my pen, to forge forth with more gusto, to be stronger.

I will enjoy being lighter, being less fixated upon holding on. I will get square with the stream of the universe, with the fact that all fades and eventually no one will know I was ever here. Images are not superior to reality, they only offer us the illusion of immortality by preserving precisely the moments that slip past us in real time. We cling to photographs to fill our flawed memories, to give us narrative jumping off points when the mind fails.

We are in those images, our vision and our presence. It is not unreasonable to mourn the loss of that evidence.

Still, reality trumps its lens-snatched facsimile. I am getting closer to that in prose, close as can be; I am shuffling up to it, snuggling my skin against it like an antsy, coiling cat.

I must keep looking as if I have the camera; perhaps I’ll buy a new one when I head east. I musn’t be afraid of losing cameras over and over again because it’s just money, just hassle. Hassle moves and motivates like any part of the journey, I can’t be afraid or impatient with it. This is the worst that can happen, remember? I know my silly self.

“Ridiculous absentminded girl, how can she do this again? How does she exist this silly way?” I ask from the outside, feeling my purse like a phantom limb. But I know, I do know my silly self, I expect nothing less at this point. In spite of my disappointment, silver linings sink in like the gray relief of Dutch sky after so much scorching Spain. Luckily luckily I did not lose my passport again, luckily luckily I still have my ticket to London. I will get there, things are not so bad, nothing will stop my forward momentum.

Last week in Amsterdam, a mushroom trip dissolved into panic at the end of the night. The pleasant thing about drugs is that generally if you take too much, you wake up in the morning and everything is right with the world again. This is different; the consequences here are real. Canceled credit cards, lost equipment, another bump up in my mother’s anxiety. I wish I could turn it all back. I wish I was less like me and a bit more like someone else, someone responsible, someone fastidious and vigilant.

The roller coaster will take me up again, I’m sure. For now I dial these numbers again, where lost objects are meant to be found. I hope that someone kind will read my notebook, find my address, and drop it in the mail.

I find a nail clipper on the bench, waiting outside the station. I have no money and no heart, but a friend is on the way to rescue me. The sneaky universe has not forsaken me yet.

first two video attempts

#7/30 "Welcome to Cebu"

In the morning, the city is dirty-beautiful,

bright paint burned tired turquoise and pale pink.

This vintage palette complements

the hello-waving verdant palm leaf fans.

Other tropical foliage crawls

an insistent claim to the land

over buildings of weepy concrete.

The streets are crowded with knock-kneed kids

and shirtless, shiftless men. The men hawk

sunglasses and towels for pennies to the stalled traffic,

or load heavy knots of star apples

onto the backs of motorbikes. Jeepneys bursting

through their glassless windows with humanity

weave naked and neon through the gaps.

Everyone sweats in their shacks

cobbled of corrugated tin and beer billboards.

A woman lifts her hair in a breeze,

smiling at the baby on her hip.

I am here, adding

whatever I am

to this ripe beginning.

#1/30: "Denial on the Dock"

30 poems in 30 days? Fantastic. Let's do it. Here's #1.

Mama with your fancy heart

full of wedding rings,

let go of them red balloons

and take me to the circus.

I want to watch a fantasy be

honest about itself.

Imagine that tightrope,

perfect under paid feet instead of

trembling in your poor throat,

forever calling across the water

to a ship not coming in.

Mama I am tired of this dirty dock,

tired of the way you say the fish

won’t smell tomorrow but every day

is the same, salt-burning sun

driving your welcome balloons

a little lower, that ship never

coming any closer and fish

one after the other lain

gutted on the wood to stink

like they have to, because that

is what men do to fish; make them stink.

At the circus I hear they have a silk tent

wide enough for everyone.

Forget your diet, let me buy you one of those

popcorns big as your head.

We’ll throw some at the lions

to prove we aren’t scared.

Laugh with me, Mama,

at the clowns and tumblers falling

head over heals for their buck.

Better at them than us, still waiting

for fish to stop stinking in the sun.