Garden state of mind

We All Gave Thanks An Hour Ago.

Wow.. What to write; after 6 months?! What a flake as a writer I have been, on and off for so long. And yet so many valid fucking excuses I have, for everything else, other than not writing.

I'll let these hands take over for a small while, let be animated the key and keyhole portal of my true self imprinted on this borrowed flesh. How can I be more poetic? How can I stop from yielding to the days as they march over me? So many ways I know how to live the answer to these questions, and yet countlessly I shun my escape, day after day. I am overruling my calling, and running from myself in the ways I learned as a young girl. I defy my body. I hush my mind and all the brass, silver and gold keepings inside that seek fruition. And then I curse my fate! What a joke I've shaped so much of my time into. What a mockery of my capabilities and destiny. Dancing along in chaotic parades of  dishonor and shame and immaturity... I know my time is near. I can feel it knocking. I know I have fan backwards far too fast for just a little longer than I was allowed, and I feel slightly like a newly blinded person, that my fate will come into an uncomfortable permanence not fit for me, if I fight life much longer. I've done too much damage to the world around me to be in tune with the future much, or the promise I know it holds. But I feel that we are born with the pull of hope, and we are made with the urge to follow calls. It's our souls job to weed out which scents we leave to the winds, and which sounds we work feverishly to hone in on. I know I've stacked straws higher than Kilimanjaro on a losing bet; on a lame horse. I've been wondering, lately, if I have enough of my senses left in tact to heed the final calls that will sway my fortune promisingly. Or if I have fought too long, and too hard towards my own suffering by engaging in temporary escapes. Too many trapdoor shortcuts and even the most travel savvy sailor can lose their way. I wonder...

Alasssss,
I started to write this half-dressed and alone, cross-legged out back. Just me and the coldest parts of the night. But the rustling and sight of an enormous nocturnal creature of some sort left me scurrying for the safety of my own room indoors. As a result, my ability and pace of writing is vanishing as always when combined with artificial warmth, and the racket of a t.v. necessary for a dear one to sleep. So in conclusion I am done here, and headed to bed to find the sleep that should have been the daily reprieve I settled for so many years ago. The natural, allowable, sufficient escape. I will try it on for size tonight, and God-willing, soon it will be the only escape I choose.

Sweet dreams world :) And Happy Thanksgiving.

-dm.

A Girl In Port

Here I am, nearing 3 am again, tiring away like the hours of yesterday in my pumpkin coach. Not in a sad way, but in an inevitable mellow-drama. Falling out over time like the waves making it to the shore, no matter what shape in which they might actually arrive. Even if they die out, foaming at the mouth. I used to be a soldier at heart, but the desert has warped that blessed curse in this mind. All soldiers become weary. That is the shore that I am currently beached on, ribs caved in mindless breath. Thinking nothing, nothing, nothing. I am a sleep walker, a daydream cruiser. I am a reality winder-hide and seek bruised. Too much of a day is a bad thing for me, and I have had but an hour of rest between now and the sleep that pinched me barely between it's fingers for an hour or so. I wish I didn't have to start a stupid job this morning, but I guess it will help the day die. Hopefully this one falls like a half ass fire, because I'll have to be up at 5 am to start this puppy. Coffee in the veins, that's an incoming reality without a doubt. It's funny because the trains are blaring their business over each other at a constant pace, which is usually oddly comforting to me in these hours, a dulled reminder of home. "You can still go back one day". But, this morning they are too familiar, too selfish and obscene, like the trains that would scream 50ft from my head on a freezing Portland night, as I hated a concrete bed. Here's to fighting the lackadaisical. Here's to charming the pants off the rest of today, and goddamned most of all, a mouth frothing CHEERS to hitting that delicious stage of delirious when you know you're good because you and the world each have each other by the balls. Amen sister.

-dm.

I was waiting to be struck by lightning.

Here's to listening to The Lumineers "I Don't Wanna Go"

I am sitting here utterly prepared to convey and scream my love through these fingers that stream my soul. 

This is about my love, my dual spirit, my other end of the here and now, Kevin Pierre Tomanovich. 

The one who cares not for his middle name (which is French for Peter, though he is Italian).

 The one who wears the bands of metal upon his fingers that I bought for him celebrating another year, the year that he was born. 

So that he may catch the sight of them out of the corner of his sweet smiling eyes and be reminded of me. 

That he may laugh out loud because a good moment that we shared was brought to life at the sight of these mixed metals, that he might be overcome by it. 

So that these infinite presents may bejewel his magic hands and keep the current of his life source. 

So that he may enjoy them, I bought him those rings. 

Because he likes them, and wanted them; as I like him and want him still. 

I think of this boy, this man, trapped in a boys body, young in flesh and always in spirit, though coated in wisdom. 

I think of this soul, labeled Kevin in this life and I might think of how we re-labeled ourselves. 

Deep in thought about how we have been called Dallas and Kevin, without choice, before we were even breathing the air that we recycle now, and we studied each others faces calmly and patiently, scanning each others unsaid ideas silently. 

"Who would I be if I wasn't Dallas?" 

Would I be a Ruby? 

A Diamond, a Sapphire? 

Am I a Clair as I sometimes feel? 

Am I bound to be just a Dallas, or could I ever possibly be the Roxanne I once wished for? 

I think not. 

We thought hard. 

I stood to challenge a mirror for answers as he watched me; I only presume his eyes followed me admiringly as they do, soaking me up like rays feeding a reptiles skin. 

Giving health through the sight of love; energy vicarious through lust. 

I saw myself, un-Dallas, no Taylor, no longer McMackin and considered Gemma, Coco, Emmylou, Fiona, Victoria and Vienna. 

He commented that I was partial to the letter V. 

He paid attention to me in that moment, and so many more. 

I felt like home, with him, even in the midst of having no name. Even if at that very second I looked in the mirror and couldn't tell who I was then and there, I knew for sure I was His. 

I had no name, no label, no title to turn my head and respond to. No denomination of familiarity to  appoint as me. 

Just that feeling, of a small cold ribbon interwoven with my bones, that if you cut me open located and read, would "I am Kevin's. 

I know not my name, what I know is that I love him". 

We called me Daisy. 

Saturated in each others stares, our hungry gazes smiled and I slipped this new term on for size, easy and loose over my head like a pink, silky slip.

 I pulled that name on and smoothed it over my skin.

 I let it sit and felt it tangibly. 

 I let it stretch out to my size and shrink to my shape. And there I was, born again, his Daisy. 

I saw this man, this boy in part, strewn out across my bed, head rested on an emerald satin pillow. 

He lay and existed in the most, nonchalant, gentle form. 

Hands interlaced behind his head, black hair like a ravens wing, dark and smooth and with the same sheen. 

He does it in the mirror, that mirror I pocketed Dallas in. 

Kept here hidden away, yet close to my heart in a secret breast pocket. 

Gazing at each other, satiating our insatiable hunger for each other in the collapse of our lips in a kiss. 

Meeting, lip-locked, found and quenched. 

Rejuvenated through our closeness, in the waft of our sudden scents, mingling, and our skin warm to one anothers touch. 

Cultivating the desired end result; closeness and the calamity of passion swayed by sweetness shared. 

Breathing again, I let flutter open my eyes and the light of the world met me like the end of a movie when everyone in the theaters gets up and goes on their way, I could carry on. 

After this kiss was set aflame, burned, and died. 

His face parallel to mine, mirrored in our care. 

His sweet cream skin, thick with cigarette smoke and the smell of his sweat, pure comfort to me. 

Noticeable and different from all other memory making scents. 

Here he was, within fingers reach, rough khaki material dutifully wrapping his long legs. 

Black canvas boots haphazardly laced and strapped on to bear the weight of the world. 

"Who would you be if you weren't a Kevin?" I asked this beautiful creature, with an affinity to bring me joy. 

"Jack" he said. 

so assured. 

Jack fit like fingerless gloves on a seamstress in the cold. 

Like a glass slipper who'd made it home. 

Like a harmonica finding a blues-mans lips. 

The note sang Jack, Jack and Daisy. 

So we used this moment as another excuse to hold each other fast. 

Long and swept up in one another, new beings to that moment. 

The re-kindling of the people we were and still tucked away in a breast pocket, are. 

This woman that I am here sitting and typing this bit on the computer, is Dallas. 

Dallas Taylor McMackin as I write this. 

Dallas, conveying the stories that Ms. Daisy describes to me as she is lolled out in the breeze like a tongue rolling down the couch. 

Dallas, as I smile at the thought of Daisy, and swoon at the thought of Jack, sometimes known as Kevin. 

Beautiful we are, moments unwound and knots to be picked soon enough. 

There's a ribbon of love, a lavender ribbon encrypted with the proof of my love, waving wildly within the storm of my heart.

Singed on the tips; telltale signs of lightning strike encounters.

-dm

Go Bears!..

BlaAaAagh, soooo, I had another GRIZZLY BEAR dream again.. It's been quite sometime actually when it comes to the HAUNTING of my dreams and their freaky reoccurring ways.

So, last night my BEAR dream involved the cubs in it, like I usually do I saw the bear cubs first and immediately go into action mode because where there are cubs there is a big ugly mean mother..fucker. Fuckin' mother? Meh. Anyways, I see these cubs, and they seem moreee...teddy bear like, they just physically looked more like a teddy bear than an actual future evil giant grizzly bear that will inevitably stalk me in my dreams. Also, I was able to run inside without any SUPER close calls with mama bear, AND get all the other stupid innocent people whose lives fall into my hands, INSIDE the house so that NO ONE DIED! *phew* Also, in my dream there are always TWO bear cubs. Anywizzle, consensus: Dream NOT Nightmare. SO, I am prepared to, AGAIN, look up the significance of these 'swipe-your-head-right-off'' capable aminals in the DREAMWORLD.

Haha, wow so I am writing this current sentence at 2:53am the NEXT day. ANNYWAYS-BEARS! So believe it or not I actually DID look up bear's symbolism in dreams (not), I just got distracted during that same moment (believe).

Bears symbolize a multitude of things of course, and this is just a general interpretation (I mean we ARE talking about a dream here), but here goes. Bears are found to signify strength and honor. Usually, in a dream about or with bears, they often signify some type of habit (bears are habitual animals). They also can be a sign of duality. Or that you must hibernate on a thought for longer, or possibly gain some outside perspective on an issue before making a decision. They can also symbolize the very innate and raw protective nature of a mother bear.

I told Kevin about the dream in which that young grizzly cub was chasing me in circles and how I kept running and running and just barely making it through one door in my house just to try to survive running to the next and the next, and so on-as this ravenous, blood thirsty beast chased me, as if for fun, as if it couldn't wait to torture my frightened little soul. I told Kevin, about how somehow at one point I got just far ahead of the bear that I had time to slip behind one of the doors I went through. For some reason I had an orange and I rolled it out from the door to distract the grizzly and as it came lumbering slowly around the door frame, nose investigating the rolling orange, I came up behind the unsuspecting bear and slit its thought in one savage and poignant moment. And as my arm  finished the movement across the bears thought, I looked down only to see my dictator of an ex boyfriend heavy in my arms as his head rolled and hit the floor. There was no longer a beast chasing me, but this beast of burden I once called my lover wasn't chasing me with that familiar blood thirsty look in his eyes either. I've always loved that dream..haha it makes me smile to realize how actively my mind perpetuates surrealism. Asleep and awake. Or the other way around, some would argue we don't know the difference, but it's all the same thing to me. To me, my dreams are just myself communicating within myself without the ease of conscious thought because I am sleeping after all, and not therefore receptive to myself on a normal awake level. So this is where psycho-schematic processes bind together to communicate with me in a way where I am receptive to these thoughts, without having to be fully conscious. My electrical currents never stop, the temperature doesn't drastically change, I am still Dallas Taylor McMackin, except I double clicked 'hibernate' and shut my  mascara'd screens. I love how innate we are, I mean no wonder we are so analytic- we are so complicated, so complex and yet so in tune with everything else. We are at such oneness with ourselves until we give into that desire to analyze. But that's just my own analysis, so don't mind me ;)

3:33am- of COURSE.. good morning and sweet dreams world<3

Trainspotting. Dreams! On the lamb... Feng shui?

I've always dreamed vigorously. Here's to savoring my minds inexhaustible avenues. Here's to having as much energy as my imagination. So I'll smoke and let my fingers do the talking.

I watched Trainspotting with Kevin last night (or technically the night before since we are currently 3.5 hours into Sunday, I'll clarify by telling you that this dream happened Saturday morning to be exact). I had a dream that I was on the run, for some reason, I had done something reprehensible and the entire world was on the lookout for me like they were for the scummy fucks that bombed Boston (may we take them out ever so slowly now that we have found them). Anyways, the world wanted to get their grubby paws on me and were searching confidently, zeroing in. Somehow I found myself in a thick woods, of tree's that swallowed the sky and shot so high above you that you couldn't fathom that they ended at all. The sky was a far cry from the limit. As I said, I was on the run,  like a wild animal somewhere in the middle off NOWHERE I found a house. I made my way inside and came across two blonde toddlers, girls with ringlets. They were beautiful, and so very small that they couldn't much talk. This was a good thing in my dream I remember, because I could tell them not to tell anyone they'd seen me, or tell anything at all. I tried coaxing this fact to them with a hand upon one of the girls heads. As I am trying to convince them of silence, the grandmother comes about the house,  and I dash into a back room to hide, but she see's me. She is weary of my presence but tries to   keep her calm and as she makes her way to another part of the house I know intuitively that she is alerting the authorities and calling me in. For some reason I am in my little sister Leahs room I realize, and there is my dresser from my current room in front of me, and  its filled with my sisters clothes. In one drawer I know somehow that there is a clean pair of black jeans and a black top, so I change my clothes in an effort to switch up my appearance and better disguise my identity. I make a mad dash from the house, out a back door and careen crazily through this forest. I remember being terrified at the realization that I was going to get lost because I had absolutely no idea where I was, and no way of knowing where I was going, or how to "get away". The authorities were close, and I broke crazily through the heavy woods, I ripped through tangled low-hanging vines that weighted higher tree branches, I weaved through tree trunks, and remember falling into a swamp like body of water. A giant catfish gulped me up, so I stood up,  and undressed myself from its mouth like I was pulling a tight dress down to my feet. I make it to civilization, a city or town somewhere that resembles the suburbs in Oregon in which Mark Shaulskiy's parents lived. In my dream I am in the suburbs and it is early morning, the sun has broke the mountains from  sunrise and continues on it's daily route. This visual, and a lot of this scene reminds me of when Mark and I had planned to rob his parents safe, and had journeyed all the way to their home just to not be able to do what we came to do. It was so early in the morning when we finally gave up and ventured precariously back to my mother's house. Back to my dream, I find a road, and see a big truck with the back open, so I hide away inside to catch a secret ride. The driver uknowingly stows me away to help me along in my escape. When he finally stops he opens the back door and I hop out,  but he seems more surprised that someone was back there, rather than seeming to recognize exactly who it WAS that was in the back of the truck. I run out and wind up in hallways, white hallways like in a school but this place has a company feel, a well kept warehouse, and its just hallways of doors to storage rooms. I go into  a room, its got minimal light through closed blinds. The perfect amount of light where you can see the dust floating peacefully around in the soft suns rays that manage to peek through. Here in this room I have a mental narrative of Kevin explaining, how a room should be set up to be successful at what I'm trying to do, which is set this room up for some reason, not to stow away there but for weird reason I think I was trying to find some serenity, simply. And I started with making the room mine, so I picture BleuBleu's mural on the blank wall I'm looking at and Kevin's words are that I need a single chair, because the right seating is important, and that it MUST have a back (and I remember arguing with that logic in my head, "well of COURSE, otherwise it would be a stool right? not a chair..and I don't even HAVE a stool here to use so it's gunna be a chair obviously) hahah. Anyways, I remember vividly seeing the profile of kevins face, with bleubleu's mural contrasted in the background behind him (the one from the vid from his apartment) and he's  explaining now that I need a t.v., one that is not plugged in and that I must make sure that it doesnt work (and for some reason I get anxious and Im walking around with this old tv in my hands mumbling to myself trying to remember if he said it SHOULD or it SHOULDNT work.."he said SHOULDNT right? but shouldnt it work if im gunna HAVE a tv?"...I'm starting to lose  whatever calm I was able to afford, and at this point I'm  realizing they are definitely going to catch me, once and for all. I head outside, back where the same truck that I stowed away in before, is parked, abandoned again with the back open as it was before and as instantaneous as I walked out there were helicoptors and cops with guns and dogs. I remember knowing that the dogs were in the warehouse smelling me out so I made a vain attempt to escape being captured, just to walk into the inevitable capture anyways. I raised my hands slowly above my head, elbows cocked above each of my ears, and assured them I understood their requests and I remember yelling to the police over and over, "I am going peacefully! Hey, I'm going peacefully! Everyone calm down, I'm not putting up a fight.." And I laid  myself down on the ground in surrender and my dream ended before I could remember them actually handcuffing me, or taking me to a cell or anything like that. Quite the dream! I was just revising something else I wrote recently and in the middle of reading this totally unrelatable piece, my entire dream started coming back to me in full detail. Kevin mentioned, like I said, that I should write my dreams down. I do, and I have, but I don't take care to maintain their memory like I used to, and the sad/unfortunate fact is that I seem to dream less since I've moved here to Tucson,  and SPECIFICALLY since I got clean almost three months ago, so I miss dreaming. And it might be the case that I dream as often, but I just don't remember them like I did before.  Cheers to remembering!

-dm.

"Sugarplum fairy came and hit the streets."

            I remember taking a walk on the wild side. I remember wearing 3D glasses during the day time because my reality was so electric and so gigantic, that my eyes couldn't keep up. My pupils would cower, hunkered down in the surrounding blue-grey weather. They would shrink away in the yellowy white of their Ray Charles ways. I was on fire. I was attacking my own self, from the very nape of my neck. From the center of my spine, is where I started, and from whence my powers and problems grew. I was only looking to be alive, to have the world permeate my skin. To feel every existing wavelength with the very fibers of my muscles. I just wanted to have the weather seep into the roots of my teeth.  I just wanted time to pass through me, and pool at my feet. I wanted everything, and I wanted every moment and facet of life, to feel me watching it, to feel my eyes on it, my desire of it's fucking attention, so that the sun, and the nitrogen in the air, and all the poison in the ground, would have no choice but to stop it's necessary action on Earth, face me, and acknowledge my every taste and scent and flaw of how I stood before them. I wanted it all, I wanted the terror, and how I portrayed it only to be forgotten. How my brain would run like a shaken child, pounding against my skull, it would rampage upstairs, destroying the bad memories as they flooded the gates steadily. I pictured my brain, fervently dropping wine glasses of poison happenings, and stomping them ruthlessly like the Rabbi at a jewish wedding .I wanted everything, I wanted the exact epitome love, I wanted the flutter of my heart to feel fatal, and I wanted that comfort of  unquestioning commitment to the emotion. Where I had once felt like a half-read paper in the wind, tumbling feet over head in the dirt and grit over the edge of a sidewalk, I wanted love to come and have swept me up. Giving me the safety of gravity, like someone snipped the threads that held the night sky, letting  it fall on me like a blanket of black velvet; heavy heavy heavy as eternity. Heavy as what it held. Like my heart in its anxious confusion, wondering what all the racket my brain was making upstairs was really about. That blanket dropped like the new year at midnight, or like land that held dynamite. I wanted it all, I wanted the sadness that I held at bay until it caught me by surprise around a corner and grabbed me by my throat. The utter despair that demanded my attention like I expected of the Universe. The sadness that chilled my blood and stopped at the nape of my neck, the start of me and my problems, and resigned, frozen solid. Completely  stopped by the sadness, immovable, silent, hollowed and trapped under the ice. Stuck, the sole existing thing within the darkness of this emotion, living off of a trapped air bubble. Waiting for my life source to be snuffed by the calamity and  weight that the sadness I created, held. It was a beast of burden. My experiments gone wrong, a pet run loose. My consequences of these Ray Charles eyes. This sadness bore an infection from the smallest sliver of a shard of glass from a posion memory my brain crushed to smithereens,  but never properly disposed of.  I had wanted all of those things, the truth of them. The sweat of my Earth, and I wanted to know her taste.  If these hands were to be red, and god damn it there was to be blood, then I want it to be the blood of everyone I know. I wanted to know the deepest depths of the moments I encountered, I wanted them to bloom in front of me, with first breaths of air. I wanted to be the first face recognized, I wanted to be permanent, and important. I wanted the world to be connected to me, so we could chase eachother like tails. I was going to seek it like a duckling follows the first thing that graces it's eyesight. These kaleidoscope eyes that I overwhelmed with 3D glasses even, in my hunt of all things "more". In  the search for the farthest extent of "Right Now". And if I was going to dig  my toes into the ground until I could feel the heat of the sunset on a summers day in China, then god damn it I was gunna watch it die too. And, as I saw it, with my Ray Charles eyes. As I saw it with my minute pupils quietly seeing behind a 3D wall-the sooner I died, the closer I was to this "Oneness" I couldn't  capture as Dallas McMackin. This wholeness, that I sought. An idea I was educated about but had no personal experience of because in  all my efforts, I had concluded that life was slicked. It was our invisibly saran-wrapped, physical playground for the stupid,  for the dumb, and for the idiotic.Simply for the physicallity of it all only. Earth was where we suffered. We had a miniscule 70-80 year sentence on this blue and green orb so that we could become acquainted with the notion we have souls. We were given physical bodies, and life stages, and puberty so we could be fascinated, disgusted, and then familiar with our casings. We are like empty, self-fulfilling photo albums; where will we go? what will we capture? what might we want to keep with us forever? what would we die to forget? These are the things Earth is for. Our slicked, bubble wrapped world of perception-our Dummies Guide to gaining experience, so that we may one day hold the wisdom to truly want to understand these souls. So we start with ourselves; we are given disease, and death, and sex of all kinds so that we may understand our emotions, and the many colors in which they can paint us. How the way we feel paints our world. How if you look at the colors long enough, they can change and blur. What once was red, is completely blue sometimes in the end. The people, that the universe creates, winds and sets off toddling this way and that, those are the most catastrophic and game-changing of the tools we get on Earth. In this world. The most important tool, is others. I think more so than ourselves, because if it was just ourselves, nothing would change. The colors would never change, because we would never mix our palettes. These people are the objects that we bump against, friction of the souls, the ones that sand away at us. Intentional, accidental, vicariously; whatever the route may be, it's imperative. Intentions hold possibility of immediate change, results like a hammer to a piggy bank. Then there's the collective unconscious, still effective on us in our time here, like a trickle of water that grows into a river that evaporates only after it has formed the Grande Canyon. I felt these facts, and I wanted to know death sooner, because I had figured out the riddle of my here and now. I had burned and beaten, and loved and  soothed and worshipped my skin, but I couldn't reach my soul. I was exhausted by the rattling of my mind, and the quivering of my heart. The echo of my steps, and the harsh rasp of my breath not only in, but constantly following with an exhale. My fingers and my hands were my only friends, and they felt as trapped as I did. They begged to die, they only wanted to write and they hated watching me hurt myself when they KNEW that THIS life was only to learn that lesson. It was like finding out about a surprise party beforehand, and the dread of having to fake a sincere reaction. Of having to re enact and hold onto that lie. To try so hard to make it authentic for the world, a midst having probably just lost the very point OF that moment- The surprise. Life was an obstacle course to give your soul bruises, so you're better equipped in handling the magnitude of the After Life, or Hell, or Heaven, or whatever other world awaiting with the need to be capitalized, may be. I had wanted it all, and when the surprise was blown, I wanted to know exactly where  my prize was. I would stop up my throat if it meant I could strip this skin and feel time with my soul. If temperature lost validity and I was made up of the same components as Joy, and Anger, and the substances that make up all the light years of space, then that's exactly where I wanted to be. I had been walking, I took a walk on the wild side and met my maker one afternoon. I used a syringe to get some heroin into my veins so I could paint my world a little, and my soul jumped ship. I had perforated my skin, right through my moment on Earth and tapped my soul  on the shoulder. Instinctively it jumped, not expecting company for another 70-80 years it was caught off guard. I was handed a note through a dark door and it said "Open Your Eyes", so I did. The Dallas McMackin casing that I had been so crude with, opened the eyelids I was assigned that first day. As I did I realized that my vision was that of complete white. There was no shade, no color, no contrast, no shape or dimension. In my selfish and blind urge to paint myself something different, to change where I was into somewhere I wanted to be, I had thrown parallelism between my soul and body. I had flailed, and perforating my soul with a needle, I had sent myself spiraling too far ahead of myself like a balloon losing air. Luckily for me, the world is greater than I, and it's hands are gracious, Like I said, I took a walk on the wild side, and I do not remember where I went when I did leave this world, but all I know is when I got to come back, and I tried to "Open My Eyes" the world was all white. So far from my intentions of painting, it was now entirely blank all around. I brought my hands, my loyal servants and friends, I brought them to my face and found tears streaming my skin. Dancing rivers from my eyes-running, screaming. My fingers caressed the water telling me the details, they conveyed to me that there were tears here, and they brought cupped handfuls to their mouth to tell me that they tasted of salt, like the oceans that slow dance with gravity back here on Earth. In the white, the vast, stark nothingness without the comfort of dark, this is where my pupils were first ever afraid. They called out to my hands for directions, for details and for news. My brain smoothed away years of crushed glasses and bottles and porcelain remains for the time being, stoically internalizing the things my fingers and hands were interpreting. The messages of my hands, that first feeling of tears from eyes, this was my surprise party. Sensations, the ones I had spoken so low of, the ones I had thrown aside, and demanded instead to know "What Next?!", pounding my fists! My heart sat listening against my skull, intent upon every noise and happening on the other side. trying to make sure that it missed NOTHING of what my head was experiencing. My whole self was with me in entirety  watching my face, my reaction to the surprise party of my life. I remember when I returned from that walk, on the wild side that day. How I had overdosed in a public bathroom in a gaudy search for an emotional niche that was out of my reach, and when I was handed back to my body, soul in tact, I remember how I couldn't see. The amount of white made me cry, and I could feel  my head and heart eachoing eachothers greif and regrets realized. I remember how my fingers had felt the tears between them just to hold onto something, and how all of a sudden one of the times I blinked those tears away I saw the world appear in front of me again. I saw the blue sky, the robin egg blue sky, like it was mixed with just a dash of cream. No clouds had come to greet me, but a tree was there. With tendrils for branches, and I smiled and looked up within it's canopy, at a sparrow. A tiny brown sparrow with black markings, how it flitted from the ground only for a second before he took to the treetop. I remember watching this bird take off from the ground into the milk and sugar sky and how I paid attention to the sensation that my smile had, the pull of the corners and it's picturesque timing. How I intentionally remembered EVERYTHING about that moment, because I had almost lost it. I had stolen the beauty of the surprise, I had tossed it like salt over a shoulder.  I had lost so much time trying to negate everything around me in a shallow and heartless quest for the next best thing. I had ALMOST failed my bubble-wrapped world. But the world had grabbed me by my throat, along with my terror and love and sadness-it had looked me into my eyes until the moment no longer belonged to me, so that the memory of it was never  even an option. It had slithered through me,  overseeing my framework, seeing me for everthing I ever was and the things I could be if I tried, and it gave me the chance I was given the day I was born. I was re-assigned my task. My true task, as I had been told; ONE instruction, "Open Your Eyes" so I did, as I had 17 years before that, And I saw again, as if for the first time, like I had 17 years before. I had taken a walk on the wild side, and now I just remained with open eyes, because the world is already watching me, staring me straight into my eyes, into my iris, into my cornea through my optic nerve and pouring out into my heart of hearts. It is already there, it has always been and always WILL be, so I may now continue on walking. For it is not the arrival or the end that I need seek, but I must see the many colors of this world, and feel the textures that this life leaves on me. You see, we are but canvas, and we must choose to roll in the world of our colors. We must seek to battle the blank.