sure i want all this shit. moneycarclothesgold. but i want the best. a tt, it has to be silver otherwise you miss the impact of the black grill and it looks so good like that. and custom leather knee-high riding boots, black and chestnut two-toned, and the skinny legs that are prerequisites to boots like those. i want white gold and i don't give a shit about diamonds, but gimme watches and bags and shoes. give me the sunnies and hair and the body to match, please. glamour. its all this city craves.

all i have to offer is angst.

remember that time we danced in the doorway? i don't know what song it was, something about clouds maybe? it was such a silly moment but it is one of those that comes back to me when i think of you. god, how disillusioned life seems after everything. all i want is to get on my bike and ride down to the road, just past the beach. the empty stretch where you can always steal a moment alone. contemplative and cool in the east wind, looking out towards the lighthouse across the harbor. that water. nothing could nurture me more. it quietens my disturbed soul. i am realizing now what i always suspected to be true, that my time underwater was what made me. meditation. and now i am trapped in this glass and cement cage. i saw the sea today, only the turgid water of the bay. there are too many people here. if i cannot be with you i want to be with no one. how impossible to escape, this modern world.

here's to hoping this last glass of wine and my favourite new band will enfold me in catatonic arms and let me sleep in peace. no more dreams of your face distorted, disappointed, unloving. no more waking to the reality that you are gone and i am alone. if only your body was cocooned around me in this cold. if only i could go back. i am here, but my {xxx} is with you still. with these songs i attempt to fill in the spaces. like sea water through cupped hands, my heart runs out.

 i am with you.

*Can't help myself but count the flaws/Claw my way out through these walls/One temporary escape/Feel it start to permeate
We lie beneath the stars at night/Our hands gripping each other tight/You keep my secrets hope to die/Promises, swear them to the sky
The bittersweet between my teeth/Trying to find the in-betweens/Fall back in love eventually/yeahyeahyeah* {Young Blood}

until, now... happy.

things turn around.

everyone but  you.

silence.

the garage:
no less than six bicycles, two motorcycles (possibly functional), one motorcycle (boxed), two pairs of cross-country skis, a gas grill, five cases of beer, a box of sprouting tubers, our old kitchen cabinets, a folding boat, several vacuum cleaners (probably nonfunctional), pieces of at least three home-gym machines, a basket of dried gourds, a table saw, a bookshelf, two cat carriers (one circa 1970), what was at one time a workbench now piled a foot high with stuff, tools, ladders, a sack of onions, tires, a machine i don't recognize, boxes of photos, three coolers, two fans, boxes labeled "garage," bags of plastic recycling, bags of stuffed animals from our childhood, rakes, brooms, fishing things, gardening things, cans of paint, an instant canopy "64 sq. ft. of shade" never opened, an old tape deck radio, strings of christmas lights, a saddle, pieces of wood in all shapes and sizes, old suitcases, folding chairs, a broken chair, and a roll of white mock-tile linoleum.

just outside of the garage sit one 1962 triumph TR-something (was last functional when i was about nine, nineteen years ago, and has rarely been seen outside its blue tarp wrapping ever since), six rubbish/recycling bins, two stacks of plastic chairs, and a section of white picket fence.

it is one of the great tragedies in my life, that i was born an american. (another, that i was born half-chinese, without the blonde hair, blue eyes, and long legs of my distantly-german-scottish-french mother.) my soul, i have always felt, has resided in britain. in the ragged cliffs and angry seas, the rolling soft green pastures with their hedgerows and sheep, the sturdy ponies and muddy wellingtons, ancient stones and viking burial grounds. the romanticized country pub with its fire warm in winter and dark beer and simple food. charles dickens and j.r.r tolkien (though his history was mostly invented, i always wished it was real), mary poppins and most of all jane austen. spencer and chaucer and milton and shakespeare. king arthur and sir gawain and beowulf and once a novel about a girl-paige with violet eyes who could wield a sword better than a king. what history could stand up to that? certainly not a history full of stuffy old men putting things in writing with plume-pens and those stupid pants. i was never very much beguiled by the vast expanses of unexplored territory: The West. i have been raised in the west, and it is lovely, but never so romantic as the unknown lands of the old country. even the native americans, whom i do admire, especially in their wisdom regarding the earth, and animals, and their quiet reverence of all things, have never held my heart. i feel more connected to my other ancestry (though it is not by blood, as far as i know), of the ancient polynesian explorers. the native hawaiians who were strong, dark, of the land and more so of the sea, who sang in a beautiful language and believed in mischievous menehunes and the power of the waves. they were warriors, they were royalty. they have eleven letters in their alphabet, only the letters that make the most melodious sounds. and the others -- the maori, with tattooed faces and violence and enduring art. those who were great navigators, ship builders, sea farers. i feel my soul borne on the same winds. i will find your stars to guide me, but never home, because home is nowhere. home is so many disparate places; the tops of mountains and the bottom of the sea floor, a ship, a forrest, a heart that will never stay still.

it was just a bad dream. reality wasn't like that. we were good. you loved me. i guess the ghosts of the past still haunt me sometimes. they come in sleep to punish what fortunate time i've had. i will never let myself go.