the olympics

so. let me give you a little context for this:

i am doing another one of Julia Cameron's books after having finished the Artist's Way a few months ago. it was so transformative and encouraging, that i wanted to keep up the momentum. so i went out and bought another of her books: vein of gold.

so remember how there were lots of assignments and homework and list-making in the artist's way? no? well, there were.

but THIS book puts it to shame. i have to write an effing AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

let me be clear though, it's an important assignment... it's already been a great journey and i've moved through some really painful memories, as well as uncovering some funny ones too.

so anyhow, since it's taking up a significant portion of my time these days, i thought i'd share:

I always had visions of grandeur growing up. Like I dreamed that one day I’d go to the olympics by being discovered for my fast running.

I used to run in the races during recess in elementary school and only one boy was faster than me. Later on, in junior high, when I had started puberty and was a little chubby, I imagined that I might still be secretly fast.

I used to run as fast as I could through the parking lot from the salon up to the convenience store. I would go at an all out sprint to get anything anyone wanted from the 7-11. Lotto ticket? Sprinted. Soda? Sprinted. Ice cream from the Baskin Robbins next door to the 7-11? Sprinted and didn't even spill it.

In a parking lot.
In a small town outside of Houston, Texas.

I honestly thought a "scout" would see me and I'd be out of there, faster than a speeding bullet.


Love,
Sam

using just my words

i try to take a walk every morning after i write. there is a loop i like to take around the north part of central park, which affords me a pleasant combination of people-watching and nature-observation that i find stimulating and inspiring.

today the wind kept gusting up in random bursts and shaking the leaves loose from the branches overhead. showers of yellow leaves drifted down in shafts of sunlight, like glittering golden coins, but moving more slowly,
like feathers
or molasses
or slow dancing.

it was like magic.

i realize that these are my favorite trees and i draw them often: trees with a few leaves...
perched on the precipice between fullness and hibernation,
introversion and extroversion
summer and winter.

poised in fall, like some glorious rite of passage, vibrant, proud, celebrated.

i didn't have that. responsibility and maturity rounded the corner on me at an early age and i'm just now starting to grieve it. the change. the loss of something. the birth of something else.

"how trite."
the critic in my mind scoffs at such suburban self-therapy speeches. but i don't know if comparison is the way to deal with suffering. although knowing that there are people with worse stories than mine could inspire a sense of gratitude in me, it doesn't change the fact that every human walking this earth suffers. and has hurt. baggage. regret. pain.

and everyone is free to choose how to live with that.

x,
sam

apple.

we went to connecticut this weekend with russell's family and picked apples.

i'll probably make pie.

posting will resume later today... i'm a bit swamped with catch-up tasks!

cheers!
sam

empty

if you open me up,
i'm afraid you'll find
i'm empty,
i'm empty inside

but where has it gone?
where could it hide?
i'm empty,
i'm empty inside

see, i lost my heart
the day he died
i'm empty,
i'm empty inside

so if you open me up,
i'm afraid you'll find
i'm empty,
i'm empty inside.

i'm not here.

i float through my days, feet never touching the ground. i float down my street, across the town and in my apartment where the ceilings are high, i float way up to the top.
and i'm touching everything with rubber gloves so i don't leave a trace - because i'm not really here.

i'm in 1988 playing scrabble with my father. 1989: raking up leaves on that interminably long driveway and my father is shaking his head at me while i am screaming about caterpillars, which truly frighten me. i'm in the garage in 1997: sitting in the front seat of the jetta, which itself sits on blocks, as my father takes apart the struts and shocks and puts them back together again from memory, only to realize he forgot a piece, so takes them back apart and puts them back together again, a second time.

i'm in 2007: a few months before he died, cutting and laying stick-on linoleum tiles with him in the tanning salon while visiting from florida. i am coming up with a good solution for fitting the angled end pieces, and i think he is proud of me for it. we always bonded over problem-solving. that, and our dry sense of humor... mostly enhanced by my mother's theatrical tendencies (which i also inherited, much to my chagrin.) but we had the common sense and the sarcasm to ourselves.

it was hard for him to watch me grow up. it was hard for me to watch him grow old.

so i'm not really here. i'm floating. i'll be back soon, but i just can't tear myself away.

nyc walk

i stopped walking at that moment. thinking about my father and how i always think about him when i smoke - or was it the other way around?

it was impossibly hot and humid outside and something about the moment, sitting there in the semi-dark, seemed ripe to get it all on paper... this intangible feeling.

i missed him - always would - and would welcome any moment to remember him.

across the street the sounds of basketball and sneakers stopping short on polished wood drifting out of a second story window brings me full circle to john wooden and his life lessons in threes. my father loved threes too.

it all seems to matter.

we're back!

we spent the last few days in the catskills staying in an airstream trailer to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary.

we took some pictures... they're on flickr.

illustration and regular posting will resume tomorrow!
cheers,
sam