Jazz.

Something about jazz flows into your life. You could have played one jazz song once, you could listen to it all the time, you could take one picture of a musician or you could be an aficionado. No matter your experience, the minute you touch jazz it engulfs you, and changes you from the inside out.

Something about the improvisation, the divine falling together of music. Communal living off of sound waves. It changes you. You begin to take life less seriously. When you go to get something to eat and find out that the restaurant is closed, when you run out of gas or blow a tire on the highway... Even, yes, even when you get lost in a strange city jazz quietly whispers out your name. It gives you your game plan. It casually tells you in it's silky, cool voice made from years in clubs to;

"Improvise."
All of the sudden you discover a new restaurant, you walk to a new place and meet new friends, and you discover the heart of the city. America, the land of opportunity, and discovery.


Jazz, the real American music. The one style that is wholly American. Born from the spirit of what makes us, well, us. New Englanders made new ways of surviving, they created something out of nothing. We've found ways to survive over the years. America does a good job of evolving with the times, redefining ourselves to fit with new times. Our Constitution was written in such a way to apply to things unforeseeable.
Whispering it to us. "Improvise." In this spirit America does everything.

But, wait, what happened to the spirit of jazz? The silken, cool, go-with-the-flow nature in which notes fit together? The adventure, the real adventure that jazz music is. I am not saying to go out there and buy every jazz album you can, to become an expert on such an evolving, changing, living thing. But let it reach out and touch you. Although, if you let it swallow you, no doubt you will be a lot happier than you were before.

If your tire blows, if you don't know what to have for dinner, don't get hung up on convenience and how America has changed into everything I need, right now, my way or the high way, rush rush rush and never ever slow down to create something.

Make something out of nothing. Improvise. MacGyver. Create. You'll be so much happier when you forget your to-do lists and make an adventure out of the mundane.

Improvise. It'll fall into a cadence eventually. It's more the journey than the end.

Some would say that I just don't know when to give up...
I say that I don't want to.
Ever.

Morendo.

And I'm dying everyday.
I'm beginning to like it.
The love dripping off of your lips like raindrops off of telephone wire.
It hurts so bad, just like I knew that it would.
Like pouring antiseptic onto a wound.
Like walking inside from a blistering cold to warmth, the burning that comes with life.

I'm dying to you. You're healing me.
Why are you wasting time on a zombie like me?
I really don't want to know the answer, I just know I don't want you to stop.

After so much... after slitting open my soul every single day for so long...
It's so nice to find someone willing to pour theirs into me.
50% 50%...
Who knew?

You don't take away the sadness for what was. You don't make me stop thinking about what could have been, what should have been. But oh darling do you make me believe that it was worth something... That I'm worth something.


I would have never guessed... That I was worth as much as you say I am.
Thank you.

Noche de los Muertos.

In my world, there wasn't "snack" or "dessert", just eating enough to survive or less.
There wasn't "cold" and "hot" only the same median temperature that allows you to live.
No excess.
Nothing.

The living dead.
Break out of the mold and try something new.
You'd be surprised what sparkles hide in the shadow.

¿Qué sobre mí?

A bumper sticker can be amazing.
"My scars tell a story."

Espejo

I feel as if I'm being torn apart, like the seams of my blood vessels are popping. Some mischievous little worm is splitting them. I live in a doorway. Purgatory. I'm right on that piece of wood that separates your home and the outside. In the crevices between pages in a book is where I lie. The ravines betwixt two houses. World War II's No Man's land. The place between my blanket and my bed isn't warm anymore.

How do you behave after surgery? Do you move on as if you have never had a problem? Do you act like you still have it? The immense monster that once bounced around synapses is gone. The cavern in my skull isn't filling up with rainclouds and octopus ink. The venom so greedily milked from rattlesnakes isn't the fluid surrounding my brain. What do I do with the stains they left on the bone? With the discoloring that the gray matter still bears? Do I bleach it out, do I ignore it? Do I behave as if it's still there and fear for every move I make?

Our job, as the outpatients and those in surgery is to be vulnerable. We are, in essence, a freak show. I mean that in the tenderest of ways. We are supposed to show our disfigurement, not to induce tears from children and screams from the bravest of men, but so that we can see a future past our pain. The scars on my wrist will always be there. They will always show when I get cold, or when I tap the skin. I cannot deny their existence. There will always be those instances of terror when my doctor goes "Where did you get that?" or when people admire a bracelet and ask what happened. The shameful adornment of my body... We can't forget it. To forget it would be to give it permission to try again. I can't live as if it never happened. As the song says "These scars remind me that the past is real". We have to live like those moments engulfed in tentacles happened, but not like we are still there. No matter how futile it feels, how we think we're still in the same trench we've been in for the past year, we've moved. If an inch, if a mile. We have moved. Share the scar of that place, the callous on your feet from the nails in the ground. You don't know who is there now.

That is a fact that I have forgotten... Forgotten that I have moved and gotten discouraged at the fact that I am not there yet. I will never be "there". I just have to make the best of here.

Hope is knowing that there is something beyond the next horizon.
Hope is believing that the ground will catch me as every step forward falls heavier and heavier under my weight.
Hope is the song we are all trying to sing.
Hope is always there.
Hope is all we have.
My hope is you.