chapter one | like a daisy.

like a daisy.

I feel lost sometimes. I feel conflicted and pulled in just about one trillion directions and one of my feet is here barefoot and splashing in the LA ocean and my other foot is tucked away snugly in a boot in the middle of a pile of flame colored leaves all the way in Massachusetts where I’ve surely left my heart. God do I love Massachusetts… those leaves and all those stones and that milky leaden sky and sad sad Wintertime thoughts and freezing nights that are so black you cannot see your hand before your face. And still I love Los Angeles, too… even with the resentment I so often feel toward miserable molasses traffic stretching onward like the wounded in that post Atlanta Battle scene from Gone with the Wind and the hours upon hours upon days upon years that I have spent in my car stopped at green lights just waiting to make a left turn. Even with all that… and the orange tans and the panty-sized-shorts and the misery that people force themselves through while forgetting that this was never your dream wake up wake up… (gee I sure do dislike a lot about LA, huh?)… But even with all that, I love the light that falls like glitter all around and the sunshine faces and the beautiful hills and beaches that are not even a hop skip and a jump away from these grimy streets. Mostly I love the glitter and the jasmine scent wafting through the air… and my apartment, of course. And Mary. And my cats.

And I miss New York, too. Those sparkling nights with lights like stars in the sky but nearly on the ground and gothic churches made of stones that house mysteries therein and filthy streets that yes are filthy but in the most beautiful way possible and not at all like the filthy streets in LA. And the rhythm like a pulse throughout the city, everybody rushing and breathing and thumping in their chests like hearts but not necessarily a heart. And cafes and people watching and black leather jackets (always I see black leather jackets when I squint and see New York) and remember oh when I remember way back when in another life that was still my life but when I was peering outward from inside another brain that was a much older brain but inside a much younger body.

And I think about New York and LA and Massachusetts and I feel like a daisy pulled all apart for love, and so here I am the sad yellow center all alone like the sun but not the sun, like a spider with no arms. All it takes is gumption, really, to solve this problem of mine. All it takes is dedication and planning and working out the details or letting them work out themselves. Of course, it also takes deblumes, and alas deblumes are hard to come by when one wants them and hard to hang onto when one has them (perhaps that last one most importantly.) I could live the life I want to if only I wanted enough to really be happy and to really feel alive.

What would happen if you did the things that would make you feel good about yourself? If the entire point of life (at the end of the day, moving beyond just “love” because really I think it’s much much simpler than that and much more lonesome but not in a sad way) if at the end of the day the point of life is just to finally, really, truly feel good about yourself, then are you worried that life will be over when you do? Or perhaps you are worried that it won’t be…

And if so… of what are you afraid?