I Would Follow You

To Wisconsin.

He said, underneath the heat lamp at the outdoor cafe.

On our first date.

There have now been four dates.

Tomorrow will be number five.

And that is all you need to know about him.

I would like to spill all the words and looks and the synchronicities and the eyes, oh, the eyes.

But.

I am not going to.

I spill so much of my heart on these pages.

“You wear your heart on your sleeve,” an old lover once told me, “I could never write about the things you do, share the things you do, it’s what makes you a good writer.”

I don’t know about that necessarily.

I think a good writer is just one that writes.

I still write every day.

In the mornings.

Three to four pages, sometimes just one or two, but I always write.

I don’t show up here as often, sometimes I think it might be time to hang up the blog, but I just keep holding onto it.

There is something here still for me.
I am not sure that there is anything here for you though.

I just keep letting you go.

I don’t know who shows up to read these ramblings any more.

I don’t know who you are.

I do know that you still read the words.

Sometimes you search me out.

Sometimes you find me on some old social media post I thought I had scrubbed away.

Sometimes you find me with esoteric search engine terms.

You keep finding me.

And I keep writing for ghosts.

This time.

This time though, I am writing for me.

About a month ago I sat down in front of my computer with too much eye make up on and a bushel of glitter and my hair wild and I did my dissertation presentation for a friend who is a film maker.

It was not as good as when I defended my dissertation and was awarded my PhD, that feeling of being so in the moment and not even realizing the camera was on was not with me when I did it for my friend.

But.

He got the gist of it and he liked it and he said, yeah, we can make this into a film.

It had been suggested to me by one of my former supervisor’s that I make the dissertation into something, a one woman show, a documentary, a film.

He said I had it, that he could watch me present the work all over again, would pay for it and that it was better than a lot of what he’s seen on Netflix.

I mean.

Fuck.

What a great compliment.

And also.

Fuck.

Scary and wonderful and am I really going to do this?

I mean.

I just finished my PhD.

I have a full time therapy practice.

Shouldn’t I just be taking long walks on my days off?

Just looking at the sky and the city and breathing without the pressure of a writing project on my shoulders.

Just walking around and watching the birds wheel in the sky.

Just listening to music on my Airpods and smiling that I don’t have to go anywhere, don’t have a deadline, don’t have to do another draft or edit or more research.

I can put away the research.

I have shelved the books.

I can let it go.

Or can I?

There is something here.

There is a story and I do think there is a movie and so does my friend.

When I started writing my blog, twelve years ago now, I would sometimes get a line of words in my head or a phrase and I would know, that’s my blog.

That’s the line.

That’s my way in.

I don’t actually need anything more than that.

Just the line.

What follows after that line I never know.

I just have a feeling for what has to be written in the next moment, the next breath, the next beat of time.

And I kept thinking about how my friend sent me the info about how to write a screen play and how it should be a certain kind of way and I was like, well, damn, I don’t have the “ending” you’re supposed to have.

But who ever does have the ending that they’re supposed to have?

What if it wasn’t bad timing lover, friend, soul mate, what if it was just that we weren’t meant to be, not really, not ever and we stole something, took away light from the moon and carved out a tiny moment in the soul of the world and hid our love.

But it couldn’t stay.

We weren’t meant to be together.

We never were.

Because we aren’t.

So I let it go again.

Let you go again and choose something else, I look up at the stars, the moon be damned, and find a new way forward.

It is dark and it is new and I don’t know where it’s going.

But when I put my hand on his back last night I thought I might just find a new way through.

And I might just have an ending to my story that has hope.

It may not be the fairy tale ending.

I have had my heart broken too many times by the fairy tale.

It will be a different story.

A new story.

And yes.

It will be a love story.

My love story, though.

My way through.

My way out.

When I chose to walk out the door to my apartment and take a right and not a left and meet him at the corner of the street and take a deep breath and say.

“Hi, it’s nice to meet you.”

And really, really mean it.

It really has been so nice to meet you.

I don’t know if we’ll ever go to Wisconsin.

But that you would follow me there.

Well.

That is one hell of a way to start something.

Something that begins with hope.

Friday’s Class

Fuck Friday’s class.

Fuck reading for Friday’s class.

Fuck caring where Friday’s class is on campus.

Fuck Friday.

heh

Oh.

Fuck me.

Friday is tomorrow, is like in less than an hour and I’m wide awake.

Because.

I slept eleven hours last night.

ELEVEN.

Holy cats man.

I can’t remember the last time I slept eleven hours, without being intoxicated into doing so by way of a super bad hang over.

I mean.

Really.

The grey foggy morning helped.

The ringer turned off on my phone definitely helped.

The lack of sleep from being at Burning Man, the absolute clincher.

I have no recollection of what I blogged about last night, in fact, amazed that I blogged at all.

I woke up pretty groggy and pretty much ready to go back to bed after relieving the bladder.

I glanced with little care at my phone to see what time it was.

11:15 a.m.

Oh shit.

Getting up.

Getting up now.

Not that I couldn’t have slept longer, but it’s not the best idea for me to ruin my sleep pattern by staying in bed that late, I would have shot myself if I had slept past noon.

Again.

Not because I had anything pressing to do today.

Except get to the Mike Doughty Living Room Show that I just got back from attending.

So good.

I laughed a lot, clapped a lot, sang under my breath to the songs a lot, he was recording the show and since it was so small it felt utterly inappropriate to sing along to the music, even though I found myself mouthing along silently to many of the songs.

I also found myself in tears twice.

First, when he did an acoustic version of Sweet Dreams of Wichita.

Oh God.

That song, it still slays me.

I can still be transported right back to the house on Franklin Street where I lived with an ex-boyfriend and two other guys, two cats and a small hydroponic pot farm growing in the hall closet.  I can feel the wood floor underneath my feet, the summer night warmth on my body, and suddenly being transported by the music to another place, swaying in front of the double tape cassette of the boom box on the table in the living room.

I remember that was the year I got turned on to Jeff Buckley and to Soul Coughing, both of whom I got to see in concert.

Funny that.

Doughty talked about Jeff helping him move into a place in New York and eating a bucket of KFC in a U-haul at the show in regards to a question that was asked from the audience.

He, Mike, had a clear plastic jar that you could scribble down a question on a post it note and he would answer.

I asked what was a favorite line of poetry.

He recited the first bit of Xanadu by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Fucking swoon.

It was a great show.

I was able to chat with him afterward, we have some mutual friends, and I was shy as a kitten and perhaps, well, perhaps social anxiety is the best for me.

Even should I have wanted to have said what I wished I could have said, I really couldn’t have said more.

He did sign a birthday card for my friend who was at the show and, a friend who might be a bigger fan than I.

Might.

It felt good though.

So good.

All the things, the way the Universe connects, these places and parts of me, these heart shaped words pressing agains the back of my throat with a longing wild and slow burning to be seen.

And I was.

I feel that.

And I didn’t need an autograph for me, but one of my friends did buy me a poster as a thank you for getting the tickets to the show, so I got the signature.

It may be the only autographed thing I have.

It is enough to have the music autographed on my soul.

Stitched into the memories and the placing of who I am in this world.

Time stamped on my heart.

True Dreams of Wichita is not about Kansas for me.

It is about Iowa and it is also about running away from home when I was young and stupid and naive, God damn, so naive, but gratefully so, had I not been, I would not have had all those adventures.

And mis-adventures.

So many experiences and stories.

The soundtrack came with the music after.

I had never heard the sound track to my story until then.

There are memoirs I have written, years ago now, and they have these sound tracks.

The music that was there for me to lean into and the music that was on the stereo, the cd player, the record machine, the tape cassettes, the sound track to my young, raw life.

It is a good one.

And I realized.

Yes.

I will re-write some of the memoir, I will tighten it up, and I will also screen play it.

And some day, far, far, far away, but someday, because I can, because I will, because I manifest, I will have Doughty’s music be the soundtrack to the film.

Even if it’s small and indie, because the material is not mainstream.

But.

It will happen.

I had hoped, fantasized, come on, let’s be real, to kiss him, to linger at his knee, to look into his musician’s eyes and make woo woo faces.

Of course.

Real life being, well, real.

That did not happen.

But I saw an artist.

I was inspired.

I was moved.

And I got a hug.

“We meet at last,” he said with a smile.

I am seen.

I am recognized.

That, well, in my tiny, wee little way, was very special.

Thanks Mike.

Thank you for the music, for the memories, for the joy of seeing how far I have come from being that scared nineteen year old girl on the run from all the horrors of life, horrors I was so used to that I didn’t even know they were terrifying.

I got through, in no small part, by listening to you.

So.

To get to say thank you to an artist who has meant so much in my life felt very special, unique, privileged and it was just a plain honor to bear witness to the artistry of the man.

Especially with my friends.

Life is so good.

School starts tomorrow.

And though I will be sleepy.

I will be there.

Happy and replete with the soundtrack of wistful longing embossed upon my dreams.

Thanks again, Mike Doughty.

It was awesome.

Seriously.