The air is thinner at the coast, as I imagine it to be at the top of Mt Everest. Perhaps it's not the altitude but proximity to heaven or the alternate. Earthly vales are stretched. Perhaps it's the beauty, casting fiction over the rest of the senses with its staggering bulk.

I watched the moon rise quickly over the coast range, full and miraculous. A sunrise I can appreciate.

Lately I overhear whispers from the other side, snippets of the goings-on. The streets are wet with rain there, as here. People rush by. Here I sit at my desk for hours, bruised by fluorescent light. There, giant lanterns beckon ponderously in the wind, and I know I will stop for a minute at the temple, searching for a cat to cajole. Red glow from vertical signs and grill smoke from tented alleys along the train station, two ghosts haunt the city together. I know where I am, here. But I want to be there, lost.

I am no transformative flow of river

"Its language is inadequate for the rapid complex syntheses achieved by the minor hemisphere." -- Jerre Levy and R. W. Sperry, 1968

"Our brains are double, each half with its own way of knowing, its own way of perceiving external reality. In a manner of speaking, each of us has two minds..." Betty Edwards, The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, 1999

I am still, an underground lake, but the experience flows through me. Ripples charge the surface til the water absorbs the movement without a trace.

Reading this chapter of The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain explains why I've observed the most beautiful autumn I can remember, but I can't translate any of it into creativity.

For all the hours here that move too slow

A song I love, whose lyrics I would hope to never be true, now rings clearly and insistent as a clock in the market square chiming twelve noon. I'm not sure that I can ever listen to it again.

Moments of Heaven

This has been the most beautiful season I can remember; no other autumn comes close. We had more sun than we've any right to in the month of October, and November is always the month in which to pay. The beauty has rendered me speechless. My brain is too busy trying to fit all that my eyes funnel in, and the visual never even gets translated into words.

Lately I've been mindful of my daily moments of heaven. Usually once a day (more often on weekends) a few things come together and result in a delicious, fleeting bliss. Today's moment of heaven happened as I drove home from work. It was warm out, so I had the car windows down, and as I waited for the highway meter a New Order song began, and as I accelerated with one arm out the window, singing, the rushing air traveled all the way up the sleeve of my trenchcoat. At the first breezy tickle, I knew: windows down, the full fall air, the song, the singing. The elements come together, and recognizing the confluence is the cherry on top.

Inevitably, the parts that make the whole begin to peel away, and the sublime is lost. But having that moment, appreciating it in its presence, and diligently awaiting the next one-- the present is suddenly more in the present, a sensation entirely new to me.

The weight of time

This morning was so many days ago that I can't keep count. I'm aging in syncopated rhythm, the heartbeat of an insomniac racehorse five years past its prime.

Control top

I don't like the attention. I think I know why. I am guarded-- cautious-- and I like to maintain control. That's why I can never let loose at parties, why I'm often the stick-in-the-mud. I'm cautious. I like to be reasonably certain how things will turn out.

Sometimes I hate this about myself, and I rebel. I think that I will let go and have fun. It's not enjoyable though. It never is. It's not me.

I think of it as a familial saddle, with each generation leap-frogging. We look after those before us, we challenge those ahead of us. I will keep my head down and do my job.

The sighs of miles

I thought I had the words. I thought I had them because this morning while riding my bike from the train station to work, I found myself enjoying the very act of breathing. The air felt late and thoroughly warmed through, a twang of diesel and cut grass wafting through like hot sauce that purifies and elevates the flavors of the entire meal.

The rest of the world moved mechanically by like a well-tuned, slow-turned music box. I could even hear the tinkling notes through the cotton air. As timeless as it felt, it ended abruptly when I went inside the office building.

Maybe I've accepted autumn.

I'm going to go hit "Publish" on some old draft entries that only contain a sentence or two. There's some fiction mixed up in here, words written just for their joy at being seated next to one another. This entry isn't one of them, but they're in here. In case you wondered.

Autumnal panic

I used to think that I could pick out my favorite lyrics from songs and rearrange them and come up with the most beautiful poem imaginable.

alonetime

Alone in the kitchen. Erik just left for PAX in Seattle, and my dad will leave Port Angeles any time now to drive the five hour journey to my house. The radio is set to the jazz station and Kenard is snuggled up to the laptop, obscuring the left side of the screen.

There are so many versions of heaven on this earth. This is one. Last night at the Doug Fir, watching the lead singer of !!! move in a shameless heartfelt body-jerking dance while performing All My Heroes Are Weirdos. Finding a dead snake floating in the lake at work, with Hanna. At least, that was heavenly until she touched it and we found another dead snake in the water. Then I worried about Hanna getting sick and snakes being targeted by poison. Back down to earth.

But here I am, listening to jazz, stringing rocks on wire for my latest modular jewelry idea. The only thing missing is coffee, and I'm about to head to the farmers' market to sniff fruit and caress plants-- that favorite beverage of yours and mine can't be far behind.

I still find pieces of you in places I thought I'd locked you out of long ago, even while we were still together. How did you wend your way in? It must've been one of those times, your hurricane winds blew right through me. I could never stand your gale force, and being knocked over, chipped, you were right there.

Night in the garden

This dark heart of mine, crouching in wait, overflows in the rain with its scent of the earth. Waiting for answers before questions can be given over-- the lock to make the key turn in writhing anticipation.

I used to fear reaching my hands into the unknown black spaces beneath rocks, leaves, and wood. Naked fingers are drawn to the tangled puff of spiderweb and sudden cold slime of snails. Time spent closer, face pressed to the ground, has cured my hands of their exploratory apprehension. Every rock is turned and all secrets are baked away in the white smoke of the sun. I know all corners of the garden and each leaf-leaned nook.

Now though, these night visitors-- the raccoons-- fill me with dread each morning I wake to find undersides turned under again.

these thoughts I must not think of

I am wound up. Not wounded-- wound. Why are those heteronyms?

At any rate, I usually think of myself as invisible. Certainly in public I try to not speak out or stand out, to blend into the background and observe the surroundings. I've been told conflicting opinions as to my effectiveness on this front, but the point is that I keep to myself and I'm rather shy.

Tonight while I was out for a run in the conditions I most dislike-- hot, dry, sunny, windy. I was thinking about people I used to know. When I saw one running towards me (although his hair was the wrong color). I shouted at him, stopping, perhaps jumping to give impact to the name. I shouted til he had to forcefully respond that he wasn't who I thought he was. Oh. I moved on, embarrassed. And my mind locked onto the interaction, repeating every detail.

Why did I think that was my friend? It's like I expected that my brain could conjure him up. Normally when I see someone I might now, I remain quiet out of fear of intrusion. What pushed me to act, when it was more than likely I'd be wrong?

Welcome to the real world

I still can't believe what she said to me. I know why... but, really, why?

She's mad that I've been absent for weeks.

It's like she hardly knows me after all of these years, although she is now one of my oldest friends. She doesn't understand that I can't contact her every single day, and I don't understand how she could need so much contact. It's the kind of cycle that breaks down before it can rebuild; an eclipse marring the otherwise perfect 365 day calendar. All of the other years— most of them— are fine.

She thinks that I am punishing her by not calling, and when she tries to punish me by also not calling, I don't notice. I am the insensitive one, and she is doubly punished. So she lashed out to let me know.

Even with this logicked map, it still hurts. Her words echo in the corners. It feels like a shared sentiment. Everyone waits, watches, assumes that this is not it— the end, result, reason. Call it what you will, the end does not justify the means: the means is all.

Where we are, where we stand, we chose. Persevere.

Rage incident at the Doug Fir

From the journal, 7 June 2008.

Doug Fir has the uncanny ability to terrify me with its opportune people-watching. Regardless of ridiculousness, anything seen on more than two people per evening will indeed become a [fashion] trend. Tonight it is fanny packs. No, sadly I am not joking. Thick, contoured belts with pouches. I've seen three, so it is upon us.

I am asymptotically reaching a freak-out point. I knew-- I f*ing knew-- that she'd be here. I've thought about the possibility for months. I thought I saw her in the [back bar] corner. That, and I'm coming off such a bliss full week. There is no yin but there's a yang; no shadow without light; no day but for night. [ed note: I didn't mean to make that rhyme]

Lest I lay it on too thick, I'm sitting here hating on a troupe of hippy girls. I thought that I had gotten over this particular prejudice & embraced the dirt, but there is... something... about these particular specimens-- which means that my rage at the east coast version is deep and justified.

time ponderance

I am lying on the couch, watching the leaves of the ninebark jitter in the wind in the golden light from the sun that's finally appeared at just about the last moment possible. If the sun's arc slowed to infinity, I could watch this dance forever. I can't tell if it's because I'm so tired that everything becomes hypnotizing, or if the movement of leaves is always a fascinating thing. I suspect the latter.

I tell myself I'll take time for this-- some day, I will. Time to watch the clouds take lingering leave of the West Hills, with arms outstretch in goodbye. Time to mete the westbound morning bridge traffic, to make sure that everyone makes it back to the eastside before sundown. Time to poke a stick and my camera into every hole from missing squares of purple sidewalk glass in all of Old Town.

I'll have time to finish thoughts and ponder the last dream I had. Time, even, to see every episode of Dr Who from its start til present day.

From my journal, written in the back of the car during the drive from Port Angeles to Crescent Lake.

Deep in the secret heart of me unfinished stories from the past bubble and simmer. The ones I don't often tell and rarely pick to examine. So many of them now are dim from dust. Distant tales of nearly a decade past in a city on the other side of the world, starring a character I hardly recognize, as myself.

Ringed mares

Dreams of the outer band of my wedding ring wearing through, of outrunning tsunamis by climbing up a hill to Powell's but getting abducted as slaves by aliens, of a favorite carnival ride abandoned for fifteen years and infested with horror freak puppies. These are my dreams by night, as I slowly ebb the energy it takes to focus a tired mind awash

dreamstate of silence

The other day I wished for leafdreams back, and since then I've had vivid dreams which I've remembered almost every morning. There is no solace in the memories of these near-lucid bloodbaths. Some nights I am chased by ruthless bands of assassins. Two nights I've been back at my father's house, more realistic in its details than my cube at work in the waking world.

The other night I was there, petting my first two cats. I said to my dad, "I was two when we got Dora-- that means she's 27 now!" He nodded and agreed, but she didn't seem as though she felt particularly old. She rolled onto her back and I rubbed her belly, which was dark in the dream, but white in life.

Last night I planned and executed a plot to kill fifty guards and escape the prison camp in which I and about a dozen other people were trapped. At the end of the dream, as with the cars-running-into-the-house dream of the other night, it was utterly silent and empty.

I wished so hard for a return to inspiration last time that I had nightmares.