Don't Aim High, Don't Aim Low

Things Fall Apart, as They Tend To

Rachel C Johnson

Half of me wants to be in Seattle all the time, the other half in Chicago. As for the rest of me, I’m dying to finally do something great, break out of this cycle I’ve been pulled into, this cycle of financial downfall and general discontent. To break out of this state, the state of mind that is Oklahoma—the intrepid discontent on an Oklahoma summer.
It seems that the closer I come to any sort of comfort the more I realize how in the dark I still am. I feel like, for once, I was almost on top of my situation. Not necessarily in control of it, but to the point that I felt I might finally have a chance at comfort, at repair. But, my world has a tendency to come crashing down. Things fall apart, all over the place, all of the time, and, as far as I’ve seen, at the most inopportune time. “Bed news never had good timing,” just when you’re together life falls to pieces.
I’m tired of being in repair. I know it takes time, but time is starting to get the best of me. Time is supposed to be on my side. AS they say, once you stop fighting you realize time is your friend. But, time seems to be fighting me. I’m standing still and it’s pushing me to the ground. No, I have no control, I have no way of calculating this end, but I think I have the right to ask time to be my companion. I think I might have the right to need it on my side. I wish it would stop throwing the punches, I can’t see for the black eyes I’ve been dealt.
I’m blind. From now on I seem to be relying on memories that don’t belong to me. My head is swirling, torn and in two places. All I can do is start into the familiar Oklahoma sky, place for lack of water color. And in the head I might just let my mind wander deeper into a state of submission.

July 26, 2007
Don't Hang On, Don't Let Go

With a Little Smirk

My Dreams are Dreaming Me
Rachel C

My life is in chronological order, but my mind doesn't work that way. I spend so much time contemplating the clouds, once I wake back up to life I'm so far behind or too far ahead I miss the present, I miss what is happening now. I miss the signs until I catch up and contemplate them later. I anticipate words that are too far away to actually hear. Nobody is ever prepared for the present; nobody expects what is happening right now. And I see so much of every time surrounding, I lose track of what time it is now. I don't hear what you're saying until you're on your way to complete your life. And I'm so thoughtful I tend to slow it down. I slow us all down, tire us out, and while you're sleeping, I jump ship to another period, sometime when you don't exist, and I am deep in the life I am not prepared for yet.
I don't know why I do this, though the comfort could explain it. The present is awkward, you don't exist any time else, and I don't move quick enough to say the right thing today. So I say it tomorrow, but you aren't in my head, not the way I wish you were. And no one ever hears exactly what I have to say. If I say it today, It will come out wrong, and I'll lose the chance to make it up tomorrow, and my mind will shift to focus on the past.
I'm not prepared for the present; I'm not prepared to move in chronological order. But I don't have control of time, not even the time in my head.

July 15, 2007

There's No More Logic

My Foolish Notion is Too Fun

©Rachel C

I want to take
you and drink you
and somehow become
a part of you and by
doing so I want to love
you and I want you to
love me.

July 1, 2007
When There's Magic Between Me and You

Come Now, Come and Mourn Me

My Old Bones are Growing New Bones

©Rachel C

Driving home I can see a string of nearly black clouds floating low in the sky. They’re thin, and almost resemble smoke, but they don’t have nearly that consistency. It’s weird to see such dark clouds so thin, and so low as if they just evaporated from the surface of the earth. So low, it seems, a tall man could reach right up and swing his hand through them, scattering the droplets and shaking them back to earth. Maybe even a short girl, with ballet flats and big dreams, could reach up and swipe them away, pull them down to her chest, breathe them in like a natural humidifier. From an angel where they lie next to the dark clouds in the horizon, they are nearly invisible, but once you’re facing the sun, they’re so close, so low, so dark, and so stretched thin you could pluck them right from the atmosphere. For some reason, I feel like these clouds, so fragile and yet out of reach. As if everyone could touch me, feel the moisture of my skin, but I am just an arms length away; a tall man’s head is too far below my feet. Touchable, right there to hold, and so far away, so scattered and stretched, so dark and no one can come near me. Those clouds, I know, aren’t me. They will pour their insides to the ground, or dissolve if they come any lower. They will disappear, and I won’t ever see these clouds again. I may have taken a dive, disappeared, dissolved for a moment, but I can resurface, I can breathe more life, I can begin again—maybe not where I left off, but where I am now. Those clouds will die, and I have not, and someday I will come close enough to touch.

July 1, 2007

It's So Easy, Now I'm Gone

Don't You Break--I Will Not Let You

My Fingers Get in the Way

I hate you simply because you act like you don't care. And you don't talk to me anymore. But I miss you more than I hate you. And songs and moments like these make me miss you even more.

I guess in the end, everything is lonely, thus I must be my own bestfriend.

--replace you with myself--

People touch our lives--but I wish you hadn't left mine.

June 28, 2007

I'll Make Sure They Will Not Get You

The Words That Throw Me

“Come now,

come

and mourn me.

It’s so easy

now I’m gone.”

The rain has made the lawns like swaps
and has left my heart hoping for more.

Walking through the yard has become

like trudging through mud,
grass is ankle deep and growing
with the increase of precipitation.

The only things I want are
to feel more at home in this suburban wilderness
and to not have to shake mudded water from my feet.

I miss the smell of concrete and steam,
the sound of sirens past midnight,
the jolt of trains stopping and going,
moving across the tracks with rough sparks
and no hesitation.

I miss the people who made that city my home.

I miss their energy, their honesty,
the feeling that we were true friends—
despite all the [fake ones] we encountered.

And I miss being able to laugh without needing to,
without having to smile to keep my spirits lifted.

The coffee, the cold air, the coats, the strolls,
the train rides from no reason, the adventures

that were ours.

People think I am strong, because it’s raining
and I smile.

What they can’t see are my hollowed-out insides,
and that I am happy just to not be sad.

Other People's Conversations

Inside Looking In
© Rachel C

Some one once said to write what you know, someone also said to be objective when you look back, write what you see as if you weren’t there but are experiencing it as a stranger. I don’t know who said either, or if either were ever actually said, but I do know that they cannot go hand in hand, for what you know cannot be objective. I’ve not lived a very long life, and for most of it I have been unconscious to the world. But, from what I’ve seen, from what I’ve lived cognizant and eyes-wide open, I have a pretty good understanding of the impossibility of objectivity. It can’t happen. Because, if it could, how many people would revert to objectivity to escape the pains of life? Sure there would be fewer suicides, maybe fewer cutters and burners, drug addicts and drinkers, whores and the men who buy them. Maybe society would seep into a Utopian image, but it would only be seemingly peaceful. The peace would come of thought being forced into a vegetative state. No one would survive to have opinions, only to survive without being hurt. Pain would be obsolete, self infliction would be achieved by slumping back into one’s mind, clearing out one’s history, tucking away one’s emotional thought for a perspective without perception. And everything would fall into itself. There would be no reason to war, no reason to cry. Because, when horrible things happened, we would recluse our emotions and step back, look at the situation as if we don’t know ourselves. Look at the situation as if we are strangers, and the girl being raped, the man being beaten, the wife being cheated and played, they wouldn’t be us and we wouldn’t have to deal with who they were on the inside looking in. So, society would fall into internal chaos, simply unaware of the destructive nature of objectivity, simply closed to the trouble it was inflicting upon itself. Someday, somewhere, when men who have become children and women useless bodies, someone will stand up and realize that living without pain has left us all inhuman. Robots, we’ve become robots. How could we have never seen it coming?
So this is my opinion about objectivity: we can’t have it, unless we are truly objective. Unless we have walked in on the situation from the outside looking in, honestly unaware of the details, honestly unconscious. And, in that case, we cannot know how to write it until we can immerse ourselves, completely, become knowledgeable entirely, and once we have we lose our objectivity instantly. But, at least we have a story.
We have to know what we write, and write what we know.

June 23, 2007
Author's Note: I guess I'm questioning the power of being objective.

Never Without Something

No Boundary on Color

© Rachel C

Have you ever thought that maybe this is my book?
I know you wonder if this is my life, is this is who I am. If this day will remain that way I lived it in my memory, if I won’t skew the dialog or the images in my mind. If I will remember at least what he said, if not his name or why I loved him. But at least who he was in the moment he became it, who I was in the moment I opened my smile and let my walls break down.
I’m tired of writing poems about dolls protected in glass walls, metaphors for my heart in its case of crystal and ice. I am tired of reaching too deep for something I won’t feel once I bring it to the surface. Honestly, the dark, twisty pieces are dying out, there is hardly anything left to hold on to. I’m melting, peacefully, with my smile growing brighter like quarter-moons and Cheshire curves. I can see something below the layers; I can cross my fingers that I am not the only one.
Maybe I am still waiting, for someone to love, for something to spark that nostalgia that pangs in my stomach. Those things motivate me, but never as much as I can, when I walk into a conversation without meaning to, when I stumble onto a personality so unlike those I am familiar with.
I want to know him, but he’s not someone to love, at least not for me. Though, in this moment I can recall imagining seeing him again, and a lot like love I’ll smile and recall his name and why I spoke in the first place. Maybe I’ll take that painting with me, when I leave everything behind. Maybe I’ll take his memory, when I try to forget all others. I plan to write them down and leave them on paper for others to read, and I can forget these years. But, maybe I’ll remember him and his red monster, maybe I’ll remember that I can be iceless, familiar, and smile. I like to think that I can smile—for all of our sakes.
I’ll take some things, and leave the others, when I’m riding on trains I’ll remember what I’ve brought. But for now, my porcelain exterior must be cracked, the glass barrier broken down. I need to join the folks as they wander side streets, smell the toxic air if only to cough it up again. In that meantime, before trains leave stations and my three years are on paper, I’ll hold his red monster in the back of my mind; my soundtrack playing along, illustrating my story, my narrative following along. I’ll look back, to the depths of my mind, back where I remember days of rain and the smell of steam from city streets, and I will smile. I will draw myself out from the dark places.

June 17, 2007
Back to the Sun and the Square

Red Monster

While Musing Over Art on the Walls
© Rachel C

So, I can’t concentrate. Not on Islam, not on research papers, at least. I wish it were still raining. It has been raining for maybe months, and I can’t grow tired of it. I can’t, and I won’t. Times like this, sounding so cliché, I realize maybe I don’t want to venture back to Chicago. Maybe I want to try again, start again in Seattle. The rain, the buildings, the personality—I can’t deny I am drawn to the idea of the city. But, Chicago is so comfortable. I know it, I almost understand how it moves, I can almost feel it. The strangest things remind me of it. Moments I never living in Chicago instantly leave me with the smell of the streets and the feel of the air. I want to be back there, with people I know are my friends—and some I’m not so sure of anymore. I’d love to be back there, living my life again, like I am not living it here. I would love to feel that irresistible happiness again. And yet, could I find it, on greater scale, more realistically in Seattle? I don’t know if I will ever have that answer. If I will ever feel that surge of blindness, that overwhelming, body consuming happiness that surrounds me while I walk through city streets—buildings so tall I am both small and greater than I have ever been all at the same moment. So small that I have worth, I have meaning, I am someone and no one, no one surrounded by nobodies, and happy for it. I don’t know that I will ever have that answer. Maybe I should just concede, stop thinking and sip my coffee. Sip my coffee and wait for the rain.

June 17, 2007
There'd Be Nobody if We All Stayed Alone

In and Out

Boys Named Chad

© Rachel C

What is it about boys named Chad? Or, boys in general—studying human anatomy with their triple grande white mochas in the middle of a crowded Starbucks? What is it about young beards and short hair, wandering eyes behind metal rimmed glasses? My first though is med. student. But, after several glances his way, while I read about Islam and listen to popular girls drink their frappuccinos, I think he might be an artist, studying the shape of the silhouette. But, it could go either way. And I suppose I couldn’t care, as long as he glances my way every once in a while to watch my face as I write, draw inspiration. In that case I sit up straighter, hide my imperfections as because I can. I touch my chin, my lips thoughtfully, maybe he’s intrigued. Maybe his blue eyes will meet mine for a moment. Maybe we’ll share a moment, as he thinks and I break for a sit of coffee. But, he’ll go back to work, and I will try to keep my eyes on the page. We’ll look up—he at the girl saying goodbye, me to see who responds. And that will be the most, that will be as much as I share with boys named Chad. He will check his watch, grab his back, and even if he thinks I’m pretty, he’ll walk out of my life, the door bouncing on its hinges behind him.

June 17, 2007
It's About Words that Throw Me