first sip

life is facebook for me--more and more.  more and more it is looking online to relate to people who are not in my intimate, physical reality--because there is not one.  and then, there is.  there is the coffee.  it is hot.  it has to be made or warmed up.  it  steams.  it lives in the cup offered by a dear one--the big purple cup with the black cat on it that had a plant in it when she gave it to me, that lives, if it still lives, outside.  outside is life.  outside is the wind and the palm tree and the rain.  i have installed myself on the gifted futon and look outside--rather than braving it.  i have been in for three days? since friday? leaving just to welcome my friend, venture with her for trader joe's party supplies, and then out once more for the friend and her love that came to the selfish portrait door.  yesterday, i stayed sealed inside this space and the front door never opened--not even for guapo.  when i am here--sitting in the space, i can see what there is to see of it and in it.  i can look at this long room.  i can watch it expand and contract with the bodies that come and go through it.  i can feel the stuck places and the piles of excess.  i can be in the stagnant chi, the still water, the undead of what is gone.  i think about staying in the stuck--and then i know, when i stay long enough something can grow.  i can root in a different way.  i can branch and leaf.  i can burn the drawing into the wood with the tool that makes everything smell a sweet kinship with not yet fire.  i am not yet fire.  the immolation fantasies i have have not been earned.  i am not ready--the decay has not set in.  i am not dead or undead or zombie like or shutting down or jumping off or any of those other sweet fantasies of flying, transforming, truly changing form.  i am not a caterpillar.  this is not my cocoon.  this is my blue bathrobe--a gift from my best friend for 30 years--32 years??? who finally allowed the his and hers fantasy of an unforgettable trip to the past--maybe even the future--but not the here and now.  here and now, the gift of leather jacket lays casually across the top of gifted dresser above the painting--one of the first--bought and then gifted back from a supportive friend.  the painting is tjombe's--my first artist--my first plane parking gay man who wanted to be an artist who whispered to me over drinks one night in such a way that my soul could hear what his soul was saying and i hissed back at him with my forked tongue, quit your job and do it--and he did.  i am always hissing back to the dreamers--quit your job and do it--and sometimes, the happiest ones, the most miserable ones, the truest ones, the most real ones--they do.  and they live.  and their life becomes their life.  and they grow up to paint the portraits of demi moore's kids--or at least that's what happened to the first one--there--in los angeles--sending tulips to my wedding.  there.  he is a story i have earned.  but me??? i long toward the life i have actualized, given to me by so many people who believed me when i said this is what i wanted, and i iterate so slowly--ever so slowly toward the actualization of my dreams--and then i realize i'm doing it again.  i'm taking away the accomplishments of actually having changed my life from a life where i could not recognize myself as me to a life where i am only and totally myself.  i play at cutting myself open in some sort of literal way so i can know the experience--and the knife is not sharp enough, so i try to sharpen it--so i can know the meaning of the words i use in some kind of actual way--so the actualization can take the power out of the metaphor.  i am unsuccessful.  i don't want to work that hard.  i want, instead, to take to the sword of word--the words of swords--to type them out in single letters strung together without spaces and pauses and breath.  i want to get all of the words out of me.  i want to speak them all into silence--but to know they have passed through my body while i was here in the speaking place--while i was here, co-mingling with the water before the part that is me gets shoved down under the part that gets to enter the desirous mouth of the drinker.  ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, the desirous mouth of the drinker.  drinking is going away for me.  i will always be a good one--but i am choosing water, coffee, soft drinks, juice--concoctions still--but not as many cocktails.  they have had their way with me.  again. it is time to turn toward the awakenings that come from some other substance--like breath? maybe? sounds? maybe? i hear the train in the distance of the not too distant place.  i notice what i am noticing.  i begin to consider.  yesterday, i made the offer of bringing back the press--to publish an anthology on a topic dear to a new friend.  am i learning discernment yet? i consider. i consider.  here is the now of this moment.  crossroads.  spinning.  spiders in the container garden by the upstairs window.  i am here, now, hearing my fingers type.  i am here, now, hearing the water go on in another unit.  i am here, now, breathing. i can hear myself breathing.  i like the feeling of breathing again.  i like knowing the air is still willing to travel way down in there--way down to the place where breath goes when it gets to come all the way in to a body.  i have been so stingy with my invitation for the breath.  i have been so shallow--letting it come in, only so far.  what is it about the pleasure--the deep, real pleasure of breath, that i have been denying my body? my spirit? my frame? what are the colors of these words? the taste? the sound? the smell? the feeling???? are they tender yet? it is my first sip of the new moon morning and i am alive again.  and i want a real job.  and today, it will be breathing.