Pine and Ocean

[shikostuff]

[pineandocean]

salvation mountain

legs, unshaved, hanging out of the

passenger side window.

pink sky, blurred road, 

plunging faster into the quiet.

the radio offers

cowboy melodies

floating out into the

quivering twigs, 

the burning stone.

down low where 

the rusty canyons curve,

I'm dying for the

jagged purple peaks and

the long clouds of bone,

slowly unfolding as the sun rests below.

the sky is silent. we had some beers.

My arms embrace my body

as we peer 

into the haze.

the lavender valley's filling with shadows,

other barely-theres seeking their fix.

small people, big cars, soft music, hot fires,

small specks against 

layers of sand.

When I'm not myself

I need this more than anything else.

Down here I don't feel the

falling into nothing

I don't hear the

neon city at night,

the thrashing oceans

dreams frozen in glass

lost in the screens of

digital parades.

My salvation is organic and unhinged.

Not a person, or word, or thing, but a place.

Not a crash, but a murmur.

Not a forgetting, but an unlocking. a gentle liftaway.

A freedom the color of creamy moon.

Higher and higher I swim in

this warm pink heat,

this twilight fire

melting the glaciers of

what I've held onto.

a sadness I don't remember now,

drip

drip

dripping

into small streams

birthing red cactus flowers

that bless the land.

This big, wild land,

so vast and cracked,

holding me up and then letting me go.

- Stop misplacing your light.

Come out of your cave

and into the valley. -

Yes, I can do that now.

Yes, I have prayed and heard,

to stop searching for saviors

and remember my feet instead.

Yes, I trust the underground rhythms

of forgotten earth,

carrying back everything I've lost

in the wind.

And I am finally happy to be alive again.

[pineandocean]

slight lights

softly

piercing

the lazy, hazy

freeways ahead

[pineandocean]

guidebook

Wash your clothes on Thursday nights and

Dry them at home so you save the quarters.

Don’t walk barefoot after a parade.

Always keep an extra tampon in your purse.

Don’t always finish your plate

on a first date, or ever.

Be interesting - talk about

Costa Rica, Reyjkavik, those small streets in Paris.

Don’t wear that dress,

you look easy.

Don’t leave the house without make-up.

Women with make-up are confident.

Don’t put so much make-up on.

You look desperate.

Use Medium-Beige for powder. You look streaky when you go darker. 

You want children, don't you?

Who doesn’t want children?

Why are you drinking alcohol on weekdays?

Don’t be so extreme about not drinking on weekdays.

When you’re making spaghetti sauce,

Open all the windows

So your hair doesn’t smell like the country you came from.

This is how you iron a shirt.

This is how you iron a skirt.

Here’s the cheapest dry cleaner.

Here’s the best place for produce.

This is a condom.

This is a lollipop.

This is a long skirt to hide your hips.

This is how you smile at strangers who don’t smile back.

This is the day you realize people only change on the outside.

This is a tax return.

This is a spare tire.

This is your credit card statement. Check it twice.

What’s that callous on your hands?

I know you like your bike rides by the sea but-

Girls shouldn’t have callouses,

because how else do you hold your hand up for the proposal photos?

Well, girls should have callouses.

Working out is hot. Being fit is hot. #fitfam.

It shows that you’re strong.

But wait- not too strong -

you still like to be held.

This is what it feels like to be held.

This is a 401k.

Stop being afraid.

Stop being shy.

Don’t overanalyze.

Don’t take sick days.

Don’t tell anyone you want to be held.

Don’t forget to shave.

Don’t forget to wax.

Don’t initiate.

Don’t come up with so many new hobbies,

Because you can’t afford the gas to get to all of them.

And you don't follow through.

Remember that paint set you stopped using? There, see?

Don’t show too much. It’s oversharing.

Don’t hide too much. You’re inaccessible. 

Don’t wrinkle your blouse, you look inexperienced.

Don’t smile too much, discuss too much, feel too much, or spend too much.

Last but not least,

The world is yours,

as long as you follow these rules which

you clearly don’t know yet.

[pineandocean]

on purpose.

Vita brevis, ars aeterna.

I’m not an architect of words,

Just a traveler in heat Chasing maps on my lips -

Feather, branch, water drop.

Night unfolding.

Patchouli on skin, Pantyhose drying, A stranger disguised as

Buddha, Jesus, Pollock, Coltrane. Wishing for whiplash,

Who cares for tomorrow.

What matters is that

It felt good today.

Ship seeks sea without anchor,

Black hole, no return.

Much like 

hot coffee

sipped slowly on selfishly slow mornings.

< But why do you chase a black hole? > To remember what I’ve lost, which is the only time I truly know myself.

[pineandocean]

on late night diners.

My sympathy Eats away at the hazy glass Four people at the counter Four creatures on parade, clothed and alone. Two in the morning on Saturday night And these four have no place, And no one And no plans Outside of this diner On Olympic Boulevard. The world's easier and better When it fits inside A chipped white mug And maybe the lights Don’t show a woman’s age If the man next to her doesn’t know her name. They could pair off like a game show, Two and two, Hovering over the Lacquered countertop, The sleepy brunette waitress Becoming the emcee Of their hesitant intimacy. It's late and I pull myself away  Leave them to their private cozy dread. I'm on the other side of the glass. I have someones and somethings, don't I? They have themselves and dirty napkins 

burnt coffee vapor, the flaky crusts of key lime pie, Ham and egg and cheese on rye.

So who’s to say what satisfaction really means, when it's this dark outside?

[pineandocean]

on the topic of broken hearts.

Sometimes we keep things inside for too long, so we turn on ourselves. We believe the world disapproves of us when really, we disapprove of that whole crowd and their way of being. We believe the wrong things because of our frail egos. We say “darkness is a terrifying place” while also saying “yes” and “of course it doesn’t matter”. The needle of artificial harmony slowly unravels us, loop by loop.

Protect yourself from the revolving door of faces, the sloppy bars, the Polk St. boutiques and expensive shows for artists you never liked, because otherwise you’ll lose. You’re not a candy-flavored blow up doll to laugh at unfunny jokes and talk about dicks over omelettes and wax your whole body then go home hating yourself and taking Vicodin for the pain.

Don’t lose. Don’t dim down. You are fine. Yes, you were injured a few times in a row. Yes, there were snags in your fabric. But you survived. There was blood. But you are alive. Your skin healed.

Treasure your aggression. Embrace your emotion. Loving the things you hate about yourself is your salvation.

Open up, initiate the kiss, say what you really think, admit the truth about your family, let your trust be earned. Let your selflessness be intentional. Graduate from the giant hole, always looking for fillers, because each person who comes in will stretch that gap until it gets so big that you’re not even there anymore and you don’t remember where you started.

Take as long as you need in your dark room, feeling around until you find yourself under the plastic.

Where are you right now? Are you lying on the couch at home, burning incense? Are you cooking (slightly burning) something on your stove? Are you resting in bed, delaying the day? Are you paging through a book someone recommended? Are you in a hidden path through the woods, listening to a new song over and over the way you do? Are you feeling good?

And what makes you feel really bad? What makes your heart shrivel up? What makes you feel like you’re losing time? Who makes you feel like you’re shrinking? Who makes you feel like another face in the crowd as they check their phone?

You think that between what you want and what you have, an entire kingdom lies. But the Big-You is just a bunch of small-yous marching, saying Yes to this and No to that and just generally kicking ass and saying “fuck off” or “fuck yes” enough times until you’ve molded something that feels like you, and you’re loved by yourself and others, and you wake up naked feeling like a million bucks because nothing on you or in you is artificial.

It’s a big undertaking so allow yourself to rest. Allow yourself to feel at home sometimes. Allow yourself to experience softness without resenting or rejecting it. I might not feel at home in the prisons of my mind, but sometimes I revisit them and reframe them and somehow they’ve become important stops to my home over time. The church, the museum, the interview room. Stations of change and of possibility. I’ve spent a long time staring at images and words of dead people, wondering what inspired them and if they knew that something they almost tossed in the trash became their legacy. Emily Dickinson, Stephen King. They help me avoid erasing myself.

Maybe this would all be solved if we made it mandatory to have one year of therapy and one year of being in the woods, a la Thoreau, when you turn 18. Where’s the sci-fi novel for that? Or do we only ever get dystopia? Anyways, everyone would need to do it, and the only exceptions would be for people who combine them into one year like Pat did, and he still drinks but now he understands why he was trying to erase himself and he doesn’t do that anymore.

Maybe if we stopped fantasizing about who we were, who we could be, and who we were waiting for, we would realize that every single thing we want is waiting, in our breath.

[pineandocean]

3am

Living in dreams

Thinking in symbols

Blinded by spaces

Haunted by cursors.

ink unused, page unspoiled,

drying, expiring, into last night.

Paralyzed by purity,

Dimmed by sleep,

Lids falling with pen stuck.

Pen. 

Stick that beats emotion down

Until it’s flat?

Small sword slaying

Ideas once in flight?

Weapon, not vessel,

As my eyes dart back 

to small spaces of the retina.

Places of insomnia,

Webs of slow spiders.

Nothing glows or moves.

No glitter or mystery,

No breakthroughs or levity.

Only slow machines

humming and buzzing 

like factories boarded, 

hoarding the past.

Not the celestial destiny

we envisioned in reverie

But electric aggravation, 

pulsing and pushing,

Pouring from plugs,

cold and translucent.

[pineandocean]

FEBRUARY TRAVEL GEM :

The Blue Lagoon, Iceland

"You can skip it, it’s pretty touristy. It’s overpriced for what you get. There are sooo many other things to see in Iceland.”

This is the travel advice I read on blogs about the Blue Lagoon. And I’m glad I didn’t listen, because it was one of the best experiences of my life. I had to go there because this was the first image I’d ever seen of Iceland and I knew I had to be in it, feeling that water and seeing that sun come up myself.

So, you take a bus from the airport in the pitch black of night, groggy and jetlagged from your 4 am flight. Driving in, you see nothing but odd shapes in the dark, and streams of white smoke coming from different points in the blackness. You stand in line with the 30 or 40 people who came on the same bus with you, and they’re all from different countries. You hear different languages all around you.

After changing and showering, you come outside in your bathing suit. You sprint through icy night air to enter this giant volcanic hot tub. You’re in a pool that stretches for about half a mile, in front of you and around you. You wade through the water, playing with mud masks and ordering champagne from the swim up bar. Life is unbearable.

Finally, 9:30 am in February hits, and the sun starts to rise in Iceland. As the light illuminates the curves and swells around you, you see milky blue water, black lava rocks, and silky green moss, everywhere you turn. You’re completely removed from everything and everyone you know, except your travel companion. You just journeyed across the world, and all the planning, money, timing, and crimped airplane sleep have led to this moment.

If you want to feel powerful and alive, do the tourist thing - go to the Blue Lagoon.

[pineandocean]

FEBRUARY COFFEE :

Specialty mocha, at Reykjavik Roasters, Karastigur 1 | corner of Frakkastigur, Reykjavik 101, Iceland. [phone].

In a rapid-fire world, cafes restore us with the luxury of frozen time. They’re the best places for reminiscing about the old or creating the new.

This mocha was made with Reykjavik Roasters medium roast beans, fresh cocoa, a sprinkle of cinnamon, and a cloud of cream. All of their coffees were incredibly smooth, and in the ocean of coffee culture in Reykjavik, these beans are their own battleship.