The Shifting Hours: A Scott Foley and Laura Horton Collaboration.

If you have an iPad, you should check out Katachi, an iPad magazine, and download the latest issue. Scott Foley and I have been working on a 12-part video series, The Shifting Hours, the first episode of which premiered this week (though I think the first three are actually available if you scroll through the feature).

Below is the promo that Scott did up (pretty bad-ass) -- get excited:

Chronological Nonsense and a Moment of Fall

I dressed for mid-October, though it is mid-November, and I’ve found myself in mid-May. I have excused myself from my desk – a place where seasons have no meaning except during those first and last two minutes of the day when we add or remove layers – because my walk to the train indicated an opportunity to sit and read in the park. And so, here I am. Sitting in the park, autumn sun filling me like water does to a parched sponge. I think of you because I always think of you and because I am warm, a feeling I have come to associate with being in your arms.

For the last couple of weeks, I have been reading a love story, of which my opinion wavered in and out of favor. Today, warm and reading the final chapters, I am immersed. The story has become inseparable from our own. That a year ago today I was taking in the same sounds of crushed leaves and the same spectrum of burnt fall colors, and also the first taste of you, the first feel of your arm holding my frame to your chest, the first blurry gaze of you asleep on my pillow, probably has a lot to do with why I can’t stop imagining this day as if you were by my side.

I am calm for the first time all month. Blissfully calm. Stomach-completely-pit-free calm. I am outside of myself, hovering above everything, detached from my life and my worries and my uncertainty. I am both wholly present and wholly absent. I sit and observe my surroundings, breathe them in, bear witness to life unfolding. I am lost in the beauty of the scene – the soft afternoon light filtering through the not-yet-bare branches and reflecting off the wake of the ducks and geese eager to rescue crumbs and crusts from their certain drowning.

But We Emerge: A Scott Foley/Laura Horton Collaboration. Again.

Video by Scott Foley. Words by me!

Visions of ourselves find vigor in the calm of fresh air and fall colors. Enlivened senses stir us from our hiding spots -- inadequate havens in which we shelter ourselves from the malaise of ceaseless motion. Our everyday has left us haggard and barely breathing beneath an ever-growing layer of self-doubt. But we emerge.

When the world outside has become still, and our eyelids are not burdened by the weight of a slumber out-of-reach, we embrace our vitality once more. We find our moment. One moment to quietly reflect. One moment to allow our souls to float along the streams of the westerly winds and hover breathless in rays of afternoon sun.

I fantasize about this kind of paradise – the kind that breathes, the kind that cleanses, the kind that numbs our overheated nerves. I dream it takes our heartbeat back to an un-caffeinated pace and delivers the peace for which we so humbly pray.

You Are Here: Another Scott Foley/Laura Horton Collaboration.

Video work by Scott Foley. Words by me!

You’re not lost. You’ve simply forgotten it doesn’t matter what you’re looking for. All that matters is you’re here. Here because there, wherever you were that held whatever you’re getting away from, wasn’t enough for you or was too much for you. It let you down, or it tied you down, so you had to leave.

You’re not lost. You left aching to get away from something tired. Not thinking through the part about getting into something new. But you found something new. You found this. You found the ground you’re standing on. So you’re not lost. You are not misguided or mislead, not astray or wayward. You are here. With everything or nothing in front of you.

What do you choose?

Storms, Fairy Tales and Moorings.

We craved a storm so extreme our insides would finally find relative peace. In watching naked destruction fall upon our road, our trees, our power-lines, we hoped we might watch something succumb to the same fate that had been ravaging our hearts (rubbed raw by our ribs with each overpowered beat), our lungs (worn down by whispers and wails) and our brains (overheated and undernourished). Instead we found scattered twigs and torn leaves and took refuge in TV marathons and video games.

In another form, in another situation, I'm sure I have felt the same heaviness, the same scorched chest, the same tendency toward tears and small corners. I have been a girl pouring over lyrics, fairy tales, and old movies, and I recognize my senses now filled with the same uncertainty that was once scrawled on crumpled paper and whispered into starry skies. But it is different to feel this way with you. It is different to feel both so utterly afloat and so completely anchored.

You are the only one who sees what I'm feeling, through the muddy water I hide beneath, and makes me feel it. Though sometimes to stop drowning and start breathing feels like simply drowning in a new way, you are the only one whose arms can make the mess in my head subside for a moment. I have never known laughter like ours. I have known no hands, no arms, no lips, that make me feel as safe. Wild, alive, and safe.

Chewing Gum, Infidelity and Idiosyncrasies

Our story has a different taste to me now, something like the faded mint of chewing gum that has been stretched across your tongue too many times. Our visits are shorter, our conversations less interesting. (We've stopped admitting flaws, and I'm not sure what that means). As I sit across from you, your words wash over me like a swarm of insects that I have to wince and dodge my way through, and you are increasingly aware of my discomfort.

We run through the motions of what we once were, occasionally admitting a detail that our current relationship doesn't warrant, but somehow we still feel obligated, like we're committing some kind of infidelity against our former selves by feeling so distant.

Then you sip your drink the same way you always have, and I bring my knees to my chest the same way I always have. We smile. For a moment, I think I still know you the way I've always known you. I could paint the way you tie your shoes, the way you drive, the way you run your fingers through your hair.

But we can't seem to dig ourselves out of the silence.

“You’re Letting HIM Post on Your Blog?” Tour ’11

I'm Peter. Laura was kind enough to host me during my meandering guest posting tour. She gave me "The moment you know you're in love" as a writing prompt. I hope you enjoy what I did with it.


anyone can get it up for a sunset
but
those that just
know
the true beauty
lies
in what happens
immediately after
the colours are darker
richer
the night coolness
shyly introducing itself
to you
to us
it's always
the right after moments
i think
as the echoes of passions shared
and created
fight to continue to be heard
as our bodies are held together
magnetically
a soothing heaviness
coats
us
as our brains recap
the words
that reached escape verocity
shared moments of delicious shyness
wash over
the back of my hand traces your hip
goose bumps follow
with no regard
to keeping
a safe distance
as flashbacks
collide
with anticipation
you know
as i whisper
my lips caressing
barely
your stomach
riling up
the butterflies
once more
you whisper