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?

Carved Boxes and Open Palms

I'm dealing with an absence of things to say, things to think, as though my life has stored its meaning in a carved wooden lockbox because the beauty of it seemed to rest on some complementary frequency but thoughtlessly misplaced the key, leaving the two of us, my life and me, to sit and stare at this work of art wordlessly, afraid to speak lest it be something inane and offensive.  We'd like to actively hope for a means to access the meaning it holds within itself, but more frequently the delicate woodwork and the stained iron of the lock leaves us in a state of hypnosis.  (Keys do not walk themselves to open palms, yet here we sit with our wrists askew, waiting for a weight to fall into our fingers).

We tell a story  – or I do anyway, as my life nods along – of someone who knows where and who to be, of someone who might have lost a key but broke the hinges or manipulated a paper clip because meaning was all too important to be left stagnant in cedar.  This someone is as oblivious to what the future holds as we are, as afraid, as happy to sit and wait for something to come to her, but she is also certain that there is more, some undiscovered fulfillment in the pursuit of dreams and the wild pull of ambition. She sweats when only breath is demanded and bleeds when they call for sweat.

In moments of disenchantment, she grabs onto shards of broken hope and turns them into prisms, which then turn her the temporary relief of her moments of optimism into a mesmerizing splendor – dreams of dancing with green and purple to watch them envelop her in yellow, blue and red instead.

The words of her flow out of me and into the air to settle in the intricate carvings of the box, which now balances atop a bench beneath the readied swing of hammer, the beauty ready to be traded for meaning though not without intent to find beauty in the aftermath.

Registers above the Buzzing in Your Ear

It sounds like theatrics. Like a man in a tweed hat and a tweed suit in the center of a dark stage telling us how to suspend our disbelief as he puffs away on a corncob pipe. It sounds like something that becomes an eighth grader’s away message, something that I would have clung to in my 15-year-old heartbreak when I doodled the lyrics of songs that I didn’t understand on my shoes. It sounds like a temper tantrum, like Tom Cruise on Oprah, like the girl whose Facebook status updates tell her life story.

But I’m sitting here, staring at the wall with a smirk on my face, and I want to bang cymbals. I want to learn how to play the trumpet so I can announce things off balconies to unsuspecting passersby. I want to stand two inches away from a stranger and tell them my life is changing. I want the side of a building as a canvas and three shopping carts of spray paint.

The words sitting stagnant on my tongue, the ones I am always careful not to let get mixed in with the clutter, deserve some theatrics. They deserve a quiet moment to explode, echoing back at me in new and interesting tones as someone else’s taste buds discovers their flavor. But I may have kept them inside just a little too long, and now I'm carbonated and not yet settled from a bumpy ride, ready to provide theatrics even if the moment's entirely inappropriate.

Obscured Lines in the Sand

The wind carried the sparks off into the dark sky, teaming up with the smoke to take a moment of brilliance away from the stars.  The six of us lay on the ground, he with his head on the sand, I with my mine on his chest, and for the moment we weren't worried about the grains of sand seeping into our socks and waistbands. We stared reverently as the silhouette of the bonfire shivered against the night, glowing like a spotlight on a dark stage.  I changed the grip on my beer and shifted my weight to my elbow, eager to see everything the evening had to offer: the way the waves took turns giving us a new look at the moon, the glow of the horizon inviting our thoughts to dream with a little more risk.

"We need a soundtrack."

Cue headlights, someone's fingers fumbling over the dashboard, and an Atmosphere song making its way around the windshield of the Jeep. Our feet jumped across and dug into the cooling sand, our arms swinging without direction. I could feel his eyes follow me as the shadows from the bonfire made shapes on my face.  It wasn't the first night of obscured lines of friendship, and it wouldn't be the last, but it was always contained in day-lengths, encased in memories not spoken of, just replayed like the best verse of a forgotten song, almost as good as we remember it to be.

Imaginations on Airplanes

I roll my bottle cap in my hand and feel every ridge, every oddly placed spike, and all the smooth parts in between. My head feels heavier than usual, though only in certain areas, turning me into a bobble head at awkward moments of human interaction. "Would you like something to drink?" I shake my head but it turns into an odd roll. I cringe, apologize, and turn my eyes toward the window.

From above everything looks so delicate; a veritable bouquet of textures and shapes, solid in their placement (a permanence I don't feel when I'm among them). I imagine them to be actually tiny, or maybe myself to be fantastically large, so I would be able reach out and let my fingers brush along the tips of the trees and the sides of buildings grip and slip along the lines of my fingerprints.

The clouds are something like bubbles in a hot bath the way they move, the way they're never quite satisfied to stay the way I mold them. They're softer though. More delicate. Like wisps of bunny fur, stripped of their ability to turn me frantic with removing the feeling of breathlessness from my nose.

I wonder where I'd rest my head if I were so fantastically large and decide Saturn sounds comfortable. So Saturn, tonight's all yours.