cause I've knelt

Didn’t take a picture 
Didn’t want to remember 
Didn’t paint a painting 
I was trying to forget 

Don’t carry paper, still I
know these streets like I hold a pen
For all that score keeping I still
don’t walk these streets like I hold your hand

People are here to say they are
Through a bullhorn, to a mirror
To pray that they’re not somewhere else
And do I? Pray - cause I’ve knelt

People are here to kiss their bride
To stroke themselves to sleep
Barking up the wrong tree, hills for streets
I’ve watched it all kneeling, but does a beggar pray?

When we dance, I dance I stand
You came with shovels and fire
I came from the downstairs tundra
I say now dancing, dig, and I know that is a prayer

November sunrise over Manhattan

no wile, no rile
still I stare
It used to toss the fallen leaves
its streets, mine, too
It’s true it don’t move me anymore

I see quieter things
where I wish they were where
It is instead
I am instead
quiet

like a woman betrayed glares
like a child denied
like a dog forgotten, forlorn my stare
carries the air I’ve forbade myself
within these haughty walls

Rock Bottom Doesn't Kill

“Rock bottom is where you stop digging.”

I wish people were encouraged to hit rock bottom. Rock bottom doesn’t kill you. Refusing to hit it does.

I found the most beautiful hue of gratitude at rock bottom. The truest shade of gratitude that did not need anything in return. It gave and it gave and it gives.

Gratitude is now. It supersedes circumstance. It waits not for a commonly-deemed-positive opportunity or what we perceive we lack to be granted us. It admits what is now and positions the self and the heart to receive the wholeness of now. This is true even when the wholeness of now is an opportunity to integrate an old emotion and feels as though life shows no grace. Gratitude does not wait for “positive” emotion. It needs not the sky to be blue. It is as the flowers bend towards the sun. Conscious, effortless.

I’m 3 weeks into a journey of no caffeine (tapered off) after drinking it nearly every morning since adolescence. For me, caffeine is a way to force a societally-appropriate mode of being and I was sorely dependent on it to be conversational, able to think fast, energized, [fickly] motivated. Little was my awareness of how it also perpetuated a great hurriedness within me, attention deficit, a clinging to narrative, hormonal imbalances, sleep troubles and more I have yet to discover. I’ve also quit drinking alcohol, which really had no benefit to me anymore beyond the pleasurable headiness of the first sip of wine of an evening. Every time I drank I felt further away from myself. Most of the time that was the point. Someone recently asked me how long I plan on abstaining from both. Truth is, I wouldn’t judge my own relapse, but I don’t see a return. Why?

In the momentarily-tireder, clearer radio signal of near-sobriety I am remembering that I am not separate from the experience I want to have. I am not separate from the human I dream of being. From love. Love is the very breath of my body.

My personal rock bottom wasn’t my angriest time, nor my loneliest. It wasn’t my brokest, my least-sober, my most creatively void, my most promiscuous or transactional. While I have ritualistically revisited all of these hells like a fiberglass horse on a carousel, rock bottom was when I stopped needing to. It was a pigheaded summertime depression within which one morning I woke up and decided… this sickness is over.

I need not conjure from darkness the sun. I need not conjure from darkness the sun within me. I needn’t manipulate time or dissect myself into shreds, or build myself up larger than life. All there is to do is allow what is to be: allow love to be. And believe it. Be mystified, be in awe of what wealth of truth flows from letting go.

If everyone were encouraged to hit rock bottom, they would probably also be encouraged to ask “who am I?” and truly listen for the answer. If everyone were to see who they are, they’d fall in love. They’d live in love the way they long to find with another person, in their career, in the world. And life is big enough to support that being the case for every single one of us.

Gas Lamps in the Bywater

Mazzy Star in my cans at Caffe Reggio. So, Yoko Ono has left the Dakota. I don’t know how she ever stayed. Yet, if my life and my love were hers I might not leave til I were 90, either.

Sometimes inspiration feels like a gas lamp aflame at 2pm on the porch of an old wooden house in New Orleans in the 100º weather. Great, you’re burning. Your flicker makes my world no brighter. Your warmth is rain in my ocean. Still cute, though. You challenge me to appreciate the singular form of what is plural all around.

He said “I’m on a beach and you can’t see me.” I said “I’m on a beach and I can see me.”

On one hand there is zen, neutrality, even avoidance. Numbness. On the other there is flying into JFK. At eye level with the stars, upon first sight of the clusters of golden light below New York gives you visions of everything you’re going to go through for as long as you stay in her this time. It all plays out in your body right then and there. You feel why you have come to her as her song sings to you “beloved, gaze in thine own heart” (The Two Trees).

Ephemeral Shannon

dae·mon

noun: daemon; plural noun: daemons; noun: daimon(s)

  1. (in ancient Greek belief) a divinity or supernatural being of a nature between gods and humans.

    • an inner or attendant spirit or inspiring force.
      "Socrates claimed to have lived his life according to the dictates of his daemon"

The 5th and second-to-last track of Dear Ghost (EP) is here. I wrote Ephemeral Shannon (originally titled Shannon Song) over the course of a year. The song’s incarnation began while walking west on Bleecker Street in early 2021. I overheard a man on the phone say “I wonder what Shannon thinks about it,” and I felt compelled to write the phrase down immediately. A perceivably mundane statement to the inattentive psyche, but to mine, I felt an array of affect: the absence of Shannon, possible estrangement from Shannon, simple regard for Shannon and her input, and a real indirectness, possible avoidance, as he vocalized to a third party his desire to be in touch with Shannon. Which broadened into “who is he in Shannon’s eyes?” and “where is Shannon?” and “what part of him does Shannon represent to him?” or “what power does he perceive Shannon has over him, beside him, or even beneath him?”

The choruses allude to Shannon and the narrator once planting trees, pruning them together, which was their communication pipeline. As I wrote the song I realized the narrator was completely estranged from Shannon, alluding to how their connection is now “buried in concrete,” which is a reference to the premise of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi. Shannon could be an inner child, could be a sister, could be the narrator’s daemon, could be the paradise of nature.

★ Listen to Ephemeral Shannon

★ Watch the music video

Deactivation = Reactivation

July 9, 2023

Yesterday I deactivated my instagram account and logged out of tiktok and facebook. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision with years of ignored intuition behind it. It’s been a longterm belief of mine that I can’t achieve an international artistic presence as a writer and performer of my own songs and other’s without actively maintaining a personal social media presence. Many “mentors” in my life have also had the fear of who they are without all that validation and the occasional gig call they receive by being on social media. For long, I’ve formatted my art according to what performs well on the apps where people consume ,,,,,,,, “art”,,,,,,,,,,,,,

We’ve put the collective definition of “art” in the hands of corporations, including instagram. Recently I’ve been honest enough with myself to acknowledge personally participating in this is not in alignment with the artist I am, nor the leader I am. I will no longer deny that people have been following in my musical and personal footsteps for years and while I’ve rejected that truth out of self-loathing and denial, well like I said, I’ve been honest enough with myself lately to acknowledge who I am without putting any moral label on it.

I’ve formed how I relate to the world on social media, bridging adolescence into my 20s by tailoring my personality and art to the internet. I do wish I were exaggerating. However, I am completely not. It has been one of the strongest causes of anxiety in my life because now I realize how inauthentic to my true nature it really is.

People of all beliefs talk about our ‘higher selves.’ We have this idea that somewhere out there in time or space is this version of us who acts in accordance with what we actually value, what we actually want, who we actually are. They have the life we know we deserve or are meant for or just simply desire. Inherently, this holds the ideal self separate from our present form. Yesterday I realized, and I have been realizing over recent years, that my higher self is me and is me now. The task of life is not that I pine for and chase my higher self, but that I relax into my highest self by allowing my inner guidance, my spidey-senses, to inform my action, allowing the unconditional love (which is the reality of my existence) to dissolve my shame, allowing my inherent freedom to unchain the shackles of any other outside belief.

Upon deactivating my instagram, which dismantles the account’s visibility without deleting any of its data, I realized this life and this journey as an artist is so much bigger than the confines of social media. This is why I live in New York City when “nowadays you can live anywhere with the internet,” why I started a blog on my website, why I continue to perform live, and why I put my phone in airplane mode to sit in my room and write songs all day. But since I know I do not exist on Instagram today, the music and the art has never felt more sacred, more powerful, more purposeful. Perhaps because I don’t need it to perform well. I don’t need to watch it perform well.

I am. This is it.

I’ve always had a reason to not do what I did yesterday. I have more music coming out and about to come out than ever before. There’s a new song out this Friday and my EP releases in total on August 4th. I’m writing more than I ever have in my life. My live shows feel more momentous than they have in years. So, stepping away from social media could absolutely be seen as foolish. However, I’m a risk taker and a sucker for trying things I’ve never tried before.

Gandhi said to be the change you want to see in the world. Truth is, conformity never flattered my frame.

frankincense / dumb luck

The streets of Napoli smell like frankincense. Lately when it rains I just get wet. When I connect with a piece of music I physically enter the sound like I do buildings and train cars. There are nights New York will let you think you’re the only one in it. When I leave the stage in America they tell me “good job” or “you were great.” When I leave the stage in France they say “thank you.” Reddit is the shadow side of social media. Reddit is a public diary. There are few more compelling earthen smells than Jasmine. No one talks about the extremely unpleasant sensation of removing white strips. Grocery shopping in Chinatown is a timeless, quintessential New York experience. Unconditional love is neutrality is sovereignty. There is a feeling that oft wells up in my heart that you can also hear in the right-panned lead guitar in the last minute and 30 seconds end of “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over.” It is akin to feeling nervous. Like the moon, I daily appear different. I could curl up inside the flavor of kiwi and live happily. When I’m writing I imagine my room is a life-size music box where my soul spins on axis in the center.

At least I know I can 
Walk myself numb in this city
Walk myself dumb
Luck that’d I’d run into you 

On Volition & Vanity

morning makes dreams feel false. dreaming makes life feel boring. but what are dreams without the world void of and longing for their mystique? and what is life without fantasy?

an earlier journal entry: I know what it feels to mean it. sure doesn’t feel like this.

welcome to vanity: a deep rejection of self, a hatred of sorts, a self-tyranny and yet, you still try to give the light you know you are capable of shining. welcome to purgatory. and yes, I do believe it is palpable from the outside. I do believe people can sense something, perhaps not totally disingenuous, but something in disagreement with itself.

to mean it. to be inside it. to stand by it. to need to say it. to want to say it. to believe in it. oddly, in my life this has come along with a sense of not needing to say anything at all, but knowing the moment for what it is. volition.

have you baked yourself too many colors deep into a layer cake to know what you mean? you can truly live a whole life not meaning anything. for the creative who endeavors to still say something, they will be left with dust to create dancing figurines and curse the pair of eyes in the mirror who could not command dust to the will of their hands.

if you’re going to mean your living, you might need to mean some dying too. or first.

the human who jumps from a ledge has made the same decision as the human who unconditionally supports themself. both are a radical act of volition in a lukewarm landscape. the same energy that sows suicide is also fertile soil for deep expansion of consciousness.

who will know me? I will. who will validate this feeling? I will. who will love me when my hair is white? I will.

shouldn’t’s, virtues, stories and figments fade with their decrease as commodities.

a man who fears a woman fears himself. a woman who hates a man hates herself. in all that bitterness they are victim to the fact that they happen to find themself breathing. void of volition. untie those feelings from the pole where they are chained in the backyard and set the animal free to run, build muscle and become something beautiful to watch it dancing.

only in knowing my shame and its many voices have I witnessed it turn into love. wear the shame like a mohair sweater in the summer until in the sweat you can feel the pain it causes you. there is no better a time to mean love.

the music box

Maybe that is the point
What is?
That there isn’t one (points to the center of the room)

I must’ve had to walk 100 miles ten times
Must’ve had to be alone for almost too long
Like bread on the verge of molding
Plums on the brink of rotting to see
Our souls
Spinning on axis, twirling, frozen in the middle of the room
A life-size music box

You are nowhere to be found but, ricordarsi
It could be my nickname for you
You reminded me of what is beautiful for what it is, not for what it was made to be
What is beautiful for how it is natural
What is beautiful for being unapologetic
What is beautiful for not being beautiful

I crawled inside every word you sang
Laid my head to rest there
When I woke alone with my incessant need
I was surprised to find beauty in what never appeared beautiful to me before –
The grave and despondent char on my heart

Perhaps I am finished imagining my life as if it were that of the lamppost instead

It is the sheer feeling of free falling when I stare into your eyes that reminds me
Maybe that is the point
What is?
That there isn’t a point and yet, still here we are

Stories wash away
Like a man left untouched for so long
I am tempted to write them again
Chicken scratch, you in every page
But I will not
For now

Normandy / My European Debut

April 26, 2023

It’s the window seat. It’s the upper level of the train. It’s a steady flow of green past the glass until it’s a burst of yellow – yellow as if the earth were wearing a jacket made of lemon peel. Canola fields. They come into view like the white at the end of a roll of film. A medieval church steeple protrudes from the hills. This is Normandy. I’m in Normandy. How did I get here?

Not a month ago I posted that I would be performing in Paris. I heard from an artist on Instagram asking if he could put together a show in which he would open for me in the neither small, nor big city of Caen, Normandy. With the experience of an American, of a New Yorker, of a songwriter, of a vessel for music who’s embraced cutting her teeth on life spinning about in my psyche, I accepted. I’m off the train and there is Val. He recognizes me before I recognize him. We walk to the venue. I have coffee. He rolls a cigarette.

Portobello Rock Club smells like a bar. It has a real stage and vibrates at the perfect frequency of grunge. Val, his friend Amandine and I are biding time together, stretching, showing each other what graphics are on our socks, watching people stream into the club from the upstairs window. 21:00… Val goes on stage. I peer out from behind the bar hearing the enchanting solo piano chord changes of his song Ana (releasing in June). There are 60 people with eyes glued to the stage. I pause for some neural pathway rewiring. This is an unexpected moments that tears down preconceived ideas and defenses. I see my life flash before my eyes, realizing how all of it has led me here and how none of it matters anymore.

The stage then houses me. As I create the first violin loop people snap along. I mean within seconds of there existing an audible tempo in the room everyone is right inside it with me. At times during the set the audience is singing along, most people having never heard my songs. We are laughing, they are bearing with my English, supporting every endeavor I venture on. By the end of the set they ask for an encore. And another.

Afterwards I stand by the bar to witness nearly every person in the room approach me to thank me.

What a thrill to know the vibration of that evening lives on in Caen: the first time I played music in Europe. In celebration on the following day, Me, Val and his friend Ju ventured all the way to the top of the Mont Saint-Michel, which has been a subject of inspiration for me for 4 years. With gratitude and amazement, I thank Val for his hard work in stitching the evening together, his friends who welcomed me, the Portobello Rock Club for their hospitality and to the audience in total who was ready for music.

Read a review of our show in English / in French.

The Axiom

He asked me to persuade him
I don’t deal in the business of convincing
Truth is it doesn’t matter what or where
             He does
      He is
Fields of wildflowers
His own avowed reflection to make out in the mirror as the steam of his question disperses

Queen Anne’s Lace garlands the highway
I pick it, poppies and a single dandelion with 7 year old hands
They dance in the fields
Fields of wildflowers are dancing in me

She asks how I can leave it alone
I don’t deal in the business of bombarding
Truth is it doesn’t matter how or why
            I do
      I am
Avowedly

S
O
L
I
T
U
D
E

Solitude is English Ivy planted in my toes
Creeping up my shins
He is swinging from the vines
Tugging at my skin

A marble angel draped over a grave
He teases her soul up and above
Pulls it like old fashioned taffy
Chews on it like tobacco like
The wind chews at the rocks in the desert
Eroded by nonsense
Baptized in “if this then that”
Tattooed by rain

false fear and true fun

Good morning from Paris. 

I made a music video for my recent release, Vintage Bendel, the 3rd track of the Dear Ghost EP. At first, the process of making it reminded me of being a kid: driving to remote desert gas stations to find fireworks, eating candy, swimming in my bikini, off-roading in a friend's Tacoma, destroying old vinyls on camera. I had so much fun. 

Then it came time to post it and all the voices streamed in. "Remember all the people who told me to stop acting in my own videos?" "What will people think seeing me in a bikini on the internet?" “I despise promoting myself and would rather live a quiet life unseen by anyone” "What if people don't care and don't watch it and it falls flat like the other videos and songs I’ve spent hundreds of hours on?" ... I almost didn't post it. 

I texted my sister with my fear to promote the video. She simply asked "what are you afraid of?" and that sticky devil fell right off my back. Instant. I realized my fear is the judgement of others, which is really an external manifestation of the judgement of myself. It is also the fear of rejection of others, or being overlooked and not valued, which then confirms my lowly suspicions of my self worth. DONE... POSTED... PROMOTED. What else am I here for? 

I made this piece of art. I guess its art. Call it what you will or don't call it anything. I hope it brings someone a fraction of the joy it brought me to make it. And maybe someone has a summer bop to add to their playlist.

The Question

The flowers on the deli counter
Are as dead as a doll is living
I’m wasted as the greenish week-old water
Wasted on you

The cat looks at me like you sometimes did
A question claws from behind its eyes
It peers up at me like a child
No words to adorn the air in meaning or light

Desperate as you were to ask
Just as determined not to hear the answer

I, too, have a question
Writing itself out in blackletter font
Inked into my retina
Like a teenager’s first tattoo

And so I see you
I know you and choose not to be you
For all you are and aren’t, I stare
At the sliver of sky
Between 400 year old buildings on a hill
And I ask, I stare
At the woman in the reflection of the deli window
At night, in the florescence, over dressed

I am asking

~ dusty rose ~

Barefoot in the heavenly April air after frolicking through Central Park, I’m sitting on the roof watching the 7 o’clock sun stain the Empire State Building pale gold with the ever-racing heart in my chest. It beats like a disconsolate, old country ballad, like a carpet beater against a wool rug.

Tonight for the first time in my conscious life, it’s just a racing heart to me. Not a train of thought I must board, not an internal F5 tornado that requires a pill to subdue, not a judgement I need to pass on someone else, not an acrobat I need to perform, not a love I must earn, not a curse word I must blurt, not an amount of money I need procure, not a distance I must run, not a lock that is keeping me out, not a problem to solve. Just a racing heart.

An organ.

I saw a man dancing with a life-size skeleton puppet in the Union Sq subway station this afternoon.

Would you know I don’t feel nauseous anymore.

Freedom

The light on the Empire State Building is now dusty rose. It is as if I’ve never laid eyes on it before.

Liminality

Dearest liminality,

Screw you and thank you. What better way to see you then the Pacific Coast Highway of California from a car with no roof and no presence in the passenger seat. And there you were as were the wildflowers on the hills, as was the unseen but felt-invasiveness of the wind on the beach just north of Monterey. Tireless. Nosy.

I lied. My camera laid in the passenger seat, ready to capture you at any moment. A 35mm frame between you and I: precisely the way I would have it. Its the way you will never truly allow, though I appreciate how you entertained my veiled fantasy if even for a shutter.

To the right.. land. To the left.. air-meets-sky horizon. Inbetween? You and I tangle, tango, brawl, lick the roofs of each other’s mouths and most vividly, disagree.

Mementos of you.

I cry at the ocean, wiping the tears from my cheeks, tasting them off the back of my hand like a child. I taste what I see – salt. Unus mundus. Did I find home? Had I forgotten it? My flesh is land as my eyes are sea, my breath is air as my heart is surely fire, surely ash, too.

You. Indication of change, challenge. To be frank, as much as I value such things, I’ve posted guards in my sleep to stand at my doorways beneath the header which reads “only the familiar may enter.” Luckily, your nature is truly that of a good lover. I am drawn to you like a bee to a neon-orange poppy, out of my hive to your spaciousness, to your unpredictability, to how you waver in the breeze, and I cannot fight off such a curiosity which brews in me like coffee on a brisk morning.

There are pines so dense the sunlight does not peer through. Yet the tops of those trees know no shade. There you are again.

Dearest, liminality.

Salt and the Neutrality of Rejection

I posted a story on Instagram tonight alluding to how some of the most personally and professionally invasive behavior I’ve witnessed in my time on Earth is that of men who I’ve not wanted to date. This topic was inspired by something I heard recently from a friend. They brought it to my attention that an individual in the music industry is actively spreading untrue rumors about me. And you guessed it… I rejected their offer to date. 5. Years. Ago.

Someone rejecting you is not a signed, sealed, delivered letter from god telling you to stalk them, spread erroneous rumors, talk shit, or most commonly: berate them [or yourself!] with the simple-yet-serrated backhanded remark.

“The Dead Sea is not as salty as a man who you don’t want to date. A barnacle is not as crusty as…”

I took down the story and took out the keypad to write this instead. First off, I recognize the bitterness in others <of any gender> because that same capacity and even track record lives in me. In fact, it has been through various instances of being rejected, personally and professionally, that I began to learn rejection is neutral.

I used to fixate on who rejected me, rolling around like a pig in mud in the bitterness I developed over being unwanted. Over my perceived ideal not blossoming to fruition. I believed rejection posed a threat to the way I saw myself, like the patina of an old mirror minus the charm-factor. I even believed rejection meant I was of less value to the world.

Choosing to be comfortable with external disapproval is the best decision I’ve made so far. In doing so, I’ve watched myself evolve from a validation-seeking shapeshifter towards a standalone consciousness with two feet on the ground. Rejection [and praise for that matter] is more neutral than often perceived, for most people act on what they need and want for themselves, which so much of the time is feeling and perception based. External input no longer governs my identity (or even better, lack of identity).

I suppose…life is hard enough. And while rejection can hurt like a bitch, if you lean into that, crash, burn, Phoenix through it (thank you Jarle Bernhoft) you’ll find freedom.

Prince has a tune called “I Wish U Heaven.” I have a boombox on my shoulders playing it on repeat.

Demon/Damon/Daemon

In lieu of Damon, the second track of the Dear Ghost EP, coming out this week. I allude to “devil” and “gods” as symbolism.

Demon: the liaison to the devil, the pain, darkness.
Damon: the human, the flesh, the present, neutral.
Daemon: the liaison to the gods, the inspiration, light.

dae·mon
/ˈdēm(ə)n/
noun: daemon; noun: daimon

  1. (in ancient Greek belief) a divinity or supernatural being of a nature between gods and humans.

    • an inner or attendant spirit or inspiring force.

      "Socrates claimed to have lived his life according to the dictates of his daimon"

I woke up at 3AM this morning feeling like a snake had wrapped itself around my neck to tease me with death. Some people call it the witching hour. Waking from nightmares. Feeling the stress we numb ourselves to during the day at full throttle as we dip our toes into (or nearly drown in) a wasteland of nihilism.

In the same way at different times… Dopamine. Inspiration. Breaking out of the matrix. The ancient Greeks called this spirit a daemon (pronounced like diamond). Songs are birthed. Meaning takes hold once again in my life, mysteriously and without name, like a wave to ride.

Demon/Damon/Daemon: the alchemy and transmutation of consciousness from neutral to pain to strength and fluidly between the three. Perhaps life is less about maintaining a perceived level of productivity or light, and fully experiencing the throes of being human. I choose to grow an appreciation for the tides of change.

Hiroshima

Something familiar before thought puts a name to it
Slithers up from an anonymous depth and strangles my throat
It’s disguised with charm but I know and can feel that it belongs in a Goya painting

The smell of a premature Spring day sticks out like a sore thumb amongst a slew of frigid February mornings

On my walls are reminders of past efforts, solitary attempts at capturing not only anyone’s attention, but my own
I sit in my room in silence with the notion that most of my efforts fell flat

The ground cries as it thaws Winter from its layers
My muscles, too, ache in a detox of memory

Us at my kitchen table
“Don’t forget” as if forgetting would be worse than this
And that is the masochism of this heartbreaking town, of love, and truly of me

Each step I take down this hallow block is letting go
There no longer resides a choice within me – only direction, only current
Yet, still, a needle tugs my throat, pulling a thread of resistance as another struggles to penetrate the tough old denim of my jeans as I hem them
The silhouette of your body is stained on the walls of my inner city like the shadows of Hiroshima

A symphony I learned long ago
You are it: memorized, still breathtaking, and not as familiar as I once named you to be by the passing of years and whiplash of seasons

Moapa Valley

I’ve been training myself to see lack as an additive. Extra sauce on the side. When I feel the cavernous void of lack and start to tremble at the screams of “you’re not enough, you weren’t then, you’ll never be” I ask myself “who am I without this lack?” Then I walk around the block naming as many vegetables as I can.

Who am I? Am I the story I sung myself to sleep with when I was thirteen? Am I how much they love me or how little they care? Am I the backhanded thing I said last month? On January 26th I could see Mars from Manhattan. I laid on the roof. I am none of those things.

Nature is regenerative. For how many billions of years? It bows with reverence to the seasons, bending with the changes. It needs not winter to be summer. I once perceived a deprivation of love in my life. Now I ask who was I without that lack of love? And I see that even then, I was whole. Complete.

Nevada State Route 169 weaves through the Moapa Valley. I’m driving wherever it may lead me. I begin to weep without knowing why. I hear a voice that says “forgive me.” All is. Forgiven. As if it were never stained with anyone’s blood. And so you were free to bleed and I am free to remember you for who you were, which was enough, though you did not believe it.