happy birthday day Q, happy birthday Mar.

dd
___Q

where are we? where are we where are we where are we? who is this life, who are these people? i can't recognize much of this landscape, but it has a... sense of correctness to it. a feeling of it being the 'right way'. and for whatever reason, we have regained something of ourselves haven't we?, and in addition, have made a profit or two along the way. i was counting, between november and december i saw 36 sunrises in a row sitting at my desk. is that what life is? after dinner, i throw away what's left of the roast chicken. it makes me sad to do it, but, it was getting old. is this what life is? but what a heavy thing we have become. so full of myselfness so that even when i am insecure i am not. and when i am perplexed i crash walls and she says to me sometimes i think i have to tiptoe around you and she wants me to kiss her but i can't. this is who we are. drifters. desiccaters. licking our lips between sex and gasping at how wonderful it is to remember we are alive afterall. Q, we are alive, afterall. [i smile]. after it all, a diet of cough-drops, amphetamines, hand-holding, and persistent sunrise watching has sustained us. (how hard it is to be a dreamer. a professional violin weeper. a sunset cemetery leaf sweeper).

licked our lips between gulps of rum, sitting in rooms by ourselves, with our fangs having nothing to stab but notebooks writing page after page forgive we who are lost, forgive we who are lost, forgive we who are lost, only to wake finding our car, parked out front, has been smashed up by the neighbor too-sleepy on his way to work at 5am. and nauseous, drove where we needed to go and sat and stared at computer screens listening to our neurons crackle like static. this is where we have come from. that is a world we know. ____and yet, ___this is the silent land.

purpose, my mother had said, is what you need boy. you are purposeless. and i had stared at the floor and felt my insides connive to catabolism, afterwards spitting out mouthfulls of shame and blood and acid.


___MAR

___(as always, in my head, i hear Mar's voice and Mar's silence. Mar's little hands and Mar's tea kettle which Mar could hear boiling 24 seconds before any known creature alive Q, the kettle's boiling she'd say, no it's not, i'd say, sure enough 24 seconds later i'd hear the dimmest high-pitched shriek starting up; as always, in my head: this is the only way it could have been). we'll laugh at their funerals Mar. we will laugh at our funerals. we will dance at our birthdays and our dawns, we will have dreams made of tea that smell like vanilla, and markets smelling of fish, we will sit at the borders of States and argue about nicotine and we will live brutal brutal unfair lives, and we will laugh till somebody does me the favor and ups the morphine drip. and we will lick our lips in between for more.


___Q + MAR

in a world with too few friends how'd we end up with soo many Mar? and life is short i hear but there're stories crammed into every drawer, closet and backpack we own - can't start the car without encountering a few more. i've done us a favor and been succinct about it: friends and stories, that's all there is to it right? friends, stories, that's all you take away from the table.


___MAR

dear lovely eyes, say hi to Mar. the only person to hear me cry in more than a decade. who outstretched her hand from beyond continents and calenders to make you feel better. whose couch has saved me more than once. who doesn't let you get away with fallacy or cowardice. whose soft in the heart but guards it so you can't get to it without earning you way through. the sort of friend who'll sock your ex-girlfriend in the face for being a bitch to you [Q smiles as he think this].


___Q + MAR

happy newest year guys. happy newest versions of yourselves. happy the best-ever versions of
yourselves. the most up-to-date. exhausted and fatigued in all the best/worst ways. you have more future than time for.

___(i'm in the water alone, it's black and the sky's black and the moon's yellowish. it's hard to see much. in the distance, on the sand dunes i see some light-bulbs on the sand with coloured plastic around them. a sound system blasts music and people run around and dance and sit by a campfire. laugh. a couple of the more responsible amongst them clean up the remains of an epic barbecue. it is a rare convergence point - the lives of some 30 people having found their way to an isolated beach in northern israel of all places. i know some distance away, to my right, there are ruins of an old fort. i am swimming in history. every grain of sand was once a bone. the fossils of footsteps and feet and stones that footsteps and feet walked on of zealots and desperates and lovers and dreamers. of exiles and parasites. sand that was once blood or blue eyes or white gowns.

then boom. next thing you know, years have passed. most names only exist in facebook. occasional anecdotes in coffeeshop story-telling sessions.

we have more future than time for.
(god bless that)
____(and more history than heart for)

big love on our birthdays
q.