do the work

LA isnt as sad as i remember it.

walking the streets at night, stumbling against brick walls, fibers of sweaters getting caught on rusted lamp posts, jumping off curbs, avoiding strange pools of water leftover from last weeks rain.

it wouldnt be LA if there werent rivers of water full of unknown debris, she says, the santa monica pier in the distance, hair in her eyes, sun too bright, too high above us for it to be any sort of golden hour. whats wrong buddy, she asks, arm around my waist and mine around her shoulders. i cant put it into words, i tell her, i dont know, i say, and its one of those things you cant put your finger on, mercury under fingertip, it keeps slipping away.

that last time in LA we were all still drinking and we went out to a warehouse party and watched the sun come up and drove drunk and rode the freeways and skylines and ate tacos and dressed too tight, too black and swore a lot and so some things are still the same, at least, not everything has changed. t and j and i had drove down in the truck, smoking cigarettes and stayed at some boys house behind a strip club on sunset and i see things sometimes, now, that i remember from that trip, that house in the hills we had gone to and laid in a treehouse in the sun, all of us together, our arms resting against one another, quiet, happy. it was the first time i fell in love with LA. i had been sad then, in my life, and LA had made me happy, i was looking for something and it happened, i remember going back to the city and things feeling different, brighter.

but its just me now. i have that lonely feeling i cant shake, but that only i can change. i dont want to get lost here, without my sister or anyone to pull me back up. i came here for a reason but its becoming less and less clear what that was. i thought i was following my heart but i should know better than that by now.

in the mirror now, above the sink, i look at my face, but try not to for too long, there are things i dont recognize and dont remember moving, happening, something has settled above my brow, a finality, its almost as if i have resigned that this is my life. i have stopped struggling, i have stopped fighting, that part of me, that part that felt fiery, is fading.

dont get me wrong, there are more magical days here than not. but not even santa monica, venice or the pacific ocean yesterday could cool me. not even the water or the air, that smell that i love could make me feel better. yoga helped, good food helps, laughing with mia was great, and the thought of you, out there, making beautiful things makes me feel connected somehow, keeps me productive but somethings gotta change around here. theres got to be more to it than early summer and tea and cigarettes. theres got to be more here, i keep thinking, we've got to push harder, get more serious, be more bold.

and by we, i mean, me.

i once said LA was a sad place, and i didnt mean it. i was just a sad girl, and every city has its dark side, every grey day has its comfort in covers. i can be brighter than this place, i can work harder than i have before. i can make this city mine. i have all the right tools.

know that i would do anything for you

read old posts. remember how good it was.

jarr tells me ill have that again. my mom says, while watching sound of music on christmas, i want that for you girls, that kind of love, and i lose it, i completely bawl.

i dont think ill ever have it again. and thats okay, right?

i tell jarr, when people say its better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all...theyre wrong. if you have that love, and lose it, there is nothing that can happen to make it better. youve known love, and that kind of love doesnt come around again.

lose your love

i havent written in weeks, not since ive been home. everything has distracted and overwhelmed and overstimulated and when i go to write anything it comes out some mess of emotion and i just start crying, kind of like im doing now, cause youre not here and it just doesnt make sense.

ive never been here before.

ive never, never, even those lonely months in san francisco, those weeks, months, those times id call people and think, if i get another voicemail im totally going to lose it, if i have to spend another night driving around with no where to go, no one to call, no money, that feeling of failing ( except that i had you), i never felt so out of place, out of sorts. nothing has made as little sense as it does right now.

i belong nowhere right now. i am aimless, wandering, i have so many options its frightening, as much as i tell myself this is all temporary i cant help feeling completely lost and out of control. the new year hits and i try not to think about it. i try not to think about what this year has been, what has happened, what it has changed in me. i try not to think about all the promises i made last new years, how different it all was, how last year i was in love and smiling so hard and thinking, this is it, it doesnt get better than this.
i run the streets of san francisco but everything feels dead here. everyone looks the same and i want to say that everything feels the same, because in a sense it does, nothing has changed, except that its all different; my friends are all gone, i dont have an apartment here, the other night i literally leave the hemlock and give him our old address before i remember i dont live there anymore, were not together anymore. i tell jarr as we get serious (and im afraid, cause we dont do this much), when i left, we were all here; ames, jo, liv, us, i was in the best relationship of my life. and i come back, and those people are gone, that relationship doesnt exist. its as small as the liquor store guy on geary saying long time no see, where have you guys been, did you move? and i smile, laugh, as i leave, no, i moved, he moved, its not us anymore. its just me. he seems sad about it, sad that things changed, i pat him on the back and say, dont worry, ill be alright.
this city, its not mine, its not ours, we dont live here anymore and thats been completely earth shattering for me. i cant live in sf again, not now, i dont know if i can live here ever, i dont know if this place will ever be safe for me.
i talk to r, a boy from home, that had driven me back to my grandmas house and sat outside it drinking icees with me at 2am and i told him that san francisco felt like regressing, and we hadnt even talked in years, maybe 5, maybe since high school and he just looked at me, across the front seat, heater blasting, and said, exactly, regressing, you cant go back there, it doesnt make sense to you there anymore. and i had barely told him anything about it, hadnt told him about the relationship ending and i dont want to use that as an excuse, because ultimately its not just that. its..
well, its me. its me now. its just me. and i dont fit here anymore. i want to make something for myself on my own and i cant do that here. on any given block i run into our old life and i have to get out of it, grow over it, move on. being back has changed me too. its reminded me why i left and let me know that what i thought i was coming back to isnt a city or a person or a life, its options, opportunities, beginnings.
its the scariest/saddest night of my life. im back in the states, something i had wanted for so long and im alone, im more lonely than i had felt in south america, thousands of miles away. its the only thing that feels normal. missing you is beginning to feel normal. being without you is starting to feel normal. its like i had to come home to understand. its like coming home was understanding its time to make a new home.

youve come full circle and now youre free

ive made the separation, he says, laying next to me in bed, his chest against my side, one hand holding mine and i feel defeated because this means im lagging behind, i havent fully separated and i thought i had. im surprised its so easy to hear him say.

if i had i would have made my flight back to santiago. i wouldnt be here thinking this was something to fight for, id have realized there was no longer a struggle, no longer a fight.

he says, we need to have a serious talk about this, words no one wants to hear and i can feel him in the darkness, brace himself, exhausted, (hes thought something through for once), im sorry im being so blunt, he continues, his hands still holding mine, but i stop him, remind him, this is how it has to be now, you have to say what you mean, i just dont know how you can mean it when you say it that way.

i dont cry for long or very hard, just tears that make a quick escape and are gone, wiped clean and absorbed into his sheets which smell heavily slept in but not just by him and its unnerving.

you still taste like beeswax, he had said, smiling, (my heart breaking) over drinks at the corner bar we had gone to my last night in BA back in april, what i didnt know would be our last night together, and i cant help think of when we used to smell like that, our kisses. the tin of burts bees he had given me on the ride to the airport in february, 7am and raining, youll need this, he had said. and i had, i used it all the time and it never seemed to get empty, to disappear, and i used to think it was magic, like us, filling up and keeping me safe.
when we broke up i set it in the sun on my desk, in the window, let it get buried in my abalone shell under jewelry and coins from all over south america. i tried to forget about it, about him, that smell, i let it go rotten in the sun and somehow that seemed appropriate too.

i finally got to touch you. something i have been thinking about for months, wanted to do so badly some nights my own skin ached and i scratched at my arms and struggled with the sheets and sweat your name in tiny beads down my back. i felt for the first time what it was to long for someone, my body felt that word for months. so many days i thought of what it would be like to see you and then there you were and it hurt to be near you. stomach churning, skin pricked up, eyes burning everytime they met yours, not longer than a few seconds at a time. it hurt to be near you, that was all i had thought about and now i just wanted to run. run. run.

my last day in buenos aires, i go to the zoo and holucaust museum while i wait for my bus back to santiago, the only two things i can think of that are more depressing than leaving my ex boy on the streets of a city we were last in together when we were still in love. i try to get distracted, feel sorry for the animals, try really hard to feel upset at the pictures of people, entire families, with such looks of desperation but i cant and i feel selfish which makes it all worse. i sit in the botanical gardens by myself and cry, big gasping hollow loud sobs until my chest aches, people stare and i just keep taking pictures of cats.

how is this my life, i keep asking myself? how did it all go away so fast? is the question i couldnt bring myself to ask. how did it just slip away?
i know i couldnt have done anything differently although i sure whould have tried if i knew, if i thought it would have made a difference or change his mind. its hard to tell its the end until it is, and then its just the end and its terribly sad.


the last night you had put a pillow on my lap, layed your head on it and slept. i ran my fingers through your hair, which is long now, longer than ive ever seen it, and i pressed my palm over your forehead, scratched your neck, massaged your temples and it was such a small, seemingly insignificant thing but it was so meaningful to me. how many nights had we layed there, just like that, how much did i love to touch you, to watch you sleep and smile and curl up closer to me. the ease in which two people who really know each other can just be, just be with each other is enough to break me. i pulled my hand back and went back to my book. you only stirred slightly before falling back to sleep and i didnt touch you again until morning.


i leave him again on some street corner in buenos aires but its so very different this time. i dont cry because im so desperately sad without him, or because i dont want to leave, or because i cant wait to see him again, because i love him so much i cant stand to be apart, or because i think what we have is so special and amazing and i cant live without it. i cry because i know it will be the last time i do this, the last time i leave him in BA, that this is where that love stays. i walk away and i turn myself off, my heart just snaps shut and everything inside of me changes.

i'll never forget anything, hes telling me, hands on each of my shoulders and the wind whips around my face and im grateful for sunglasses and the street traffic distraction as he searches for something better to say and there is nothing, its so terrible, were just memories now, were just old apartments and kisses and promises and stories well tell to other people. things well always remember but never feel again, things, that after time, just become things, spaces to be filled up by new memories, new people and so many things well most likely forget and it seems its already begun.

you used to say forever, remember that?

i can smell the strawberries from here

today i have a meeting with the grants and loans guys at chiles tourism, parks and recreation department to show them my photographs. i was nervous and sweating and sticking to the sleek white stools trying to keep my legs closed while peeling them up off in painful rips every couple minutes, that slow stick that makes noise and reminds you that while leather looks nice, its not always practical. its hard not to bite my nails and mess with my hair, which is still wet from swimming in the pool earlier at leos house, theres nothing better than swimming at 10am, he had said, grinning. im distracted today, everyone wants to know what happens next and im not sure what to say, "i dont know" doesnt seem appropriate. everyone wants me to know, like how could i not? if anything, these past two months have presented more options, things i never knew were available to me, things i never knew i wanted and so i cant chose, i hardly know which way is south, which way is north (that night j had turned me in the kitchen and said, no, this way is california and i just stared at him, tequila big blue blurry eyes, no way, no way i kept saying and he put his hands on top of mine and stretched my arms up out to my sides, north, south, slowly turning me around, eyes closed, see, see how different that feels, north, south). i can hardly distinguish what has been a dream and what has been reality, the lines so terribly inconsistent.
its too cold in the office and everyones staring at me, im underdressed, of course, my tattoos showing, bra straps hanging out and dress too short, mouth too big. im trying come up with a better excuse for why i dont have any photos to show them than they were stolen. robbed. that the house we stayed in, our little haven, first working toilets and a baby with chubby arms that used to fall asleep on my chest in the early evenings, and music, and thick mattresses, that little safe place where i first felt pangs of trust in another person, where i felt i had no choice, that these people were all i had, that i had finally been put in the right place, that maybe, eventually my heart would heal. how could i tell them that house had been robbed, broken into and trashed one night we went out for karaoke, stumbling in laughing, my arm around s's waist, pulling his shirt tight balled up in my sweaty fists, cheeks red, my feet aching but happy and how f had started to cry, all the baby clothes were gone too, and the mattresses we slept on sliced down the middle, big jagged knife cuts like you see in the movies through all the blankets we shared, cutting us right in half, thats how it felt anyway.
thats what this meeting is about you know, my photography, my plan, my story and now what do i have to show for myself? because i wish i had something more than the rocks im carrying around, the scratches on my palms, the short attention span, the desire to keep moving, the ache under the arches of my feet, the way my knees give out sometimes when i stand up, the dizzying memories, the hazy dream of it all. i wish i had more to show you, i want to tell them, believe me, everythings gone, all those photos, even the the rolls i developed in someones makeshift darkroom on chiloe, all those beautiful black and whites, all saved for the one, but its gone too, because i left it with him, the day i left, boat riding literally into the sunset and him waving frantically, if not desperately for me as i left the shore. i didnt cry, it wasnt a painful goodbye, but one i knew would come eventually and so i braced myself for it, talked about it incesantly, when i leave, when i leave. but i could tell it was difficult for him, and so it made it hard to be the one leaving, the one ending things, even though there was nothing beginning enough to end, not on my part anyway, i always told him that when he lingered too long over a sentence, when he took too many photos of me, when he asked me to dance and the song was always slow. its hard to ever feel truly sad about leaving someone when you still feel like youre the one who's been left. it gets easier really, to distance yourself, to live in the moment, to look at greetings like goodbyes. i had taken that particular role of film the night of the full moon festival. i had no idea whether the film would come out or not, if i had the right settings, angle, shot, photography was always more of your thing than mine, i was just playing around, it was too beautiful not to try. the photos came out distorted with light and water spots, blinked with sand. you could make out shapes of faces and outlines of trees or a bright smile in the background, a fire, the ocean, but they were a mess to a person who didnt take them. i thought them fantastically haunting and strange, full of heat and motion. the one i gave him, the only one i could bare to part with i took while we were running and all you can see if the outline of his head and his arm leading back to my outstretched one, so that we made one long pale line, connected and then foot fulls of sand swirled up as we flew to the ocean, to the ocean and the whole picture is an explosion really, except for that one long line that someone would probably never guess was a photographer and her subject, holding hands.
i gave it to him because i didnt want it, i never wanted to see it or him again. its not rude its just the truth, i told you i was being honest.
i never thought all the pictures would be gone though, i looked at them every night and tucked them safely away, i couldnt wait to show everyone, show you what i had done, what i had made. ive thought about trying to contact him, please send me that print, i would say, but he would think it means something and i dont even know his last name anyway. you dont go calling back for things you dont want, you know, you leave them if you want to leave them, you let them settle and rest and recover, alone.
the rocks ive been carrying around in my pocket i havent washed, the dirt comes off onto my palms and makes my hands red, pools at the bottom of my purse and scratches the surface of phones and compacts. im still waiting, theyre 30 minutes behind and im getting more and more fidgety, trying to form in my head a good excuse, ive got another meeting, a lunch thing, something came up can we reschedule? when my hand moves over folded up pieces of paper in a pocket of a purse i forgot i had. i hardly have to look to see what it is, i can tell by the yellow lined paper and the tears in your handwriting, addresses and words scrawled into the rips and i scramble to find more but theres only the two and how is it, months and months later, that now, in this cold office waiting for a meeting i dont deserve to have, using a purse ive worn countless times before and hardly thinking of you at all, do i find little pieces of paper you had drawn on, on that glass table in our rented apartment in buenos aires, the address of the church we went to on easter, the names and phone numbers of david and the cell he let you borrow, basco's address and the number of my editor in the states, your last name, drawn in cursive, and something i cant make out, ink faded and yellow cigarette torn, how is it that today, of all days, these show up and i hadnt noticed them before? i dont know whether to smile or cry, ive stopped believing that everything needs to be a sign for something so i dont freak out, i just use the back of one of them, the one with the least writing and write, i had to go and my number, leave it on the front desk with a girl whos teeth make me uneasy and walk out the front door.
its time to go.

winter, summer; spring, fall

he says, we're somewhere in between seasons, over the phone, his voice sounds so close, i havent heard it in so long and my mind spins off and i am three months ago and i could slip back into this too easily, i think, and it scares me so much it straightens me out. i look at the bed ive slept in for six months alone and i hear that catch in his voice, that confusion, that bluntness, and it all floods back, how badly ive been hurt, how many times i wanted him to call and he didnt and this one call wont make everything right, nothing will ever be the same as it was, so yes, we are stuck somewhere between seasons, and i am torn between listening to my head and feeling immensely with my heart.

but now i want to see him, i want to talk face to face, i want to be able to change his mind, just one more time. just once. c'mon, wouldnt that be fun?

o says be careful, d says, cuidado, and n just looks at me like his own heart felt just a tiny bit of the break mine felt, and so, in any language, in my own recent knowledge, i know better this time. i shut my computer and i walk away. time to go drink chicha in the park, relish in the sun with my friends, c'mon afton says, its a nice day, and take advantage, of this, this wild wild life.

adam says, live your life as if your waging war with death, or something like that, and it makes me glow. i have fought my way out of this cold winter, clawed at the walls i put up around me, that are there now for protection but not from isolation, i have pulled myself out of that dark place, ive learned to swim again.

book work

if i could bottle this breeze i would, it is the lightest most comforting, invigorating feeling, something that shouldnt even really be talked about or written down, but felt, because there are really no words. for me, this is a break through. for me, today, i lay in the sun and get a sun burn, get hot, feel alive, feel like, maybe im not in some country so far away from home, but maybe, just maybe, this country is strong enough to hold me, to allow me to make a home in it. or maybe im tough enough to try, to put some roots down, to stop acting like im running, because right now, i dont have anywhere in particular to run to.
i spend the day writing on the book and its hard work. im going somewhere that i thought i was outside of, some place i thought i had lived enough since, loved and fucked and learned enough since that i could look at it objectively but it is hard work. it is bringing me back to that person that i was, some of the hardest times i ever had in SF and i am not there, not physically, but mentally, im remembering and im embarrassed in a way, ashamed, disgusted even some times, that i was so cruel, that the world made me that way, that i lived so recklessly, that i wasnt learning. and then i notice that i AM looking at it objectively, i am different now, i can see how i was living as different than i am living now, and its not any place that i want to go back to. those dark dark depressing nights are being carved out, im giving them a place and however difficult it might be to admit them, to write about them and make them more real than i ever let them be, might do just what i want it to. free me from a lot of guilt, allow me to really live how i want to, and let other people know that they are not alone on those streets. san francisco is a glorious place, but i know at any given time there were many other people who were leaving their house as soon as the liquor stores opened up just to refuel, just too avoid the comedown. i know i wasnt the only one. but im writing about it now and its fucking hard.

so i play songs that are new, and stare out at santiago and think about how many of the people im writing about arent in my life anymore for whatever reason. i think about a time when i will write about right now, when i will be able to, if ever, write about how i got here, how i moved here, what im doing now, how incredibly high and low i feel here. that will be for the next book, i guess...lets hope i get there. lets hope this current work doesnt drag me down. its difficult, no, its nearly impossible, to stay present when you are sorting through the past. but its the work i must do right now. its calling to me and its coming and its been waiting to burst out and so i must give it a home. i know, more than anyone, how important that home is.