DAY 53

Sequester me in a moment. Coalesce in a field of sea grass so we can picnic. I'll bring the cider, you bring the blankets. The sky is golden. The air is crisp. We will lie until the first stars appear, and then we will treck back through chamomile fields. It is simpler now. Today. In this moment. Is it Monarch season?

DAY 52

Lesson for Day 52: gifts should never ever go unappreciated. Especially when they come in the form of beautiful coincidences. Please don't forget the "thank you" card next year. In the meantime, greatest thanks to the underground deltas marrying the divine. Greatest thanks to the eddies I recently swam out of. You had me for a moment. Day dreams have me talking to babies about the ne'er (never: not ever; at no time in the past or future), re: illusion of death. Apparently we just "mask" into something different. When asked what it means "to mask", he gestured movement implying folding into something new. Drooling in New York and dreaming of mountaintops. Keeping warm from the bodyheat of the man sitting next to me on the lift. The company is sacred. Working on a new basket for the table top. Its sole purpose to collect all discarded lists. Check, check, check, check. There are items with a perpetual place on my lists. Maybe I should complete those tasks in order to create places for a new gifts.

DAY 50

We played house. Now we play life. I spent the last four days perched in a villa above an ocean I could not smell. Is it still borrowing, if my intentions are wholesome? I upgraded so that I could sit over the wing, because that's the safest place to fly according to my step-dad. Yeah, that's why I upgraded. To be safe incase anything were to happen (cracks in my disingenuous faith in the unbreakeable). I've popped a quarter of a xanax with three glasses of wine. To feel safe. Yeah, that's why I'm medicating. To feel safe. I'm trying to convince myself this isn't borrowing nor is it playing. It's just simply what it is. Now. Still trying to finger a groove. When I was in sixth grade I asked my mother for a training bra. She replied, "Training for what"? She knew the answer, she just wasn't prepared I would too. I couldn'tve verbalized it, but I felt it. I asked for a training bra because I knew my small breats, which were more likey a biproduct of being slightly overweight rather than hormones were not large enough to fill out a "real" bra. I asked for a training bra because it symbolized something I wanted to embody. SEX. I wanted boys to see I was wearing one underneathe my shirt. It was teasing and the only way they knew how to deal with it was by snapping. I wanted to be snapped. This was the beginning of objectification and I was ready for my number to be called. This was validation at it's innocent stages. My bra has grown into a C cup, really I thought that would never happen, thanks mom! It's no longer (such) young boys, the playground has been replaced (kinda) but the desire remains. I wrote my mother that I was reading Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking." My contemporaries like Didion, her name has not been worn, as other's, yet. It carries the term "literary arts" subtley but no one I've encountered is "literary" enough to speak of her in an educated voice. In comes mama simply describing her as "lucid". I admit motivation for purchasing her stemmed from equal parts curiousity and ego. I read my mother's words with a coy smile and inferred a touch of resentment between the letters L, U, C, I and D. My fear these days is not being "genuine." I would like to embody "earnest," although I might be too self-obsessed to honor that title. Regardless, I see this all as material and have to remember we are ALL just playing along. It takes life to bring one back to size (something I'd rather not acknowledge most of the time). It takes wisdom to remind us that critical disctance is essential. It takes courage to see the importance of an opportunity while understanding the weight of time. I am 35,000 feet above you, but I am still right next to you.

DAY 48

Mexican dreams swell in the night. Lustre and fog lilt on curtains edge. You're not obliged. This is only the interum. Screaming water. Night hawks swallowing and purging promises. I believe them tomorrow. I see the ocean but it will not touch me. This is unnatural and disconcerting. I want to feel fear again. Sunsets behind grand villas remind us to forget where we should be. For now we are here and it's grand. Smile west, look east. Broken no longer. Warm and free. Sighs of relief rock me to sleep.

DAY 45

"I'm too young to be gettin' serious and I'm too old to pretend to be gettin' serious"
— a soon to be good man.
I will remember this for awhile and when I get a little older I will remember it as, "I am too old to be pretending seriously and I'm too young to be gettin' old seriosuly." Lesson for Day 45 regarding Pulleys & Bridges: Moving forward is always better than standing still. Let's
remember the relief of retrospect when next approaching the inevitable. Is it possible that we know everything already and just learn to remember it? Excuse me while I get parenthetic for a moment. (No doubt I'm enjoying this more than you. S'cool. Find your own J. Butterly and be that for awhile. And to the man that I quoted above: It is all about having fun, otherwise the process is worthless. And before I forget, thank you for the inspiration. No matter how it came about, it came from you). Heart to you and you and you. Heart yourself more than I'll ever know how. Promise? Promise.

DAY 44

After Fall Part Two. A cool rush of panic crashed into me. We'd been practicing not waking up. Knowing this would be the hardest of the tasks. Perspiring palms gripping way past burn. Slipping through the powder, keeping you close presented a challenge I was unprepared for. I was scared. No, I was mortified. I believed my blood had frozen. I wanted to believe you were next to me, but I could no longer feel you. I could no longer hear you save for the voice in my head screaming. We are the same, right? This is why we are doing this. Right? You go, I go. You breath, I breath. You scream, I scream. We fell for second long centuries. Trespassing linear borders. What if that was it? What if this was what we had given everything up for? To fall forever...

DAY 43

I hope it was a good one. I hope you will remember it with tenderness and tuck it away sacredly as you would a fragile little doll. Preserve it in secrecy so that time doesn't fray the edges. Know nothing of this room for now. There are spaces in between. Revel in them and illustrate them clearly. They love it. One of the first conversations I ever had with my now best friend consisted of her telling me about this blouse she had. She said it was something a guy had to work at if he wanted it off, and if he couldn't figure it out, she wasn't intersted. That always struck me as a great metaphor for life and love. We are all just complicatedly simple as a shirt with a few extra buttons up the back and neck. Patiently undress us and you might find some beautiful skin. Speaking of, Gnarls totally shoulda won. They will be guests of honor at The Pulleys & Bridges Gala in honor of Escalators. Invites are in the mail. Capacity is limitless, but please RSVP.

DAY 42

Tulum is made for falling in love. Alejandro, the 16 year old from Mexico City said I was "muy guapa." He looked like the football player that I, A: never went to high school with and B: if I had, would've never been intersted in me. Combine A and B with C: I'm in fucking paradise, and somehow I began justifying prossibilities of making out with a child. Caribbean air does strange things. Mayan mud treatments, swimming in the jungle, fresh limes. Incessant tropical wind percolating magically, weaved webs of reason and discovery. I fainted, awaking in the arms of a Mister Christopher Bambu. It was his mud that was rubbed all over my naked body basked in moonlight. Insisting, it was he who brought the mud from Palenque. Was it he too that lead my mother through the jungle 32 years ago, pregnant with Felix carrying shrooms submerged in honey? If so, the world would then become just perfect enough for me to dream forever. Consuming myself with Borges and myths, the want of ominous staricases looming closely (I saw one tonight. She was beautiful and statuesque). I interpolated my own questions, intruding on his mastery. Hoping to find somthing burried in the margin. Wonder. Manuel says to me as I'm leaving the beach touched and red, "tomorrow, you must wear cream so you don't loose your skin." I reply, "And where would the world be without my skin?" If you are to search the walls of Labyrinths in a state synonymous with reading tea leaves, might as well not read him at all. Goodnight Dear Sir.

DAY 39

After Fall Part One. We crossed skies on the lift, tempting the other to jump first. Knowing fair well, neither one of us would go without the other. But this was part of the game. Gripping tight we closed our eyes. I removed my my left glove so I could feel you shiver. This was a promise we'd made to each other, not like a love song. What came next was unknown, a fact often forgotten. Half stoned and nearing the end we held hands to greet the After Fall together.

DAY 38

P, The numbering of the pages.
Order. Sequence. Heartbeats. Remixes. Masters. Pedantics. Surruptitously signing the moon. Sounding out vowels, selling soliloquies. Billie said it, love for what? sale. Ahhhmm. Future proverbs discount these notions. I listened to the lightening. He was sweet in the end.Opened up too soon and forgot his sutures in the sillhouettes. I forgive, such is a common mistake. We'll weave a stronger song when the finches come home.

DAY 37

Ice sculptures. Is it even possible to build something to have it deteriorate, melt or die. Once alive does it not continue? If there is no such thing as space or time are we all doing nothing, or are we all doing everything? And in our everything, are there things we will not do? Overcome atrocities committed, experience limitless love from a father that knows nothing else, strangulation, jealousy....meridians? What a pretty word. I used to say "credenza" was a favorite, but I think I was just trying to impress people. Too many people use it nowadays, but I don't think anyones necessarily gotten smarter. Believe not what you hear, only what you know. This is me ahora. Truth. And this more often than not, is different from honesty. There are a million lines to describe a million moods. I entertain myself momentarily waxing on themes. Discipline. I've never known what that means. Maybe it's about time.

DAY 36

I know you. You want to ride the edge of the photograph, alluding grotseque possibilities, but really just scared of the frame. I met you. You want to bleed someone elses truth while sucking your own through a membranous straw (your shit is leaking). I saw you. You were smilin'. I smiled back.

DAY 35

take some from another
thought one was the other
another can never be other than one
one was neither another nor other
but was, however, another done gone
learned no one is never other than another
but either is never ever other than wrong
b-sides the lies we spun our own song
breaks from others, brothers, lovers and sons

DAY 34

I search for things daily. Nothing. I've had people come into my life that seem to walk out of a shadow where a spotlight should've been and then mysteriously return, as if coming for specific purpose. Busting through the membrain, tearing a hole just large enough to nestle in comfortably for a moment. Slipping beneathe it when fit, healing as if they were never there in the first place. You were. Lucid. I like to be touched and you like to touch. You no longer exist as you did, and now I question my sanity. Interaction acts as a catalyts thrusting us forward. Sometimes we are blind to this, our choice is to trust or fall victim to paranoia. I choose the former.

DAY 33

Things don't have to be one way. I'm learning. It's really ok. All of it. Are there only so many left turns we can make? Or are they all potentially right? Viscosity. It's a give and take. It's a push and pull. It's a punch for a punch. Lay your hands on me one more time. The Era of Pulleys & Bridges commences. I will explain all of this at a later date. I have yet to loom. Soon come.

DAY 32

We are embarking on a fortress. For some it was solitude; for others it will be commitment; for me it's a foundation.

There's red wine on my lips and now I can hear you. You want to make me swoon, but your words are not original, "my demons dance on the bones of our romance." Where do I even begin? Simply put, you are a caricature. Good luck.