Scream

With the door firmly shut at my side, like a vacuum it closes and shuts out all outside noise. I take in a deep breath and hear it echo all around me. Then, I hold perfectly still.... the silence the shhhhh sound of my breathing is amplified in the stillness of the car. This lingering moment of pure silence before you start the car, or passenger joins you continues to be my favorite part of any car ride. No matter how short the trip. I listen for it each time I get in the car. I take in the my first real breath. Not the same breath I was taking in before, shallow and undetectable. No this is noticeable. Purposefully noticeable. Breaking the first layer of sound into the space, and the whoooooosh sound replaces the silent fog with its low whisper of air being sucked into my lungs and held there.

I hold my breath in as I turn the keys and my car "Granny goose" roars, or rather grumbles to life. We make our way together in the silence. Not totally silence. The tires on the road make a comforting mmmmmmmm sound and I am lulled into a more thoughtful place, instead of rage full. My headlights leap forward trying to keep ahead of me as I make my way to the back of a local drug store, gas station, supermarket, strip mall, who cares, point is: dark place. I put goose in park and shut off my head lights. I settle into my surrounds and take notice of everything around. Green dumpster ahead. Leafs everywhere... crunchy... lifeless. An old take out bag is crumpled into a ball outside a dark damp door way. Proof of careless workers on break no doubt.

I look around one last time and thoughts swirl my head. Angry, mean, hateful thoughts. Blame. YOU! YOU did THIS! I close my eyes tightly because I know I'm about to cry. Not because I am sad, but because I am angry. I take in a loud gasp of air and make noise letting it out this time, finally shattering the silence in the car, "Pahhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuughh" I feel more focused now so I start to try and remember the little things. That's what always matters in the end they say. And they, are right. Hands, a walk, an eye brow crease, a bead of sweat on the tip of his nose. But I can't remember any more the things I really really loved, like a the laugh, the tone in his voice, how he sang, or what his first words to me where. I'm pretty sure they were "hey..." but who can be sure.. ? I think about all the things I loved, all the times my heart skipped a beat as I turned the corner to walk out to my car in the mornings. "Would it be a note? no. Did I leave something he returned? no. Stop. There wont be anything. Why? Because you just don't get these things all the time. that's why. that is what makes it special, different." I would turn corner and then I would see it. Granny Goose covered. "He remembered. Of Course he remembered, I said it to him half knowing he was paying attention to detail since the moment we first spoke. "I love the flowers in the trees this time of year" I said. And he remembered. Now goose was covered in those flowers from "head" to "toe". "Again! he did this for me, again? Maybe then. Maybe I can expect it. And because he always does.. that's what makes him special, and that is what makes him different."

Knowing that everything I know. And not knowing all the things that in the end.... I don't really want to know. I remember again what was taken. It might seem obvious to some people who it was. But look closer... look... deeper. Look past everything. Let the dust settle and look with pure eyes. You'll see who it was. They know it was too. You know it was. They know you know... and so on and so forth. Anger billows up inside me again and I feel like a two year old on the brink of a massive fit. Feet stamping in the ground, flung on the floor, fists pounding, legs squirming and both writhing about.. it builds. Like a deep rumble from a dark canyon it rises to the top. This is why I got into the car. This is why the silence is so key. this is why I have to remember, make myself remember so I don't ever never ever forget. This is why the in the dark is where we hide. This is what I think about doing, wish I could do. I close my eyes, and grip the steering wheel. and I scream. ripping the silence from before from the place around me where it sat so comforting before, and shreds it. I scream until all my my breath is out of my lungs, throat and individual cells that make up my very body. I squint my eyes shut to help push out the sound that is the exact match to my insides. I scream incoherent words, and thoughts, and what might seem like random gibberish. But it is important. it is all important. I gasp for air. the screaming stops. and the silence falls again. and I take in another shallow breath, as not to disturb the fallen silence all around.

Movement In My Sheets

There must be a major change coming, or I have already made that major change. In any case there is a change in the sheets....not wind.

Easy to spot, and has been my defense since I was a small child on why my room looked like "a war zone" (Come on really? Does it?) I.. am a burrower. I surround myself with things I love and what comforts me. Ever since I was a wee child, you could find a number of dolls, bears, silk sheets, soft towels, books, music, in a fortress of blankets on my bed. I slept with it all. And what didn't fit spilled out onto my floor, apparently in a "war path" like disarray. I have some what tamed this nasty habit of bringing favorite objects into my bed, mostly because I end up with a book corner in my eye in the morning. But also because I'm trying to be the grown up I "should" be.

(For the record:Hate the word should, loath it even)

But there is another bedroom habit I have. As I have grown older I find that I mostly get this from my mother with whom I have been on the other end of many 'a sofa chairs rearranging living rooms until it was "just so", before she would go on to the next project. But I have taken this to a weird level in which I rearrange my bedroom corresponding with change in my life. Bad break up? New school? New house? New season? New way of thinking? Ideas? Hair cut prompting new attitude? You can find me in my room no doubt pushing my bed across the room with my back to the bed and feet firmly pressed against a near by wall for leverage.

But I can usually feel it coming on.. like a sneeze. I brace myself and start to draw rectangular rooms and props on napkins, paper and anything I can scribble out new layout ideas on.It is just an impulse. With any bad break up, for example it is routinely: ice cream, followed by a night out with the girls, and then in the morning bright, ok maybe not early, I am sweat pants clad and on the move in my room with music blaring. Everyone knows this.

But today I had no clue. There was no tingling in the nose, no 'Ah ..Ahhh. Ahhhhhh' before the 'chooo!' And yet here I am mid arrangement in my room. Tables pushed out from the wall ready for its new home. While I look into Feng Shui ideas, I am left wondering..what changed? No break up, new thought process, attitude, or hair even. It isn't Spring. I am a bit annoyed that I couldn't feel it coming this time. Is this how it is going to be from now on? No warning? Has my weird habit shifted into something else? Or am I getting to be that efficient that I am rearranging before the change? hmm. Doubtful. I am also a procrastinator to the very core of me. I am procrastinating right now with you before finishing my rearrangement...see that's not it.

I think I have decided, sitting here with time to think now. That I would like my bed to be at an angle... there isn't much of a choice seeing as how I have lived here two years and already rearranged three times. There are only so many walls..and God forbid I move back to an old pattern, ew. That would be like resorting back to old habits. And we can't have that now can we? No.

-Burns..on the move.

That Dandelion

There comes a time and a place in every girls life when you meet or see the girl you thought you were, wanted to be, and realized... it ain't so. For some this happens early on in life. Usually with an actress, model, sports figure, or Better Homes and Gardens Betty Crocker feature. But for me, an early on so called "twenty something", I thought I had skipped this part of growing up.

Sure I sent plenty of letters of admiration to Amy Grant in my years, and even though she never wrote back it never bothered me. A light bulb went off when I finally realized the models in the magazines were blessed with the art of editing, and grew familiar with the lighting tricks that actresses sometimes relied on. All of these light bulbs collectively lighting my way from above while I trotted about seeing myself for the best that I could be, can be, at each moment. Someone real, raw, and somewhat creatively artful in the way I lived my life, even if I stumbled into bad lighting.

But then I met her. The Dandelion. A weed, growing all alone in a sea of grass and flowers. But a beautiful weed. I had seen her before. Heard her name mentioned a handful of times. I was introduced and I felt what all those small girls must have felt when they saw it too... you aren't pulling it off...because this girl is already. And doing a far superior job at it too I might add, adding insult to injury..of course.

She is beautiful without make up with bone structure I have been trying to accentuate in my own face since I first picked up a blush brush. She wears lightning make up with the sleek swagger of a high fashion cat walk. Images I attempt, whole heatedly, but unsuccessful in the end. She is classic, she is modern, she has that edge and that softness that makes you want to tell her your every secret.

See, sometimes.. well more often then not. I dream. Vividly. Sometimes these dreams are scary, terrifying me to the toes..unfortunately. But sometimes they are beautiful. Dreams that look like old Hollywood movies. Moving pictures of a beautiful woman out in a field of weeds, hair curled and tossed, eyes bright, and a bust of sunlight from behind, tinted as if I spilt my tea on it, shows her silhouette leaning against an old blue Chevy. Romantic images of cherry blossoms and hardwood floors. Ceramic tiles and flamboyant hats rime the background. I can see it all so clearly. I try to recreate them with the pictures I take, hair styles I wear, or clothes I buy. but it is never quite right.. never really hitting that nail on the head. Finger to nose....spot on. But she has.

Effortless. That's the key I think to my late night disgruntled blogging. These images, these ideas, and my attempts to recreate them into myself, into my life, into my 'being'...it is all effort. Effort, ideas, and premeditated plans of action to surround myself with this style, this life so that it becomes my own, a life of beauty as I dream it to be. But she is a step ahead in her natural, and beautiful life. When I read what she wrote, I new that's how I should have been writing. When she walked, and watched the way she hesitated before she took the next step, I realized I had been walking all wrong, bushed my hair out of my face too harshly, breathed too shallow, clenched my jaw too tightly, and spoke too loudly. She lived in every moment I shared with her, for just that long. A moment. She has a way of translating my thoughts and dream like images into her real life self. Her waking day wardrobe that hangs still, and waits to be paired with unlikely matches, the songs lay motionless in her head set waiting to be shuffled into a play list I hum, and writes down the thoughts I hadn't known I was thinking all day until I see them written already in perfect order, shape and sound.

I have met that girl. and she is the link, however small or disconnected, to what I try desperately to be, to say, to appear. Dandelions are weeds, thick steamed and fuzzy/dirty to the touch. But above that the dandelion in fail, in angelic, is magical, because dandelions make your wishes come true.

Off to find a dandelion to wish on...

-Burns.