jesworkman

[jesworkman]

Joshua Tree

Let’s go chase a fire up in Joshua Tree 

The sky is orange and burning far as we can see

We’re on the edge of sixteen, you and me 

Only one of us will ever live to see 

[jesworkman]

Twelve

I’m sure I’ve written something on this day every year since. Maybe in letters or in some inspirational social media post, gathering likes that make me feel like we all woke up in the same heavy room. I woke up today and forgot for almost an hour. The “8″ on my phones calendar hiding in the background, allowing me to carry on with my productive morning. Coffee, emails, breakfast. Then Facebook and that always definitely not a reminder of the more uncomfortable moments of your past feature, On This Day. Two years ago, four, five, six. Eight. Back when I got my first tattoo. Fresh crisp ink outlining a now dated and laughably religious design. “For you, my dear”. 

I never called him dear. I never called him anything like that. That warm, loving closeness happened after. Our real lives were spent teasing, siblings fighting in the back seat of a car. Competing, always one-upping each other with grades, music knowledge, anything. Trying to be cooler than the other one while secretly knowing that the other one was kicking our ass. No hugs, no sweet words, nothing that would let on how much the other one meant to each other. Maybe because we didn’t really know. 

Twelve years now. Longer than I knew him. Further away than we ever imagined for ourselves. I wonder if he’d live in LA. If he’d be dating a girl that he loves. If I’d be photographing his wedding or if I’d be standing by his side. If we would have stayed that close throughout college or if we’d quietly be following each other on Instagram and I’d see his engagement announcement in a series of pictures like everyone else. 

Saying something on this day, even if it isn’t very thought provoking or emotional, even if it’s not much different from the year before, helps. It helps to see how my heart has changed. How I’ve grown. What it means to me now, in this very moment and what it meant to me years back. It’s always evolving. Getting deeper and coming up in different ways. Hurting in different ways. But the lessons become more relevant. Easier to accept, maybe. Easier to understand.

And on this eighth of November, I’m thankful. Thankful that from the worst day of my life, I’ve made it here. We all have. With a level of compassion that can only come from understanding a certain level of pain. Of someone else’s pain. With a view of life that only comes into focus when one is taken away. With an unlimited amount of love to give and without the fear of it never coming back. Because it always does. 

[jesworkman]

Midsummer

Kings of Leon does it. The herbal scent that gets released from the brush after a summer rain storm. Thunderheads in the distance, looming over the mountains. Tan skin. Carne asada wafting through the air. Cicadas as loud as lawn mowers no matter what time it is. Pools the same temperature as it is outside so that when you get in, you can’t tell where the water starts or ends. Sunsets so vivid that they paint the entire sky with color. 

All of these things bring summer to me. I grew up in one of the most beautiful towns in America but it took 26 years for me to realize it. To miss it. To truly crave it. Woe is me though, I live at the beach now. A beauty of it’s own. But summer to me isn’t the scent of coconut and days spent by the shore. It’s not surfing or lake days or hikes. It’s the desert. In all of it’s hot and humid glory.

[jesworkman]

Remember

“It’s the seventh”, someone said yesterday. The seventh. Of November. That date almost as cutting as the one that follows simply because it was the last day of normalcy. The last day of naive bliss. Of childhood.

Today is the eighth. The first day of a dark season that, ten years ago, shattered a part of myself and many people around me. The eighth was the hardest day. The most jarring, life altering. The one that made us scream, drop our phones to the ground and send desperate prayers to whatever being in the sky that could answer them. The first day that led us into a week that felt like a nightmare. Hazy, unclear, surreal. Foggy, as I described it at his funeral, without a clear answer or bigger meaning. A week that turned into months of questioning things fifteen year olds shouldn’t even be able to comprehend. A year that yielded more occurrences like this than one town should ever have to go through.

I think about it a lot. We all do, I’m sure. How we’ve changed from it, how things would be different if it never happened, where we’d all be. It’s an odd thing to have a piece of your life and your future disappear just like that. As the years go by, you forget the small things but you start to piece together the big things. You stop asking the easy, specific questions and start trying to figure out the larger ones. The ones that evolve as we age. The ones that sit in the back of our minds because ten years ago, we were opened up to them and we had no idea why. 

But now we’re here. We’re ten years out. A decade. We woke up this morning and saw the small “8″ on the calendar icon on our phones and let a moment pass and put our feet on the ground and started our day. Some of us will take some time to look through photos, like a thoughtful Facebook post about it or note the time on the clock when we got the call. Some of us will cry, some of us will smile, thinking of a memory that maybe we had forgotten for a while.

But we’ll all remember. In every city, wherever we all are now, we’ll all remember him. 

[jesworkman]

river bank

the sweet, oily scent of the sunscreen that mom rubbed on your shoulders every summer on the lake. a chemical disguised as something pleasant - vanilla, coconut, something botanical. you smell it now at twenty six when you open a new bottle of cuticle oil, something you needed but now something you’ll use for another reason as well. the arizona summer sun, unforgivable yet friendly. familiar for as long as you can remember. the roar of jet boats making the first passes of the morning, cutting through the glass water after a night of rest. the first ripples of a wake on the pebbled shore, tumbling the clams and shells around into new patterns of speckled land. the first sip of lemonade from the ice chest, a treat for sitting in the front of the boat and battling the winds that whipped the loose strands of your braided hair across your face. dozer, your golden retriever, sitting on the seat across from you, eyes searching for a chance to jump off and chase a flock of ducks. dad at the wheel, eyes squinting even from behind his same pair of maui jim sunglasses. santana or eric clapton blaring from the crackling speakers. one day we’ll get a really badass sound system, he says. like bill’s, our neighbor. he has a new lifted golf cart with a paint job that matches his new boat. we should do that, he says. one day. and you’re excited because that sounds great. that means this won’t ever end. and when sunday morning comes around and mom piles trash bags outside of the house for dad to take to the dumpster, you swing from the chair outside on the tree by the river because the sound of the vacuum bothers you. and out here, with dozer, by the water is a much better option. the breeze that wasn’t here yesterday blows through the leaves as more boats pass by, taking their last cruise before they too begin to load up their weekend toys and head back to their normal. you hate sunday mornings because it means going back home, back to where things other than new golf carts and loud speakers matter. where parents have to go to work and you have to school. where nights mean yelling and your room is the only place you feel at peace, with your tv and your favorite movie or a book, anything to take you out of where you are and bring you to a place that feels like this. like this river bank. this warm summer arizona sun.

[jesworkman]

[jesworkman]

A Walk

I went on a walk tonight for more than a few reasons. The strongest being that it was the only thing that sounded good. I’ll listen to some good music, go out right before sunset, enjoy the view of the ocean and walk back as it starts to get cold. But iPhones don’t have headphone jacks anymore and God knows where the box for it is and did they even come with headphones? Why does technology change so fast? Guess it’s a good thing and you know what, the sounds of nature, as much as this suburb has, is probably better anyway. I’ll just listen to the birds and the wind.

The clouds are out. The fog, the smog, the marine layer. Just a few patches of grayish blue appear some layers up with just the faintest shade of pink on the edges. The sun has set. It’s somewhere in the thickness above the sea just beyond sight. Oh well, it’s still nice out.

Shut it down. Shut your brain down. Stop thinking of work, of clients, of money. Stop thinking about problems and how answers to them seem impossible. Stop thinking about today or this week or the past few months. Stop thinking about how you can��t stop thinking. Just relax. Listen to the air. Listen to your footsteps. These shoes are finally comfortable, that’s a good thing. A family of three ride by on their bikes and I think how cool, she doesn’t have training wheels, good for her. But I don’t say anything because the world is weird right now. Or maybe I’m just weird right now.

The hill feels good on my legs. Breathing gets harder and I start to think about that. How I should be out here every day. How I should go further today. How I should workout when I get home and lift some weights and have a protein shake for dinner and why did I buy chips today? I shouldn’t have bought chips. Shut up.

I pass a house with a wall of jasmine and my eyes tear up. It smells like the sidewalk in front of my grandparents house and the air is humid with a slight hint of rain and for a second it smells exactly like the desert, like home. Their front door is open and someone yells bye and an echo of voices say bye, be careful, call us when you get there. I imagine a still warm dinner on their table, just eaten and waiting to be put away in tupperware and tucked into the fridge. A kid with a fresh bag of laundry getting into his new car, already checking his phone as his parents watch from the doorway. I wonder if he’s headed to campus. School might start this next week or maybe it already did. 

I turn the corner onto the main street and a man with headphones in says hello and I say hi back probably a little too quickly and nod my head down. Why is it so awful to just acknowledge someones presence? 

I reach the intersection and decide to head home instead of going up to the top of the road. It’s getting darker quicker than I thought and I’m thirsty. A car slowly rolls through the intersection with its windows down and a strong whiff of vanilla air freshener rolls out. The same one my sister always has. 

It’s midnight and I’m in the passenger seat of my sister’s Honda Accord and the moonroof is open and she’s blasting BPM on XM Radio and tapping her fingers to the beat on her steering wheel. I lay my head back onto the headrest and stare up. The desert sky is dark, moonless and filled with more stars than I’ve ever seen. I reach my hand outside and my fingertips graze the warm, whipping wind. I point to Orion and trace the belt, the swords, his arms and legs. The big dipper. I see what I think is a big dog in the stars, or a cat. Something takes shape. I shut one eye and the other, wondering how far we really are from them. What’s in between. What’s where they are. 

I round the corner to my street and the same man with the headphones is there, talking on the phone this time. I nod again and cross the street to my apartment. Up the stairs, in the door. Shit, I left my back door open. Everything’s fine though. Coco is asleep on the bed still, not even knowing I left. My room is a mess, my desk still has plates and the bag of chips from lunch. I should work out. I should shower. I should clean up. I should, I should, I should. 

But now I’ve been sitting and writing this for twenty minutes and I feel lighter. A little more clear. A little more me. A walk was the only thing that sounded good and I think it did the trick.

[jesworkman]

Bookmark

I like revisiting things. I like reading old entries here, looking at old photographs, listening to songs I haven’t heard in years. You never know you’re in a good place until it’s over. I’m not doing what I’m meant to be doing right now. This wedding stuff, it’s great, I enjoy it and the people and the overall experience 90% of the time. But I read this old stuff and look at these old pictures and know that my heart was there. My passion. I don’t know if it’s social media and the constant comparison to other people that are doing different stuff and living different lives or if it’s that as you age, you just become more aware of your insecurities. Probably both. But I need to get rooted again. I need to make cool shit with cool people and stop pretending to be a version of myself that doesn’t really exist. It’s just made up. Made up for other people, for myself, for whatever. I just want to feel like me again. 

[jesworkman]

Sometimes

Sometimes it feels really good to throw some ice cubes in a glass, fill it halfway with tequila, squeeze in a little lime and throw on some music that makes your heart burn.

It kind of feels like home.

Hey, it’s alright. You’re okay. You’re just alive, that’s all.

Your eyes feel wet but you’re not sad. You’re just feeling it.

You’re just thinking about everything. About now. Then. How it’s all going to pan out.

And just letting it all make it’s way from your chest down to your fingertips. Breathe in, breathe out.

Just a moment to forget. But to remember it all at once. To feel nothing and to feel everything. It’s not bad but it’s not good.

But sometimes, it’s all we have.

[jesworkman]

The Planes

Now, I watch the sky turn from red to pink and the air begins to cool. The lights of the cars below blend with the lights from the buildings as far as the eye can see. Planes, one after another, right on schedule, following their invisible streets in the sky. Land, unload, reload, take off, fly. I follow one from when it catches my eye and watch as it dips below some far off buildings. LaGuardia? JFK? I’m never sure, it’s always dark when I’ve flown in. I wonder how many times that plane has touched this ground. If it’s the first time it’s been here or the thousandth. If the pilot feels like he’s coming home or far from it. Another set of blinking lights rises from the ground and slowly ascends, back into the clouds. Hundreds of people, reading the magazine in their seat back pocket to keep their mind busy, watching the sunset out of their oval window while listening to their favorite song, resting their head and closing their eyes and letting the pills kick in.

[jesworkman]

Choices

I feel like for me, things happen gradually. Choices I need to make slowly reveal themselves and I’ve been lucky to be given enough time to ease into changes. If I could decide everything based on a gut feeling, I would. And honestly, I should. It’s mostly always the right choice. But I hate that uncertainty. I hate the fear of making the wrong choice. Wasting more time going down the wrong path. Because there are certainly times I look back on and think “what a waste of time”. But then again, whatever I learned and whoever I met during that time surely made some sort of impact on who I am at this very moment. I learned something, I took a long enough break from something. I don’t believe in regrets but yet somehow, still fear having them? I’m the opposite of reckless with most things. I’m careful, cautious. I think things out, plan them, weigh the options and try to think of a better solution than any of the ones present. I compromise. I truly believe that while a perfect solution may not exist, an ideal one can, if you think hard enough. 

And maybe that’s always our struggle as humans. Thinking versus feeling. Finding that balance between both. Trusting that whatever you do decide on, it’s right. It’s part of life. Making choices, living through the outcome, whatever it may be. 

[jesworkman]

Peacocks

I hear the birds at night, when the sky melts from blue to pink. When the waves seem to take a little more time getting to the shore. Just for a moment, it’s quiet. Just me and the birds that cry when the sun says goodbye, perhaps afraid that they’ll never see it again.

[jesworkman]

Paper flowers

I used to hate bougainvillea. Now I just hate that I’m always self-conscious about the way it sounds coming out of my mouth. Bo-gun-vee-lee-uh is how I said it as a kid. Now sometimes I say bo-gun-vee-uh. I still don’t really know which one is correct. But back to why I used to hate it.

My dad hated it. He would come home from work during the late summer afternoons when the sky was still bright even at seven. The cicadas hummed loud with the desert heat, singing their song to welcome the warm night. I would sit on the sidewalk, drawing faces and animals. Crushing the tiny pieces of chalk beneath my dusty fingertips. Dotting my designs with lukewarm water from the gutter. He would sweep the driveway then, when the sun dipped behind the mountains. We had about an hour of sunlight after that but the temperature was much more bearable once the valley was cast in shadow. Sweep sweep sweep. The thick bristles against the concrete.

“These stupid things get everywhere,” he would say to himself. He swept them into a pile at the edge of our driveway where it met with the dirt lot next to us. He was right. They were everywhere. Fuchsia flowers, as thin as tissue paper, littered the garage. In every corner, between every bike tire and box. Stuck to the oil in the center where the cars rested at night and entangled in the spider webs that gathered at the edges of the garage door. 

Yeah, I would think. Those stupid things get everywhere.

Sweep sweep sweep.

I’d always ignore the plumes of pink that grew against almost every brick wall and gate across the desert. Those weren’t flowers, they were invasive bushes. The red bushes. They faded to an orange in the late summer and fluttered around our streets when the winds would pick up. They were everywhere. 

The next house we lived in had three of them. Bushes, trees, I’m still not quite sure what they are. But three, one on each wall between the garage doors. Our house framed in rectangular green bushes that bloomed to pink in the spring time. And year after year, the flowers blew off in the breeze or died or whatever plants do and came to rest in our garage where dad would again sweep them off to the street. 

Coming home from college every few weeks, I was greeted by the red bushes. A familiar wave of colorful specks on the ground. I’d find them in my car, transported by shoes and taken back with me into the land of Los Angeles. A simple reminder of home. 

Different people live in these houses now. Different dads are sweeping the paper flowers into gutters and off into the streets. Different kids are sitting on that sidewalk, drawing different pictures. The sun is still warm though. The summers still hot. 

But now I love those little paper flowers. 

[jesworkman]

Vastly Under Qualified

That’s the best way I can describe how I feel sometimes at this point in my life. It’s an odd age, this mid-twenties thing. Too young to feel like you have it figured out but old enough to know you never will. I’m moving along, trying to grow and evolve and remain open minded. It’s funny though, I feel more under qualified and well, more dumb, every day. New topics, “adult” topics like politics or finances, start to become relevant but still make as little sense as they did ten years ago. I don’t really understand taxes and I don’t really want to. I’ll dip my toes into political discussions but quickly jump back onto dry ground when they get a bit too complicated. I realize every day how little I know about our country’s own history, let alone the world’s. 

But you continue to learn, to listen, to, at the very least, try to comprehend. Try to spread what little you’ve learned during your short twenty five years on this planet to those close to you and willing to hear it. You try to be present and not wish for the clock to slow down or speed up. Try to remember the cycle and that when there’s an up, there will inevitably be a down. Those ups and downs come without warning and sometimes without cause. You’ll feel inadequate, you’ll accomplish something that makes you feel successful and then in a brief moment, you’ll forget and begin working and worrying about the next project. 

It’s an anxious time. Anxious to see if the decisions you’re making now are going to lead you to the place you have envisioned since you were young. What you thought being an adult would be. Who you thought you’d be. Anxious to make yourself proud. Anxious to fuck up, to cautiously walk down a path only to end up at the edge of a cliff with no way back in sight. Anxious about nothing so you just accept that perhaps this is your body’s new natural resting state. Anxious to be good and be better. To do good. 

And then you aren’t anxious anymore. You forget to be anxious. You let go, even if on accident. Not because you’re meditating or having a drink to loosen up but because you’re simply living. 

So we jump from stone to stone across this lake of anxiety and fear and constant feelings of inadequacy and forget to take a pause and look back at all of those times we spent flying through the air with nothing but the wind on our faces. We may never get to the other side but at the very least we have that fleeting moment to look forward to -- wether we know exactly when it’s happening or not. 

[jesworkman]

Windows

A cognac couch. Cold to the touch on foggy days but warm and sticky in the summer humidity. A blanket of some sort is draped over the corner. Something soft, not scratchy. Something that was actually made to be a blanket. Easy to grab and stretch across your shoulders as you fall back into the cool brown leather cushions of the couch. Wood floors. Rugs. Plants, half dead because I have quite possibly the most brown thumb of anyone in my family. But I still try, murder after murder, because they are life within a city of concrete. 

Windows, from the floor to the ceiling. They let the light in. The entire space bathed in a soft light from two sides. Surrounded by people inside of other windows but no one seems to bother to look outside of them. At night, the constant swirling of whites and reds bounce through the windows and dance on the walls. It’s like a movie is constantly playing from outside, with the volume just low enough to bring some comfort. 

Music is playing. I’d say it’s from a record but I shamelessly enjoy the ease and creativity of technology. Songs I know, songs I don’t. Voices and then what seems like endless instrumentals. Slow songs, fast songs, songs that remind me of things and people and places. Songs that introduce new genres, new artists. Playlists that friends put together and songs by actual friends. Music, mostly. And sometimes just silence. As much silence as the city can offer, which is fine by me. 

Books line the shelves, art lines the walls. Photographs, paintings, sketches. Some with notes from friends, some with authors unknown. Journals, notebooks, boxes filled with print outs of writing. Scribbled notes and stories. Some in private folders and some that are free to be read by anyone. A few framed or kept in special places. A guitar on the wall and maybe a piano in the corner. 

A kitchen filled with fruit and glassware. Endless options. Cantaloupe with a spoon, a bowl of fresh pasta with shaved parmesan. Every type of alcohol. Good whiskey, bad whiskey. Beers from local breweries. Wine with labels too interesting to drink, waiting for an occasion that calls for something beautiful. Reminders on the fridge so that if we happen to glance at them, they’re sure to bring a smile to our faces. Photos of family. Photos of friends.

A bedroom. So comfortable and dreamy that sleeping in it seems like a waste of time. Soft white linens. Ten million pillows. A shelf with things that we didn’t want to matter to us but we’re old enough to finally realize that we should be proud of them. Diplomas, accolades, things we did right or right enough for someone to print our name on it and sign it. Nicknacks from places we went together, places we went without each other and places we never got to see. Russian nesting dolls from my sister, a type writer of my grandfathers, a camera from my dad. Crystals even though I don’t know what they are supposed to do. Overpriced candles that I’m too cheap to light. Plants that are the most alive. 

And a photo of us. Taken in a town we went to once or maybe twice, but it was definitely from the first time we went. We were drunk off of red wine and shots of something. Faces flushed, surrounded by people. A moment that would have simply come and gone had someone not been there to capture it. Laughing, you looking at me or me looking at you. One of us falling in love and one of us just being in love. With life, with that town, with that moment. Then and now. A simple, imperfect reminder that life comes and goes. It means something different to me and it means something different to you. That meaning evolves over the years, always changing with the years that fill up between then and now. 

But we were there. Frozen in time. The moment coming to rest on this shelf in a white bedroom down the hall from a cognac couch bathed in light from the tall windows that look out onto the buildings and streets and cars and bars. This is where we are now.

[jesworkman]

Disappear

Every once in a while, we experience something we can barely explain. Sometimes we know these moments are happening while we’re in them. Other times it takes us a few hours, days, years to realize their rarity and importance. The meaning of these moments changes for us over time. Sometimes. And probably evolve the same way for the other person, if there was one, who was a part of that moment. Some moments are larger, more significant than others. Some are just the frame of the picture we fill in with our minds. Some we block out because they hurt too much, they mean too much, they make us so angry that we let that moment slip between our fingers. We relive these moments, over and over. Some we forget and remember suddenly with a certain prompt. Rain on the city asphalt, the smell of LAX in the morning, a character in a TV show, a name. We realize then what these moments can do to us. We go back and live there for just a second. We blur out the background and pause, holding on to that very second where we felt the most. That turning point. The grasp of a hand, the pause in a sentence, the decision you made, the slip of tongue, the air, the words on a screen. You try to remember every scent and sound and sight that you can. And then you let go.

There’s a period of time in between these moments where I tend to spend most of my time. Waiting, remembering, wishing, hoping. Half wanting to go back and stay in these moments forever and half in anticipation of the next, not knowing if the next moment will happen today or if I’ll be writing about it a year from now. 

I wonder if these moments are significant at all or if I’ve simply built them up to be. Thinking about them makes me happy. Makes me sad. Makes me feel hopeless and hopeful all at once. Makes me cry, usually. Makes me wonder. Makes me ask more questions than anyone could have the answers to. Makes me feel. Makes me want to disappear. Makes me, me. Here. 

[jesworkman]

In Another Life

On the edge of the earth. Stars swirling overhead, down below, all around. Other worlds, both a fingertip and a light year away. Seemingly endless but feeling like the very end. 

Music plays from somewhere. Maybe it’s you, maybe not. A soft, familiar, sad song -- and yet we’re smiling. A gentle lullaby that takes us to the very edge. A warm hand, nodding, it’ll all be fine, just enjoy it while it lasts. I wish it would never end. I’ve always wished it would never end. 

It’s that third act. That slow breath out after the climax. The tears drying on your cheeks, on your shirt. Your heart slowing, grip loosens on my hand. But you don’t let go. As long as the song goes on, you don’t let go.

So we enjoy the view. The stars. The warm hand. The smooth, steady breath out. Not quite knowing what to expect next. On the edge here, together.