#found a strip of photobooth photos of me and my ex

[ialwaysknewyouwerepunk]

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[worryingthing]

It’s been a weird one, but when has it ever not been? The first warm day, the first day I thought about plugging in a fan. I got up and suddenly there were the little yellow buds of leaves on the tree outside. The tree both dies and is reborn in yellow each cycle of seasons. My favorite clock. They had appeared over night and with them the giant bees that inhabit the tree. How can something be so terrifying and simultaneously so harmless? and even further, so essential? Then I realized I could ask that same question of most experiences in my life.

The bees are back in town and, as much as I flinch, it’s good. No leaves yet, just blossoms. They rile and buzz defensively when I come too close to their feast frenzy. I am just taking photos on my phone, which I feel tired of doing. I ordered a new micro sd card so I can use my camera again. I opened a drawer and dug around for an old one and found a fresh roll of 800 iso film. I thought of how, in Japan this September, I could buy more film and maybe even get my natura classica repaired, or find a better camera and let that be the window to my whole experience. It’s going to be overwhelming, why not approach it with the slow measured decisiveness of film. I’d have to get the film I shot developed there so the airport scanners don’t warp it. The thought of looking for a local film shop feels like the most comforting, tangible part of the whole trip so far.

I dug in my desk further. I found my passport. Why was it in there? I thought it was elsewhere, so I guess that was a good uncovering. I found old photobooth strips. My ex’s face. How could a monster have such a human face? I shuffle past them, I guess I haven’t thrown them out because two other friends appear. I wonder if cutting around, cutting out, is an option. It isn’t. I found the notebook I couldn’t find the other day and post about. In the front cover four addresses written down where Frank O’Hara once lived. I was reading a biography on him, one of many I own, and I wrote down the addresses to visit at a later date. I used to be so afraid of going places alone when I wrote those down, now I don’t feel that way at all. The fear, the way I inhabit my body and space, has shifted. I find writing and cant remember who it was I was in love with when I wrote it. I read further and realize, and can’t understand that I could have ever felt anything close to what I’d wrote about the monster and feel as though I want to recoil from my own skin. I think “at least when I got on medication I stopped writing and pining.” But was it really that, or was it the coinciding feeling of losing control of my life, losing so much to someone who already just took from me to begin with anyway.

I decided if I didn’t accomplish a few chores and leave my house I’d lose my mind. I can’t dwell. All I do is dwell. Consumed in dwelling. Is that how it became the word: Dwelling. 10 years in one space that seems to haunt me and yet I can’t separate from it and it and it seems we manifest from one another. I never read the writing in my old notebooks but I do keep all of them. I want to sort through everything in my house and empty it all out before my birthday next month, maybe then it would feel like breathing again instead of stagnant traceless dread. I just have to do it, I guess. It’s not easy to sift through past selves. 

I did the chores and took a walk in the park. I can’t put in words the relief I felt removing my shoes and feeling the soft cool grass beneath my feet, but you know it, I’m sure. Sans description it’s still sublime, restorative. Like the earth has let me back in after a long fight and a turned cold shoulder. I took photos and dodged bees. I slowly drank one beer, concealed in my bag and wrapped in a koozie. It’s still cold. I’m worried a few bugs might have died in it. I’m going to go to the store and buy some things and make a fresh tomato and almond gremolata/pesto. It will taste like spring, which is a thing I always want to catch in my teeth. It is bright and sharp and sudden and restorative. You don’t need another metaphor for rebirth here, so I’ll skip it.