Artists. We make our best stuff out of the bones. Out of the empty rotting carcasses of pain and despair. Life’s sewage becomes our aquarium. Gazing through the murky slop we catch glints of gold and retrieve them with care, knowing they’re the only things that will keep us alive, and sane. We collect them and make something with it: a shield, a map. Our ceaseless quest for beauty is found blossoming in the unbeauty, where it grows, on the dark side of the rocks. We go there to make dazzling light from shadow. Creating becomes breath itself, darkness no longer a threat because it contains that which gives us life. We learn to see the sheen glimmering on the surface of shit. Nothing is wasted.
Ten years ago the day was warm and blue and untouchable. There were sunflowers and smiling faces and bad church music and perfect candlelight and us, light as air as we held hands and made promises and giggled and twirled around with our loved ones. We laughed so hard at the speeches we thought we’d die of joy and wiped each other’s tears with the backs of our hands and closed our eyes hard willing time to stop forever inside that old lantern lit building by the lake. We clambered up boulders on the water and everyone joined and held hands and swayed together in a gem-toned haze and shoes got stuck in rocks and no one cared because they were only holding us back from more rollicking and when we danced you broke out into a theatrical solo number and everyone cackled uncontrollably and I could hardly feel my body from the love filling every crevice in the room and we didn’t want any of it to stop so we took friends from both continents with us to the ocean where we ran into the water at dawn wearing glow sticks and splashed about together telling stories that had no end and there was no time for sleep only picnics and waves and sun and rapture.
Ten years ago. But it’s been a decade of giggling and twirling since.
Dreamt I was on the side of a road sitting on a curb. It was twilight so the sky was dark but still full of purples and pinks and everything was turning into silhouettes. I got up to get where I was going in a hurry and passed a car with a woman in it. She’d parked on the shoulder and was leaning out of the window looking up with her chin resting on her arms like she’d been there awhile. Like she’d lost something up there and was trying to find it. I asked if she needed help. No answer. She just started talking about the sky and UFOs and wondered if the moon tastes savoury or sweet and if a Coyote’s howl is actually a laugh and why does everything have a name. Then an animal started laughing in the distance. She got out of the car, threw me the keys and bolted into the bushes towards the sound. I looked down at my hand and her car keys were made out of pretzel. One of them was half-eaten. I woke up hungry. And curious. Which I guess is exactly the point.
