if places were people no. 5

i never thought i'd see you as a person,

except now that i found you it makes sense:

you became the place we hated.

you formed as i slept,

so i woke to your enormous cancerous thought processes

and your hopeless breath

that blows as mercilessly as the wind.

i woke to you being a mountain,

and i dangled off one of your cliffs.

you rise steeply

from the endless plain floor.

not sunshine falling from heaven,

but rock wishing to rule above grass,

tough as meat and

those shard-like word ledges threaten from miles away

sharp collarbones and jawline and thin thighs

my intention was to never climb your type,

but i'm the only one close enough to try.

now, when you aren't slicing with your obsidian edges,

you're mixing in dirt, breeding infection, reveling in the primal.

hungry green eyes.

you're wild, snarling,

edging away at every flower,

the ones that do bloom are tiny and dull and only last a week or two,

and then your thin breath suffocates them.

seeds only last so long underneath your snow.

your endless winter,

and the longer i spend in you the more i realize

why no one lives

here anymore

your hands used to hold mine and now they

hold me in the sunshine, mocking, until my skin burns.

your skin is dirty and rough and darkening with every day spent so close to the sun

your eyes used to make my own light up,

and now i shiver away at your glance,

afraid of what it might mean.

every car going in the opposite direction seems to call my name,

and i want to go with, but

from where i sit i can see the gravestone that holds childhood memories

and if you will not guard in then

i will

although i think even the memories have crawled out and left

i don't think you even know where the graveyard is,

though it continually fills with your victims,

and you know it not.

you only know when i'm in the area,

your arrows made of steel and the knowledge of my weaknesses

seek out not my heart, but the

arteries pumping towards it.

you aim for my limbs, not

my organs.

you look for targets to maim,

not to kill.

you would hate to be a killer.

you would hate to be anything horrid,

anything blatantly wrong.

but you don't mind the label of desert.

or rock of a mountain.

you don't mind the fact that people climb you to die, not to live.

or that they only come visit you when you smile,

not when you snow your black snow, dark thoughts.

you don't mind that everyone calls you no-mans-land,

no-woman's-land

the forbidden and hated and avoided land.

you say you don't mind, anyway.

but it must be lonely.

it must be quiet.

and i know how you loved the music in the city squares.

how you loved it when people smiled at you

and i know it because you loved it before you changed,

and you say it's an act but i will be honest

i do not believe those words of yours.

i try to bring it to you, the music,

but it isn't the same without the crowds of dancers

and anyway,

your shale mountainsides cut my feet when i dance for you.

it must be trying,

having everyone hate the way flowers grow rarely

so i try to plant a garden,

but your winter comes to soon

for sprouts to push out of the ground.

it must be

so

terribly

hard

to be a mountain in a country

where everything dies.

and yet here i am,

sitting with you,

because so far i have always been a mountain person

and i am starting to think that i have changed,

and that maybe the ocean is more of my style

except i don't want to leave you.

not like this,

not when you've run out of victims so you're turning into one yourself.

not when i can see the structure of the mountain,

and the covering is starting to fall.

the skin is starting to sag and stretch and

you're getting thinner.

i don't want to leave that grave of childhood

the snows came early this year,

i think you crave the ice water more and more.

there was one day this winter when i couldn't make it to the grave.

when i went the next day,

your forced laugh of a wind had felled a tree

breaking the headstone.

i think i will catch one of those cars now,

because who knows when the snows will melt.

i think i will go to the ocean

to see if less thin air will bring clarity of mind.

i think space

between us will make your

visible ribs seem less knife-like.

maybe space will make me miss you.

maybe i will like the thin air when i come back.

maybe the flowers will grow more, if i'm not watching them.

maybe you will have a bouquet for me when i come back.

maybe you will not be so hated when i come back.

maybe it will be better

when i come back.

if i come back.

you stabbed me from behind, when

i turned to walk away today.

an ice shard through my thigh

so that when i do walk, it will be painful.

i can still walk.

but i don't know

when i will come back.

if

i will come back.

too many scars from your arrowheads will

make it harder to climb your

unscalable peak

if i come back.

YO ALL!!! i'm still alive. (seriously i keep saying that. why. maybe because i have multiple not-so-near-death  experiences so i SHOULD be dead.) (i was busy.) (and there was a lack of coffee.) (don't ask.)

SO YEAH. there's another super-downer for you. in my defense i TRIED to find something uplifting. what can i say. i listen to too much chopin to be an expressively happy person. OH WELL. 

xoxo

if places were people no. 4

   

your eyes are blue. 

as blue as the rest of you, 

ranting and raging and throwing your wave arms up in the air with every 

gust of teasing wind. 

you told me once

green was your favorite color.

i doubt it.

it's not just one blue. 

but layers. 

almost black-blue, like sleeping heavens 

and then the cerulean lighter Caribbean pools,

streaked with the almost white of ripped denim and 

the deceptive brownish of sea foam. 

your waves are uneven, 

and they ripple across the surface of the sand like your skin

ripples across you 

the dips and curves making tide pools 

for crabs and sea anemones to take refuge. 

most people don't like you 

"too chilly. can't swim there. 

and there's too much wind and rain."

i like you. that's my kind 

of weather - messy and dirty and sad and yet simple

with only sand and water to get in the way of itself - the way you let the mist 

lounge about, 

sauntering from tree to tree, street to street,

storefront to storefront,

enveloping, muffling the distant song of water's heartbeat,

and it makes my jacket and jeans damp with its heaviness.  

when i walk down to your shore you throw wind at me

thinking i'll walk back  to the house for warmer shoes and some hot chocolate. 

but that's the thing

you don't know me. 

i'm a mountain girl. 

mountain girls climb mountains just to find wind that carries new scent.

i face that wind, 

and i let the water make my feet go numb,

it's iciness is threatening but

i'm not afraid of you. 

beach length waves shove against each other, 

racing to reach my ankles

a bet against time

a wager for the pretty lady. 

i think of what the jovial nature hides - 

harshness and honesty. 

chasms. 

doldrums. 

hurricanes. 

shelter to the water beasts

raging against the coasts. 

the way you never stop - 

you're a constant of wave, water, depth, shallows, 

somehow you cover every aspect and the sheer 

immensity makes me feel small. 

i think of

the way man has wanted to tame you

and yet you have remained just as dangerous as before 

they tied some sticks together and tried

to cross you. 

"we'll win the pretty lady,

pretty lady come home in our tub"

but you pulled them down in maelstrom and reef 

sent an extra breath of wind to make the waves psychotic

carved graves out of the feasting table

that sharks so often watch.

and yet how like man you are, 

those long waves equalling strong shoulders, 

bringing the wind and blocking it at the same time, 

gritty hands pulling at my feet, digging sand around,

kissing locks of my hair, mingling my blonde strands with your sandy ones,

light and bleached from salt and sun

and then kissing my lips with

your salty ones. scratching

my check with the bit of stubble, grit at the top of 

your cheekbone, sharp.

i can't tell if it's a scar that's yet to heal from 

the tiff with that shark last week

or if it's because you never shave when 

you're supposed to. 

you leave gifts on the shoreline:

seaweed, driftwood, pretty stones and shells 

and even the occasional sea star or jelly fish. 

some days you bring me sea foam in your hands, but 

it spills over, all over the bland sand and makes me laugh 

when it flies in your face. 

the perpetual lullaby, 

murmuring sweet things in a language i do not understand,

shhshh shhshh,

others say be careful. 

that you're dangerous. 

that i shouldn't swim too deep. 

you'll pull me away from them. 

i think of our differences. 

me climbing heights and you diving depths. 

both breathing oxygen but yours is in water and mine is in air

and i imagine your sandy hands pulling at my feet again, 

deeper, love, deeper, let me show you something beautiful. 

and how you love to tease the seagulls. 

i think of how you send me sunsets and 

i think of the way i found the mountain looking at the stream instead of at me

and i think of how i'm tired of air, 

and i'm tired of the brown and green of mountains and the mocking 

humhumhum

of the wind in the ponderosas 

you send a salty kiss my way 

and pull me deeper beneath your waves and i can see the 

sand dollar cities and 

a wall of sea stars and 

families of fish 

and a shark says hello

and how the water feels different in my lungs and 

how it feels different in my hair,

and I see the danger 

and I see your anger

but I also see the way you smile 

at me and i think i like your little gifts and the shades

of blue in your eyes. 

i think i like your lullaby 

and your allure

and the way you send me winds filled with new smells 

i like the way your hands are not big enough to hold the sea foam and how

you're wild, but you're mine. 

if places were people no.3

I thought you were a shortcut.

You took us the long way 'round.
With stops at every station.
Pauses after every sentence.

We never went
faster than
50 miles an hour.

26 hours is a long time to sit and stare
memorize each other's faces, skin lit up by
dimness of walkway lights, reflecting off the scratched, plastic-y windows.

Maniacal laughing clatter of steel wheel against steel track
annoying complaint of rubber window lining against foggy glass to the outside
Almost distant stubborn stomach grumble of the machine taking us to somewhere

You are that in-between place
That interpretation
That 'please wait while document loads' symbol.

You will always come back
But sometimes you will sleep
And Destination will take your place

Sometimes you will go on holiday
And Preparation will visit
To get us ready for you again.

Sometimes your face will change.
You'll grow a beard, or something else ridiculous will happen,
Like the time your eyes changed colors.
And sometimes I will need to memorize that face
Over again.
Take the journey twice.

Sometimes you don't make sense.
And yet you are almost constant and consistent
But you are nothing twice
You are never the same
You are In-between

We had better get used to it because
Consistent is different than static
And change is different from chaos

And sometimes you will drive the train backwards
And north will be west
And east will be south.

And I don't mind.
I love you very much, more than I thought I would,
Because I thought you were a shortcut, someone
I could pass by without a second glance
And you very much weren't.

Which is to say
I like your scenic routes better.

In-between is nice.
Even though it is the definition of patience
and You never had a dictionary.

Which is to say
I thought you were a shortcut
And you showed me the world
And stole my calendar
And my time
And my heart
And now,
I live for the limbo
The in-between
The changing
The unexpected hairpin curve that says
Pay attention.
You don't have time for second glances.
You may not come this way again.

(WHAAAAATTTT. Yeah. Hi. I'm not dead or anything I just haven't posted in FOREVER. Sorry 'bout that. But anyway, if you're interested, the idea for this one was from the train trip we took last October. Fun stuff. LOVE Y'ALL. I'm going to post again soon so stay tuned.)

(ANOTHER NOTE BECAUSE I FORGET THINGS: remember last year when i did that blogtober series? I NEVER DID DAY 18 (the horror) but it was supposed to be "This week I..." and really, that week before the 18th i had gone on a train trip, which is what this post was based on. basically: i finally finished blogtober and its july. isn't that great?)

if places were people. no. 2

Just allow me this moment to say that I LOVE THESE PICTURES THAT I TOOK and also a warning to prep yourself for another rather sad people/places analogy/rant. #sorrynotsorry 

our lane. as in, yours and mine.

open and honest, the towering brown rabbit of a house nested against a row of ponderosas,

three of them a three-headed dog.

if you follow where the driveway points, an arm into the wilderness

you end up in the stream-bottom, hidden heart of the wood, 

wandering water trickling down from a lake 30 miles away, 30 years up the canyon.

you end up in an aspen grove with a random pond 

in the middle where we don’t ice skate in the winter

because we don’t know if it freezes and none of us are brave enough to find out.

none of us want to be eaten by water.

you have to walk down a hill to get there. 

it’s the same hill we go sledding on in winter, dangerous, 

like an angry boyfriend, but alluring in the same way. 

you have to take a 6-foot sidestep to avoid the sister of a bush with inch-long thorns.

around all this are the fatherly fields, that take away the view of the highway and when you lean

down it looks like the grass stems have been dipped in gold-making water, 

except the water is the sky and it's blue as eyes, blue as ice.

and even beyond that are the step-mother mountains, protective, leaning in to eavesdrop your secrets,

passing them on to the wild animals that snicker in the night. 

the mountains where snow shows up in september 

and doesn’t leave until june 

the very heart of them is ice and 

you know that if you started walking through them, 

if you tried to leave, you’d never reach the other side.

and if you look at where the mountains start and 

follow the pointed ears and the pointed hair 

up up up up and over 

until you reach the pointed ears and pointed hair 
on the other side with a playpen for the sun and moon and stars in between, 

where geese dip their wings in the spring and fall
clouds parade and wander and fight 

you swear that if you look hard enough the blue of the sky turns into the blue of the sea

the whispers of the wind gossips that live in the trees turn into 

lullabies of sea goddesses and gold grass turns to gold sand 

but either way you know that if you started walking through the mountains or you started flying

through the sky or the sea 

either way you know that you won’t make it out the other side.

and you know that if you did, if you did start walking or flying, and you changed your mind 

half-way, and you started walking back, 

the damage would be done. 

your stepmother would be broken and old, and your father wouldn’t be gold grass covered anymore,

he would be simply dirt and the few remnants of brown field, 

and the sister thorn bush would be gone and the boyfriend would be married to the stream 

and let’s face it:          if you leave now it will never be the same.

NOTE TO SELF: fifteen

last one, guys. :) don't stop looking for the little lessons. 

NOTE TO SELF: fourteen

This. This idea: to not let things get to you. figure out who you are, and what you contain, and then just learn from everything else. let it flow through you, but don't bottle it up. you don't have to process everything. sometimes you just have to let it run by like an icy stream on a summers day. it bubbles and pulls at your feet but you stand there. you don't let it affect you other than to let it make your bones ache and your skin cool and remind you that you are alive, and you are who you are.

MOVING ON:

guys. i am the worst. blogger. ever.

i just up and leave and decide to drop by to post these notes....

YES I AM FEELING GUILTY FOR LEAVING YOU HERE WITH NOTHING TO READ.
(on the other hand i'm kinda half tempted to be like what? go fend for yourself! i'm totally not responsible for your blogger feed being full and up-to-date. i won't do that though, because i know the feeling of an empty blog feed. *so sad*

me feeling guilty, the lack of posts here, this is soon to change. (translation: if i don't sit down and write soon, my brain and my fingers are going to run away on permanent vacation to the Bahamas and then where would we be?) (Answer: we would still be here, in montana, with semi-gorgeous weather and a 3.7 mile long to-do list buried underneath a full-time job and the incessant craving for coffee that i have tried (and failed) valiantly to curb.) (and we would so much rather be in the Bahamas, now wouldn't we?)

two more NOTE TO SELF posts, and then Kate at the Goodness Revolt has graciously offered to let me guest post on her blog about said note to self series. (i am equally terrified and thrilled. i've never guest posted anything before, so i'm getting that jittery feeling in my gut that happens when i go over to someone's house for the first time and all i can think is i really hope i don't break anything.) (wait. can you break things on blogs?) (*worrying intensifies*)

WELCOME TO MY WORLD.

after this....I have absolutely no idea what i'm doing.

(other than the if places were people series because i've got some sparking ideas for that.)

this is gonna be great.

NOTE TO SELF: twelve

NOTE TO SELF: eleven

NOTE TO SELF: ten

NOTE TO SELF: nine

NOTE TO SELF: eight

NOTE TO SELF: six

NOTE TO SELF: five

NOTE TO SELF: four

NOTE TO SELF: three

so for all y'all that are confused by this, see Kate's post here. its actually about working out but the part about going mental really got through to me on different levels. plus, her blog in general rocks my world. check it out.

NOTE TO SELF: two

NOTE TO SELF: one

NOTE TO SELF: the sticky notes series

i am feeling SO overwhelmed.

i love to blog. really really really love to blog. i would do this all day every day if i could make a living off it.

unfortunately i can't.

so - i'm cutting down. you may have noticed already that i'm not posting as much as i have been. (october was kind of a post overload...so aside from that.) i want my blogging to be real - not just something i pump out every once in a while because i feel like i should keep this up.

i want to post the highlights. the stuff that sticks.
old stuff that i love, new things i think are awesome.

things i would change, things i love and hate at the same time.

i would love to have red hair.
i fail at bible time but its a new years resolution to remedy that.
as much as it tries to kill me, i want to start running.
and i want to look at the good things.
i want to learn the little things and remember them.

i therefore introduce to you:

i will be doing two series at the same time. Note to Self as they come, and then If Places Were People every other week.

Note to Self  will be the little lessons that i learn that i don't want to forget. these lessons are actually written in my horrid handwriting on my bedroom walls, but i want to share them with you.

because somedays we just need little sticky notes that say it's gonna be okay.

I may not post as much. but hopefully these posts will be less of me blabbering and more of
look what i learned today! what do you think? 

plus - you know - these are probably gonna be on canva things so AWESOMENESS.

stay tuned, lovelies.

lend me your ears...or eyes. whatever.

hello lovelies -

so here's the deal. i went to norman, ok, right? and it was a wonderful trip. we did a lot of amazing stuff while i was there:

 - Milk tea with boba

 - College campus, libraries,  backpacks, and sore feet

 

- taking pictures with my iPad, so they're not anything special, unless subject was awesome then I did use my regular camera.

 - piano music in Beaird Lounge

 - the little stationary/journal/neat artsy stuff shop that was like, three blocks away from campus.

 - trying (and failing miserably) to food blog 

 - drinking water because dehydration is not fun.

 - LEARNING. (aka: an honors class in which I learned that one interpretation of government is that it harnesses the ambition, vanity, and ego of human nature, and pits it against itself. Ambition against ambition, ego against ego, want against want. I NEVER KNEW THIS and partially hated government for it. it always seemed like government was supposed to be above human nature. But when it is described like this is offers the idea that government uses human nature and it totally makes sense now.)

 - people watching and stereotyping, which I would normally protest against, but while on college campuses and in airports it's basically a sport.
 - takeout thai food (MOST FAVORITE EVER.)

 

- our own attempt at thai food - which was rice made with coconut milk, beans, and curry powder sprinkled over the top (it was really good.)

 - late nights that turn into study times that turn into music jam sessions with four female voices and a guitar and a ukulele that turn into wall-sits and planking (the roommates have accepted me as one of their own. I'M SO PROUD OF MYSELF.)
 - first time flying on a plane. which was awesome, and terrifying, and terribly liberating. (see?)
 - visiting my awesome friend who showed me all over campus and we got to talk about EVERYTHING. (Okay well maybe not everything but she really confirmed my suspicions: she's seriously the coolest person in OK right now.)
 - #pianohandsami and #travelbug...check out my instagram @saminuxoll.

this trip to Norman was what i would consider my first solo adventure (i've been on many trips with groups of people, aka my family, but this one i was on my own...for at least part of it.) (basically this was me.) and so i'm like, YAY NORMAN, but then i'm like, oh. home. and then i have to decide, and i end up with the conclusion that travel is wonderful and new things will always be lovely and visiting friends in their lives and worlds are usually wonderful things, but home will always be my world which is okay. because that's my world, and they have theirs. and we can visit each other. And maybe even I will get stuck in their world sometimes but that's okay. Good, healthy even. (Yeah I totally just quoted Flynn Rider. #bombdiggity)

SO THE TRIP WAS GREAT.
the thing is, while i was there i got an email from a previous professor of mine. he was the one that taught me to love writing. and he says "sami, i'm starting a creative writing course, and i know you're getting ready to go to midwifery school and you need to save money for that but i also know that you love to write so if you want you can audit this course" and i'm like "TOTALLY. COUNT ME IN!!" because i mean really: it's poetry and creative writing.
and so one of the assignments for the class was to write a memory and/or place using imagery and assertion, simile and metaphor, and make it live. so i get totally excited about this assignment and i end up writing about norman.  and then i realize that i love writing places into people, and that's how this poem about norman looked and i'm like:

I SHOULD BLOG THIS.

and so I'm writing and writing and I end up with this poem about how Norman was kind of a place-fling for me. don't get me wrong: i loved norman. its just that norman wasn't for me. it was flat and i'm a mountain kind of girl, and the museums were great but you can only go through so many museums before you get sick of them. so this poem is kind of how i feel about places, which is basically I LOVE new places but in the end i will always return to mountains. particularly MY mountains, to home. and so then I'm thinking about how i could try writing a lot of different places as people - the ocean where we've always gone, the cabin that we have in the woods, Arizona when we took that road trip, even downtown in my hometown and then by my house and the next thing I know I'm like:

I SHOULD BLOG THIS.

And so just a note:   i swear this first post about Norman is actually NOT how i feel about dating people. And the rest of these posts in the series are not how I feel about family or friendships or PEOPLE in general. It's just how I see places - how I relate to places and maybe even how my pen took over my brain for the length of the poem. 

This post: it's a bookmark: it's a colon: it's me saying BRACE YOURSELF because the series that's coming? If Places Were People.  It's gonna be awesome. Mostly because I'm stoked about it but let's be real: sometimes that's all awesomeness needs to get started, is a little excitement. 

enjoy!

-XOXO-

Sami

if places were people. no. 1

if norman were a person, norman would be curiously normal.
normal norman.
whirlwind romance across flat squares and circles and grey veins of unleafed trees.
we spent a week together and only took pictures
of some things. remember how we met?

remember how some days i wore a dress and you made sure your sky suit was blue
and your breeze flirted with my hair and for a moment
you had all my attention?
i almost remember thinking that not even my long-term relationship with mountains could taint that.

but at the end of the week the whirlwind took me back to my mountains.
and you tainted the mountains with your ink of red clay and azure atmosphere and because you tainted my mountains, you faded just a little.
now the pictures are faded too.

you were just a fling: a moment where your flat land hands held up my feet
and your skies let me breathe for a week
and it was good except it really was just a fling so
i didn't stay.

i think i'm the player because
i think that will happen with every place i meet
i think they will love me for however long i'm there
and then one day i will get up and leave nothing more than a note written

in the sand in california. in the dirt on the outside of an english moat, maybe i'll scratch it into the stones of paris or into a papyrus leaf in egypt or maybe even into a palm tree in the carribean or indonesia. maybe i'll put
the note in a bottle and toss it into the ocean.
all i will leave is a note
and the absence of the perfume that i don't wear.
the note will say "thank you." that's it.
you will be the person i couldn't spend the rest of my life with.

you will be the place where the museums were nice and the skies were blue for the most part but other than that there wasn't much to say or do. there wasn’t much of you.
and now we’ve bumped into each other, 30 years late, and you are the same. maybe
a little grayer. but still flat

with squares and circles of plots where people have pushed you over
and plowed into your dirt. your veins of unleafed trees are a little deeper, still a dull paper gray.
and the only reason that i say "hi" and not "how are you" is because you are still just normal.
you couldn't keep me happy then, and you still can’t now. you’re normal norman.

and maybe that's wrong of me.
maybe one day in another 30 years i'll come back to say that i'm sorry and
i’ll mean it.
maybe one day the whirlwind will take me back to you and we will laugh and watch children play in 

your fields but i will be remembering the way your hand brushed mine 

as you reached for my fallen books and the thud when they fell against the concrete path

the ringing of my phone that made me drop them in the first place.
i will almost remember the painfully normal day before
i met you, when the whirlwind had just set me down.

i can promise you that if it does. if the whirlwind does bring be back to you
i will only stay because my wings have been cut off,
and my feet have blisters that won't go away
i will only stay because i can't leave

and you will write your vows on the other side of the note that i left
and i hope to god
that i don't ever have to see you again.