i send my SOS to the world- this is my message in a bottle. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Happy 23rd Birthday to Me
In daylights, 525,600 minutes, how do you measure a year in the life? --------------- I measure it in the tracks on a half finished second album, when I once dreamed and wondered if we'd even have a first one. I measure it in the spaces of silence between track 8 and 9, in the infintesimal inhalation after a chorus and a bridge. It's there- wedged in the centimeters between disappointment and triumph. My 22nd year is measured in cups of white hot chocolate at the Living Room, in pitchers of margaritas at Fred's. It's measured in Wednesdays, in Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, in the amount of times I've fallen off my surfboard and in episodes of Firefly. It's measured in the 4,925 words of my prose fiction short story that was published this year, in the 19 european cities that passed before my eyes, in the one perfect afternoon I sat underneath a weeping willow in Golden Gate park reading Walter Mosley to the sound of a man playing a saxaphone. It's in the 50+ books I've poured over, in the pages of textbooks and casestudies, the deux ex machina of a novel. It's measured in the poetry of Pablo Neruda and the filmmaking of Niki Caro, in the voice of Stevie Wonder and the words of Paolo Cohello. My year is measured in quiet talks on the bow of a ship as the sun sets over Capri, over loud racous evenings in dive bars in the Gaslamp, in late nights in piazzas in Italy over Bellinis and gelato. It's measured in games of tag in Union Square, in airports, in bottles of Victoria's Secret So In Love perfume and MAC eyeshadow. It's in the slow quiet tears that bloomed as I drove north on the 5 on a cold january morning, and the loud hiccoughing ones that sprung as I drove south six months later. It's the one song that I sang in the quietness of the mortuary, eyes closed and fists clenched that seemed like of all the songs I've ever sung, to be the only one that ever really mattered. It's measured in going from four grandparents to three. It's in dinners with my parents over Pho and in my first burrito at Valentines, in IHOP breakfasts and stouffer's lasagna. It's in the 50 minutes it took me to make a very mushy hard boiled egg, and in the slow simmering pot of my very first batch of adobo. It's measured in the 3,200 feet above sea level that creates the feeling of domed weightlessness at Mt. Diablo, the gentle curve of the earth that presses into me, in the sliver of skin between my winter jackets and my jeans. It's in the shallow peacock blue of the mediterranean in Greece, in the rising imposing dome of the Vatican, in the surprising 60 feet that Michelangelo's David commanded in Florence. For a year that only contains 525,600 minutes, it seems as though there were so many more moments that existed in that time. And for that reason, I cannot wait for the next year. 11:28 p.m. - Monday, Oct. 24, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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