if I could, you know I would...

It's 2 in the morning and I've been sleeping since 8, waking up knowing I have to be up in another 6 hours and wondering how I messed up my sleep cycle so completely and wondering if that has to do with all the craziness around me hitting home.

The sirens are everywhere and I don't even want to know what's happening outside. I just want to fall back asleep and not be so congested.

Today was so beautiful and we drove out to Chagrin Falls where a strange convergence of bikers hanging out in front of Starbucks drinking macchiatos and people getting married occurred. And I realized I've never driven through 'where the other half lives,' this strange and beautiful land south and east where it feels like I'm in some BBC movie with these endless acres and big country houses, polo grounds, English nanny schools, and so many trees I realize that I've been profoundly nature-deprived. I don't know people who live in Gates Mills or Hunting Valley or whatever. I'm sure there's nice people there like there is anywhere. It just feels so far removed from my land of cheap apartments, gang graffiti, and loud car stereos.

It's not that things are so bad, it's just been hard to see all the stress around me and be unable to really do anything to help, feeling if anything like a nonentity or an impediment, that I always say the wrong thing, though I know most of this whole life thing isn't my fault. I think I'm going to come away from all this stronger and more sure despite all the shifts and transitions.

It's helped to retreat into art, and I've discovered the wonders of the Cudell Art Center where you can go and work with clay, make pottery, sculpt stuff, and glaze it and hang out with really chill people and it's free, which is amazing. And when I'm not there, I come home and splice together the leftovers in the kitchen and then get out the paints, finding catharsis in the way the colors run together and listening to all my old music.

Thankful for the friends who've stuck with me through this season of struggle, who've let me cry and vent, helped me jump through the hoops of the legal system, encouraged me in making art, made dinner with me, been wonderful companions for adventures. It's meant so much to have that in my life to balance out the hurts.

And I'm wide awake now, listening to this song over and over again, grieving some losses and some current losing, knowing that this is only the beginning, that this is part of continuing to live and be human and that there's a long trail of it ahead...



If you twist and turn away
If you tear yourself in two again
If I could, yes I would
If I could, I would
Let it go
Surrender
Dislocate

If I could throw this
Lifeless lifeline to the wind
Leave this heart of clay
See you walk, walk away
Into the night
And through the rain
Into the half-light
And through the flame

If I could through myself
Set your spirit free
I'd lead your heart away
See you break, break away
Into the light
And to the day

To let it go
And so to fade away
To let it go
And so fade away

I'm wide awake
I'm wide awake
Wide awake
I'm not sleeping
Oh, no, no, no

If you should ask then maybe they'd
Tell you what I would say
True colors fly in blue and black
Bruised silken sky and burning flag
Colors crash, collide in blood shot eyes

If I could, you know I would
If I could, I would
Let it go...

This desperation
Dislocation
Separation
Condemnation
Revelation
In temptation
Isolation
Desolation
Let it go

And so fade away
To let it go
And so fade away
To let it go
And so to fade away

I'm wide awake
I'm wide awake
Wide awake
I'm not sleeping
Oh, no, no, no

can we rewind it just once more?

I used to say I didn't have a favorite band, but honestly that favorite band is probably U2 because so many of these songs speak to where I'm at more than I could ever articulate on my own.



Jesus, Jesus help me
I'm alone in this world
And a fucked up world it is too
Tell me, tell me the story
The one about eternity
And the way it's all gonna be

Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man

Jesus, I'm waiting here boss
I know you're looking out for us
But maybe your hands aren't free
Your father, He made the world in seven
He's in charge of heaven
Will you put in a word in for me

Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man

Listen to your words they'll tell you what to do
Listen over the rhythm that's confusing you
Listen to the reed in the saxophone
Listen over the hum of the radio
Listen over sounds of blades in rotation
Listen through the traffic and circulation
Listen as hope and peace try to rhyme
Listen over marching bands playing out of time

Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man

Jesus, were you just around the corner
Did You think to try and warn her
Or are you working on something new
If there's an order in all of this disorder
Is it like a tape recorder
Can we rewind it just once more

Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man

I don't believe in painted roses or bleeding hearts...

I've been moody this weekend and not that much fun, with the heat and disappointment and a good night's sleep eluding me.

my neighbors set off fabulous fireworks. everyone's blowing off some serious pyrotechnics and I walked to the corner where the ice cream stand is and there was a few of us hanging out in front throwing firecrackers, watching the fireworks from downtown coming over the trees and the people on 44th sending up one after another. It was so beautiful out and it made me feel a little less lonely because it sucks watching fireworks by yourself.

And it sounds like heavy rain, thunderstorms, the third world war with the flashing lights and the smell of burnt chemicals and the way that it echoes like it's striking twice. And I think about how these explosions are fun here, but that this is what people fall asleep to every night but it's sounds that could kill you.

I dug out my copy of "The Joshua Tree" for the first time in awhile and wondered why I was listening to all these songs about sad eyes and crooked crosses and how every day the dreamers die.

But that's where I'm at, trying to figure out what to do now that I'm no longer full of youthful idealism yet still want to have a meaningful life, not expecting fulfillment in another person but finding extended periods of solitude unbearable, trying not to think about the future, wondering how to get that sad feeling out of my insides.

and I can't sleep, with all the car stereos and the noise so I'm listening to music and hoping that sleep comes like a drug...