grace from reading

"I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love." -The Color Purple

i never thought this life was possible

the heat comes easily and we all move so quickly to the front porches and the middle of lakes where we can sing and yell and say so this is why we made it through winter. we sat on gloriously old rugs smelling of nagchampa and nectarines and i looked up and loved minnesota and its bowling alleys where waitresses dance in lieu of taking orders and its rivers that sneak up on you and so much swallowed watermelon and climbable trees. i digress, i meant to say: it was me on a plane to chicago, where one of my best friends met me, hair flying everywhere and us, on the road, where i think we're meant to be all the time and wisconsin, a state i forgot i missed, and we flew by all the cheese and fireworks and the remember-whens and i felt so lucky, getting to the twin cities, with so many of my favoritefavorite people. what do you say when you get to watch another best friend filled with so much love that it bounces off her, onto sidewalks and trees and some i'm sure is making its way down main streets in kansas and maybe tennessee and hopefully it will tango its way to the east coast, where we could use reminders that we are so small, we must dance we must laugh when we get poison ivy and drink while we try not to scratch and always drive past our exit and say tomorrow we hit utah. tomorrow, we start all over again. so cheers to you friends, what a world we live in that the universe drop-kicked us all into the same place. how lucky i am to know you all.

one last song

It's been so long since I've written anything real. Tonight I will try. Tonight, I'll tell you I got a package from my aunt, who sent me a book that belonged to her best friend who just died and she sent it to me because it's about wandering and always trying to find some concept of yourself that always seems slightly elusive and because she said I'd understand and all I could do was sit on the couch with a beer and cry and cry and shoulders shaking think, has it really been seven years since my closest childhood friend died? Has it really been that long since we walked along Lancaster Avenue, sneaking late late at night, when the fireflies would sleep on your shoulder, into the park where we grew up playing softball, where we drank warm, skunked beer in high school, where we spoke of all the porches we would visit as adults. We promised each other we'd be 90-years-old and happy and drinking spiked lemonade on a porch overlooking some unmarred horizon and I keep thinking of things to tell her and after all these years I wonder when it is that time is supposed to make everything alright. Sometimes, everything seems so small and I want to be so quiet and it's hard to explain this to a beautiful city that never sleeps. Its windows are like fireflies tonight, dancing on tonight's horizon by the bridge, silently moving above a landscape full of old blood and newly mixed cement and spilled Thai food and mouths dribbling tequila and ripped flannel and you and me and everything in between. It is almost midnight and despite the little clothing I have on I can't stop sweating and it is nights like these I wish so much you were here. We could walk, slowly, down the street, stopping beneath a street lamp so we could see each other and say, oh, hey, I miss you. I hope so badly you are somewhere bicycling through naked rain, always.

for the heat, etc.

because i will never tire of mixes:

http://8tracks.com/annag