I practice my writing with my left hand

A Little Love Poem

Someone who hates scrabble.

Someone who sleeps on her back near an open window in winter, her breath rolling like a river into night.

Someone who wants me to wake her in the morning by reading ee cummings' love poems, giving a small candle-flicker of a smile just before opening her eyes.

Someone who appreciates the architecture of churches, but refuses to step inside.

Someone who has hands fit to hold hurt sparrows and robins.

Someone who threw out an her Alice Cooper records when she found out he loves to golf.

Someone who would swerve a new car into the ditch to avoid a frog crossing the road.

Someone who would tattoo my name on her arm in writing the same colour as her skin, so it would appear slowly from nowhere when she suntanned, people thinking her blood was telling secrets to the world of its own accord.

Someone who learned Spanish to read Marquez, or Lorca, or Neruda.

Someone whose hips whisper their own stories of the serpent and the garden of Eden.

Someone who bites the back of my neck like a leopardess carrying her kitten to safety.

Someone who'll make me wait for her to come out of the shower.

Someone whose smallest movements amaze me: her hair falling over her eyes, the soft swell of her hips when she ties down, a deep sigh when she sleeps.

Someone who maps every ticklish part of my body and then uses her knowledge strictly for evil.

Someone who paints our bodies black and makes love with me under the stars.

Someone who burns through my chest like that first shot of scotch.

Someone whose tongue, if we're kept apart too long, would nervously trace my face into the roof of her mouth.

Someone who practises her signature with her wrong hand, in case of accidents or a sudden arrest.

Someone whose fingrnails smell faintly of her hair.

Someone who reminds me of the soft tickle of fog.

Someone who would rush outside in the middle of the night, setting a spider onto the lawn, never admitting it's because she hates rain.

Someone who understands the unforgivable importance of ravens.

Someone wholl flicker into my lips with the ferocity of a dragonfly.

Someone who will open, thick, pungent and vital, like a Mapplethorpe flower.

Someone who has searched for me like a near-sighted woman groping for her glasses, stubbing her toes and swearing in Yiddish.

Someone who would understand why Steve and Dave and Paul and I sat in a bar staring at the mirror behind us for twenty minutes because somebody had asked what would happen if you looked at yourself in a mirror using a pair of binoculars unti1 we had to admit the question was too big for us, and we turned back to the safe optics of the beer bottle.

Someone who would just happen to cut my wrist shortly after reading Ondaatje's "The Time Around Scars. "

Someone who'll stare softly but straight at me, smiling reassuringly when I tell her how my 73 year old Medieval lit prof looked up from Chaucer, stared blankly over the class's heads and said that even the happiest marriage will end in death.

Someone who understands the efficiency inherent in suicide.

Someone who knows that love can be the thickest slice of hell we’ll ever taste.

Someone who would dance with me by the sides of highways.

2 years latter and you can still miss someone like it was yesterday

Two years ago a dear friend of mine took her own life because she thought it was too hard ro continue. I've been in that same position before but since then have vowed to never let the sadness overcome me and to never fall away from who I am. I miss her a lot and days like today, the anniversary don't help.She will forever live on near to me, in my heart, in my soul, and in my mind. That friend happened to be transgendered. I shut myself off from so many other sense then - but now I am open and ready to help as many through the struggle. I've decided to dedicate my life to helping transgender individuals in every way that I can. Especially medically.

Sammy - this is for you
It's always all for you.
She was my first love, and will always have that place in me.

Spill Canvas - Self Conclusion

Fade in, start the scene
Enter beautiful girl
But things are not what they seem
As we stand at the edge of the world

"Excuse me, sir,
But I have plans to die tonight
Oh, and you are directly in my way
And I bet you're gonna say it's not right"
My reply:
"Excuse me, miss
But do you have the slightest clue
Of exactly what you just said to me
And exactly who you're talking to?"

She said, "I don't care, you don't even know me"
I said, "I know but I'd like to change that soon, hopefully"
Yeah, we all flirt with the tiniest notion
Of self conclusion in one simplified motion
You see the trick is that you're never supposed to act on it
No matter how unbearable this misery gets

"You make it sound so easy to be alive
But tell me, how am I supposed to seize this day
When everything inside me has died?"
My reply:
"Trust me, girl
I know your legs are pleading to leap
But I offer you this easy choice-
Instead of dying, living with me"

She said, "Are you crazy? You don't even know me."
I said, "I know, but I'd like to change that soon hopefully"
Yeah, we all flirt with the tiniest notion
Of self conclusion in one simplified motion
You see the trick is that you're never supposed to act on it
No matter how unbearable this misery gets

I would be lying if I said that things would never get rough
And all this cliche motivation, it could never be enough
I could stand here all night trying to convince you
But what good would that do?
My offer stands, and you must choose

"All right, you win, but I only give you one night
To prove yourself to be better than my atttempt at flight
I swear to god if you hurt me I will leap
I will toss myself from these very cliffs
And you'll never see it coming"
"Settle, precious, I know what you're going through
Just ten minutes before you got here I was going to jump too"

Yeah we all flirt with the tiniest notion
Of self conclusion in one simplified motion
You see the trick is that you're never supposed act on it
No matter how unbearable this misery gets

When you are sick what more to do than relive the past

excerpts from the journal of Nik Jameson
This is the progression of my last 2 months in Grinnell and the stress and the work. It's not all here except the last two entries 5.10.09 and 5.16.09 are in full and in succession. Nothing was written in my book between those two dates in time. Although I fully remember the situations, the emotions, and the places.



4.13.09
Andrea Gibson stole my heart - broke it. Made me cry and made me want to be in love again.


4.14.09
Cacao beans are amazing. They are my new start to any day. Instant happiness. better than sex i might venture to say because they are a more lasting effect. Thought - mixing sex and the consumption of cacao beans.


4.16.09
The little elf ran away with it... an dI can't stop it.. an dI don't try. My poor body aches - my ovaries are pumping out what could have been a baby when my phone rings. On the other line it is my father. He stumbles out the words that still float through my mind. She's having a baby - that's lucky number three. He asks what I think and I pull out the best big sister phrase - really wanting to pull out my hair. Hay maybe I should eat some raisins. This little baby will join the world late in 2009.


4.16.09
Sometimes a little elf runs off with my heart - somethins I let him go and sometimes I don't. Today I let him go. Who knows where to or for how long.

I sometimes dream of him rocking it back and forth under the stars singing softly,
"hush little baby don't say a word"

And of course it doesn't say a word, because it's a heart. He can only hear it go, "boom da boom boom do boom." You know the way hearts go.



4.19.09
Last night was a very strange night. We won the flip cup tourney - somehow.
I drank a lot of beer.


4.22.09
Favorite D. campbell phrase - "I just got it ass backwards"

In 20 years I will be 40 - how will I look
maybe - very different
maybe - very much the same


4.26.09
I am going to write and preform like Andrea Gibson someday


4.27.09
I sit in the library - 3 people walk by outside that I would have enjoyed talking to
oh...life

3.06 pm - I can see MJB and he's on a campus bike. It made me smile

I am 5 slides in
I am 2 pages in
I am freaking the fuck out!



4.28.09
D. Campbell tells me today that migraines are closely linked to higher intelligence. Does he only say this because he also suffers from them?


4.30.09
I have a major boner for Sorghum and it shows - a lot.


5.3.09
Not too sure when it became May 3rd. but it did. Here I am sitting at my dest thinking damn what a weekend and.... time to get down to business. The show ends today. Everything went well.

Todays emotions:
include an overwhelming need to be outside eating tomatoes. And the want to hold something small and warm close to me.


5.4.09
Word on my mac is dead - more dead that I expected
My grandmother is cute she sent me something in the mail today and my afghan is done.



5.5.09
I don't care to see or deal with anyone. I sort of want to keep away in my own world of thoughts. Staying alone as Nik is a form of insanity I can deal with right now. Dealing with other peoples stress is something I can not handle within my own insanity just now.

Time to do those last 30 pages and my design. I'll make it until the end.
1 more weekend
1 more week full of days
1 more Africa class
1 more of everything else

die Ende is Nahe...


5.6.09
3 am the hostile hour
a world around me
not waking, but not asleep
silent minutes pass by
writers and artist spill ink
3 am inspirations are lost
to the sheets of black

we are rather alone


5.10.09
A little drunk I played Kings Cup because Andrew Otto came back today. 3 beers later I am thinking about my life choices. Bak on Noyce 3 - writting - the boys are in bed - nap due in about 2 hours - Good life choices


5.16.09
I have lived the past 3 days in a state of intoxicants. It has been glorious and relaxing. Wednesday at 5pm I turned in my paper mostly finished and took a beer shower. Life has only gotten better from there.

Today's problem:
I own enough supplies to stock a kitchen - but I don't own a kitchen! Makes for some interesting packing and uses.

Today's goals
1. Piercings
2. Packing
2. See friends


Thoughts on leaving Grinnell
It is the end of my second year. For the past week or two I have been living off of sprouts, oatmeal, and coffee. Not a glamorous existence but a functional one.

I have never been more ready to leave this place. I always liked coming back here - but right now I am having very few thoughts of coming back. There are things that I will miss like the rain on my loggia - or cold beer on South beach. or working in the community garden.

This afternoon I will seal the deal on the semester and I will be getting two microdermals. My gift for having lived through all of this shit. Then I will comence my packing. To make sure I really know that it is over.

I don't know yet which friends I am going to miss. How can I even say which friends are going to miss me. I've made myself so nonexistent and so emotionless these last few days and weeks that it's going to be a rough and interesting shift no matter what happens.

I will be spending a week here - mostly with myself and kate. I leave this place broken hearted and empty not being in love or like with anyone making it simpler than all semesters before. I will miss Kate, and Evan, and Grant, and Adam but in 3 months we will all be in this place again. Save Adam who will be half way across the country for a semester. In time though he too will come back.

My brain can no longer make thoughts worth writing down. Just the thoughts of packing and moving on.


5.22.09
I am intrigued by motion. Bodies. water. ice cream. tissues.

Shel Siverstine

I wish that I could remember what i am so inspired to write at 3 am. I am even still an insomniac at camp but the problem is I have no place to write when I am up here. So instead of writing I read, which isn't bad but it is still killing me.

I've had an extremely emotional week and now I just want to write my life away but instead I have 15 girls to deal with on minimal energy. I'm emotionally weak and in need of human contact that doesn't come from strange girls or from a staff of 18-20 year olds who I've lived with for the past 7 weeks.

I am ready to get my introvert time back and my scheduled tea time and my naps. Do any of you know how important naps are to an insomniac!

Generally I am not too unhappy at camp - such as tonight I was able to read from Shel Silverstein around the campfire and be really happy. I was content with my unit and the way things were going.

humm I want to read aloud to children more often I feel

Spoon Thief

(blog worthy camp stuff)

At camp we have something called 'The Gossip" and we all bang on the tables and say, "we want the gossip, we want the gossip!" The girls absolutly love it because we talk about 'boy friend joey' and 'boyfriend greg' and the donky floating away if it had rained, and loads of other funny things. This week though I've made the gossip for the first time all summer. It's been said that I've been stealing spoons around the dining hall so everyone should watch out for me. Of course I couldn't let the gossip down so I did start stealing spoons. I was very sneaky about it. Quickly things progressed though and a spoon protection program was made, they have a song and everything. Also I decided at the end of the meal to steal the spoon bucket - with all the dirty spoons in it. So they finally arrested me and put me into jail. I made bail of 3 spoons and a fork and am waiting my Wednesday trail where Judge Gerorgia will rule.

Switch has been made my authorny, and she is working with Elizabeth who is now know as bob on my case. I've taken the identity of Elizabeth Marie who is going into the fifth grade and loves math as to avoid any more questions and battery from the people. The girls have been eating it up - they really love it. There is a distinct, spoons innocent group and spoon's guilty group. We do have so fence post sitters, but not many. All the girls every want to talk about is if I really stole the spoons or not. I simply say no comment. They then say we saw you steal the spoon bucket and my response is that once you discard an object it becomes public interest. Just like trash, the spoons in the spoon bucket were public property therefore I was allowed to take them at any time.

Some people think that I have motives to my spoon theft, such as building an evil robot. But this isn't true, I simply feel that I have the right and duty to accumulate spoons that have been discarded and abandoned. I've worked really hard on my case, but there are eye witnessed who have seen me stealing spoons so that may be hard to swing. Teehe - it's a lot of fun

We have a wild west unit this week as one of the specialties, so they have built a jail and they have handcuffs for me and they made wanted signs. It's all a huge deal and it's only Tuesday. But it is also really funny.

I will let you know how the trial goes on Wednesday.

untitiled

I am beautiful

Auto Pilot

I'm an auto pilot counselor. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I can sing and think about what a girls is doing and talk to my supervisor all at the same time. I can also lead songs and not be thinking at all about the song, yet it still comes out of my mouth.

Just like that - I am on auto pilot singing and thinking


p.s. I forgot how much I liked Heros. I'm nearlt through season 1 so soon I will want to start season 2. whoa!!!!!

Beets and such

I'd missed cooking for myself. Friday night and Saturday morning I found myself in Boulder with a few Grinnellians and no place to sleep. We figured things out and ended up in a spare room of a big empty house. On Saturday morning we went to the Boulder farmer's market. As if I hadn't already fallen in love with the culture of the city I meet a million cute farmers who I wanted to buy goods from. I ended up buying beets and carrots from a couple who had dreadlocks, a baby, and an amazing painted sign.

the day also contained a trip to the contemporary art museum which was conveniently in the middle of the farmers market. I was even more inspired to do art after going into the building. The support a lot of local artist, as well as brining in artist from outside of the city and state. It was incredible.

To continue my story though, Saturday evening I was cooking for myself. I make beet greens, roasted beets, roasted garlic, sautéed tomatoes, and eggs over-easy. I ate all of this on chunks of bread also bought at the farmers market. It all tasted so good, fresh, and healthy. Unlike the camp food that sits in my stomach, and makes me feel less than great about myself.

I've re-decided to work on veganism again. It's important to me and makes me feel better. I want only to be healthy and I think I am going to be able to keep myself healthy with a vegan diet. Of course I can't do this while still at camp.

I will add that I've given up caffeine, and even in a coffee shop today I was able to stick to my soy coca. I also haven't smoked a cigarette in over a month and a half. Which I will gladly say, means I am done with them. I am now working on fried foods. I don't think I can give up pan fried things, like my eggs. But deep fat fried things haven't entered my body in a long time. I can't tell you how long because I haven't been keeping track but I can almost say it's probably been over a month. Although I'm not sure when my last order of french fries was. I know it's been since I came to camp. I really am working on a balanced and healthy diet. I think it is showing too.

In to the Wilderness

Sometime we journey into the wilderness because we have lost something that we want to find, and sometimes we go because we haven't yet lost ourselves completely.

At Tomahawk I have already lost myself - I live here more simple and more contained. I do not have constant cell phone disturbance because we are out of cell phone reception. I also do not have constant internet access. We are asked to live with children who have asked to come to camp. This life is simple and sometimes very quiet. It is hard and we are with children for 22 hours a day sometimes less than 8 of those are sleeping, although we as counselors try to sleep at least 8 hours a night.

I've spent the past few days living even more simply as I have been backpacking in the lost creek wilderness. This is an amazing place about 1.5 hours from Bailey. While backpacking you take only what you can carry on your back, and only what you need.

Day one: pack clothing, food, equipment, Bahba, my journal, my i-pod, a small book. Drive to Trailhead, pack in 6 miles, set up camp.
this is the day Erin caught a fish, I pumped mountain water, I decided I'm making memories to tell my children, I lost my Brikenstock in the creek, Kate saved my Birkenstock from certain death, we all fell asleep in the rain.

Day 2: eat breakfast, pack one bag, hike to the lost Valley.
This is the day I saw a mountain lesbian, got to the lost valley, bouldered into the valley, used all the muscles in my body, found I have upper-body strength in my right arm again, wrote a lot, took an afternoon nap in the woods, pooped in the woods, cooked in the pouring rain, went to bed in the rain again

Day 3: eat breakfast, pack camp, do a ground check, pack out
This is the day I woke up to a dog smelling my feet, I pumped my last mountain stream water, I played with the dog who belonged to another pair of hikers, I became a Tadjer, Bahba became friend with Cream, I made it back to the car.



This was the first time I backpacked within America - I'm sold
I loved it and wished only that it hadn't rained every night. I've started looking up trails in Iowa, Illinois, and Vermont. So far I am pretty sold on ending up in Boulder someday - but Vermont and San Fran still call my name. I know of good national parks in the San Cruz valley so San Fransico may still steal my heart for a long time, but Vermont still has goats and gay marriage which beats both the other places. I am actually really excited about living my young life, because I have so many places to go. I may end up somewhere completely different and because I have no solid plans yet, that's okay! Who would have guess that going further into the wilderness and coming back again would inspire me so much.

until then - I'll be thinking about you
and the life you also should be leading

On My Way

I'm coming home to see you,
yes I'm coming home tonight.
If the time gone has wronged you
then I'm gonna make it right.
I'm gonna hear how much you missed me
and I'm gonna say the same
How I miss the way you touch me
and the way you say my name.

But don't get used to this coming home thing
Cause next time I'm leaving
You're the one I'm gonna bring.

I'm taking you to Italy,
We're gonna sail to Rome.
If we find Hawaii
then we'll make that our home.
I'm taking you to London,
we'll backpack to France.
But leave this town again without you...
there ain't a chance.

I can see the city lights now,
the plane is almost in
I can't help but giggle at
all the trouble we'll get in
Oh baby, leaving you behind
had to be a sin
But never fear,
cause it ain't happening again.

I'm taking you to Italy,
we're gonna sail to Rome.
If we find Hawaii,
then we'll make that our home.
I'm taking you to London
and we'll backpack to France.
But leave this town again without you...
there ain't a chance