lose our clothes in summertime/lose ourselves to lose our minds...

I am perched like a sparrow, tired from fluttered flight, as the night air begins to cool itself over my body. In something soothing a pseudo-sister wrote to me the other day, she included these words: "Go now and be restored." In and out over the fabric of these last days, I have thought often and almost meditatively of this statement. It has become a mantra of sorts to me. And I wonder...in those pieces of time, those smoothing hours spent cooking dinner, sharing wine with my parents on their skinny porch, curled on the floor playing Scrabble with my smallest brother, crafting slow words into my journal, laying trance-like on a stretch of beach, tossing strangely in my sleep, looping the sounds Sufjan/Devenda and other such fantasy husbands incessantly through my ears---is this restoration? I think, in a veiled way it is. Yesterday, at the sun's crowning height, I slipped to a foreign space of park and fell into an infinite amount of yoga. It was just me, alone, and it was very different from what I am used to, but it was good. I felt my body shedding heaviness, shedding anger and shedding grief until there was little more than myself remaining. I felt stripped and raw and, in a way, terrified, but more than anything, I felt back to the sinewy core of myself. I think there is both paralyzing fear and a glaze of exhileration in inhabiting such a place. I am trying it on for size. Currently, it fits...though awkwardly. My instinct fights it...thrashes at it and into it, but I feel a gradual acceptance. There is only forward, and that is the direction where my gaze is locked.
Stability and freedom.
Be brilliant today, as you are.
All my heart/Bisoux.




(good lord. love.)

and i am an alien and a citizen...

Last night I was gifted with an unexpected chance to lay eyes and ears on this artiste:



He is a dream in every sense of the word. For me, there was a completely organic sort of beauty in his presence and performance--draped in raw simplicity and a gorgeous, gutting air of melancholy. I sat, shoes slipped to the ground unnoticed, glass of wine in fingers, curled against Meg...and I think that we both experienced a temporary transformation of sorts. I resisted the urge to leave at times, so great was the depth to which emotion was startled and stirred inside of me. If you are wondering, I did not leave. I remained there, inside of the stunning darkness/lightness of it all...and eventually I felt myself ceasing to resist it...leaving the fear of what I might feel in a shroud of abandonment. I moved into into...fell into it, flowed into it...and found myself free.

So for that, Jose Gonzalez, I thank you.
Merci beaucoups also to Madge and to Laurennnn...down the chain of how that ticket came into my posession...
Experience: disarming, yes...but in a very necessary way. And there is goodness in that.

"I am the silence that is incomprehensible and the idea whose remembrance is frequent." (--unknown)

I am melting away for a pair of weeks.
Open mind and open heart...
rb

tat vam asi/i am that:

how long...so long...too long...
the night is dark like ash and i am post-cafe, post-2 am, post-any remaining streaks of energy. candles aflicker and heart dripping unrest...i am here and "i am that"...tat vam asi...a golden person in my world shared these words with me a few weeks ago...before/before/before...and also enlightened me as to their meaning....that being, "i am that...which i want to be"....translation: all that it is i want to better about myself--i am already that. desire is a powerful thing. and so, by yearning to create differences in ourselves, we are already that which we look towards.
for me, this is hopeful.
hope recreated, and realigned.
heat on my skin like a
second skin like a layer of liquid
energy faint but
real it is there i can feel
it into the velvet solitude that is
tonight don't feel very much of
anything but in that absence there is presence there
is presence it will be
okay.
sadness found me...but reamin in it i will
not cutting it like slender
vines, gentle, spiderweb-light it will
die a little every day i will
dedicate myself to it.
rain and lilacs/lilacs and rain.
for now, that is all.
perhaps sometime soon words will find me again.
rb

The glitter and the gold...

Tonight, walking home from cafe latenight slaving, the streets were blackened...and so soso still. The air lingered with rain, hanging midair like some strange and invisible web. Wind gorgeously cool and silky-dark against my skin, I breathed deeply...in and out, and over again. Taking the long, listless way home. Ahhhh. What I mean to say by all this is...it's spring. Embraces all around.
Time for these weary feet to tread towards bed. Fresh, light sheets, and such.
Here is some love to you all.
X and O.
Rebecca L.B.

Imitation of:

Christ?

...




...




Worlds atwine and intermingle...
More. Soon.
Dark night and cool sheets.
RLB

Open your eyes, it's springtime--

Freshess and lightness is coming; I feel it. And I am embracing oceans of hope.
This week I discovered a breathtaker of a book,


written by this alluring femme named Sophie Dahl.



It is the thinnest, loveliest read I have touched fingers on in quite some time. Who would ever have thought that fairy tales written for adults were just a stone's throw away on the nearest library's bookshelf? Not I. So this is a precious find for me.
If I were you, I would not hesitate to hunt this nombre down and thus give your eyes and heart a delicious feast. I felt a warmth while and after devouring the volume, but not in a stupid or cliche sort of way. I just felt lighter, happier...a smile playing on my lips paired with a quirky sense of spirit.

Here are a few bits of knowledge (albeit verging on the brink of irrelevant) I have acquired in the last recent while:

--feeding bits of buttery toast to a waif-like cat can result in painful results
--vodka meets apple juice meets cinnamon dust does not make for a delicious drink
--days lacing slowly past can actually be a friend, rather than a frusteration
--I am still prone to burning utensils when I cook
--birthdays, and the anticipation of them, is so so very nice.
--Charlotte Gainsbourg is still seductively amazing beyond measure.
--everything is really, truly that much funnier at 2:30 in the morning. chained to responsibilities at work. lying in a haggard booth under a fake sea of stars. waiting waiting waiting to slip home and beneath sheets.

Taking wing,
RB

Paint by numbers, paint it black.

It is laundry day for this tired face, and I am actually quite enjoying the process this frosty morning. I have peppermint tea scorching in our new (but ancient) mold-green teapot that is in fact shaped like a very wide-eyed chicken. Or maybe it is a rooster. My farm animal savvy is not the sharpest these days. Either way, home is a nice space to be when the coldness hangs outside in the air, so heavy that you can almost see it.
Time is a bit of a strange concept for me right now. It feels as if it is slipping by like the blink of soft lashes...I cannot lull it, yet I know this is a good thing. My days are draped with the familiarity of routine as of late. In a way, I like that. I feel that in the present, I am wearing it well. I am really beginning to savour my days spent often alone, and my later nights of cafe work. It is a temporary fit, I realize this, but for know it is better than okay; it is startlingly satisfying. I have a few interesting side projects on the go...messing around with words and with art, keeping my creative side somewhat less than starving. I have also been taking to my yoga mat far more in the past weeks, treading the blocks to my favourite space of heat and open-heartedness...having the sweat lace off my body...down my legs, along my spine, and across my cheekbones again and again. It is good to feel nourished in these ways. I have come to know afresh that I crave, among other things, creative expression and care slash challenge for my body--I need these elements in my world to keep me feeling focussed, achieving balance.
I feel the shift of seasons stirring again...thank God and the stars above...I know perhaps this sounds a touch mental seeing as it is minus thirty-fazillion and dropping in our city at present, but I think somehow that spring is nearer that we may realize. Or maybe I am falling into optimism as a last-ditch method of survival...
Regardless, I am ready to peel the layers of winter off. And I think I am pretty accurate in saying that we all are, by now. I am primed for rubber boots and bare arms, afternoon walks and iced coffee, the river aflow once again, bicycle hangouts and reading in the park.
Loves, nothing here's for sure (to quote a little Page France)...but it is nice to know that the changing seasons (whether early, late, or somewhere in between) are something stable, something unwavering. I like being able to remind myself of that, especially when things seem blurred or inconsistent. Okay and okay. I have officially spent too much time hunched over my slender computer's keyboard...here's to the day ahead. Happy birthday, dear Hilary. You are so so loved!
So long, farewell...(Meg, you can finish the rest of that lil nombre yourself, okay?!)
RB