Thursday, April 8, 2010

Cotton Eyes and Train Track Ties

I smell of blood and corn. This is not the intro to some pained story about my life and being from the mid-west. It is literal: I started my period this morning and cannot stop boiling corn on the cob to slather in butter and salt and eat in a bowl in a bed of a hotel-ish room on the 10th floor of a building that is downtown Seattle's version of a skyscraper.

I am tired. I am hungry. I will gladly shove anyone and take their salt, sugar, and/or starch.

Instead of feeling my heart beat in my chest, today, I feel it in my ribs and hips and thighs. It helps. A person close to me just had their mother pass away. And in the silent time- the time after he's fallen asleep or hung up the phone- it brings me back to that first death. Not the first in order, but the first in impact. The first person I actually knew who died. For me, I was just stepping into my 24th year, and it was someone I had always claimed as my best friend.

So today, for a number of reasons, I move slowly. Carefully. I've been listening to Tim Barry's song 222 from the Manchester album and parts of it echo with me as much today as it did before it was written.


And I don't feel alone when I look up anymore.



Give it a listen:

Press the PLAY icon next to where it says 222

Visually. Live.=

Here


Photo credit: From Misskim on Tumblr