Your Eyes are Golden

The strings come in and start swelling, the bells echo the melody over and over again, and I am positively vibrating with energy. The motherfucking heat of summer is enclosing my body, and as a beautiful little bead of perspiration rolls down my back and along my side, I smile at all of the things I have seen and heard and smelled and tasted in the past 5 weeks. I feel like I have gained a foothold on life again. Not like I had ever fallen, you know. More like... floated away into some sort of amorphous and intangible expanse of nothing. With nothing to ground me I waited, but now I see life ahead, glowing like stone wall, the precious steps up scattered here and there, some vague, others obvious, leading in so many directions.

My god, how I want to climb towards you. But I am not worried because it doesn't really matter. You've never really left me have you? You've never left me at all. And I know that you're telling the truth, that you will always be my fortress, because I can see it in your golden eyes. So come on, let's climb up fences, break into schools in the middle of the night, get drunk off our own high, lay on my bed in the yellow light of my bedroom lamp and listen to the sweetest music ever heard echo off the walls and float out through the shitty Vertical Blinds into the warm night outside my window.

And I'll take you by the hand and lead you to all of the strange places I've been to, and tell you stories about my life and other people's lives and the world and the stars until your head is buzzing and your eyes can't see the difference between anyone or anything-- it's all one, all together, you and me and everyone we know. And I'll lick your salty skin and you'll kiss my mouth and our fingers will intertwine as we melt together, fade into each other. Even as you board the train-- the very same that bourne you to me and now takes you from me-- I know that you will fall asleep to the gentle rumble of the engine, and the setting sun's rays will fall delicately on your eyelids, glowing golden in my heart and keeping me safe forever.

All of the Goodness and Beauty in the World

Waiting fervently on the platform, I did not see you exit the train as I searched desperately through the crowds. Turning around in circles, our eyes met and I could remember each spot of light in your star-bright eyes. I wanted to jump into your arms, but I restrained my feelings as I ran to meet you, my clumsy body fumbling to meet yours as I toppled into your embrace. And when I looked up I saw green and gold and gray and blue in your magical ever-changing eyes, multiple facets of shades and colors that danced like a kaleidescope with the receding angles of the setting sun.

When I look into them I feel like I am peering into the future, the past, into all of history and time and life's mysterious secrets and I can't help but wonder what exactly it is that you are, that stares back at me, and what it sees in turn. They stare right through me and clear away the hate and the pain and jadedness and draw out my purity, all of the good that wants to come out of me and love you and love the world. It saddens me to think of these things that pollute my mind and my spirit, but at the same time you comfort me with your seemingly infinite patience and understanding.

We hold hands as we cross old brick paths, so well worn with partings and reunions, travel and return, creation and destruction. We are immortal beings who watch over the earth below from the lofty heavens, where dreams float up to us like little birds that play in the sky. I am calm and content and filled with felicity. The clear blue sky quickly dims, and we walk on into the twilight.

And at night you say my name over and over again and how much you love me as we move together, and our hearts and bodies swell with emotion as tears come to my eyes and stream down my cheeks because the thought of being with you and loving you is too beautiful to even fathom. And when I close my eyes there is nothing but blackness and powerful intense feelings permeating everything, straight to my soul, and it is as though I have completely given myself up to my sensations. And all I can possibly think about is how wonderful and beautiful life can be.

L'Age d'Or

Remember those really fucking awesome backyard shows we used to go to, like 5 summers ago? Things were so so different then, we were such different people then. High school was still fresh, even after graduation. Damn was that ceremony boring. So full of fake-ass ostentation and seemingly random importance placed on a very unextraordinary "achievement." Pomp and circumstance indeed. So anticlimactic and unmoving... not at all the fitting ending to our youth.

Things were so golden back then. It was a hot and humid summer, and it permeated through everything, the blood in my veins, the air in my lungs. We'd swim in the big concrete hole of a dirty suburban pool surrounded by a weed-overrun backyard next to that crazy old dilapidated car covered in rust and spider webs. Sun bleached white plastic chairs that were about to break and dented beer cans littering the environs. Pabst Blue Ribbon and Miller Lite 40's and fucking Natty Ice. And we'd walk to the 7-11 down Mast Boulevard and eat wonderful deep fried Taco Shop and drink Cokes or buy popsicles.

The best part was the afternoons when the sun set and everything was orange and red. And your loosely thrown together band would assemble in various white trash backyards to play into the twilight until the blue evening cooled us all down. I would sit on an amp wearing a flippy little skirt and flip flops watching you set up, sound check, smile at me. I stole your chord cheat sheet after the show, scrawled with a messy hand on the back of a crumpled flyer, studying the movements of the lines and savoring the spontaneity of their strokes with as much appreciation as a Chinese calligrapher. And I'd dance to the music you covered later that night as moths burned themselves on the bare light bulb of my bedroom lamp as they flew in through the open window.

Our hometown was shit, but we didn't care. It was East County, it was So-Cal, and it was summer. Your shitty amps rang out distorted chords that resounded against the walls of the valley, and for an hour or so I could just stare up at the dark sky and let go of everything. A real l'Age d'Or. We kissed on the 4th of July after climbing up to the hills covered in scratchy dry grass, showers of colored light illuminating our vision behind closed eyelids.

The summer and the music was still hot, flowing through my body, but when Labor Day came I was suddenly in the grip of Fall. Fuck, it was cold. And like a tide you ebbed ever slowly away. That was it. The moment when you smiled at me, bidding farewell as you stepped into your mom's van, going away to college, your cheerful words, "Be happy... go find a nice boyfriend" gave me a fucking black eye. That was when I knew I had grown up and that I could never ever go back or even look at this town again.

Late Afternoon Return Trip Streams of Consciousness

Reaching the 405 at 5:04, I realize suddenly how very palindromatic my route is, how every town I pass through is the same, how it stretches into one long patchwork of buildings and walls and hills and fields that constitutes the 144 miles between us. Even the names of streets begin to be reused, an unimaginative Adam of an architect cutting corners. Euclid, Fairview, Main, Broadway, Culver, Mesa, Rosecrans, Harbor. One after the other. O my beautiful artfully artificial Southern California, may your orange sun forever burn into my shoulders. With Bass+7, Treble+3, Fujiya & Miyagi thudding like pixelated scraps of jazz max in your headlights.

A thin film of the beautiful briny Santa Barbara breeze and perspiration coats my body as cities flash by me. I can't think of them as anything else but names, as I have only experienced them as such, though I do hear that Van Nuys is very nice, and that the Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen's Club is quite the place to be in the City of Industry, according to a poorly designed billboard. I keep thinking back to all of the little time we've spent together and how it seems to stretch on forever in my memory, even long afterwards. I know I'm reading too much into it, and your two eyes are too wise for my innocence, in a sense.

A sudden break in the traffic jolts me out of my thoughts at Brookhurst and Fountain Valley. Goddammit, I think. Suffice to say, if shit had gone down, bitches would have been flipped. But the cars start speeding up again, I regain my momentum, and begin velocitating rapidly towards a cool 86 mph in silence. Portugal.the.Man brings me back down into my sleepiness again, and my exit finally floats up to me out of a fog. I keep falling into this dream state, my very secret, very solitary second life pulling me down and enveloping me into blackness. Driving down familiar streets, the music recycles, and I wonder if you have seen me cry, tears like diamonds.

I may be batting a thousand, but a homerun crack at love... This is where I tell you that I know love's what I need to work at.