Vulnerability ---

--- goes away when you display it.
This is the irony of it.

And so it goes that ...

... I am afraid of you knowing me. Really knowing me. I'm afraid if you found out about my deep, black secrets, those only whispered under my breath, you might find the will and reason to tie me to a wooden stake and burn me, in front of my peers, with good reasons. Good reasons that everyone will agree are good reasons.

They said, "Yes, it was hard to watch her burn up in flames because i can only imagine the pain, but something had to be done -- something had to be done to make an example of how a person shouldn't think."

And with that the community nodded their heads simultaneously, as the blue flame gripped me at my feet, rose up toward my chest, licked the tip of my chin then began to consume my face. As I fell into my own ashes my consciousness looked about me, from the ground. I looked at the departing crowd shaking their heads, sighing with relief, holding each other and some clinching their fists. They walked away, some looking back, as I lay their awaiting my wind to disperse me into everything -- soon I will become, everything. I will become the chill at their shoulder, the quick light to their right, the sudden noise in their silence and the abrupt choke in their throat.

I have become the sigh in their fear. I don't mean to become any of this. It's just that there is nothing else to become. There is nowhere else to go. There's just this place that I've begun to occupy that's somewhere between my reality and their denial.

Physics says that smoke will rise from a burning fire. If the fire doesn't get your flesh, then the smoke will take you from the inside out.

I, like smoke ,have been released from the flame and my spirit liberated from gravity. And they ---- they are still trapped by the very thing they believe keeps them free. And yet somehow, someway they envy my burning, wishing they had the courage to let the flame come for them and deliver their catharsis. But instead, this healing they scream for in their dreams is only experienced by observing someone else's endurance of pain.

There's an envy here put upon me. There's an envy that I have dared to hold the sun in my own hands, like an innocent child that's only interested in the light of it and not the burn.
And this is my vulnerability. It was, indeed standing there in front of them with all of my darkness awaiting the light to absorb me.

vulnerability ...
... goes away when you display it.

This is the irony of it.

My vulnerability died with my darkness. And now the pain of that birth has left me raw, open, sticky and new.
I have entered a paradigm shift and will return on slow moving, distant storm clouds.

I am with the thunder. I am with with forgiveness herself. Eyes darting and wisdom in my mouth -- it has brought me to today.

And today I am fearless - absolutely fearless.

Yet, vulnerability is still a distant sound in a canyon that echoes to me as it bounces against stone walls - reminding me that she's never too far away. Never, too far away.

So, I journey.
I journey.
I journey.
I journe
I journ
I jour
I jou
I jo
I j
I
.

This has been a long time ... I've been traveling in a worm hole through time and space, sniffing here and there, jaw-dropping once in a while, bored other times and floating in a stream of it all.

People, sometimes - misunderstand me. Yet, the world keeps hanging out in the middle of nowhere and my life, life in general, is all but a sneeze away from being over.

I haven't been here, blogging in a while. And why do I do it? Why do I even feel the need to externalize myself, to whispers, fast moving lights, business, the all of everything that is so self-involved that they don't see the person next to them. We have become like those horses trained and bred to toil and sweat without ever really knowing why we did.

So, I'm here in the middle of this place --- this place where everyone is so busy doing something --- alot of nothing. It is inevitable, if you're paying attention at all, that someone/people might believe that what I'm saying comes from an arrogance or some superiority complex inside of myself. I can see how and why some may think that. Or, maybe they don't at all. Perhaps it's just myself not wanting to meet myself. Maybe I'm afraid of myself and all that she is, has been and is becoming. Maybe I have to pretend I am less than I am so that I feel I have a place in this world - so that I won't be misunderstood.

My life is turning. Not left or right, but several circles forward and upward, forward and upward, forward and upward --- my soul is rising through perpetual motion itself and is sustained by the surrender to it.

But, who gets that? Who wants to get that?
So, I guess just posing these two questions would suggest that my knowledge isn't knowledge but instead arrogance. But, the arrogance isn't in me. It is confidence earned through humility.

There is a thing about a person becoming who they need to in their lives. All things around them -- people around them -- are scared. So, what's there to do? Crash in a deserted island like the folks in "Lost"? Plan your own fake death? Otherwise, it is hard to get away... to get away from the gasped breaths of those witnessing your transformation right before their eyes. They are not really asking "why are you doing this" but rather, "how dare you do this" ... how dare, you.

The arrogance of knowledge only exists in the culdasac of it -- in the backwater of the ebb and flow. That is to say, arrogance can only suckle on the certainty of denial. Denial then breeds more denial. Then this breeds vulnerability = fear = making excuses = projecting on everyone/everything else but yourself and your own weaknesses. Then, there you are. If you are known to be someone with knowledge to challenge the world that will require a little bit of tolerance for pain, then you are .... arrogant. Suddenly, everything you know (that you earned) is not what you know.

You are arrogant in the face of the judgement that comes from arrogance.

So, you -- "I" -- will stand there in the puddle and watch and listen to the lips slowly moving and sounds of whispers all around me. And I won't look down and I won't look forward. I will look upward and wait to rise, like steam into a never-ending, misunderstood and omnicient sky.

When you arrive there --- it's hard to be, here.

Inhaling


It's coming from some untouched place. This rare, lost, but waiting to be found-place. It is tiny and passes when you blink. Just in that moment before you take a breath to say, "hello" -- it is there, living inbetween the inhale. And my mind wants to badly to catch it. But, like a hummingbird's wings, my sight can't find its stillness and my hands can't catch it in mid-flutter without killing it.

So, I'm stuck within this delicate balance of it all. Watching time reveal what it does to us all. Watching it unfold its everyday birth and decay. I'm only trying to find this delicate, quantum space in-between it all. This sweep maple smell that finds me, coming from a hundred-year-old-tree, reminding me of my own mortality.

And, the clock keeps ticking. Time --- demanding that the battery life in my watch keep up with it. It is snuggled within perpetual motion and I am but a spirit bound by the gravity within my flesh.

I find solace in knowing I breathe.
I look forward to the moments between all of my inhales --- this space where I stop time and can witness the unfolding of its consequences.
Action. Reaction.

I am alive.

I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS PRETTY


And then I turned into a girl. Always steel. Always silver. Always gray. Cold. Sharp. Exterior.

But someone lit a small pink petal with a tiny flame. And that pink turned fire red and consumed the monotone. Then the sepia came.


I worry too much about everyone around me. I think about her and how misery has covered her like bear fur in a false winter. I think about how sex has smothered him like slick oil, making him slip on his own desires. And about her rigidity, like a lightening bolt, has struck her straight into a perpetual pose and the inevitable gout found her. And their denial; how it covers them with ash – taking away the myriad hues of truth.

And myself and how I manipulate the edge of pavement and dirt. How I avoid the cuts at my feet.

“Come back to the center” some collective cries. But I stay dumb with lush, on purpose, watching the realness of it all swirm around me, like a peripheral parade chanting aside me and I am but a spectator to it.

Sometimes I like to get lost. And I know when I’ve put away my compass. And I use him. I use his warm body to find me – make me feel human. I use him, his cascading hair, deep breathing, whispering voice and sweat. And I lie a little bit to myself. Closing my eyes I let myself dip, for a sliver of time, into the possibility of him letting go. Imagining us by the tickling sound of skinny water pushing forward in a shallow creek over small pebbles, tiny rock. I imagine us in silence and only looking at each other underneath a swallowing, overcast sky – waiting for the rain.
And it is the rawest kind of beauty.

So, I imagine these things while he’s over me and his mouth suckles me. then I realize he could be anybody and it would be okay. He is a shadow come to life. Flesh appearing on his dark bones. Warm liquid swimming inside of him. And suddenly he is human before me. eyes sparkle in the indigo light and I see the river in them. And this empty cavern inside of my chest is suddenly filled with the sharp UV rays of the day’s sun. it finds me cuddled in the corner, still young and naïve and waiting to be found by love. I am like an abandoned child with torn, dirty clothes. Fresh faced. Dirty faced. Scared. Not-trusting. White-pink, small paths of tears already created underneath my eyes, the way that small water carves its path into ancient earth. I am curled up and remembering when I was a fetus – longing to be closed eyed and fed by my mother.

And so I pretend that he is the sun – that which has brought a song into my silence. And the melodies are like magic carpets and I ride the treble out high, dropping with the bass underneath the clouds. I am a girl laughing in the air carried and loved by the syncopated dips of notes and sounds. My melodic parent keeping me safe in the womb of sound.

And I just want to be loved. Embraced. Filled with lucidity while limber. It’s okay to be limber and just let gravity let me rest.

Then, in the midst of all this noise the silence found me. In the midst of all this colorless space, I have been discovered by the rainbow – and sepia has turned into contrasted brightness. Every color is bold. Every color takes on its purpose.
And there is harmony while holding my breath.

I didn’t know I was pretty until I turned into a woman. Always linen. Always ivory. Always immaculate. Hot. Blunt. Interior.


I didn’t know I was pretty until I realized ---- it never mattered.
And I have ended where I began.

A LETTER TO THE ONE I LIKE AND COULD LOVE IF HE LET ME AND WHOM I KNOW WOULD LOVE ME IF HE COULD ONLY OPEN UP.

August 20, 2006
C. Pacheco

Brave and Stupid


There’s this love thing again. How could a civilization be so predictable and complicated at the same time?
How could this cliché of the subject of love become commonplace in a society that has risen, pushed through oppressive forces of our earth’s gravitational pull and despite all odds – still land on the moon?
How could the ethereal nature of love be so filled with blinding complexity and binding ropes?

This isn’t like me. My time is usually spent thinking about the sky and looking at the trillions of tiny dots that make up our multi-dimensional real-life moving painting. I think about them and the quantum leaps that happen all around us everyday. I wonder about DNA, perpetual motion, and the science of emotion, spirit and reincarnation. I dig inside of the mud, get dirty and want to discover the bottomless pit.

But love.
I am clueless and without words or language.

The wanting of love and not knowing how to ask for it leaves me the most fearful. It makes me more scared than traveling alone in a wet, thundering mountain in a country below the equator, surrounded by strangers in a lost place.
It is my heart that is bigger than this world. It expounds beyond the literal universe and reaches toward a horizon, poised to land in the incinerating center of the sun.

It is brave and stupid. But isn’t the difference just a transparent, fragile, fine line?

And so I’m here in this place- staring at the dots, creating a play list of music for you as you are probably daydreaming about your happiness, your sadness, what it is that you may want, don’t want, don’t want to admit you want --- amongst your confusion, your breakfast, your laugh, the lowering of your head -------- your sighs.
I can’t help that your exhaled breath finds me like smoke signals.
Wondering about these little pieces, I have a deep desire to touch you and remind you that you are not alone.
Then, I feel crazy --- as if I fell through a wormhole in outer space and the universe of my heart is leading me further away from civilization. There, I become like an animal – reactionary and losing all my reason.



And I don’t care.
Perhaps I have already found this pit – this 8th wonder of the world; deep, dark, mysterious, primordial and unexplainable.

Between all of my deep ponderings and curiosity about our existence, at the end of it all, I want to slow dance with you.
I want to think of nothing. Maybe that is the greatest give that love can bring to me, can bring to you…

Silence.


Inspired by E.

A LETTER TO THE ONE I DON’T WANT TO ADMIT I WANT TO LOVE AND WANT HIM TO WANT TO LOVE ME BACK



Promise of Spring
By C. Pacheco


WORDS TO CLEAR MY THROAT:

What if I told you that every time I’m near you I feel like I never learned a thing? You make me want to pull my heart out of my chest again and lay it down for your to explore. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt my center rise and my core as bright blue as the hottest flame in a dark room.


THE POINT:

I want to hold you with my eyes closed, touch your beautiful hair, smell your golden skin and bring you into me – over and over again.
I want to exhaust myself at the end of everyday for over-loving you.
I’m sure that it would be reciprocated. I have a place for every part of you. Your sweat dripping into my small valleys – there’s a dry part of me matching every damp part of you. You arrived like a thunderstorm, uninvited and surprisingly. So, rain hard on me. Demand your thunder to shake my earth – your lightening to strike me more than once. This humid, sticky essence of your entrance brought green to my grey.

I can’t explain all of those silly little reasons that I feel this way. I’m just drawn to you like dew to a thorn. And even if it means yet another pain of heartbreak, I want to lay with you and feel what it could be, in my mind for this moment – if only for this moment.

Please be him.
Rub your body around me as we dance to deep, slow rhythms and make me want it.

You can make me wet with longing. Kiss me where I’m raw, sore, tired – where tears swell and my body tickles. Give me your mouth and sip on my sweet, hot tea for a while.
I want to show you my words, my most open – my most honest – and I want for you to play with them between your rough fingers. Swirl the o’s in your index, tickle the x’s, dot my I’s, squeeze my e’s and push down on my g’s with your green thumb. Grip my sentences and hold them up against your warmth. Then give them back reinvented, like new full-bloomed dewy roses from your garden.

In the deep purple and blue hours of the night I want to awake with my body lying over you - lethargic and trusting. Let me sleep cradled in your thighs and dream of all that you could be.
I will dance for you – undulate my body, like you are the dry shore and I am the full moon’s tide.
I want to rub you, feel you rise - pumped full with blooming gardens of life and a promise of spring.


Your lips are ripe and high above the sea – ready for me to dive deep into yet another abyss - this deep blue bottomless wetland where I never catch my breath.
Come close to me, up against me. Feel my damp chest slipping against yours – I am squirming and not wanting to give in. Make me see in your eyes that I am but a young girl again, remembering my innocence.

Though all of this is like over-saturated sweet syrup poured in lumps into milk, just bare with me today as I finally am waking from my winter’s slumber. I am grateful for the possibility of you and it makes me rise in the morning and look toward the sun.

Shine over me. Bring me your heat.
Make my flower bloom in your orange, hot and humid dawn.

A letter to the one I don’t want to admit I still love

Perpetual winter


I want to hate you.
Don’t we all feel that way about some people?

I don’t even really want to want to hate you.
Where are you anyway?

You damn fool. You still feel me when you sleep against her. Her hair, her smell, her skin, her breathing. Isn’t she lovely? Really.

In your dreams I know you see the “ifs”. And no matter how collected you are and perfect you are and clean you are – no matter how composed and intensely focused you are, those messy memories of us cloud you.

It’s all about the, what if’s, isn’t it?

But who in the hell cares anyway?
This mini obsession I have with the wonderings about you add up like small dollars and tiny cents. It was expensive to have experienced you at all, on any level, in my life.
I have been paying on the interest and feel like I’ve just begun bargaining with the principal. And I still have a long way to go.

When can I finally upgrade from you? When can I at least trade in this broken heart for a newer one? Perhaps one with a different vibe, smile, texture and color. At least it would be a variety on this pain. A buffet of gut wrenching is better than the same ol’ everyday, predictable and petty disappointments. It would at least give me the thrill of the un-expected. You remember how I enjoyed playing with fire, don’t you? I like skating the unstable edges of piercing cliffs and cutting earth. There’s just something so divine about the hurting that reminds me of my closeness to apathy. It’s just a quick, steep and fast death fall ahead.
So, at least pain that I don’t expect - keeps me on my toes and reminds me that I’m living.
If I only could say that I’ve been hurt by another this way. I want to say that I have – but no. I tried to. At times I may have stared deeply into myself in a mirror until this person in the reflection became a blurred, melted fleshly version of me. She became part of the glass and evaporated away. I was searching for a kernel of something that would convince me, sincerely that I have bled for another him.
But, no.
Instead, all they’ve ever been were just other let-downs. Like flies and honking horns in the distance never letting me sleep. But never like yours.
I wonder if the veil over my soul has thickened like the dry callous on the balls of my feet, and have become themselves like those dark, old timeless rocks existing in a vast, isolating land – never uncovered.
Damn how I long for that sweet pain of slipping and slicing myself open. That deep, violet haze of pain that rises like smoke in a room on fire.
But for that I’m guessing I would have to open up this cave, again. And at least for now, it seems that snow is still falling on those steep and sharp edged cliffs. Sleet is still slick up against the pavement and the bitter cold is breaking the bark of an old oak outside my sunken lair. I will hibernate until the first trickle of melted ice, like a bug, sneaks its way underneath me and into my hiding.

This winter has been a blizzard and even the sun holds out his hands, bloody & filled with sharp ice. Stabbing, cutting, hard frozen water.

This is how I loved you. This is how you loved me back. Such sweet slicing pain that created a dichotomy inside me – splitting me in two - like ice cracking rocks in a perpetual winter.
You see I want for you to come back and hurt me again. Summon out the purple from my beige. Conjure up my red from my still white. Bring out the black from my clear and lucid pastel.
Come and bring this pain, sharp and cradled in your hands, and make me hate you again.
So that for one brief moment I can remember how it feels to want to love someone else, anyone else, but you.





For G.

Written on Thursday, July 27, 2006 (on the plane over to Tejas)

OZ


The other day while feeling bad, I bought myself a beautiful pair of deep-red, patent leather, closed toe, classic high heeled shoes.
I’ve always wanted a good pair of red shoes.
And last night I found myself packing them up alongside some old, tattered, dirty flip flops. They are meant to be broken in someplace else.

Here in Austin, it is hot, humid and wide-spread – just like I remember Texas.

You see, that’s the thing about Texas. It sticks to you, like the humidity. And already, in some ways, it seems like San Francisco was a fairy-land, foggy dream. Did all that ever really happen? Did I really live in such an amazing world-famous city, on my own, in a cool neighborhood, dance naked for some funny money, do media work, go to the Hopi reservation and Alaska, meet Maya Angelou, get my heart swollen and broken, hang on for dear life in the Muni, run down the stairs to jump on the BART, participate in some of the largest protests, smoke the best herb and meet the strangest, coolest, funkiest people? As a matter of fact, it can be said that I indeed met the tin man with no heart, the lion with no courage, the scarecrow with no brain while skipping around in the emerald city.

And the result of that messy mosaic is formidable. My wisdom is heavier, like a water-balloon. My conscience looks bright like white linen shining through sun. My heart is large and filled with the deep blue liquid of humility. And, my spirit. She is light and boundless – forever rising above me, watching the landscape and guiding me where to go next.

But there is something I must say to you all, my fellow travelers down this yellow brick road: In my deepest core I am certain some day, some how, I will click those shiny red heels of mine and return to Oz – taking the emerald city within me.

But, for now I’ve got to admit ------- there’s no place like home.


A big embrace to my California peeps. You are with me for life.
And to SF --- I've never felt a warmer embrace from any other cold place.

Thank you.

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

-- Robert Frost