Hey Jenn

I wanted you to know what I was up to tonight. Things have been building creatively - I think I'm finally starting to move ahead in things, and being smarter and healthier about how I'm working in the practical, and that Saturday afternoon coffee at Ideal with Helen which sparked one idea of choreography, has sparked some further things when it comes to our collaboration. I want you to know that the greatest gift a partner could give another is space and time, and there's no one else on this planet who understands that more about me, than you. So if you're wondering what I'm up to tonight, I'm going over notes for our first piece together - it's taken a little while due to my creative inactivity and your imprisonment, but I've finally seen an idea evolving involving us. It's going to be quite demanding on you - as a narrative it'll force you to become part photographer and part dancer, and that means a parallel physical transformation where you're really going to have to method act - you're going to find yourself thinning and leaning and emptying out while getting stronger and harder and more fierce, and it is a journey I'm going to share with you, because the demands of my character are similar to yours (when you and I get together for tea on a Monday night I'll show you the notes for what I'm coming up with, and you'll fully see) I think it's fantastic that we're even at the point now where the circumstances have now permitted us to work and build something together, and though our connection is as natural as breathing, this is going to be something where there's going to definitely be anger and clashing and fierceness, and I think we're both looking forward to that gigantic studio space, because when you see the idea, trust me you're going to want to come on over and work on the narrative, and I'm so excited that we get to share that opportunity. SO, if you're wondering where I am tonight, it's in the space I have at the moment, working up a sweat, storyboarding and making notes, while browsing other mediums of a similar kind of art, for a further inspiration. Your understanding is absolutely appreciated, darling, and if this city is about people surrendering to being their own sexy selves, the mere empathy for this artist and his creative process, makes you sexy, so thanks beautiful.

On to it!

Older

Some mornings you feel it a lot more, depending upon the evening before (the evening before being a moment I haven't had in a long while) I'm looking at the calendar and I know that in a few weeks I'll at last be settled into my new space (I expected months ago such a relocation, so I'm glad that it's finally come to pass) I think I had to wait for the right kind of place to be in, and it's a lot bigger than I expected, which I'm glad for. How this ties in to the feeling of how you feel 'it' a lot more is simple - I'm quite sick of waking up here, because this space is too small to hold all the ideas that I have been waiting for too long to explore. I'm glad that I still have the ideas to begin with (and they are so much better) But ideas are nonsensical if you're not applying a little bit more of an action to them, yes? They are just scrawling that is unintelligible and really doesn't have much meaning until you put the full weight of your effort behind them. Effort is discipline, be it to get enough rest or good food or to balance the practical with the fantastic (although the practical does have it's fantastic moments) I don't feel like I'm disciplined and healthy enough where I am, and that the first day I roll out of bed and I stand up and suddenly there is all this sunshine pouring through all of the windows and I look across my space and there'll be enough room to run towards the kitchen - it's that moment I require to fully commit to the ideas I've put on to paper. For me, the priority is to just get through the next few weeks while furniture is moved out, and the space is vacated and I can take ownership of it. Effort is also staying physical with the space you have, and I'm trying - I've had a pretty intense 2010 when I think of all the things that have happened, and all the people that I have loved who are no longer here, and the evolving responsibilities which I've taken to quite well (I've grown so much in this time, who I was last year I don't really recognize - it's me but a far better version in the here and now) Only a few more weeks of maintaining and continuing to repair the damage physically. Though I've been working a lot at my practical job, I fully recognize how much it's shaped me, and changed me for the better, and how the work is beginning to become complimentary to the nature of my existence again, thankfully. At the same time, I've let myself be beaten down a little bit by the workload, and I'm only now starting to balance things out. I feel it this morning, but it wasn't from the work, but the choreography, and the excitement of working with a couple of amazing individuals I've met through the work that I've done in my job. I earned this space. I earned it. And when I wake up in the morning, that first day, you can be sure that I'm going to leap out of bed, and run with gigantic, bounding steps to my kitchen, hop up on the kitchen counter in my underwear, pour myself a cup of coffee, and look out at this beautiful city for a bit, before I start my day of training and work. This is the life waiting for me, and in the last days of being here, I can't wait for it.

Ahead

I am making a decision to return to doing this kind of work again (I miss it, and it's way too much fun, so I shall)

Eulogy

I am trying to wrap my brain around the fact that you are gone. I've experienced death in my lifetime more than a few times, but it's your loss in particular which sticks. To contemplate the fact that you are not here, for someone so full of life and living and promise. Someone with so much passion and yet so much anguish and pain that you endured in the short time you were upon this planet, and how you somehow managed to get beyond such things and find love. You were the example of poetry that I would use, of transforming something of grief into something of wild beauty and joy. If I were to sit down and discuss with another all the elements of a tragic beauty, you would be it. To even frame such things in past tense does not make sense to me at all - there's a displaced quality to it all where in quiet moments (I find these come when I am motion, be it dance or walking along with my headphones on, or on the bus) I'll think of you and the fact that not too long ago, you closed your eyes and this time you did not open them. The mere fact that your physical being does not exist, and that you are wisps of smoke and ashes scattered about, and how I'd tell your little sister over and over again throughout this all that your soul is intact, and I so believe that, but that I wish it was present, in the here and now, in living flesh with laughter. You reminded me of all the great laughter - the kind that isn't polite or as courtesy, but the one that would make you double over and howl and roll on the floor unable to breathe because you'd be so full of joy. Imagine that, that you had the kind of charm to suffocate people, and we never minded it whatsoever. I am trying to understand how someone so beautiful and sensual and playful and sexy who had no inhibition and the mind of a genius (who else could get into Harvard while in a coma? Only you could do that, you know) is not here.

(Where did you go?)

I've been sick on some level since you died. I haven't really recovered fully just yet, and though I'm the tower of strength for everyone, in your last days you taught me that I should allow myself to be more vulnerable, and that the only way to truly be strong is to admit it when you're hurting, so I'm hurting. And now that I've admitted that, I think it's also a good thing to tell you that you've lit a fire under my ass in the best possible of ways. I know I've been ill and ailing and that physically I haven't felt myself for weeks since you first became ill, and that the majority of this summertime has been spent either lying in bed or at my job, but that I'm assuring you in the here and now that when I'm feeling stronger (and I will be feeling stronger) that promise I made to you before you died I will absolutely keep, and that I promise you that you will not be forgotten, and that there is a wealth of surprises to share with the world that will have your name, or your impression attached to them, and that I'll do your memory justice with what is being offered, and that even in death, you will still always be one of the most beautiful souls I will have ever encountered, and that I'm so glad that we met when things were absolutely rough for you, and that I had the pleasure of helping you do what you ultimately did on your own, and that's move forward. I'll move forward for you, and I'll keep watch over your sister and give her all the love and attention I can give, and I'll relearn how to dance, and I'll build that school, and I'll repair and heal and love. I'll remember my priorities and make sure that as I transition into a new phase of my life, when I stretch out in my new space and begin to move again, somewhere you'll be around, and though it's a negative thing usually to imply a haunting, I hope you're around, you prankster girl, to play with me every chance you get.

You were lovely, and you are lovely, and I'll miss you, beautiful, but not enough to hide away from the world and withdraw and forget. For you, I'll remember myself. I promise.