im anxious on a saturday and my usual coping methods don’t work like i planned: the shower is lovely but the hot water does little to warm the ice that lines my stomach; cleaning the bathroom hands and knees is a useful distraction but short lived, the beadwork is relaxing but ive got a troubled mind that keeps chattering about sick beds and infection, plane tickets and home owners insurance. 

i shop sterling and turquoise at the vintage market and buy some hefty turquoise pieces from my favourite jewelry dealer (i didnt need more turquoise). 

my travels take me to the park to collect feathers and watch people. there’s an evangelical christian praise jesus event happening.

people raise their hands to the sky holding cans of cream soda and beer.

there’s a dramatic play happening where actors play out events that might challenge the faith of the believers and the answer to all scenarios is trust god, pray.  i watch for longer than i would like to admit. not too far away, a homeless guy is shooting up. words of praise in my ears and the reality of poverty and mental illness collide. i can’t help the guy shooting up so i do pray for him while i clutch my feathers standing amongst the crowd. 

there’s a guy with a custom jesus motorcycle and he asks if i want to go for a ride and i say no but i actually really want to. psalm 91:11-12 is on the fender

“for he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone”

the guy offers me a prayer book for bikers and a sticker in the AC/DC font that says “jesus: highway to heaven” and i laugh and he laughs too. he has kind eyes i notice and i regret not taking the ride but i have grown a little risk averse as i have aged – figure i have spun the cylinder in deaths revolver a few too many times already.  but i love the bike like i love all devotional objects. ive got a blog and he’s got his bike.

i wonder if jesus would ride a motorbike if he came back now – beats walking i guess. 

i wander the beach and notice people and notice people noticing me.

a girl recognizes me from instagram (hi) and she’s pretty in that perfect summer way – shorts and a flannel, a nose ring and dirty old chucks.  a snapshot of her could be in any photo album from 1979-2026. 

i watch a storm roll through the desert city, black clouds looming like the anxiety that drove me to the park in the first place. 

i realize that i miss him on the drive home. 

i don’t want to know

you know?

i dont want to know about your tv or your money or your fucking mortgage or your car or your band or your shitty etsy store. i want to know you, restless stranger, beautiful rambler. let’s shake off our skin a little and turn into humans having a human experience. connect to me and witness me in my complexity and absurdity and my disgusting humanness and let me connect to you too.

i want you when the party is over half dressed and wild eyed and i wanna know what you dream about and what you’re afraid of and that weird noise you always make because it’s funny to you. 

tell me about your dead friends and the pedestal they occupy in your mind where you dust the altar of their being and unbeing because i know that feeling too clutching rainbow dollar store feather dusters forever.

i want campfire nights and tent laughter and tent cold and throwing cigarettes in the lake by accident.

i dont want reality tv or jokes about your spouse or you describing tiktoks to me. tell me about that time your mom died and it was weird and you hadn’t forgiven her yet but now she’s an angel and it makes you feel hollow inside.

tell me about that time you fell in love hard for a summer with a french fruit picker and you thought it was gonna be forever but it wasn’t and that you’re okay with it now because that love was so sweet just like summer wine country fruit. 

tell me about your vodka and gatorade and that guy you never got over or the one you did but you still think about sometimes. tell me what makes you feel small, what makes you feel big. 

tell me about your favourite book and that you’ve read it a hundred times sitting happy grilled cheese sandwich ketchup kitchen table liturgy greasy glasses page after page. 

tell me about your brothers and ill tell you about mine except my story is a little sad and a little weird and a little rezzy too. hope you remember to laugh when we get to the part about jail.

god just tell me about you so i can know you and feel you and understand you as a human, so i can understand myself as a human and we can be humans together as we were meant to be. 

fuck this ai, planning intimacy, talking stage, euro trip, fuck ass tiktok bullshit inspo influencer reality tv traitors hair extensions bbl new drake album(s) horseshit. sick of mean people and bad vibes and everyone’s fucking ego and their goddamn dogs and their promotions and their off leash free range organic grass fed grass free soy free mocha latte summer convertible tesla right wing hate speech but im the victim actually mindset because i don’t wanna know, you know. 

i just want to see you. 

i dream bridge dreams again. 

the raging thompson river is high and fast, the black churn and undertow moaning, creaking. 

they had to stop renting out the paddle boats because too many people fall in and someone drowned recently. the river is deep to the banks and the water is wild, just like the decemberists sang. 

i dream bridge dreams, standing on the train bridge naked with my long hair loose down my back, whipping like tongues. 

i feel the air and the rumble within my chest. i smell the creosote and the iron of the train tracks. dreaming of rivers leaves me restless and confused and i need double coffee the next morning and a good smudge with the goose feather i found at the park blowing in the wind. 

brushing my hair and spirit off asking for purity from the geese who swim the river and the river itself. 

the river takes and overtakes in its endless glory, boundless being. 

am i the river or the bridge?  can’t i be both?  steady and always moving, fierce and cold and wild and free?

i dream bridge dreams again, standing at the edge of forever and nowhere and somewhere, sage in my lungs and a song on my lips or was it a prayer?  i dont remember anymore but it doesnt seem to matter. 

a dead cow washed down the river the other day, stinking and bloated. do cows dream bridge dreams too?

i think of all that the river has taken. 

all that it desires. does the river dream bridge dreams?  does it dream people dreams?

i see it in the faces of people i have known for years – age, time. 

gray hairs and lines, scars and sturdier limbs. 

i see it in my own face looking thinner, still me but weathered like the boards peeling paint on the old houses i can’t stop interrupting road trips to photograph and write poems about while a lover waits for me in the car. 

voices sound a little harder and i hear it in the tattoo shop banter and how we shake our heads at young kids trying hard to look goth on the corner but there but for the grace of god go i and all. 

girls i knew became women became mommas and they inspire me with strength and their it girl manicures that don’t really hide the bear claws. 

i watch people pushing forty pushing fifty still trying to throw it back, trying to hold court as a scene king this scene king that and its like yeah ok i guess. 

im not afraid of getting old. 

it means that we were alive, together. 

it means we fucking lived.