blanco y rojo y azul y yo no te

misty ride night song

Rain soak me
wash off what is not me

clean me
so that i can see
heal me
so inside i am free
pause me
so i can learn to be

Owl guide me when i am alone
follow me
when i need to roam
navigate me
when i lose my way home
find my heart when it has ...flown

Hill strengthen me when i am weak
let me summit when life gets bleak
guide me to your secret creek
quiet me when i shouldn't speak

Life teach me and i will gladly learn
holding tight upon your stern
when wind blows in i will not turn
i'll ride your waters as they churn
 ~michelle

personal stuff

sometimes i feel lost in this world without my pops...
he was the only person on this planet who got me.
i mean really got me
knew me so well...even the tiny burrows one only knows about themselves.
when we would be at family gatherings, or in rooms together and i would say something
that had hidden undertones, or i felt nervous or uncomfortable, or i told one of my stupid
jokes that no one gets...i would glance at him and he would give me the most understanding
wink...and i knew i was loved and known.
that's big shit!

music to shiver to

click

soak

j'aime

some words

"i could fucking die tomorrow...

fuck that

fuck you

fuck it all

i'm so pissed

not about the dying part, cause the point is it can happen
and that would be the canned laughter to this joke of a life...

hardy har har

grass greener there
grass green here
my damn grass is green, soft, roly poly nap grass
i love my field but i don't like your fence on it
er...or maybe it's not yours maybe it's mine
maybe i'm a time bomb
ticking
imagining fences and walls and gates
that are not there.
oh rules...i hate you
you and me have been butting heads since day one
i test you
and people cry.there is this polaroid that
i want to crawl into
when i look at it i can smell the room
hear the conversation
remember that feeling-
thatfreedomyoudidntknowuntilyoudidnthaveit
- i have spent the last fucking years
trying to lasso-
bucking bronco bucking me off
the more i resist
the more i get tossed...


man that's just it though -
i don't know
i
don't
know because the book hasn't been written yet.
the damn thing hasn't been written...
i keep forgetting that...
books, movies, songs, paintings
we've seen so many endings we forget we can write our own..
each and every day...
each and every day! get that- that is fucking amazing!"
my blue suitcase,
waiting patiently...
it's funny what you pack when you don't know
where you're going...
if you're going...

what if i leave
sit on the bed of a hotel room
watch television, drink a bottle of wine, eat my favorite food
cry hysterically, laugh hysterically, dance on the bed, braid my bangs, smile about what i wanna go do
make a list about what i wanna go do
wait

and realize

it was all me...
(cause you can't leave that behind)
  ~michelle

without a map

i got lost
how can i find my way?

can you see me over here
rainsoaked and i'm drowning
ground so soft, i'll go to sleep
try again tomorrow.
  ~michelle

duality...truality (beat box background buzz)

as i tramped through the grass
i was stopped by a bee
who buzzed up real close and spoke words to me-
at first i was scared, cause your s'pose to be
but i swallowed it down and it drew close to me

"Listen up lady,
i got something to say
it just might affect where your going today.
As far as you know
i just like to sting...
this is only a shtick
i got more that i bring. You see, back with my pals, i am known to be nice
funny and sweet, with a vice for the dice.
In the town next to here,
they'd have something to say
about when i visit
in my "own special way!"when i'm here -i am this
when i'm there- i am that
but mostly i live without a format
inside i'm the same
cause inside i am much
without walls to contain me
with rules and such."


i waved goodbye
careful, for the bee
who had taught me a lot about how to be free.
letting go of the ties
that so often bind me.
 ~michelle

choices are personal

"I know who I am,
and who I may be,
if I choose..."
~ Don Quixote

Revving

There are few people that I wholly admire.
However, there are a couple of folks who have stood out and set a bar I have spent my life reaching for.
They bear qualities that make my skin twist and contort and my stomach vibrate.
I consider the few, mentors of sorts.
Although individuality is something that I have championed since I burst out into this world...sometimes feeling so different can be scary...so reading about a person who carries the intensity for life you do, and exploring how they sprinkled that into growth throughout their life, is inspiring.
This book is my ALL time favorite book ever. Not because of its great literary style, but because in it, it describes a person that I know. While reading (several years ago), something was conceived inside of me. A jolt of appreciation and understanding.
A way of living that I will incorporate into my life, forever.... an intensity that I have always felt but didn't know how to use.
Mr. Unsoeld bared or at least aspired to the qualities that I, in my own personal ranking system, put at the top. They are my ladder of essential achievements.
- intensity: full on, 200% in every aspect of your life
- completion: what you start you finish, with high intensity and in your own creative way
- loyalty
- word: what I say I will do...I want to be counted on
- full on living: this is it...this one life...could be a life of many years, could be one of few so you damn well better live each day as full as you want it to be. Don't waste time on petty shit. On silly dramas...get up, get out, and most importantly BE PRESENT!
- individuality: be the best you- embrace the qualities you love the most in you...and work damn hard to evolve the ones you dislike. Let your freak flag fly but don't let it flap into someones face.
Quirky, eccentricities are the engines for change.
- no excuses: do it or don't...if you don't, get up and do it the next day.
- don't whine: man, if you don't like something then change it, but please don't sit around and whine about it.
- simplicity: whenever you can, go back to your simplest being. Eat what you find, lay under the stars, cook on a fire that you built, make things from your hands, feel your muscles work...test and challenge yourself so you can see what your made of.

When I feel my blood is getting soupy and lazy I know it's time to read this book again, and get my fist pump on...Get up, Get out and GO.....

phone #7

oh i would never
i wouldn't ever
no i would never tell-
secrets are part of, part of this soil
live in this soil now.

oh i'd be careful if i were you
sometimes the truth makes them not love you
say what they want -to- hear...
  ~michelle

some words

I walk the line

soaked in thoughts...
scattered candy wrappers, chocolate taste still on my tongue.
i watch the returning cardinal - skittish-
my feet feel quiet and still
i await the drying out of
clarity.

"what?" i ask reaching for my voice.
i sound so far away.
"sorry, yes i'm listening"
i am far away. i don't even know where i am.
"no, i'm just watching the birds at the feeder"
my fingers are white and cold. i run them through my hair.
it's been awhile since i've fixed it. since i've felt i needed to.
"i think i'll go lie down for awhile and read"

i know today is this. i know tomorrow it won't be this.
and i know that a time from now it will be this again.
it always is. this, then that, then this again.

always on this line
sometimes i can run on it so it blurs
sometimes my knees are shaky and i'm scared
sometimes i wanna get down on one side
but
its never the right time -or- the right place
-or- the right me.
i have a map though and if i am reading it right
there is a place on this line where i have to get off
 ~michelle

Walden

" I went to the woods, because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted...to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."
- Henry David Thoreau, "Walden"

days that have passed

hermits

My fascination with the lives and choices of hermits just might one day land me in a cave or up in a tree...

Tales From the Nomadic Tree

i just keep swimming
round this ol' tree
chewing the roots
to set myself free.

i've seen many colors
way up on the tree
a place that i know
would be perfect for me.

one day i began
to swim to the top
a trip i have tried
and failed quite alot.

and looking down gently, and kindly and sweet
the tree started chanting an encouraging beat
"swim, never stop, keep your head pointed up...
swim don't give up, for there's answers up top"

so i took a deep breath
said goodbye to my sea
and started the journey
that was just meant for me.
 ~michelle 

gratuit

One day I was beckoned
to follow the brook
that was babbling under it's breath
free fee free fee free fee free fee free fee free fee free
  ~michelle

Me gusta

some words

down the dark, wet, slippery streets I drove...
it was late
underbelly late

as I turned onto the main street
I saw a man
yellow, curly hair popping and twisting in the glistening, spitting air...
on a bike no less, acting like it's nothing

>>>--->damp, stinky cigarette flapping from his bottom lip
white pillow case giggling with goodies thrown cross his shoulder
one hand on the handlebars<---<<<

this is "it"
i said aloud
this is where i always wanna be
on the underside of rocks 
  ~michelle

winterizing

settling in
my nook, cozy and warm
my surroundings please me
ready to snuggle in for the coming seasons
but
still restless...
dreams of travels fill my sleep and peek into my days.
thoughts of dirty toes, stream baths, coastal Oregon, medium format documentation,
dark circle travel eyes, timeless days, discoveries, late night car radio stations, sugary teeth and tongues, travel gut, roadside fruit finds, roadside tree climbs, contortion sleep, endless fields and farms and signs, memories of childhood travel, glove boxes overflowing with maps, sunflower seeds scattered on floorboards, stories, singalongs, greasy diners, and realizing that there are many, many, many, ways to live.

but until that there is this ...and this... is where i am and where i am content to be for now...

featherless flights

there's a stream below nomadic tree
it's a place that i love
where the ancient gift of silent listening
flows freely.
if you listen carefully
you will find me in my tree
if you listen carefully
you will hear the songs i sing.
inside stationary movements
sits a box upon the hill
and inside she locks her secrets
and damnation's of free will.
  ~michelle

new casa + night-time+grainy