day 12: welcome in the chaos

There is no meaning without just a little bit of chaos. Gather up your gnawed-at wires and all those batteries scattered around your home like miniature rolling pins for miniature pastries.

Walk inside the worry of a wound.

You’ve thought about this for weeks. No, months. (Years sounds far more dramatic. To be able to leave all your alphabets behind in order to enter a place without baggage. Literally. Of course, metaphorical baggage will travel with you near and far, with and without passport. Chaos is defined as: complete disorder and confusion: snow caused chaos in the region. Behavior so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions. 

We view this as odd, unfamiliar and troubling. But what if we welcomed in this chaos. If it left you to adventure. If it arrived at the answer to all your question marks. If it encouraged more photographs to be lived out loud, rather than viewed behind glass screens.

This is what I mean: On a long train ride from one part of somewhere to another, a human gets up and begins asking every passenger– one-by-one– how their day went. It went a little something like this:

Chaos Encourager: Hi. (spoken to someone stuffed inside a suit perhaps
more expensive than my rent payment) How was your day today?

Traveler 1: (silence)

Chaos Encourager: How are you adjusting to this weather? Did your
feet stay warm? Today, I thought that if I were to title this day,
I might call it a grumble of shivers. Do you ever think like
that? Hey, I really like your tie.

Traveler 1: (silence, then…looks up from cell phone game with
neon colors) Thank you. Thanks for noticing.

I know what you are thinking. There is no way this actually happened, but it did.

We forget to notice what needs to be noticed. Others. The smell of the air. The instrumentation of the rain outside, which may be a bother because it makes everything wet, but it also sounds like a symphony of percussion.

Chaos just means interrupting the norm. The quiet. The undisturbed. 

What are we so afraid of? What if we were to break these habits of looking away? We forget that if we were to lift our heads from cell phone hypnosis, we might find actual meaning to things.

chaos. disorder, disarray, disorganization, confusion, mayhem, bedlam, pandemonium, havoc, turmoil, tumult, commotion, disruption, upheaval, uproar, maelstrom; muddle, mess, shambles, free-for-all; anarchy, lawlessness, entropy.  an order to the disorder.

the most beautiful boy in the room or contemplations over coffee and banana peel

Last night, I watched a body curve into more letters than the English alphabet has ever revealed.
Last night, I watched a boy’s body curve into a new breed of animal.
Last night, Whitney Houston slipped through the cracks of Brooklyn’s walls and gave this boy reason to move.

Rain rode alongside me and rain fell over me and rain took away partial sight to see my way home and rain carried me into bed and rain made love to me.

How beautiful is ink on a forearm or how haunting is a drunk man gathering up the language to weep or how revolting is a woman collecting (inconsistent) labels in order to climb her way to the top of earth.

Dog outside window barks for me/ sirens outside window churn for me/ squirrel outside window scavenges for me/ birds outside window sing hallelujah and hip-hop intonations for me.

*
i wanted to ask him to dance but my pants were too tight but i wanted to finish my drink but i was too shy to show my body but he was too magnificent to interrupt but but but–

hey,
I’m thinking of a word that rhymes with forbearance.
When you think of it, come find me and take me back to that lake, that cabin, that tent, your bedroom, that rooftop, that field of mosquitoes and dandelions, that alley, that porch swing, that backseat.

[ok]