Let the Circle Be Unbroken

I'm a piece of shit. What can I really say but that. I haven't maintained this or kept up or even attempted to write in so long. At least not electronically. I keep journals of some sort. Of course, so much has happened since my last entry. Actually, an entire year happened. And there have been places and faces and things that have happened that would take me quite some time to actually describe. After Alta, I spent some time on the road, and then I spent a month in San Francisco and Berkeley and then, well, I moved to Kauai. I became a farmer in the most beautiful remote wilderness I've ever seen, I made friends I still can't stop thinking about and i moved back to Philadelphia to hopefully be there for and help my sister, who was diagnosed with breast cancer and has been beating the shit out of it for the better part of half a year. One of these days I'd like to rehash the Kauai experience, and even explain properly what happened to me exactly after the first few weeks of 2011. For now, I'll try to properly ground myself, for right now, in Philadelphia, so that maybe I can make some sort of documentary sense out of the crazy light picture show that has been my my life over the past year, and maybe I can make room for what is about to happen as exciting and uncertain as it is. All I can really say is that I wound up back in my home town of Philadelphia on December 8th, freezing my ass off after a nice long time in Kauai, still stained with the red dirt of farming, still in the country mentality I had grown accustomed to, to exit the airplane into a cold and wet city, full of things that were both familiar and foreign to me.
I'm still having a hard time adjusting, but still find that most things have been pre-programmed. I found this journal entry from the 11th of December and wanted to share it in hope that I could at the very least start from somewhere and then retrace my steps to fill in the gaps of 2011 so that I can, at some point, catch up to 2012, which is rapidly unfolding. As per usual, my life hasn't stopped. In fact, it seems to be moving faster and faster all the time. And I do suppose, that's what the old folks always said would happen.
This entry was written my first weekend back in the city. I guess without the back round of how I was living in Kauai it might not be that big of a deal, but fuck it, it's the internet...I just wanted to share this..again...to have some sort of a starting point. I guess I'm hoping that if I begin to tell the story, I'll continue to write it. It's not really like anyone is reading this anyhow, so here goes nothing.
December 11. 2011
-Riding the subway to to connect to the Frankford-Market El-to take a bus-to walk. I need this time to just pay attention. I'm hung over, smell like 5 packs of smokes and full of Millet, banana and mango. Folgers coffee is turning my belly inside out. It's funny that the interchange from the subway to the el is still so simple, second nature I guess from high school days-weird to not think of moving from one filthy tunnel to another amongst so many bodies-lost in thought like all of them-all organisms in the same shitty tube. It smelled like vomit and cheap cleaning products in that dirty linoleum and tiled passageway onto the el platform. Train grumbles along like an old broken worm-the black people on the platform wait for the black people to exit the train and then push in past the white people who are trying to exit. The opposite happens in other neighborhoods (northeast). Everyone rushes in to claim a seat. Every man for himself. Maybe they're tired from living so much and need a rest as we're carried through the intestines of this beast we must be parasites of. My city, my Home. I can hear snippets of their murmer(ing) conversation. They all mesh together in a strange hummmmmmmmmmmmm. I feel guilty drinking in all of these faces varying so much in color, style, expression-like I'm getting drunk, intoxicated. Too many smells. I've left my garden to troll the metropolis. Like a tart-I'm committed to no one or no place or no beast.
When we emerge into the sunlight out of the tunnel-above the city instead of deep inside-i feel like I'm being pushed out of the womb. And it's bright. And it hurts my eyes for a second. But I can't stop looking around in wonder, like it's the first time I've seen this grid of broken crayons-broken buildings-new shitty pre-fab facades amongst broken old men who were glorious in their day. Streets, like extended bony fingers filled with discard. The river right beside us, trying to drown us-it's all gritty and it's all beautiful. I've been gone so long I don't know how to understand everything.
It's so beautiful that I can't take it some times. But it's only beautiful because it's real-and harsh-and because I choose to perceive it that way. Sometimes all of this decay and rot is just too much and it's easy to get swallowed up in it's trash mouth full of broken teeth and slimy saliva and bad smells. Sometimes it's easy to feel loved and embraced and held in this place that is just so real and so true and just as ugly as you.
But it is alive nonetheless. And my garden back in Kauai was alive, and the ocean was alive. But it's far away and almost like a fairy tale I wrote at some point. This is no fairy tale. This is life. And I can fly if I want to. I can make all of these shelled out buildings museums inside of my brain. This place can be one massive exploratorium. But I can't escape the truth on this earthworm moving slowly through the dirt that is North Philly. I'm inside of it-and it's inside of me-and we're all regurgitating the same shit-and everything starts all over again. I'm Home.