it started like this...

i slid in my sarah sliding way up to him standing in his buddha way against too nice of a hotel for my young ass to be in, he looks down in his buddha way, eyebrow glancing at me, wondering wondering wondering what my young ass WAS doing there and moreover with whom i was with...flittering through nashville utterly pimped out, smoking marlboros, hotboxing up and around the bosom hills of tennessee drinking cans of beer and talking and talking and talking...head drunk on life we drove through the conversations....and

shuffled through the distillery i not know my place, he making me one...in between two worlds i was fluctuating through and around and back...

to the hot and cold nights of warm water billowing over and around the clouds of our verbality and discourse,and smoking and smoking and drinking and dunking we swam through out words back and around again...

the most memorable is coming now the most memorable of all...

to sarasota i freaked the fuck out of my mind and out of my heart, mrs. p smoke-less and we so very smoke-full. and drinking and drinking and talking and talking a night spent in a mexican bar, and while strolling drunkenly around, COI driving and we as drunk as fuck in the back, i intent on swimming the entire trip, the buddha and i jumping out before the car stopped the obligatory cigarette dang dang dangling from his mouth and run run running together to the shore we swam full of tequila and words and words and words while COI sat and stared and laughed, we ran drunkenly back to the car, i woke up sand and salt itching at my legs i woke up...

to me struggling through the one way streets in hamilton....to us struggling through the one way streets of us...

to the absence.

to the back-ness.

he came,

we came back.

and now i sit with the buddha watching emily work drinking and thinking and talking more rich than anyone before we move together through the words we make together through the worlds we've made together.

i've never been good with friends. i've never been good having or keeping friends, working at it.

there is a richness about the buddha, and there is a richness about the buddha and i and the worlds and the words and the time we've created.

he has taught me so much about myself, COI, relationships, god, thinking, education, about drinking and smoking, and yes about love.

i am forever in debt. i can recognize my life in both ways, and i know my life is rich with him in it, shallow and empty without.

happy birthday buddha babe.