Collecting signals. Leaving artifacts.

We were walking on Valencia street trying to remember where we parked.

I suddenly remembered we parked a half a block from the parklet I had wheatpasted with @thepoetrystore - the wheatpaste a small note slightly wild about the touch of your fingertips. Just across from a wheatpaste on construction scaffolding about unmasking our hearts.

I knew the location immediately. The posted love notes, even from yesteryears, a honing device.

You say to me “So, basically these notes are for you, so you can find your way around?”

I keep trying to understand it myself. The #getlovegivelove magic of it all.

Once @thepoetrystore and I proposed making a heartmap of the city. We envisioned a huge map, made of heartstands and heartbreaks and heartbeats - all the grief and joy of being human, finding yourself alive for what seems, over and over again, like the very first time. I could find my way blindfolded with this map in my mind.

The ghosts of my heartstands and heartbreaks and heartbeats wave to me from corners and buildings and trees. Reminders, longings, clarion calls.

I am collecting signals. Of what was. Of what will be.

I leave notes to myself—artifacts. Reminders of what is real. So I can remember when it is gone.

This is a sign.

This sign reminds me that dragonflies are poems in motion. That fire brings life, though sometimes it brings death first. That if you go a bit further down the road and turn left, drive slowly, and then turn left again there will be a spot on the rushing river where you can feel a profound stillness - the pause between each beat of your heart.

#loveyou2 #lovenote #stencilart #shingletown