Why, What Were You Thinking?

Guinness Is Calling You

2011-05-04T09:53:00.130-05:00

There was not a space for you before you arrived here at birth.

You broke your way through.

There was some flesh and some desire, and then there was you, and you could not be stopped.

This: (Life:) Is not what I thought it was.

I do not know what I thought it was. I had an empty head and I died to defend that emptiness.

Life is a current to join. Literally. Like, current of a river. Like, the measurement of nowness. Like, the utility of money. Like, electricity.

That current, that time, that river, is the only safety possible, only, you don’t know this, because your idea of what is "safe" is premised on total bullshit.

It's bullshit because you are one blueprint that never existed before, and will never exist again, and you the blueprint are even shifting as you're reading this word, and it doesn't matter how well you describe the temple you're building, or who you describe it to. They will never be able to advise you better than the architect within you, and because they are not you, and they are not going to live in your temple, there are no stakes in it for them that are as immediate as they are for you, and that immediate hunger, that fire, the one pushing each of your cells a little further each and every chance you get? That pushing and that reaching IS your data, IS your information, IS your wisdom, IS your map, IS your application, IS your advice. It's the only good advice.

Your desire is your advice.

You think that by trying to avoid the commitment and taking the half-step, by somewhat considering it, so that you could then go back on it, you are being safe. It's not even that this makes you wrong. You're not even dead-wrong. You're just dead.

All half measures are your downfall. Your best 99% is your most successful fucking failure. Here's why.

To be in something, to have your body present, and to have your mind somewhere else, or nowhere else the whole time, is the sin. To not take full advantage of the goldmine that is all around you, all the time, is what will kill you later, when you see what you missed. The fact that there was a cliff, and that you didn't take a running leap off that cliff is what will kill you in the end. You will not have saved yourself by loitering on the ledge and complimenting the view and looking down at that drop and coining a multitude of positive affirmations and witty aphorisms. Aphorisms don't mean shit if you don't cash them and jump into the abyss. It doesn't mean you need to drive 80mph into a wall. It does mean when you've jumped off one cliff, build your wings on the way down and sail over to the next one. Don't crash to the ground. But if you did, good job! - Now walk it off. Walk it off. Walk it off. And walk it off a bit more. If you find yourself back at that same cliff - which, if you fell, and walked it off, you can count on doing - if you find yourself back at that same cliff, then remember the feeling of your footing right before you fell. And please know that that cliff is now also completely different, and you can't even approach it with the lessons you learned on the last one. Know why? It's not a cliff, it's actually a raging river. Good luck to you! So now, grappling hooks and shoes don't mean shit. You need a paddle and padding and a life vest and a boat to boot and guess what else? Physics tells you that stationary molecules are different from molecules in motion so even your sense of physics is fucked here too. So good luck to you! Maybe tattoo it somewhere on your arm or somewhere visible on your person that there's a lesson at hand here and though the goal is the same, and your instincts will be the same, the important thing is to HOLD THE FUCK ON and to KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.

You have to assume like the biggest asshole in the world that the river loves you even though it SEEMS like its going to kill you, IS trying to kill you, ONLY wants to de-limb and de-capitate you. You need to believe that its very roughness, its very turbulence, and its very deadliness is how it shows its love to YOU, you who are the goal, you who are the diamond floating along this little lazy river known as a raging rapid, you, the diamond, who somehow gets polished while you're being flung against rock break and broken log alike. You're going to be loved very, VERY hard. Mop up those wounds, splint the shit that broke, and say "Oh wow. That was, VERY, VERY kind of you, River, I appreciate your tenderness and that was quite a blow to the head just now and yeah, it appears that there's a branch with leaves lodged through my heart but no, it's not a big deal. What are you doing tomorrow, River, will you be raging again? Cuz I'd like to make this exclusive." Whatever you do, don't abandon ship. Or walk away from the cliff. Or jump out of the plane. All the cliches are true. Try not to make them come true.

You can only recognize actual safety in hindsight, and it’s not even a measure of precaution, or the hand you won because something did or didn’t happen that you did or didn’t value. Safety is, Here's a river. The river is not you. But because you're in the river, you need to be the River. Assimilate your ass to that river.

Safety has nothing to do with somehow knowing a possible outcome and trying to control your way through to that desired outcome. It's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when he steps out into thin air and suddenly there is a path to God being built right under his feet. That path, that IS God, will be built right under your next step, by virtue of you taking that step. The path doesn't get built before you take the step. Know why? Because you create physics. You create a vacuum with your desire and your action. That step into thin air IS God. I'm not even sure yet what that means or what it looks like, but we've all taken such a step, we're rewarded when we do, and we'll all need to take them again. We feel it when we do it and we'll get more and more comfortable with being that uncomfortable. Uncomfortable is God. May we all have the strength to trust Out of Thin Air.

If you think safety is to be had by refraining, or by hesitating, or by dragging your feet, or by half-committing, as if showing up halfway somehow means you can both ‘be there’ and 'not be there at all', then you are dead wrong. You're wrong because a) physics doesn't permit such a possibility and 2) neither does logic and c) neither does anything that runs this whole video game called Life. That line in the sand that says "no, not past this point" is the way you learn. And you can't learn if you don't cut off one thing from everything else. Somehow you can only grow by cutting.

You also don't know happiness.

Your half-measures are the greatest roadblock to your happiness. In fact, you may as well call "trying", "misery." It's the half-dedication, the "I'll say I'll do it but I really don't give a shit" that will make you want to off yourself. Know thyself? Yes. Whatever it is that the you in you really wants, fucking listen, and fucking go get it. Stop thinking about it. And you'll know what it is you want because you won't be able to leave yourself alone about it. This is God talking to you, even if it seems not-God. Get over it. You're wrong. Being wrong is sexy. Try to be wrong more often.

Because you are alive, there is a thread of possibility that extends into infinity. You travel this little silver spider-thin thread of an assumption that is life that is a mind that is a path, and you can bulldoze it or tip-toe or doggy-paddle your way through, but it actually keeps moving, or really, the current around you keeps moving, even when you try to wrangle back that current - which you cannot possibly do, which is really just you fooling yourself into thinking that you could possibly wrangle it, or that there's even a thing that is that current that you could understand enough to try but still not be able to put your hands around. Do you think this sounds negative? Cause I sure do, I think this sucks. But I also know that this is the only way you build positivity. The world is entirely distraction so what is pure and vital is rare and quiet. If you accept those limits, then you can build off those limits. And guess what? - Without limits, nothing has a value. So then there's not only no way to be positive, but there's nothing that's negative, either.

You carve out tangents to that path and none of it, not the tangents and not the original recipe, is a pre-set design.

You are both a particle and a wave.

You function in two parts.

And on that note, you are also a tone.

You are a moment of music in a greater piece.
You are your own score to be conducted.
You rise to the crest of the wave because you are alive and then you become part of the part of water that may not be noticed because it is there to support the parts that are supposed to be noticed next.

No one else sounds or smells or tastes like you.
You are not pre-set.
You are not pre-designed.
You have a quality and a sound that is all your own and you cannot avoid it even though you try so hard to mute it out or don’t try at all.

When you try to mute yourself, all you get is distorted sound.

When you try to mute yourself, you get a flat note.

Your sound cannot be extinguished.

There's no way to mute yourself.

There's no way to not have a tone.

There's only a way to make a sound you don't like listening to.

And how can you be the wrong note if YOU're the note?

"How can I be the wrong Alice if this is MY dream?"

You are in need of everything that is always being offered to you, and guess what?

We all need, you, too.
We need you to show up and to unselfconsciously, enthusiastically, throw yourself at us, balls-to-the-wall, and at what you do, too. Mostly, at us.
What you choose is fine as long as you engage with both hands rather than hold back.

Don’t you know the world needs you?

Don't you understand how vital you are to life?

There’s a need for you, and for you to throw yourself into us, because of the fact that you’ve thought about it enough to take one step forward.

There's a need for you because that thing was sparkling enough for you to even think about it, to even venture an "Ok."

If you’re here, if you’ve arrived, and if you’ve been invited, then you’re needed.

Did you think that this was a luxury?

That there's empty space to satisfy nothing?
If you’re here, then there’s a space waiting for you over there, and there is where you're next.
You've lived so long saying “yes” and meaning maybe.
This has caused you more pain and anguish than diving headfirst into a shallow pool, which would have been better than hesitating and circling for a century on the edge.
It may be that it's too much to make your own choices.
The pressure and the uncertainty of not having direction or solid ground?
The suffocating anxiety that feels like white noise surrounding your head and eyes, because you are not being told what to do, and you desperately need to be told?
It induces paralysis.

What if there is no right or wrong choice?

Are you okay with that?

Are you okay with your decision being the only thing that makes it right?

That it’s right because you choose it?

So you looked at all of this.

You looked at what you wanted, and didn’t get, and what you should have done but didn’t, and you looked at how you hurt him, but he moved on, only you never could.

And then you did it again to someone else.

And then, you did it again to someone else.

How it killed you that you cost this to yourself, and how every cell in your body, on your face, in your heart, has been affected and there is absolutely no going back.

What good is there in a life lived unconditionally, where anything is permissible?

Where you set your whole heart upon something, or someone, and you don't get what you want?

Is it enough to be alive and to have all else unwanted, satiated and met, and the one thing you're reaching for, you do not get?

All else filled in the universe, and the one thing lacking, that means most, and this is somehow supposed to be okay, the not-getting?

Fuck that.

It's about possession, plain and simple.

It is both possession, and possession with a light guardian's hand. A custodianship.

But's the getting that means anything.

So I said,
Fuck this.
Fuck all of this,
and fuck you too, God. Fuck you for all this desire.

And that felt like shit. And I wanted to off myself whenever I hated God, and I hated God all the time.

And it had to stop, because it's me or my belief, and somehow, we'd become mutually exclusive.

If I could verbalize it about God, then I was wrong about God. And it suddenly felt good to shut up about God.

So I had to happily accept that I didn't know, and wasn't right, and was actually happily wrong - Thank God - about God.

I walked down the hallway and stared down the devil, and I said,

I understand you. And it's okay. Because I know you're not here to hurt me.

I looked at the sins I thought I'd pay for, and how at times in life, I had so little consciousness and gravity in my own head that the only way I can explain my behavior – even though I “knew” what I was doing - is that something was leading me and my life around on a string and it was a thread extending into infinity, tied to an infinite number of others, and ultimately I had no control.

I looked at what we know of the universe, the grand scope of Life that we can maybe guess that we know. I looked at the stars that are born and burn out, at the non-negotiable need we will always have for food and water, at the preference for paper towels versus cloth towels, and for this paper towel versus another, at the desire for digital versus analog, the compulsion towards the 87th pair of $160 jeans, the kid starving in the apartment on that side of town that you'll never see, at the bodies thrown in mass graves in at least 37 different countries at any given moment, at the militia-led mass rapes and murders, at the director in a townhouse in New York filming 67 takes of that couple walking down a staircase until he gets it just right, at the girl who just gave that guy oral sex because she felt she'd be doing something wrong if she didn’t, and it's all a lot of different hands flitting about in a frenzy, fussing over different objects and colors and yet it's all the same, and it's all riding on the same feelings.

I looked at the duck whose mate was just run over in the street and who stands there, still, among the racing cars on either side that could also end him at any given moment, and he stands there, standing against every one of his instincts. He doesn't know what happened to his mate, but he knows something has gone wrong.

And I heard about the family of ducks in the hotel in Nashville, who ride an elevator twice a day, chaperoned by a nice bellhop, to soak in a fountain, and then back up the elevator at night to sleep on a nice rooftop.

I looked at how I didn’t respond to his last email before he took his life.

I looked at how I would try to save it, and the trying is precisely what would cause it to fail.

I looked at how I didn't try, didn't even think about it, never once cared, and it would come to me like it was born in my hand. And how once I looked and then started walking towards it, it crashed and burned.

I looked at how I may be the magnifying glass to my own excruciating scorching sun, and I'm singeing ants every step of my way, wherever I turn my gaze.

And I was left with: None of it matters.

If all is forgiven in the end, and then if it’s not, and then if there is something vague and nebulous and ethereal with spirit, and then if there is nothing, and then if we are only biology with something brightly firing in our brains, and then if there is nothing beyond the something, and then if there is something when there could be nothing, and then if we are reborn, and then if we repeat the same life over and over, and then if we have a chance to not repeat but we slip into whats comfortable and could, but do not, avoid repeating it, and then if she was a big deal in another life, and then if I can never change my neural pattern pathways, and then if this was destined, and then if there could be no other way, and then if there was supposed to be another way and I couldn’t cut it, and then if the angels were calling my name the whole time but I got the signals crossed, and then if the devil were only inside of me, and then if I were Jesus but never believed it and I lost it for all of us, and then if He actually was just a human being, and then if God isn’t even something that talks to us, and then if we never see each other again after we die, and then if I pray silently but God respects the privacy of my mind and doesn't listen to any of it, and then if all of my prayers are wrong and selfish anyways, and then if we aren’t even real, or aren't actually seeing each other now, and then if there’s an infinite number of me and you, and an infinite number of possible worlds, and then if I’m in the version where I’ll never be happy in love, and then if my thoughts reach a critical mass that cause your actions, and then if you were born with a stronger will than mine and I can't do anything about it, and then if each of us has created all of us, then,

Then, I thought, as I curled my hair in my stark white bathroom, and (empty) put on my lip gloss, switching tops and (empty) checking my hair in the mirror again, getting ready to go out, and feeling (empty) any and all possible meaning to my life receding back just like the tide (empty) right before a tsunami hits,

Then, If I’m going to get old, and all of this will fade, and something that is not me will take my place, and nothing I can contribute will ever cause a tidal change to the world, and I’m too scared and so without hope to even try,

then what do you do, if you choose to stay here, in your life, on earth, and live it out?

What do you do?

You do what you want, at every given moment that you possibly can.

You do what you want desperately to do, but are afraid to do for fear of repercussion.

You do what you have been taught not to do but have always wanted to do, always sensed is just plain fine and rational to do, that you don't even consider doing anymore, somehow, or, ever.

You do what you've just accepted, earlier, as wrong or bad, but that, upon reflection, is actually normal, healthy, or at the very least, typical. You get the tattoo, and you sleep with the guy for only one night, and you adopt the baby on your own, and you quit the job, and you move, penniless, to New York, and you get the other tattoo, and you submit the headshot, and you ask out the girl, and you write that one verse of a song that you’re afraid your band mates will ridicule you for, and you don’t apply the sunblock because you actually don’t care about skin cancer, and you call in sick, and you dye it blonde, and you say “I’m not coming” to your dad, and you buy the fully-loaded model, and you move to the farm in Pennsylvania, and you order it with whipped cream.

You take out the loan on the assumption that you’re going to be around tomorrow to pay it off.

And each morning you awake, in the same spot, in the same body, and it's yours.

It's yours.

And it's all, all a loan that will be called at any second, but you have to buy the fact that it's an endless trust fund.

"That confirms it, then."

2011-01-29T22:30:00.015-06:00

("can't believe I got so far with a head so empty...")

I've permitted myself such not-greatness.

When an education in the classics was standard, generations and masses of people did great things, thought, felt, believed great things.

Where did that go?

If you permit randomness, you will express randomness. If you permit greatness, you'll express greatness. There can be no other way. What goes in, must come out, and you cannot make something from nothing. And all other applicable cliches (read: truths) that apply....

This is what stands for all the rage, the frustration.
I haven't had the hardness I required, so I became hard on myself. No matter what, it was supposed to be there. Whether they extolled it or whether I inculcated it, it was meant to exist, irrespective of author, irrespective of agent. It was supposed to exist in the air, between me and them, and because they couldn't give it, I introduced it. And I think I still need much, much more.

His dignity is what compels me most. For all the wealth of pain, abuse, embarassment, and agony, there was an impenetrable core that carried through, with enough exuberance to permit a full life, to permit tenderness and dedication and commitment. That's what grounds you, that's what permits compassion, permits loyalty, permits servitude, promotes leadership. This is what causes you to triumph. The worst thing you can do is spare someone of these challenges. These, coupled with the legacy that is an education, are the soil filled with the most nutrients. Look at the alternative.

Compassion is what permits instant wealth of intelligence, when there may be none in exercise. You go from human and finite to Godly and Infinite in one choice. One.choice.

The world, Life, God, is not standing there, chaperoning your choices. Life looks to you as God, as the ultimate arbiter, as the ultimate Executive Decision, and there is no veto. None. Not regarding the decisions that matter the very most. It all, all of it, stands aside and actually says "You're right." Life is a Yes Man. So you better watch.your.fucking.ass. You better have a great cabinet at your disposal. You better have the most trusted advisors who will say when they disagree, and you better get over yourself and fuckinglisten. Because no one else is guarding what you permit. So be very.very.fucking.careful when handing out those permits.

His face was pink, and dewy, but you only noticed this once they opened the door and you could see that it was raining. Then his face came into focus and it had meaning. The one said "The Duke is terribly busy." The other opened the door, and what was meant was, "You are to leave." The rain was falling hard just outside that opened door.
--I wanted to caress his drooping face; because what else could my role, towards him, be? And I wouldn't even know how to do that.
I failed at that. I failed at my role.
But I was supposed to fail at that.

It's very comfortable to me. The linens. The shined shoes. The hairpins. The jewelry. The starch. The stiffness. The propriety. The decorum. The distance. The maintenance of that distance, because what underlies that distance, is the overwhelmingness, the feelings of it all, the bravery, the dignity, the sadness, the concern, the etiquette, the divinity, the legacy, the heritage, the pride, the servitude, the faith, the leadership. Service requires servants. There is no other way. I am fond of these things I've seen.

The grandness of that entrance hall made me want to break down and cry. When I visit it, I'll be sure to go alone so that no one causes me to compromise my time there, to be spent staring up at the ceilings, for hours, for certain.

"It's supposed to be this way."
The guy coughing to the left of me. My mom kicking my heel accidentally as she shifts in her seat. The guy who asked us, as I knew he would, 'could you please move down a seat, if you don't mind?' which caused me to have to look away from the screen just as the back-ground info was up. It was all supposed to be this way. This is what gives me comfort and peace, no matter how frustrating, no matter how annoying, no matter how rage-inducing, no matter how sad. "It is all supposed to be this way". Because, were I to think otherwise, is an agony - given all the possibilities of what could have been - it's an agony that I can no longer afford to feel.

So this is why arrogance is, shall we say, suggested against? Why humility and tolerance are advocated. Why patience is proposed, but why gentle encouragement, accountability, especially, are emphasized. "To live in expectancy, not expectation."

The truth is that I'd been looking for any excuse to leave it. To leave all of it, all of this, behind. Any chance I get, I may still take.

How far off is that? Not far off.

It's not too far, it's not so impossible, it's not so improbable. I guess this means, I'm still looking to be saved. From....? And how? And by whom? And how good, honestly, would that be? How wise would it really be? Are we so weak that we cannot help but to beg for salvation from our own choices?

Or is it just me?

I learned the absolute worst lessons from him. It's as though I shook off anything that was good - what would that have been again, anyway? - and absorbed only the worst. I cannot afford to soak up like that anymore, from any of them. The next one has to be a fucking maverick at life. It's just too expensive otherwise.

That's why the Year. "It has to start somewhere. It has to start some time. What better place than here? What better time than now?" It's to be prepared. It's to know the only thing that matters, until I find something new that can matter on top of that.

"I would stand in line for this...it's always good in life, for this...."

How-To Remember You Are a Human Being

2011-01-25T18:37:00.000-06:00

If we didn't laugh, where would we all be?
Joan Rivers

So it's funny.

It's funny as hell:

"So, what I'm basically asking is, Would your life be better off without me in it?"

"...(two days later).....Yes."

"WHAT?!

WHAT?! I didn't mean that! I take it back, here'swhyIloveyouandhere'swhyIcan'tlivewithoutyouImeanitallreallyquicklynow!"

"...But I think we should see other people.

"OHMYGODthenhere'swhereIdidyouwrongitwasallmyfaultI'lltakealltheblame!!It'scalledanAmendstheydotheseinAAwhichbythewayI'vestartedattendingeventhoughIcompletelydonothaveadrinkingproblembutI'llstilltakethe blameforEVERYTHING!!!!!!............

...............

...............(two hours later).................

---How do you feel now? --You want to come back, right? You got that 8-page email I sent, right? And that letter in the mail you got that too right? How do you feel about it all? Want to talk about it?"

"....(silence...three-month-long silence and counting...and I'll be counting forever....so I've stopped counting....)...."

So, it's funny.

It's actually funny.

Because if it's not, then I'd have to kill myself.

(I think I may still have to leave town though)

It said,
"love what is to come by loving what has come before", which I was able to do for about a month. ("No matter how far we've fallen, our experience will still prove to be beneficial to others." --- Excuse me, but why the FUCK DO I HAVE TO FAIL SO THAT SOMEONE ELSE CAN STILL NOT LISTEN TO ME AND FUCK THEIR SITUATION UP AND THEN NO MATTER WHAT I'M STILL WITHOUT THAT WHICH I JUST FUCKING WANT? Why the fuck can't I just win at this, Goddamnit!?!....WHEWdeepbreathsdeepbreathsSerenityPrayerAAmeetingsprayingonmykneeswhewaddanothermeetingoreightfor goodmeasure....) and then something switched. Because when I was praying "Your Will, God, not mine," I felt the most intense and constant sadness. My conscience was flooded with grief and guilt, and even when I was able to calm my mind about it all, the grief was so full up in my stomach that I didn't have space for food, so I dropped 15 pounds in two weeks.

At work, at times, it got to be so much, barely even thinking about it, that I would be choking back tears, suddenly, in the middle of phone calls. I'd have to get up from my desk and go to the bathroom to get on my knees to pray to relieve it. Or take a walk outside. Or take a walk outside and sit on these church steps and pray and then still go to the bathroom to get on my knees to pray. And there was temporary relief, but not enough. Because I still thought that he was right about it all. And that was destroying me. I had to switch things in my mind, or else literally, I may as well have jumped off the fucking roof. Why? Because what kind of organism deserves to believe that their existence is a fucking mistake? and that everything in their head is evil? (Fuck you.) When that relationship ended, I felt like a murderer. I had to remind myself "you're not a murderer. and even if you've committed fucking genocide, you hold your head high."

So even if I'd had to completely adjust my morality and reality, then fuck it - I'm cutting the cord to what came before. Because I can't live a life in which the greatest sadnesses in my life are due to some major error in my very being.
Fuck it, and fuck you.
Cut the cord.

Here's a little tip from me to you:
Creative Destruction.
Aka, Not knowing how to get the fuck out of a situation without bombing it and burning it all down to ashes around me.
So, creative destruction. Let the forest burn so that the next one has a chance to grow.
Here's to the next one and knowing how to say "No, I disagree. Get away from me" sooner rather than fire-ier.

I didn't know how to not judge myself. I saw "him" as "Him". And it was either, Him, with that capitol H, and I die, or Me, with a capitol "M-E" and I live. So I feel alive, and I move forward, but it feels like there's a price, like something got lost in the process. I could be wrong about how I went about this; I may have skipped over the grief. ("she skipped over her grief, and she tapped into her pain.")

But then that begs the question: Who is in charge of how sad I am and for how long? Someone or something other than me? I wondered if the point of all the sadness, the constant feeling of it, was to prevent rage later on. ---WHOOPS!!----(loading shotgun)

He is, no matter what anyone says, and no matter what I experienced of him, an inherently valuable human being. I can say this honestly, from a very neutral standpoint. I've always had the ability to do this, to suspend self in order to understand the value in another, and yes, that's a pat on the fucking back about it. But to do this after a break-up? Youmustbefuckingkidding. Commence Wiki-hows: How To Get Over A Break-Up. ("write out a list - and don't be forgiving! - about why it is for the best that you are no longer together, and why it could never have worked.") Wiki-how: How To Get Closure. Wiki-how: How To Overcome Depression. How To Overcome Serious Regret. How To Forgive Yourself. How To Get a Guy To Like You. ----Whoops! -- How'd that one get in there? (delete delete)

It is possible to see myself without blame, without all the guilt I've taken on from this thing, so unnecessarily so. We were two separate people, and we were too separate people, and these things often just don't work, and neither one should ultimately take it personally. I'm just a human being. He's just a human being. These things sometimes just don't work.

When I asked him, while we were still dating, if he still talks to his exes, he said yes, but just for casual stuff, birthdays and such on Facebook. It was only after we broke up that I actually checked out pictures of his ex-es. ("....uh,....really?.... and, you, pursued, and then, dated, me?....

...Why?")

I said,
"I don't; I don't talk to any of my exes.
Too volatile."

And that's the end.

The majority of the gold from this situation, as it now stands, is in my head. There was a gold-mine of information, revelation, and beauty to be gleaned from this, and the reason why is entirely because I am a great thinker about things. This stands as fact, and yes, I perceive this to be humility on my part, as long as you define humility as "a healthy awareness of one's divinity."

I had a dream once in which I was a clone, in direct competition, in a very small bio dome, with other clones. We had to climb huge blue structures, and the goal, the meaning, was to get to the top. When I did, I was pushing off other girls, to their death. I have moments every so often in life, in which I feel like that dream's horror is a reality. And it's not even in moments of competition; that sensation will arrive at what seems like an un-related time; thinking about a nail polish color; thinking about a better notebook to buy. That's the last feeling I want, and yet, at many times, I have the thought "I want to be the best."
But not at the expense of anyone else.

The converse of this, is that a few years ago, the only thing I wanted to do was to sacrifice. I wanted to be the one to take the hit, I wanted to be the one to suffer so that no one else would have to. I don't know if that was me at my most intelligent, or me at my least healthy. I don't know that I'll ever "receive" a definite answer ("there are no answers. there are only choices.") And that not knowing, is what scares me the most: that my choices in life will not be judged until it's too late. Or that they won't be judged at all, which is perhaps more unnerving.

---this is what terrifies me: that I'm so broken down, that my doubts, my absolute disbelief that I'll ever, ever get what I want - that in fact, by proxy, I cannot help but to view life as something where I'll never get the very things I want most --- that this belief, which shows itself at the core every time I think something good (and thus, untrue) is headed my way, is going to drive me to the breaking point... or to something else, like...compromise... or mediocrity...or safety, in some things that are not at all what I find meaningful or the ultimate. "when happiness shows up, give it a comfortable seat" but I doubt that these things are real...I doubt so resolutely when it even appears that I could have something beautiful, that when that thing doesn't materialize, the pressure on me, that I've broken it, with my very thoughts, with my very beliefs, my negative beliefs, my doubts is....crushing. that I'm the one bringing about my own hell, and there's no one and no thing that can stop me. this is killing me. (I cannot exit my own mind) ---- (i am having to re-define heaven and hell and frankly this is too much fucking pressure for one small cell)

and I think of April of 2007.
my apartment on Dearborn.
being in my bathroom, having thought about Jesus, thinking only about Jesus, at that time, as I had been doing for months, weeks, hours, minutes, all the time. thinking about how unfair it would be that those who didn't decide to accept Him were condemned to hell. and I thought, "then, if they can't go to Heaven, then I'll suffer in hell with them."

and the tide that rushed in....

the emotional high that I rode, from that moment.....

I don't know if it was God or the devil that was standing up and applauding me harder.... but I heard that applause, I felt that ovation, as if the entirety of the universe, all angels, God, Jesus, everyone I'd been thinking of for months, were cheering for me.

and four years later, I am washed up on the beach of that decision.

because if it's all only what we believe, then what did I just lock myself into? to whom did I just give my soul?

(when their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone
they shall have stars at elbow and foot
though they go mad they shall be sane.
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again
though lovers be lost, love shall not
and death shall have no dominion. dylan thomas)

(what will purify this from me? can this be undone? do I want it to be, ultimately? ---is this a sacrifice that actually exists? and if so, is there a relief from it at some point? what did I commit myself to....)

"the only sin is to act against yourself...."

("oh sinnerman, where you gonna run to.... where you gonna run to.... the rock cried out 'I can't hide you'....")

My wishes, when I'd blow out candles, would literally be "May everyone around me find happiness in love, even if it means I can't."
I'm tired of wishing for this--- know why? Because it's still in anyone else's hands to fuck up their situation. My stepping out of line makes no difference for anyone else's happiness.

I don't know that I fully "feel" or "think" that I deserve the things I want. But I do recognize that the time to stop feeling and thinking this way, is now. I don't know how you undo this kind of damage that exists in your mind. Exorcism? (I'm not kidding.) Retreats to Buddhist sanctuaries? Extended stays on ashrams? Working at orphanages? Readings and meditations on the Guru Gita? How does it get to this point, where you disbelieve you deserve what you want, when you want wonderful, beautiful things? And if that's not the question that matters, then what is the answer to the one that does matter:
how do I undo this?

I was riding it so well for a while. It was prayer in the morning, prayer in the evening, it was a conscience during the day that I reclaimed because it had absolutely been lost; because when I'd been dating him and I disagreed, I'd stay silent, and I'd let down those gate-posts in my mind. So when he left, he took everything with him. everything. I'd compromised, in the worst sense, my values. I didn't realize, until after my mind was gone, that my values are my mind. Each man being a philosopher, a custodian of a specific, valuable set of distinctions and judgments that actually ARE our membrane, and given that we have skins that separate us from each other, the letting down of those judgments? for the wrong people? fucking.disastrous. guaranteed disastrous. Sanity is the holding up of those judgments. If I burn those gates, those judgments, then the flood comes, and when the reason for that burning leaves, then everything that was protected by those gates, goes with it. I know this for a fact. ("fire and water damage? we've changed our policy limits on those...") It's the worst possible way to be burned, and the guarantee is that you will always be burned. Personal philosophy is such a...nebulous thing. Perhaps I need to sit down and write it all out: "I do not agree with x. I think that y is a bad thing. Z is permissible but only under these circumstances." Because when I said "well.....ok..." to all of those, cart-blanche, I both knew what it was to love without judgment, and I lost my mind. Those are two sides of the same coin. I ceased to be an individual, and I was nothing that could recognize nor be recognized.

I wonder, often, what that means for me, for the future.
It feels like an eternity, each day, to be so hyper-aware of time, and to recognize that I may not be ready for anything remotely like that, for a very, very long time. ---I cannot fathom that it's been only three months since this happened - haven't at least 6 years passed? - why does my face still look young... ---

In the past, I didn't think about it: if something ended, that was fine, and I lived my life day to day and the time flew by and I had fun and it was onto the next thing.

But lately it's like a mania... I wonder if declaring a desire for family and kids has placed this unnecessary pressure on myself. Now there's a (time)bomb and it's ticking like a motherfucker. It has to have, because before, when I never thought about those things with agenda, when I hadn't said 'yes' to those things, no deadline existed. And now I feel like I'm going to die, at least once a day, I will do something with absolutely no.possible.fucking.link.to.mortality (like adding a song to my 'favorites' on fucking Youtube, and literally, my reaction is "oh, now that I'm compiling the music I like, I'm going to die tomorrow.") , so the heat is on. Literally.

So, I've released myself from it. I can't take the fucking pressure.
All it took was an afternoon at a diner, and I happened to be seated near a table of kids, and I thought "My God, that is NOT what I want." At least not any time soon. (Of course I say that, but with the right person, this could all be thrown out the window and I could want to get pregnant likethat.) It all seems to revolve around a person. On my own? As my own free agent? No. Last thing I want.

I don't know how to wrap this up cleanly, so.....

this is How To: Be a Human Being.

"Welcome, Jessica."

(Are you sure you want to continue?)

Much

2010-12-30T23:04:00.003-06:00

(it's all coming back to me)

to know that you can be aloof, and say, and do some things, and not need affirmation or confirmation because you know exactly who you are, and people cleave to you, and praise you, and affirm you, precisely because you do not need it.

" '...this is all you got? what's it going to be like when we're married?' " he said, and I howled with laughter.

"they'd rather believe that they did something wrong, to deserve this abuse, then to consider that their parent didn't love them." (and I cried)

"this is what you do, at the end of a long day, you come to sit at a cafe, outside, and it's like a game, between who watches and who is being watched."

"I'm alright
I won't be sorry
but it's true
and when I'm gone
you'll realize
that I'm the best thing
to happen to you"

I didn't think I could feel this good. This is what has been missing all along? -- Then, that first night, when I left and described it as ________, what I was describing was me, that night, in that moment, that series of moments. Throwing up all my junk at this person. -- which is what I had done to him. (think of all the things I am leaving out by writing this instead of those)

I didn't think I could feel this good. So this is what it feels like.

Who are you?

2010-12-15T09:26:00.002-06:00

Your fear is because you don't know who you are. So, who are you?

1. I am a thinker.
2. I am a writer.
3. I search for the truth.
4. I want to do what is right.
5. I love beauty.
6. I love kindness.
7. I love art.
8. I love books.
9. I love learning.
10. I love poetry.
11. I love laughter.
12. I love travelling.
13. I love music.
14. I love painting.
15. I love movies.
16. I love fashion.
17. I love political philosophy.
18. I love Jesus.
19. I love Alexander the Great: strength, courage, fearlessness, character, principles, skill, tenacity, determination, leadership, unification/assimilation of ideas/cultures, i.e., what connects us is what counts; not what divides us or separates us.
20. I love being an artist. It's who I am.
21. I love strength.
22. I love standing for something.
23. I love taking something negative and reframing it so that the beauty underneath is what shines through, and is the thing that is taken away.
24. I love animals.
25. I love affection.
26. I love forgiveness.
27. I love orgasms.
28. I love good food.
29. I love good wine.
30. I love passion.
31. I love who I am.
32. I love choosing to love someone.
33. I love smelling amazing.
34. I love being clean.
35. I love being outside.
36. I love inspiration.
37. I love helping people who genuinely need it.
38. I love spiritual connections.
39. I love honesty when it is intended for good.
40. I love silence, at the right times.
41. I love talking in bed at night.
42. I love revelations about who I am.
43. I love spiritual insight.
44. I love when God reveals to me some aspect of the nature of existence.
45. I love purpose.
46. I love dedication.
47. I love conviction, for positive purpose.
48. I love education.
49. I love caffeine.
50. I love cleanliness.

Go Forth

2010-12-10T18:31:00.007-06:00

1. "From the moment I fell down that rabbit hole I've been told who I must be. I've been shrunk, stretched, scratched, and stuffed into a teapot. I've been accused of being Alice and of not being Alice but this is MY dream and I'LL decide where it goes from here."

"If you diverge from the path - "

"I MAKE the path."

2. "Have I gone mad?"

"I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I shall tell you a secret. All the best people are."

Something very exciting inspired me today at work.

Months ago, during the previews for a film at a theater, I saw an ad for a Levi's commercial for Braddock, Pennysylvania. It was immensely compelling to me, for a variety of reasons.

All my life, I've tried to understand the big questions: who are we? why are we here? what is the nature of existence?

As I grew older, and was exposed to different ways of thinking, coupled with certain threads of discovery and wonder that I'd appreciated since childhood, I started to think in these terms: is it possible we are divine? that, there's no set reality, now nor in the afterlife? that it's all what we believe? well, how do you develop the best beliefs? what makes us happy, and how is this tied into our belief system? can we liberate ourselves from a certain locked reality? what are the consequences of doing this? and how do you reconcile our divinity to our humanity? how do you meet heaven with earth?

For so long - still, now - I have searched for the meaning of life.

I've discovered, Don't complicate it. Don't ruin it by overthinking. Do what makes you happy. Address needs. Know whom to admire. Know yourself. Get rid of what doesn't work. Don't let anyone fuck with your happiness.

I was raised Jewish. There's a very critical concept in Judaism called Tikkun. It means, correction, or really, "the repairing of the world." That there is work to be done in our lives, not because it is Biblical law, but because it prevents social chaos. We have to work to restore order.

I've always been resistant to work. Homework. Chores. Schoolwork. Actual work, like, at jobs. I can do it when I have to, or when there's a purpose, but just to do it? Or because someone asked? No. My rebelliousness, my disobedience, my refusal to be disciplined has destroyed me. I couldn't be broken, I couldn't do the job. And I wonder why I am where I am, with the little education I have, with the little money I make, and why I can't do pull-ups. Well, I haven't put in the work. And it's always what has actually made me the most happy. My mom always said it was true, and she's been right: hard work is what makes you happy.

I fell in love with Jesus in my twenties. From an intellectual perspective, and from a human perspective, it was especially for these reasons: that he believed in equality for men and women. That he believed in sacrifice. That He represents what we possibly, probably are: Divine. That we are God(s), come to earth. That we have incredible powers that we need only open our eyes, to see. That we must protect our thoughts, because those are what define and cause everything else. That when he said "I am the Truth, the Light and the Way," what He meant was, "View yourself as I view MYSELF." Whoever has the innate capacity to say "I Am" - which is anything that exists - is God. Is also the child of God. Is immortal and protected, and is created to be good, and cannot be destroyed. That there are ways to undo pain and loss and destruction.

I recently went through a hard break-up because I was not taking care of myself, and had not addressed some very serious needs that I'd been avoiding for years. I was always trying, and failing, at doing it on my own. I had been so afraid, ever since I'd first heard the concept, of "giving myself over to God", because it seemed to me like handing over your brain and your soul to something that I knew literally, nothing of. Something about it frightened me in the same way that a person who knows they're sick, is afraid of going to the doctor; where awareness is more frightening than the disease itself. But as years have passed, and I've seen first-hand my poor choices, and how much I've defeated my own happiness, and how much my mind, upon overthinking, and obsessing, has gotten in the way of my actions, of doing the things that will bring me happiness, I've had to admit that it was mostly God who was bringing me anything good, and it was mostly me who was chasing down all the wrong things and destroying what God gifted to me. It got so bad, because of this break-up, that I hit the lowest point that I'd been, since two years ago when a loved one passed away. I found myself crying, again, uncontrollably, and saying to God, "I give up."

I had put all my eggs in one basket of a chance for happiness, and had no idea I was doing so. And I realized, not for the first time, that one person's attention was not enough to satisfy this huge void inside of me. I have come to accept the fact that I need to spread the wealth in order to survive and more importantly, thrive. Direct it at a variety of things and places and people, because otherwise, I destroy what I love. The energy I'm capable of directing at one person is so intense, that no human being could handle it. No one should - because if they could, it would mean they're as broken as me. And I get frustrated, and so angry, when I direct it at someone who IS healthy enough to be able to say "this is too much for me." So, I can no longer afford to do this, because, I am what I love. And if I love you and hurt you, then I've hurt myself.

So what did I pray for, only days ago? The chance to work, to rebuild, to direct my energies towards something that needs it, instead of trying to create a need, in an unhealthy way, in someone. I want to go where the best parts of myself could be wanted, and maybe even needed.

Seemingly off-topic, but is not:
I knew very little about Alexander the Great until a few years ago, when he crept up on me by way of a variety of different influences. I'd heard of him when I was younger, and never learned enough to be impressed to learn more. Why was he suddenly so compelling to me, later in life? Because he believed he was half God. And as my cousin once explained, when we were discussing how thought affects action, "He thought he was a God, so he acted like a God." I immersed myself in learning about him. I became enamored with one particular story of how Alexander tamed a particularly striking but stubborn stallion, whom no one else could tame. Alexander's unique insight - demonstrated in seed form at the age of 12 - was that there was a reason this horse was so unmanageable: he was afraid of his own shadow. Alexander turns the stallion towards the sun so that he cannot see his shadow, and is able to soothe him enough to climb up. He rides him straight across the fields to the awe of all the grown men around him, and when he returns to the cheering crowd, his father, King Phillip, rejoices to Alexander, "My son, ask for yourself a new kingdom, for that which I leave is too small for you." Alexander goes on to conquer the known world. And imagine that, when he was a boy, he had once complained to a friend, "My father has done everything! There is no frontier left for me to conquer."

Seemingly off-topic, but is not:
About two years ago, I was at another particularly dark point, when I began painting, out of "nowhere." It was completely cathartic, and nothing, literally, nothing made me feel as good, then to decide on certain colors, and to pick out a canvas, and get to work, and see what unfolds; because though I start off with one thing in mind, it ends up somewhere else, and it works. One day I was thinking about painting, feeling a desire for more, and I let my mind wander to the furthest reaches of what would be possible for my art; the biggest declaration, the loudest expression. Using a brush? Not enough. Throwing paint at the canvas? Close, but not enough room to do this in any given house. I wanted to shoot the canvas with paint, essentially, and literally capture what comes out through the other side. What I imagined, required a building that would have to be an abandoned warehouse. But, a) where would I find such a building? and b) how on earth could I afford it?

For months I've been thinking of how it might be, to get to some place, maybe in Pennsylvania or someplace in the east, and work on a farm, maybe move in with a family, and learn discipline. To really work. To start over, to learn how to plant, to learn how to grow, to wake up every day, and to go outside, and to put in effort. To push myself, and to know that at the end of the day, I gave it my all. I look at my life and my clothes and toiletries and cell phone and I think of red tape and bureaucracy and taxes and paperwork and I just want to escape to something very, very simple. Very fundamental. Very literal. Where I plant a seed, literally, and I lead a sibling life to that seed, as we grow. Where I learn what it means to build, rather than to destroy. Something outdoors. When I went camping two months ago, I found myself incredibly comfortable with the removal of all the comforts of modern life. I came home and stood in front of the bathroom mirror, and put my hands on the edge of the sink, and I didn't accept any of it. I was still in the woods, surrounded by an open sky, trees, leaves, and the smell of fire.

At my job, lately, there hasn't been as much work to do.
But there has been much mention of Pennsylvania because of the formation of a state licensure board, which is a big deal in the industry in which I work. Things hit a critical mass for me today, for these reasons: 1. there's a space, because there isn't much work to do, and 2. I had a desire - a space - to learn about something, to immerse my mind in something, because the thing that I've been so consumed with, is no longer occupying so much of my mind. I got a call from someone in Pennsylvania and it suddenly occured to me. I remembered the Braddock ad for Levi's, and how incredibly meaningful it was to me. And because Pennsylvania, for me, reached a frenzy, I decided to engage. And I researched it. And while I'm researching Braddock - literally, there's a picture of the mayor of Braddock, standing in an enormous, paint-peeled abandoned warehouse - my management team comes around with Christmas gifts for us. My office manager hands me a gold box with a red ribbon, from a place called Leonidas. I open it and I see four chocolates. And the one that immediately catches my eye, because I am so familiar with the outline, is the one engraved with the profile of Alexander the Great.

"Maybe the world breaks on purpose, so that we have work to do."

There are people in all parts of the country headed to Braddock to focus on the things they enjoy, because they can purchase homes for dirt cheap and get enormous spaces and can do a different type of work. The mayor of Braddock is intent on ushering in a renaissance for the town and is drawing those specifically from the arts and green technology communities, because the potential - the space - is there. He has personally purchased abandoned warehouses and renovated them into residential lofts. He's housed at-risk teenagers there, who are too old for the foster care system. Artists have come to share studios and there's an organic farm that's being cultivated to feed the community.

Here is a man who sees beauty in something broken, because he sees, not what is, but what could be.

"We were taught how the pioneers went into the west.
They opened their eyes, and saw how things could be.
People think there aren't frontiers anymore. They can't see that frontiers are all around us."

Oraculum

2010-12-09T21:15:00.004-06:00

1. I believe that the description has stopped, and the prescription has come.

2. I did this once before; and I believe it's here again, for a reason. I'm going to fall back out of the marching line, and I'm going to sneak off into the woods, to find what is true, privately. And if it is what I think it is, then I'm going to share it.

3. If the dream became a nightmare, then the only thing to do, is to choose myself into another part of the dream. It's not over, you know.

3.5 I once wrote some instruction for myself, because it had been on my mind for so long, because I hated getting out of bed in the morning, because I had no purpose, "Find something, anything that makes me jump out of bed in the morning, ravenous, to chase down that thing, and make it mine." I'm now writing this as a sober reminder, after having ravenously chased down one thing, that it can never again be something that has free will. My sights have to be set on something that is nebulous, dynamic; interwoven; not constituted from one part or piece. This thing I chase, it can be something like a career, or a mission. Maybe in the future, it'll be my kids...only, I won't be ravenous to get them into existence. I'll permit it, I'll be willing, rather than willful. I'll just be... excited, to wake up, to serve them, to just have them be my joy. There isn't anything else that they should be. The thing that makes you jump out of bed? It shouldn't be anything else, except that which makes you just. plain. happy. And if you can't have what makes you happy, then be happy to have been blessed with a duty.

1.5 The reason why it cannot be a person? Because that's called stalking.

2. I had stopped feeling. It had been that way for a long time. I don't know when the feeling stopped, when the void began. My feelings came back to me this time, recently, as if from out of my body, out of my soul, like a cloud, like a fog. This is what enveloped me. I know this, because, when things ended, those feelings that were just hovering outside of me, suddenly rushed into the vacuum inside of me, and hit me like a bomb in the stomach. This is how I got the feelings back: through pain. Did I do this to myself, to get myself to feel again? Maybe. Was it a blessing in disguise? Maybe. Do I feel again? I feel pain, yes. I feel exuberance at times, yes. I feel guilt at times, yes. I seem to have found my conscience again. I know happiness is on its way, and by that, I mean strength. I think this is what was meant by "give myself over to the care and will of God."

3. I recognize that this is also why I write, here. Why there's not really a curtain that I've been made aware of, as it pertains to my thoughts. No human man can handle this. I know this, because I'd consistently chosen all the ones that I thought were deep enough, broad enough, dynamic enough, intelligent enough, philosophical enough. None can encompass all of it. That's okay. God didn't intend me, in this specific respect, for one person. God intended me for all who care to hear it. Instead of whispering down one well, I will speak clearly into the universe, and hope some light reaches the farthest, darkest parts of an ever-expanding space.

4. And I believe it is humility - which is a healthy awareness of my divinity - that permits me to make that statement.

5. I perceive that if you can be completely open and candid with someone up front, then your relationship cannot get much deeper. You've "put your sins before you" and you are loved instantly, unconditionally. Imagine that. Instead of hiding, you've turned yourself inside out. You've become a sun extending light outward, instead of a black hole, always wondering why it's never, ever enough. The choice is ours. Imagine that.

6. I know its right, and good, because I will think it, and something in my environment in that exact moment will reflect exactly what's on my mind. Miracles are instantaneous. God is faster than thought. This is how I know.

7. The cracks run deep. They may never be totally healed, but I am going to do what I can, until I am able to do better, until I am able to do better than that, until I am able to do my best. I believe that scar tissue can be reversed. I have to. Entirely. I believe God can do that.

8. "Did you have bad dreams again?"
"Only one. It's always the same, since I can remember. Do you think that's normal? Don't most people have different dreams?"

9. "It's all happening so quickly. I think I...I need a moment."

9.5 I wake up in the morning, and I drink a potion out of a small bottle, and I fancy myself, for an instant, a bit like Alice. I am then able to see things differently. Then I get on my knees, and remind myself, to God, that I am out of control in God's absence. And that I'm going to let God take care of me, and do for myself what I cannot do on my own. When I fail to make this pledge in the morning, then I've chosen to not be human.

10. "She's the right one. I'm certain of it."

10.5 "How can I be the wrong Alice when this is MY dream? I ought to know who I am."
"Yes, you OUGHT, you stupid girl."

10.75 "It's only a dream. Nothing can hurt me. You can't hurt me. You can't hurt me."

11. I denied my existence, my humanity, for decades. 3 to be exact. Then I chose, one day. I said, "I want to be human." This permits me to say "I want children," and what I mean by that, is, "It's okay by me, that one day I'll die."

12. I understood why he didn't want his daughter around. It's because he thought he was poison. It had nothing to do with the schooling in this country or any other excuse he could have argued. It had to do with him being terrified of passing on whatever he perceived as his illness, to something that didn't deserve it. This is what sickness teaches you: that you're incurable and that you deserve to be all alone. You'll know you're in the presence of illness when there's no hope to be found, and all you want to do is isolate. That's not God talking to you. That's something else. It's a black hole. It's called shame. It is only by drawing that line in the sand, that you declare "I have a chance. There IS room for me to grow. I AM forgiven, I DO deserve love, I CAN love." Anything that tells you otherwise, is a lie and must leave at once. This is where greatest joy is highest truth.

12.5 "You were much more...muchier. You've lost your muchness. In there... something's missing."

13. Humans used to live in peril. There used to be so much more danger. We are overwhelmingly a lot more lucky, a lot more has been established, rules and institutions and laws and such, that have been put into place and into practice, that permits us to walk about safely. And yet, we imagine such dangers. We imagine such adventures, and such perils. But we imagine great beauty, and tenderness, and fantasy, as well. What does this mean? That what we need, we create.

The Pure That's Left

2010-12-09T13:07:00.007-06:00

1. I'm trying to see things from your point of view. And then I'm trying to view things from a better version of my own point of view. You know what I'm left with? A gold mine. You can't take any more credit for this than I can, because we were born to do this. Our actions were present at our birth. Every single one of us. We were all seeds, growing together, and all the grounds and nutrients and rains and sunshine and storms and even animal urine, everything that is happening was meant to happen, meant to influence. There were indications along the way, and we chose to see what we wanted, and to ignore what we wanted. I don't want to ignore any more. I choose to see.

3. We're no longer looking together. And that's totally fine.

4. It's funny to me that guys I've dated previously, actually provided more warning for me about their successors, than the successors themselves. They weren't aware that they were doing this. I am grateful for this. After it's all been burned away, this is the pure that remains.

5. I've been wrong before. I'm going to be wrong again. I'm grateful. Because if I were always right.... man, that would be a BAAADDDDD thing.

6. The rubber bands are headed in the right direction.

7. We are attracted to people and to things. If we don't think about why, and we then we keep coming up against the same problems. Thinking. Thinking and reflecting, critically. I need to learn more about how to do this well. I'm sick of not learning the same lessons, so, I'm drawing the line in the sand.

8. We honor ourselves and others when we practice what we know is true. When we discard it, everyone suffers a huge, huge pain in the ass.

9. But... God is great because Life takes that pain in the ass, and creates a hemorrhoid cream, that requires a plant, and employees, to gain wages, manufacturing that cream. So, there, hemorrhoids. BOOM. Done. Talk about making lemonade out of assholes.

10. It was fun, actually, for a little while. Because I don't do drugs, and because I love to distort my consciousness, getting the world to revolve completely around you, though no small feat, was a really cool way to view things for a bit. I reached heights and depths that... no average human, I think, would be willing to spend their time and energy on. It's obvious to me, from this, that a) I actually have happiness to spare, because I'm so ready to take on, temporarily, a lot of sadness and pain, as if it's like, extra dishes to wash or books to carry, and b) I obviously have a lot of fight in me. Maybe I wasn't too far off on that whole joining the Marines thing....

11. I appreciate your presence in my life for what it was. But to be honest, I brought this on myself. You didn't ask for any of this; I obviously knew, deep down, that I needed to walk this path. You were an innocent bystander, so, I'm glad that you've been able to walk away from this pretty unscathed. It's better that you had such a low tolerance, otherwise, this might have affected you negatively. But back to me. (haha). I am glad you were persistent. I am glad that I caved and decided to take you up. God was eagerly rubbing his hands together at that point, saying "okay, I think she's ready to be honest with herself. I think she's ready to be cool."

12. I think this really was all about the fact that I need a better job.

I need a title

2010-12-08T21:56:00.003-06:00

1. "Phew. --For a minute there, I lost myself."

2. The truth? The truth is, it has to revolve around me.

3. Sink or swim. You judge yourself on how you're swimming? You're going to fucking drown. Just. fucking. swim.

4. "Are you a man or are you a bag of sand?"

5. We'll never know, and that's the fucking point.

6. God is a huge child with the most established sense of humor in the universe. S/he doesn't want to be found, but s/he wants to be sought, and wants us to do this with all our might. S/he hides in tall grasses and leaps out at us from our conscience. When you think you have your hand on it ---

7. What were we talking about?

8. You need something soft from one side and something hard from the other side. If you have too much of either, you get crushed or you don't form. It's a fine balance, but, tell me, who has ever perfectly achieved that balance?

9. God would answer, "Everyone, and no one. Now let's go play outside."

10. It's time to put this to bed.

It's a Dull Knife, But It's Still a Knife.

2010-12-02T16:02:00.010-06:00

1. I'm doing all of this because I want the thing that I want.... and, I'm not getting it. I'm sorry, but what is the point, if there's no reward? Fucking goal-oriented - this is bullshit.

2. I'm still trying to control the situation, and I can tell, because I keep shrugging off suggestions from people around me. I hear people say "Sanity is my higher power." "Sobriety is my higher power." "Rationality is my higher power." "The people in these rooms are my higher power." Well, here's the problem I'm having: I once said "I must be God, some form of God, because, every event in my life, originated from a thought or a desire I've had. I don't remember creating the universe, so, I'm not taking credit for that. But I felt a desire to do _____, and then, I did ______. Did I start my own life? I honestly don't know the answer to that question. Have I caused much of my own happiness? And misery? Yes, yes. Have I said 'I want this' and gotten it? Yes. Maybe this is just life, just being human. Maybe being human is something more than we think. Do you see the problem here? Where is the floor upon which I rest my feet? There is none. The only things that ground me lately are the prayer 'Your will, not mine', and a tiny, weighted statue of a Hindu monk, in Lotus position, holding a cup of water in his hands, his eyes closed. It's heavy. And I carry it around because it's my totem, like from Inception. The weight of it, reminds me to keep my feet on the ground. But it also reminds me that if I'm not able to go through the particular doorway that I had thought I could, then, there's still good reasons to continue down this road, of trying to maybe not make sense of it all, but, at least, to get out of my own way. I don't know anymore. I'm in a sandstorm of my thoughts and beliefs and they're all blinding me, and one prayer and one little statue - I'm apparently now an idolator, too - are what are grounding me to Earth, like a wire.

3. As I'm writing the paragraph above, a woman calls my work and her name is spelled "Jain", which, I find interesting, and which I know is a form of Hinduism. I look up Jainism on Wikipedia: Jainism is a form of Hinduism that opposes violence. I read further: "According to Advaita Vedanta, the attainment of liberation coincides with the the realization of the Atman (one's personal soul) that it is identical with the Brahman, the source of all spiritual and phenomenal existence." Hm. / see what I mean?

4. I don't know if focusing, or not focusing, brings something to fruition. And I can't help but to think of it, all. the. time. I try to get it out of my head, and I can't. You're in there, whether I like it or not. And mostly it's guilt, but it's also a lot of memories.... but it's fading. There's no you, to reiterate yourself to me, and, I hate that. I search for you, and I cannot find you, and my world is very, very dry, and I've stopped looking in what I know are empty wells, trying to find the water that I thought you were. This feels like a curse.

5. The truth is, even if you came back, it wouldn't matter. I have no self-respect. Literally, none. I laid aside every single one of my standards by the end. There was no barometer by which to even calculate meaning, between you and I. Not at the beginning, and absolutely not at the end. The only thing that I can count for truth are, were, my motivations, about which I came clean, and which, I now regret sending you. Why? Because you didn't ask.

6. The truth is, even if you came back, it wouldn't matter, because I don't know what health looks like. I don't know what a normal life, or a normal relationship, with health, with love, with communication - i.e., talking, in bed, at night - with boundaries, looks like. I don't. This is why I am, or someone else is, always frustrated, and whoever isn't, is clearly taking advantage, or being taken advantage of, by the other.

7. The truth is, family doesn't leave. And if they do, you can tell that they're family, because even when they're away, they're always right there.

8. The truth is, I have never, literally, never known what I was doing - I only acted like I did. I saw people in life, or on tv, going to stores and kissing faces and reading books and laying down silverware, and I imitated it, without having any knowledge of the meaning, or the content, or the motivation behind it. It was like trampling through a movie set and thinking what I did had any impact, at all. If I did know what I was doing, that has surely been turned upside down and inside out. If you think I'm being dramatic, a) fuck you, and b) find a way inside my head, and you'll be begging for a gun.

9. I was right about how I saw the movie. If I keep reaching out to you, all I'm doing is standing there, staring at my crushed, amputated arm, crying over the fact that I had to cut it off, crying over the fact that I wish it were still on my body, crying over the fact that the rock had ever crushed it, begging it to come back, pleading with it, trying to reason with it, trying to distort reality just to convince it to move, as if it could be convinced, as if it could be moved. All this trying, and crying, when I was the one to cut it off. I didn't know the tendons I was capable of snapping. You can't reason with a rock, you can't out-argue a rock. It operates on nothing except it's own gravity. Well, me and the rock? We fell together. In a sense, we both chose to get stuck. Instead of crying over the fact that I freed myself, what I need to be doing, is thanking fucking God that I had the balls to cut myself free, and then to be cut free, because at this point, it doesn't matter how it happened, just that it happened. What I need to be doing, instead of standing there, begging the rock to move itself out of its very settled position between a wall and my amputated hand, is to get the fuck out of here as soon as I can and remember that I was lucky enough to have the luxury of cutting off a limb to save my life.

10. I was right about how I saw the movie. There's a reality that I'm going to bring to life, and every. single. thing. I can see, for miles, for years ahead, in every single direction, no matter how much I think I could outsmart it, everything in life says that there's no fucking way that what's inside my heart, what I am seeing with a different set of eyes, could ever, ever come to pass. Reality is that there is a prison, and I am inside that prison, and I've got to be both the attorney fighting that sentence, and the convict dutifully carrying out this sentence, until I learn to not only believe in my innocence, but to be smart enough, savvy enough, educated enough, and determined enough to either fight my way out, or to break my way out.

11. They should have let me date as a kid. Sex, love, hormones, drugs, all of it is simply as prevalent as air. Any parent who thinks otherwise is living in a fucking fantasy world. If they had let me date, let me have boys around when I was young, this wouldn't have happened. I wouldn't be writing this, right now. By trying to protect, they were hurting. I'd be doing something incredibly different and you probably wouldn't know who I am, and my focus would be on so, so much else. But I am here, because things went the way they did. Because I wasn't taught, because people were afraid, and thought it better to deny the inevitable, i.e., reality, than to invite it in, learn about it, model a behavior towards it, show the love and understanding of it, decrease the fear of it, increase the education of it, and thus, establish the power OVER it, so that it wouldn't have overpowered ME. Because I wasn't taught. I was totally, unashamedly, unprotected. They may as well have thrown me to the fucking wolves. For that, everyone before me, before them, I suppose, is to blame. But that doesn't do shit for my situation. So what do I have to do? I have to be parent, child, and adult processing all this, to myself. I deserve the fucking Nobel for this shit. And yes, fuck you, I am going to take a self-righteous attitude about it. But I'm going to do it. Fuck you and fuck me if either of us thinks that I can't change. I'm not here to prove either of us right.

12. The dog days are over, and if they're not, I'm not stopping until they're fucking chased away with fire and knives.

13. Give me truth or give me death.

14. I know exactly how I lost my conscience, and I know exactly why this led to me losing my mind. I know that I'm not out of the woods yet. But bit by bit, row by row, .....

15. I never wanted them, I never wanted it. When you came along, these ideas wrapped themselves around me so slowly, so gracefully, I didn't even notice. And then when I did notice, I burned it all down. Why? Because of everything above this line on this page. I felt a pang in my stomach a few minutes ago and I imagined it was you reading this, and taking it personally, and being hurt by it, by me, again. I don't know what's more sad - that you were hurt by me, and I could feel it, or that I imagined this, and you haven't even read this, at all.

16. If I can't find purpose enough in myself, and I destroyed the chance of finding purpose in you, then I find purpose in those who don't yet exist.

untitled

2010-11-29T22:26:00.005-06:00

1. If you look for it, you're going to find it. Even if it's not there.

2. I have a hard time setting books on the floor.

3. Gravitation, electromagnetism, weak interaction and strong interaction are our primary Commitments to God that we'll stick around to learn some lessons on Earth. The Four Agreements are the best way to operate given those initial Commitments. Funny how there are four, and Four. I'm not dumb, you know.

4. If you bring it up, they'll follow it up. We're all the leader in every given circumstance. Why?

5. Because of the Principle of Certainty. Nietzsche was wrong; it's not the Will to Power, because it's not necessarily about domination for the sake of domination. Most of the time, someone's desire, or their happiness, is the strongest thing for miles, and when we see certainty with such weight to it, we latch onto and agree to that, unless ours is stronger. The bitch of it is, when you don't realize that you're not having the fun you're supposed to be having.

6. Playboy Philosopher Bunny. Not King.

7. Forgiveness is, "I see how you went wrong. I know you didn't know what you were doing. I disagree with what you did, and I can stand here, next to you, and be with you, even while I disagree with you. I don't have to leave." But sometimes, you have to leave. We're human, we can only take so much.

8. It's a tough thing, realizing you're Ray Porter, when you're so used to being the Mirabelle.

9. Walking in Faith, not in sight.

10. If you're being honest, then all of it is Church. The most attractive thing is to be able to say "I'm broken in half for these reasons" because if you're not aware, then you're not conscious.

11. Beauty is humility, hope, and faith, even if you're not sure what you're hoping for. It's the perfect triangle. It's the strongest bond. Why? Because it permits all things to be possible. It's by saying "I KNOW" that you lose out on vast quantities and qualities of life.

12.

Keep The Talent Happy

2010-11-26T19:51:00.005-06:00

I don't know what to do.

I could actually feel, at the most intense moments, when I was most conscious of the loss of you, and of my hand in that loss, and my guilt over it, of destroying my own happiness, that with every word I wrote to you, trying to get you back, I was pushing you further away. My desire felt like one edge of the sword, and your best interest felt like the other. I can no longer believe that this is true. I want to be on your side.

It's been weeks, and I still wake up every morning, and you are the first thing on my mind. The next thing I think is, "where are you?"

My day is a multi-dimensional graph, with every possible truth value representing a line, and every day, I hit every single point on that graph, sometimes twice or three times. Every point, every intersection is a set of possibilities: that you still care, that you still want to be with me, but that you cannot because you have been hurt by me too much. That you care, but that I caused too much damage, but that in a few months, it could happen for us again. That you don't care now, but that you did, but you cannot now. That you cared, but because I couldn't see it, there is no chance for the future. That I was totally alone in all of this. That I was not alone in all of this, but because I couldn't appreciate you the way you deserved, because you are a gem, you must move forward, without me. That even though I apologized, you still cannot go forward. That you can go forward, but because I haven't tried enough, you are, every day, moving away from me. That if I leave it all alone, it'll come back. That if I don't fight for you, I'll lose you forever. That if I leave it all alone, it'll come back. That if I don't fight for you, and tell you I was wrong and you were right, I'll lose you forever. That if I leave it all alone, it'll come back.

I read something by Dostoevksy once: "What is hell? The inability to love." He's right. But I've also come to realize that Hell is actually just uncertainty. It's not having a grounding point, a foundation, against which to measure all other things. I'm not asking for sympathy. I'm asking to be saved. I don't know what to measure anything against, and because I've trusted myself for so long, it's unbelievably uncomfortable to rely on God to do what is right. It lasts a few minutes, and then I forget it all, reality comes in and argues against me. I write out a few ideas that I have to MAKE true, that I have to MAKE a reality out of, because if I don't, then I've got nothing.

1. Miracles are happening all the time, all around me.
2. I am the miracle, and I am taking place right now.
3. God is in control. Do you think God is worried? Then why are you?
4. Anything is possible.

The thing I love most about you is the line you draw in the sand. But I cannot stomach the idea that I'm forever on the wrong side of that line. And I don't know what to do about that. I only know how to fight in one way: by taking action, with words. By arguing for what is right, against what was wrong.

"I love you... my responsibility has found a place beside you." This is what you are to me. This is what you represent. You are the call to Jesus, if you will. You are the rock against which I've come to measure pretty much everything; and you've done this, without trying. This is you, naturally. For months, I've been arguing against it, against this possibility, that one person could refute so much of everything I've thought, my whole life, and represents everything I've hoped for, my whole life; everything I've denied, and everything I've secretly hoped is true. I pushed it all away, I pushed you away, and I know now, what a mistake it was, to fight against my own happiness. Life doesn't like it. My life doesn't like it, without you.

"My responsibility has found a place beside you".

And now,

"Put your little hand in mine..."

It's not too late to change your mind.

It's Time.

2010-11-15T22:53:00.004-06:00

This is the only thing I know how to do.

It's been a week of non-stop nausea. I'm sure I've lost weight and for once I don't care.

When I'm slow, and deliberate, I can say the truth. This is the version of me that I respect; this is the girl that I've wanted to be, the girl inside of me that stands for something even more solid and profound than my mind ever could recognize. This is the one you cannot fuck with. This is the girl you should fear. She's been a long time in the making.

It's something even better than I could have imagined. I don't think it's too late. I think it's right on time, it had to be now, it had to happen this way or it would maybe never happen at all... this is the storybook of my life, this is where the roller-coaster hit the top and it's all downhill from here, nausea included. This is where the wings are built, they are built on the way down. This is how you fly: not by leaping up and soaring, but by cliff-jumping.

I keep saying "your will, not mine. your will, your peace, your security, not mine." I'm not sure any of what I do now, since such prayers, is right. I don't know that it aligns. All I know is that it's not going to be perfect; it can never be perfect. I'll fight the best way I know how, and if there's no one else out on that field, then I'll go home. And I'll also learn how to not fight those closest to me.

It's what I've suspected, forever: that if it's comfortable, it'll do you in. "I encourage you to sit with what's uncomfortable," she said. Only I couldn't listen. This is a new kind of learning. Or really, this is learning, for the first time.

You could still ignore me.

You could still shut me out. That's that, then, I suppose. I had to try. I had to tell you that you were not alone, that you were there the whole time, that I was the one who couldn't see. I was too afraid. It's a radical way to look at things, but then again, what in life is not radical? What is it that doesn't deserve a miracle? The problem is when you're too stuck in your pain to realize that you've been forgiven all along. Vision, I am relearning. I don't think it's too late, I think it's right on time.

outside the pen

2010-09-06T21:44:00.003-05:00

((((..."love, don't cry"...)))

if i face myself, as another,

it is even more an animal

outside of the pen

if i make myself proud about you,

you could move away from me.

the difference is i don't know.

(hush

because i'm too scared to ask)))))))).

i'm too smart for this, in life:

i have only learned a love

the way i am to you...

pay no attention

how you are to me

this is inconstant

it's not a tongue i understand

if you go because of me,

then do i suffer, so that

you are well enough to stay?

(((((knowing full well you are

one thing i do not get

and i get that i do not know)))

this is the sadness, always

and if it is not there,

i will force it in

where the skin is not broke

can you topple that?

i cannot lead

i can't even

this

sentence

I have learned

by the leaving of you

that it is to,

in your absence

find the point

in a sea of softness

and weak

(there can be no point found)>>>>>

i have evaporated

every new event

registering

blows the dust of me

off the table

i didn't feel the sadness with you

this is why i think

you'll stay

(forgive me

this is a day

too cut

around the edges

and too many shards

smashed together

in one match-box

2010-08-02T21:20:00.004-05:00

I hesitate to write this.

When I tried it, I didn't think the aftermath would extend long, and far and low through days like a rope through frames in the water, like the thickest black branch with the bushiest, most deafening leaves that would just embracccceeeee me for hours, and hours, leaving the most sultry gashes on my face and arms and brain where the opening of skin to red flesh below is just fine please....

it punched a hole right through me

(if you stare hard enough

if you just pass your eyes over me

you can tell

can't you see it under my eyes?

it's dark and full like a pond

you could go swimming under my eyes

)

didn't you know? weren't you in my brain when I was over there?

or did you think we are separate?

I am in you, and you are in me

This is why your touch creates the desire on my skin

this is why you manifest from out of

every time we meet

and you touch my skin,

my skin awakens and remembers

'yes, we were in want of this finger here, and that tongue there'

and your hands, in my hair,

are in their proper place

i come alive under your hands

you blow the breath into me

this is what i didn't know i didn't know

Life Came Upon Me All At Once

2010-07-18T02:04:00.002-05:00

I’ve been feeling like I’m going to die tomorrow.

Like there are goodbyes that I need to say, and that every sadness and regret I’ve been able to absorb and excrete has somehow found its way back to the front of my mind, at least everything that was painful enough to register, hard, in the first place.

It came upon me today all the once that I will be getting older, and that I am merely one small wave, one particle, that has a shimmering moment at the peak of the crest.

Lila, who just got married, will be having babies soon. Lila will cease to exist one day, and it occurred to me that this could happen before me, and that I would know her children in her unfortunate absence. And this is how things go; and there would be our generation, Lila’s and mine, and then there would be our children’s generation, and they would have their own immediacy, just like us. And we would give way to them, because this is what we do; this is how we secure future. Because we do not live indefinitely.

It feels like a tragedy, to think of not having the kids and the family. I believe I dreamt about this, a forecast of that possible world, where I lived, in solitude, in Canada, and I was a lesbian and I was an academic and I was terribly, interminably, alone.

It came upon me all at once today, and it flooded me until I was drowning, with no life raft of my own convictions, of standing strong and happy in choices I didn’t even have the chance to make yet, that were preliminary choices. I was drowning, and it came upon me all at once.

To never have been anything that I’ve been proud of. To never have set a direction for myself, and stayed it, because the most important thing would be my mind. What is the point of a mind that perceives and desires, if you just lay down and agree with whatever random soil you have been nurtured by? I thought we were seeds that could get up and walk over to the next best ground.

It was when I got off the bus and happened to look to my right that, afterwards, I was clear. To stop something. To break up what is painful to me. Not to them, to me. They wanted each other to have someone to abuse them, and to be a victim to that abuse. They were comrades. He had her by the neck, pinned down, bent over at the waist, and she was grabbing the stroller handles with both hands. But she was angry when he was arrested. She was incensed and she attempted to fight back with the police to protect him. They were on each others’ sides by the time it was all over and done with. They needed each other, to fill in the razor shard-fingers of their missingness. You can only complete violence with violence. I stopped what was profane to me, and what was comfortable to them.

It was a mess before I stopped it, but it was clear after I stopped it. I wasn’t the first watching them. But I was the first to intercede. The other guy, who had been watching, waiting for it to escalate, wasn’t the first to break it up. He thinks he was. I was the one who walked right up and yelled Hey! What is wrong! And then the other guy came in. I was the first one to act. I was the one to dictate Stay here and watch them as I went in to get the cop. This is what makes me feel good. I did it with my own raised voice.

And then it was clear to me, when Annie was pregnant in the car, driving me, the peace to end all mispeaces this whole morning and afternoon. She reminded me of something I never had, but that everyone knows before they are born, and forgets before they forget. That it’s going to be okay. That as long as we hit the dead end, we’ll be okay. That sometimes you can only learn as much as you can handle, and then you have to close the book. That you can sleep now, at least for now, because in a little bit, you won’t be able to. But it’s still nothing about to worry. For all the waves and motion and flooding this morning, with no anchor, with no life raft, with no explanation of how it’s actually going to work out, with only a drowning in worry and in language about babies and family that I can’t understand, for all of this that came upon me at once, she cleared away. I was reminded that even though I never had this, I’ve always been an owner of it. I never didn’t have access to it. She must have just woken up from a nap, because her closeness to God filled the whole car, and I breathed one round and was convinced. I’d just broken through something that was profane, and I was ready to go swimming.

I couldn’t be the rock star because I doubt all the things that make me rocket forward into space.

If there’s discipline to be learned, where do I go to learn it? Must I cut myself off from everyone and everything that pulls me in and apart? Where do I go to become the person I keep aborting?

expense

2010-07-05T21:55:00.003-05:00

I fired God and myself, hired.

What I can’t do is stay when it’s pointless. The work itself is tolerable. The stress? I like it, I like knowing that it makes me stronger. The frantic pace? Fine, it pushes me. I thrive on it, actually; for the first time, I look forward to going to work, because I am needed there. But what I can’t handle is knowing that I’m doing the same shit as everyone else, and because of legalistic bullshit, I don’t get the same treatment as everyone else. This is what pulls me down off the deep end. This is what causes me to say fuck it and just stay home.

We need to have other things to talk about. Think about it: If I have absolutely no fucking way of commenting or contributing to the stuff you’re saying, except to say, over and fucking needle-in-the-eye-disdainfully-over again, “Oh, that’s so great!”/”That’s awesome!”/”Oh, wow!” then please, do us both a favor and get a diary. I don’t care that it’s the happiest thing that’s happened to you recently. I love you, but I don’t. When you talk, talk to me, not at me, about things that I can contribute to, otherwise what am I to you? Seriously, think about it – what does that make me if you just spew out shit that I can’t contribute to? Don’t for one fucking second think that thinking out loud in my presence is anything I remotely give a fuck about, or want to know. I’d rather run alongside the car, than be in it with you, if you can’t act smart enough to know that a conversation means engaging on a thing that two people can relate to. What kind of life did you grow up with, if you want to throw shit my way, and don’t want my interaction? And yes, please, speak the fuck up if I pull this shit on you. But we both know I don’t.

I can do this if you could love me, but if you can’t or won’t date me, in front of other people, then go away.

I can’t believe how fucking poor technology is. Really, for where the Minoans were, in terms of technological developments and advances, and we don’t even have 100% effective birth control? Where's all the tech that blends thought with fiber-optic cable at the flick of a neuron switch? Get with it, dude - if I can think of this shit, then what are you working on, and why the fuck hasn't it hit the gen pop by now?

You need to get over yourself, and chill the fuck out, immediately. Immediately. Basically, if you’re feeling that need, that compulsion to say it? Do us both a severe favor and fucking don’t.

Life as it is, is something I can't take. It's so fucking boring. It's been done. It's being done, all the time. Do I sound like an addict? Fine. I'll take it. What I can't handle is the mundane. This is why I get that people plow out on weeknights, on every weeknight, so that they're hung-over the next day. Those people, while potentially alcoholics, are also warriors. I get needing something to struggle through. Where's the Colosseum here? Nowhere. Where are the spectators? There are none. The walk through the fire goes on in and of ourselves, only, what's the point, if no one else is watching, and saluting? It's not enough to know that it's hard because we realize that others are doing it, which makes us totally unspecial. We want the competition, and we want the recognition. Modern life? Fuck you, you've taken it all away. There's no way we're happier, fundamentally, without a struggle. No. Fucking. Way.

Nietzsche was dead wrong. It's not a contest of will. It's a fucking charisma contest. And we're all leaders, and all followers.

This Is To Mother...

2010-05-09T18:13:00.001-05:00

You.

Gratitude and Prayer List (in no order of importance)

2010-02-08T21:19:00.004-06:00

1. I am grateful for the chance to come home to my mom and my sister and my two dogs and relax with them.

2. I am grateful for peace of mind about him, and for all the negative thoughts, and the fury and the anger of last night, that filled me to the point of bursting, to have abated, after I prayed about it, and upon waking up this morning.

3. I'm grateful to have woken up in a good mood this morning.

4. I'm grateful that I found the building quickly, and that even though a voice was telling me to turn the other way, and that it was behind me, I kept walking forward and didn't even realize that I was headed in the right direction.

5. I am grateful for possible new beginnings.

6. I am grateful for good feelings and good vibes from new people and new places.

7. I am grateful that typing this out on a computer makes me think about the actual feeling of gratitude a bit more.

8. I am grateful for my sponsor.

9. I am grateful for my dogs, and for how cute and sweet and soft they are, and how excited they always are to see me, and how that love will never, ever go away.

10. I am grateful for my apartment but sometimes I am even more grateful to come to my mom's house.

11. I am grateful that he maybe read some of my last notes, and that he had had enough, and shut me off. I think that's a healthy thing to do, in light of my words. I would probably do the same.

12. So I am grateful to see that I cause a reaction in the world, be it for good or bad, though in this case, it was bad.

13. I am grateful for my friends: Aneeta, Meta, Lila, Mara, the list goes on and on....

14. I am grateful that my mom and Mara said "You have a different look about you, like, that you're not....so....I don't know...angry, or hard on yourself." So I'm glad that that could be seen on my face.

15. I am grateful that peace does not have to come at the expense of inaction, but is further fostered by acting well.

16. I am grateful that there are good feelings about him, in proportion to the good thoughts I think and the good feelings I have about myself, because for a long time, they all seemed incompatible.

17. I pray that one day soon he and I can reconcile. I'm not asking to reunite, but just to have each other in our lives, actively, and have forgiveness.

18. I am grateful for my hair straightener.

19. I am grateful for clean clothes this morning.

20. I am grateful for the clarity and good decision-making skills that come with recognizing that I have certain needs that are very basic, and that I hurt myself if I neglect or ignore those.

21. I am grateful that today was a good day, and that this doesn't mean that I will die tonight, but that I will wake up tomorrow, and have another chance to do good, right things. I know it will be a different day than today, but I can also make it a different kind of a good day.

22. I pray for his forgiveness, that I hurt him.

23. I pray for direction in life. I don't want to just float around. I want to have a target of which I am proud, so that I can be an arrow towards that target, and just fly like the wind.

24. I am grateful to know what is important enough to focus on, and

25. I pray to grow in awareness of those important things.

26. I am grateful for to-do lists.

27. I am grateful for my phone, but more than that, I am grateful that at times, I can turn the ringer off, and put it down.

28. I pray for his forgiveness.

29. I pray that I get my act together in terms of my health plan.

30. I am grateful for that sandwich from Lil' Guys.

31. I am grateful that though I was anxious about coming home, I told myself that I could just relax with it, and remember myself and the peace of today, and that I'd be able to be immune from it.

32. I am grateful that this worked, and that I have a hand in controlling my anxiety, to some degree.

33. I hope that I grow in this ability.

34. I am grateful that everything I wanted to bring fit in one huge bag.

35. I am grateful for a cab driver that was so chatty and animated that it made me think that if law of attraction is true, then I must be growing in health, to attract a cab driver like that, which is a great thing.

36. I pray for him.

37. I am grateful that I no longer think of R---, and that when I do, I am able to put his behavior in perspective.

38. I pray to be able to understand why I couldn't reconcile showing affection to her with having feelings for him.

39. I am grateful for the peace of mind that comes with feeling good about my life.

40. I am grateful for medication, and for an increase in medication.

41. I am grateful for people around me who are rooting for me.

42. I pray that feeling good doesn't mean complacency, or indolence.

43. I pray that I never have again have to go too far in order to know how far is too far.

44. I am grateful to understand the damage done when I don't express myself consistently, regardless of how the other person might react to it.

45. But even more than that, I am grateful to know that when something doesn't feel right, that I have a responsibility to move away from it, if I can't change it.

46. I am grateful for the Serenity Prayer.

47. I am grateful to know the amount of rage that I am capable of, and to let it out in a healthier, less-public way, next time.

48. I am grateful to understand, again, that when I lash out and hurt someone, I hurt myself, as well. I'd be willing to bet that I hurt myself more, actually.

49. I am grateful for attitude.

50. I am grateful to get tired.

51. I pray for more awareness of what I can change and what I cannot change.

52. I am grateful that I get to use good bath products tomorrow.

53. I am grateful for financial assistance from my mom.

54. I am grateful for repercussions.

55. I am grateful to hear my mom laugh.

56. I am grateful for her support and for her patience.

57. I am grateful for a really special meeting tonight.

I'm Gonna Make You Cry

2010-02-03T20:09:00.004-06:00

WARNING: This piece contains adult themes, such as crying and masturbating. (Adults with the emotional age of) Children who have been allowed to participate in adult relationships are advised to see this, and we don't give a fuck if it's with or without an adult present, although we would suggest it so that someone can explain to you what is going on.

I'm gonna make you cry.

I'm gonna make you cry and cry and cry and cry and cry and cry and cry some more.

I'm gonna make you cry,

and the next time you see my ass, you're gonna cry.

You're gonna wish you were going home with me and you're gonna wish you could get laid by me and you're going to wish that you could wake up to my sweet sleeping face and you're gonna wish that you could see my face again after that but you won't and you can't.

And you're gonna cry.

You're gonna cry about it.

You're gonna cry and cry and cry and cry and cry and cry and cry and cry and cry until you run out of tears,

and then God is gonna find one more drop of water in your body and bring it up to your face, and then you are gonna cry some more.

You're gonna cry and cry and cry and cry and God is gonna suggest that you go get some Gatorade to replenish yourself and while you're at Walgreens you're gonna be so glad that you got out of the house, and that you got some fresh air, and you're gonna feel so proud for being so strong, but guess what as soon as you drink that orange Gatorade you're gonna cry some more, because even biology is on my side with this one and you're gonna cry and cry and cry and cry and cry and cry and cry yourself to sleep and when you wake up you're gonna squeeze out some morning tears while you're thinking about me while you're laying there on your back, and you're gonna cry some sad baby crocodile tears, and while you're drinking your coffee, you may be able to hold back the tears, but guess what?

As soon as you get in the shower, you're gonna cry.

You're gonna feel the water on your face and it's gonna feel like your own hot tears and it's gonna remind you of crying and then you're gonna cry.

And then you're gonna cry some more.

And then you're gonna cry while you masturbate. You're gonna cry, while you masturbate, about me, in the shower. And you're going to think about how hot I am, and how you're never gonna find another girl like me, and how I was the best thing to ever happen to you, and how you can't get me back, and how you couldn't keep me, and how you're gonna be like this for a long, long, long time, and you're gonna masturbate about me, and while you're masturbating about me in the shower, you're gonna cry.

And guess what?

God wants you to cry.

God wants you to cry big, fat, juicy, salty-ass crocodile-ass tears because you were baaaaaaaaaadddd. You were soooo baaaaaaaaaddddd. You were so bad that you are gonna cry for 10 days straight and you are gonna lose 8 pounds from all the water weight going straight to your eyes and God's gonna clap his hands while He smokes a cigar in Heaven while you cry and cry and cry yourself to sleep.

You're gonna get out of the shower and you're gonna dry your face and you're gonna dry your tears that are mixed with shower-water and you're gonna feel good for about 47 seconds and then as soon as you brush your teeth and your face scrunches up into something like Cry Face, you're gonna cry some more, because it's gonna feel so good.

You're gonna cry about me as you brush your teeth.

You are gonna taste salty tears slip into your mouth and you're gonna taste the salt and the mint and you're gonna like it and you're gonna feel like a better person for crying, for crying into your mouth, into your toothpaste mouth, because it feels so good for you to cry, it feels so good for you to let it all out, let out all the stuff that you could never show and never feel and you're gonna feel like a really good guy.

But you're still gonna cry.

You're gonna cry.

I'm gonna make you cry.

Summit of what

2010-01-30T00:47:00.002-06:00

This is nausea.

I prayed for clarity, and this is what arrives. Panic. Regret. Alarm. Sadness. Despair.

And a raw, uncooked, unaided climb up the mountain face to try to reach the summit.

The summit of what?

What is there a top of? It never ends, until it ends.

"Tidal waves don't beg forgiveness..."

cakewalk.

2010-01-28T21:57:00.007-06:00

The door didn't give, initially.

I pushed against it and was instantly terrified that I would find her, crumpled on the floor.

This is what I've come to expect, on instinct.

To find a body, somewhere, when it doesn't seem to go right.

Which means that you have made it into my blood.

As I returned to bed last night, it hit me.

This is what I was spared.

Your dad took the hit for me on finding your body.

Because we ended, your father now has an image burned in his memory that would have otherwise been mine.

Had we stayed together - if things had gone the way I'd planned, and we'd been married - that would have been me.

And that's something I'm not sure I'd ever have been able to recover from.

Finding you, seeing you would have fortified the guilt, would have magnified it into something undeniable, irrefutable, inescapable to my mind.

It would have been the image.

That's what would have sealed me off.

It would have been me taking your limp body in my arms, and holding you, and crying over you, to no effect.

I was saved.

I was saved from hell in California by your death.

I was saved from an even greater grief when you left me, a year before.

The first loss of you was a great pain, but your death was the greatest pain.

And yet you saved me from something even worse.

And for that, for the gauntlet you have put me through, I must stop, and say thank you.

The priest had said, "Remember these stages of grief; the shock, the despair, the anger, the tears. Think about them as you're processing them, and write them down, so that when it happens again, you can be prepared."

When it happens again...

Your death is the benchmark against which all other pains will be measured.

Not this pain from that, and not that pain from this.

Not the loss of him, not the death of her, not the end of yet another, not the disappointment from yet another failed relationship...

It hurts, and I hate to think of those around me hurting, but I don't hurt as much, after you.

It is all a grazing.

A glimmer.

A deflection off the surface of my chest that doesn't get absorbed, except in the rare moments when it does, and then I am sick with grief.

And even then, it is a pin-drop in the deafening sound of your absence.

(But I'm also not asking for a challenge.)

For that, I must say thank you.

If I can survive your death, then everything else is a cakewalk.

She passed away this morning.

I'm concerned for my mom, and her pain hurts me, but the fact of it doesn't hurt.

Everything else compared to you is a cakewalk.

Beer and rockets

2010-01-25T20:52:00.007-06:00

I loved you. I couldn't admit it. My actions proved this, and you know that. I don't know what you thought, but I know what you didn't think. But it's okay.

I want to rocket right out of the universe. I want to learn guitar, write songs, and become a rock star at local venues while I keep a day job. I want to be 60 years old with huge rolling waves in my hair and wear shiny sparkly swinging 50's party dresses and jeweled cowboy boots and play at cocktail lounges on a nostalgia tour. I want to sing until my voice runs dry and I want to give back all that I've perceived.

There is such an incredible energy when two spirits meet who operate on the same frequency. When that harmony doesn't exist, both of you can feel it, and it's a struggle. Yes, love can be work, but it actually isn't, at all. Not fucking at all.

It's nothing you can arrive at by thinking yourself to. It's something that would just happen naturally, like a force in the universe, written into its code, like gravity, or electromagnetism, or respiration, or mitosis. It would just happen. It is action, it is movement, it is a line drawn because one thing was done and another was not. This is how you can tell the nature of a person's character, and what, literally, comes out of them when squeezed, and what they are when at rest, and what they are when in motion.

I cannot fucking believe that two of them accused me of not having much going on, and used it as an excuse for their own behavior. Is it insecurity on their parts? Did they have their eyes closed to my situation? And why? Well, we all know why. For the past two years, I happen to have been in a period where I can't do much. Literally, am incapable. I have survival at hand. But this was all known on your part from the beginning. So the question I have for both of you is, why the FUCK did you waste my time? THAT'S on YOU. And you fucking know it.

I'm so sick of treating men as charity cases. Of silencing the best parts of myself to make them feel more at ease, more secure, more wanted, more attended to, more more more and all I became was less less less. "There are no victims, only volunteers." You're goddamned right about that. It's over. From now on, they can bend around me. I want to leave them all in the fucking dust.

The only reason you would ask "You're used to being the dominant one in a relationship, aren't you?" is because your last girlfriends were doormats. And you fucking know it. And that shit is on YOU.

Man, I love beer. I never, ever, ever used to drink it, I hated it, hated the taste, the feeling, everything. Now, I actually get thirsty for it. My AA friends would probably tell me to watch the eff out for that, but I'm cool. It's a great taste. I'm glad to have spontaneously developed it all of a damn sudden.

I went to my apartment tonight after having spent a few days at my mom's house. My place smelled...stale. Absent. Absent of me, of human life, of human breath, and human interaction in a basic manner: the smell of shampoo and shower gel having been wafted through steamy air; the absence of the smell of my perfume. It's sad, when people aren't around. This applies on so, so many levels. I miss my people.

(untitled)

2010-01-23T01:56:00.002-06:00

I didn't choose the ones that I knew.

The ones that I chose I sought because I did not know, but I suspected, and I needed to be certain.

If I had chosen the ones that I knew, I would not now be here; I would be in a different place, and I would think a different thought, and I'd look back at the canvas and say, "I was wrong, and it is a good thing. I was wrong about them. I am so happy that I was wrong about my life."

But I pushed it all over the edge. I chose the uncertain; the unknown. Or really, the ones that I thought I could prove wrong. Every single one, every single time, I backed it up to the edge of the cliff, until I pushed it over. I was all wrong. And I was the same kind of wrong.

If it looks shaky, knock it over.

Now, nothing that was uncertain is left standing.

13 but so much more

2010-01-19T00:57:00.004-06:00

1. i wish that i could co-star on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." that is a funny-ass show, even after non-stop viewings, whether drunk or sober, sad or happy, or anything in between.

2. after 15 years of indulgence in alcohol, as of yesterday evening, i've actually developed, all of a sudden, a taste for beer. it's good stuff. minus the gas.

3. i don't know what's going to happen. all i know is, you've gotta draw a line. unconditional love only hurts you, if you don't get it in return, as a condition.

4. i still wonder about that fucker. i don't know why. i wish i didn't. but i still do.

5. this is where specific, localized lobotomies get my two thumbs up. waaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy up.

6. "so filled... so filled for you!" is perhaps the funniest shit i've heard in, oh, a decade.

7. california is looking pretty good about now.

8. he's right. there may not be a lot going on. but that doesn't mean he's perfect.

9. and no, i'm not afraid to say that.

10. really? now? really?

11. if this were a decade ago, but i were still 29, i could totally see a pill addiction in my future.

12. i wish someone would watch that movie with me so we could have inside jokes with it together the way that he and i did. but no one will. big fucking boo-hoo. i'm serious.

13. i sure hope this internet lasts.

The Sin of Indifference

2010-01-18T23:17:00.002-06:00

"Rooted in our tradition, some of us felt that to be abandoned by humanity then was not the ultimate. We felt that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by Him. Better an unjust God than an indifferent one. For us to be ignored by God was a harsher punishment that to be a victim of His anger. Man can live far from God - not outside God. God is wherever we are. Even in suffering? Even in suffering.

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony. One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it.

Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor - never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees - not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them the spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment."

(On the commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, a few excerpts from a speech given by Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel, originally expressed at the Seventh White House Millenium Evening, Washington, D.C., April 12th, 1999. Transcript provided by the awesome book, "Speeches That Changed the World: The Stories and Transcripts of the Moments that Made History.")

74 Days Ago

2010-01-17T18:19:00.003-06:00

it has been a life spent
staring up at big branches
and leaves of startling swaggering

it is a life spent under tall grasses
and the muscle ache of parting,
always only peering
between eyelashes.

the exhaustion is scaffolded by
the sitting still.
if it moved and had life,
it would be a thing untired.

it is not a thing in motion
that needs rest;
it is that a thing not moving is
not exhausted.

Drought

2010-01-16T11:08:00.002-06:00

It's been a while, since I've been struck by something.

I don't know why, but I have my suspicions: enlightenment arrives at those who are searching, and I've got my head in the sand. I guess I am not even looking around.

I made a painting, that I'm very proud of, for the first time in months. I did it last night. I woke up at 2am after sleeping for four hours, and read some of my previous writing because I couldn't fall back asleep. I forgot a lot of what I had written. I remembered that I had forgotten what it was like to arrive at something special; to realize something hard, to have it hit me, hard.

It's strange to me, how the drought arrives so slowly and yet all of a sudden, and it's hard to even remember what it was like when it was raining.

Sleepwalking

2009-11-08T16:59:00.000-06:00

I didn’t think it could hurt this much.

That the pain, being something black and unfit for life, would actually warp itself into a black hole inside my chest, and stem outward in leaves and coiling branches to choke all things outside of it that had a turn of color, a patina of hatred, cast from my mind, and my senses.

All films, all art, all thought stemmed from and created him.

Here was a man who was conscious. All human beings being philosophers, whether they recognize it or not, here was a man who was conscious of being human. All else are silent sleepwalkers, and I alone am left, with no voice, and no sunlight, in a waking nightmare.

I keep nudging the person next to me – “Are you seeing this? What do you think?” – but they remain unseeing, and I know not to wake them.

I have to pray to address the violence that lies dormant, in seed form, in my chest. This is how deep the hatred stems; it lies coiled like the snake it is, ready to snap at the slightest leaf tremble on the ground, at the slightest infraction and invocation from a dead thing with no string to the seed.

This is the thing to get through, when I thought I was already through.

This is the varnish to remove, the stain left over from the polish, when the polish has not been perfectly lifted; this is what to be wary of, when it seemed it couldn’t creep up any further, when it seemed it had been melted away by the sunlight.

This is the danger I present to the world. This is the darkness that is unfit to be cleaned by the sunlight. This is the dangling deadly fruit that will hit the ground with a silent thud, and will be felt only by my hands, my feet, my skin. This is the poison that settles and swirls at the bottom of the cup, after it’s been presumed to have been swallowed down; the trace elements stuck to the imperfections in the cup and upon each refill of liquid, I drink it down, again, and again. This is the residue that keeps on giving.

I have to pray for the protection of my neighbor, as I know as God knows that I am already broken, or that I will be soon, and the stillness I am capable of is the only thing saving us both.

This is the precipice I didn’t plan to reach, because I was not informed it existed. This is the vantage point I didn’t plan for. This is the sight I didn’t think I could see. This is what I didn’t know I didn’t know; what I never could have planned for; this is the unknown of which I need protection from.

I feel that I am being pulled to these exact corners of life not by my own will nor desire, but by something, who knows as well as I do how unnecessary all of it is, the pulling of me, the dragging of me, to bring me, what? Closer to a perspective, closer to a prayer that will bring me closer to,…what? To the great Something? So much unnecessary dragging; I see right through the strings and I am not impressed nor convinced.

And the hatred begins, again.

I wish I had fallen asleep earlier. Now that I need to, I am unable.

I wish that there were a book I could write, and burn into the words all sadness, all hatred of life, all longing, all burning tears so that its very presence would have a weight, a gravity, that would draw me to it, in the next life; draw me to this book on a shelf, in a distant or near bookstore, and I would remember as from a faint whisper: “here is the thing you must do to save him”, and I would know, I would be so pulled as to seek it in advance, it carrying all weight from my life and my love, the entirety of my love, to protect me from making the same mistake again, in another life. But the world will end with a fire, and a crash, and all evidence that permits us newness and betterness in the next life will burn with it, and I will make the same mistake again, and again, and again.

This is why the hatred begins.

This is the vantage point I am pulled to, and not above. This is where the line is drawn. This is where the thrashing begins.

This is where I wait for them to fall asleep, because in their stillness, they are protected. In their silence, when they do not even know not to reach me, they are saved. This is the line at which the blackness in me reaches through curling smoke-strands to fade away into the darkness, and to never reach, with open hands. This is where the smoke-curls end.

This is why the noise is always brighter in the night.

To call the sleepwalkers, to bathe their clothed eyes in artificial light. This is where the futility begins. This is where the strings collide.

This is where the cavity begins; this is where the picking, the stabbing, the pointing and whispering begins; this is where the abcess is formed and this is how the blood is drawn. This is where it pools; where it is congealed; and this is where the sleeping wound is awakened once more.

This is where the abcess begins.

This is where the tying-in of metaphor, like black velvet threads of ribbon, is formed. This is where ghost becomes ghost, and where noise is absorbed into the wall, from one slant. This is where the likeness of beauty is deceased, where it slides down to the floor in a crumpled, forgettable heap. This is where the ocean floor metes the wooden floor; and where the sound waves crash upon the door, and in the hallway, all passengers floating through, shuffle past, with no awareness more.

The Flood

2009-10-29T22:00:00.000-05:00

It's not going to last.

And no matter how long it seems to last, it will never be forever.

This is not necessarily a bad thing; the good things get better, the bad things get better, the great things end, and the bad things end. Everything is in flux, no matter how static it may seem. Something makes way for something else.

With every moment, implicit in our action is the fact that someone else will go after us.

It's not going to be as good as it seems it should be. But it often turns out to be something that has value.

You can judge situations all you want, but they're either going to exist, or they're not. Get busy loving or get busy leaving, because nobody else is feeling your irritation.

It's always better than you think it is, and it's always worse than you think it is.

We are afraid of the wrong things, and sometimes the fear runs so deep, we forget that we live under it. We get used to the protection.

You're responsible for getting it there, because everyone else is apathetic, lazy, or doesn't have your standard of excellence when it comes to what you want.

If they say they are, they're not, at all. Their actions would take the place of the need for their words.

When there is evidence, there's no need to convince.

Beauty, elegance, and incredible quality are very difficult to obtain both in people and in material objects. You have to pay a lot for them, and you have to work a lot for them, but they're the only things that mean anything, and they are divine.

Quality saves energy, time, and money. You always pay more for what is poor.

Humor, however, is usually free, and always priceless.

Self-crucifixion is the only way to perfection. But guess what? - It's a myth. There are fleeting moments of it, but guess what? It's not going to last.

Life's greatest curses are answered prayers. If you disagree, then you know exactly what to pray for, and I need your help.

If someone has to keep making excuses, then they are not with you. Not in any way that means anything, and not in any way worth preserving.

If they don't apologize, then they are not with you, and you do not want them around.

If they can't forgive you, then they are not with you, and you do not want them around.

Life is work.

Anything worth anything has to be worked for, and earned.

Anything worth anything is also going to hurt a bit, if not a lot. It is at least going to be pretty uncomfortable.

Perhaps the only exceptions to this are relationships with other people, when the fit, like a great piece of couture, is just right.

Time is all you've got, and even that is always, always up in the air.

There's no beauty without danger.

I've learned to ignore any grand idea of God.

I've learned to assume that if there is any God to be had, it is within, and is as natural and instinctive as being hungry, or trying to catch something if it falls, or reaching out to embrace someone in joy or in pain.

It's not anything you can arrive at by thinking about.

10.21.09

2009-10-27T15:25:00.002-05:00

10:21pm - 12:01am

10.21.09-10.22.09

Duke of Perth, Clark Street.

Emmy Lou Harris on Ipod.

It’s a bit of an unbearable sadness, and I don’t know who to turn to, and what to express to whom, without sounding desperate.

It’s a strange thing, to think that I have to work for my own happiness, that it’s not something that I’m automatically granted, by virtue of being conscious. I can’t believe that even that has to be a struggle.

Is this what it is to have high standards? Is this something trying to force my hand to develop a better life for myself? Because I don’t think it’s going to work.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think it will.

I feel these choices coming at me to reach out to people, to allow myself to be reached out to, and I feel like I’m failing, failing, failing.

Like every hand that reaches out, I just push away. I don’t know what else to do because to receive that hand would be so painful, I’m not sure why, but that’s how it feels.

It’s strange, to have people around you reaching out to you because they love you, and you, not being able to absorb that, almost as if it’s something your body literally can’t digest, so you don’t even try to ingest it. You just avoid it, in principle, in whole.

This requires a bit of a celebration.

I am free of it. Of the guilt. It may still be a while before I fully acclimate my life to that new status, but I feel it tonight, this is meaningful.

I recognize tonight that I didn’t cause his death, that I didn’t force his hand. When he said “you saved me, I’ll never forget that”, and “we’ve got to look out for each other”, I don’t think I should have taken it as, We are the only ones who can help each other.

I’ve not written back to people, and they didn’t kill themselves, so just because he did, does not mean it’s my fault. Even if I was the only one who knew about it, even if I was the only one he divulged all this stuff to, even if, even if, even if. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault, and tonight, I know this, I feel this, even if reason or rationale or anything else fails to pull through for me. It’s not my fault. I’m free of it.

So if I’m free of it, what am I to do?

Go to New York.

I know I said I wouldn’t drink, but… I think tonight called for a toast.

What are the choices that lay before me?

A lot of things.

Self-destruction.

The embracing of every aspect of my life, and those in it.

Being honest with people and declaring exactly what it is that I’m thinking.

Not smiling if I don’t feel like smiling. No matter whom I have to sell a dress to.

He and I had come here, and we sat at this exact table, in this exact same spot.

I tried hard with him. I tried to learn, I tried to be a better person, but there was a point at which I thought, and acted, like “He’s just gonna have to take me as me. As is.” And I don’t know if he could, but I guess, in another way, I don’t know if I could.

I wanted so much to have someone set a standard for me – it’s breaking me up a bit right now, in public, in a flipping pseudo-English bar right now, no less, to admit this – but I wanted someone to set the bar for me and for me to rise to what I thought that would be. I think the whole time, it wasn’t even about that, there was no expectation that I had to be any certain way, but nonetheless, I wanted to, you know? I wanted to try. I wanted to feel the joy of going over and above the line that didn’t even exist; and for the first time in my life, there seemed to be a man that loved me unconditionally – (oh god, I’m so afraid that this feeling is only fleeting, that I’m going to relapse two Tuesdays from now and realize that he’d be alive if only I’d written to him; the precariousness of almost having saved him is epic, but I hope I never believe that again, never again, never, again).

I compare everyone to him. I can’t help it. No one was as…warm, as intelligent, as embracing, as determined, as strong, and the problem is, because he was so intent on covering up so much of himself, I think a lot of that strength came from his ability to wholly avoid and ignore….or put aside…his pain. I wish, in a sense, that things had turned out very differently, but really, they couldn’t have. They couldn’t be any other way than they are, right now.

This is the rub: the ability to consider possible worlds, other worlds, and not be able to do anything about it, to be able to think of a different outcome, and yet, for it not to be. This is a kind of hell. Not that I think it is, but actually, that it is. I cried for so long, and I cried so much, thinking that I had let him down…remembering receiving the news…thinking that it couldn’t be possible, but, that of course it was.

I don’t know how to rebound, how to bounce back from that. To know that the one person you loved more than anyone was gone….it’s the strangest thing. Because you know, having been alive, having been involved with this person, that you would have had an impact on them, but the thing is, you didn’t reach out. In time, that is. It’s a timing thing. And the motherfucker about death is, you don’t come back from it, not after a week, not by the time they found him.

I read in some Kabbalistic text that there was a way for someone to be brought back from the dead. That a rabbi had lain on top of a deceased child, and had lain, eyeball to eyeball, nose to nose, mouth to mouth, on the person, and after seven days, had brought them back to life. At Dayne’s funeral, I wanted to rip open his casket, and lay on top of him, before he was interred in his tomb. I wanted to lay on top of him, eyeball to eyeball, and see if it would work if there was even a possibility that it could be the case, that it could save him. But I knew I would look crazy.

C**t

2009-10-26T21:53:00.000-05:00

. Status quo is the strongest force in the universe. In this sense, logically, liberalism is insanity; conservatism, as a metaphysical principle, is the only reality. Liberation is a dream. But it's one worth fighting for.

. I never, ever thought it possible that by giving it all up, I'd bring it all in.

. Every day, I am grateful that I return to my apartment. Because it is mine.

. I read an article yesterday about Guy Ritchie. He has three lines that he lives by. He revealed two, and concealed the third. This bothers me in a way that I cannot fully express. If you've got an idea to share, fucking share it.

. I am really, really impressed with the voice I use to talk to my dog, and how much I think I sound like a little kid, with the way I phrase words. I once made my ex-boyfriend choke on his food because I used that voice on him, and so, literally, he could have died from how cute he thought I was.

. This voice would probably annoy the shit out of someone else.

. But then again, maybe they would just end up choking. Just a little. Just enough to make it count.

. Thanks to him, I've discovered a predilection for really filthy, sexist jokes. And I'm loving it. If you have a donkey, and I have a rooster, and your donkey eats my rooster, what do you have? (Holler if you know this.)

. I feel better when I don't eat meat products.

. And yet, I crave steak, with garlic butter, parsley, and fat rinds every day, at least once a day.

. My principles on the matter are as slippery as the butter sliding off the steak I'm eating right now.

. Today I realized what a fucking airhead I sound like when I make bold declarations like "I'm a vegan." I've learned to shut up about it all so at least if I'm being a big flake, no one else knows.

. On that note, I'm pretty convinced that if you have to declare it, it's not true. Your actions would speak for your words.

. (damn, that was good.)

. Every single time, I've thought, "I'm gonna marry him." It's become something else now. I'm okay with not knowing the end. The fact is, since I'm not sure I can change any of it, I'd rather not have the guilt on top of it.

. It took one and a half years to go from denying it to accepting it, and everything in between. The priest told me, "Remember the stages of grief, so that when it happens again, you're better-prepared." That was the rub: it's going to happen again.

. I disagree with death, so I disagree with life. That's a hard thing to live with. You're always denying and rejecting the things that are all around you. The seeds that are being sown every moment, and the fruits that they are bearing, you are burning. It's a very combative way to live life. But it gives me something to think, and it gives me something to fight. And that is important.

. I've cursed existence and God a great deal. I'm not ashamed of it. But someday, if I'm burning in hell (fingers crossed), well, that's just gonna add fuel to the fire. Literally.

. Joy said in the car yesterday, "You know, it was a really hard day for all of us, but I've never lost somebody that I've been really, really close to." It dawned on me that I lost the person that I was closest to in the whole world.

. It's a ridiculous thing to have to resurrect from. I guess it gives me an interesting story to tell, but the problem is, it's not a story I want to be telling.

. The beauty is that you build your life around someone, and this gives your existence incredible meaning, more than you'd ever known or thought possible. The bitch of it is that when they go, you go with them. I've had to learn how to be a person again, since this. One part of you cannot die; all of you dies, and then all of you has to be reborn. You cannot break off a part from the whole.

. In a sense, then, you choose your own death, and it's a reflection of your life, of your mind. For him, it was, "This is the way it is; I'm right, and no one can convince me otherwise." And then, no one could. And we were suddenly convicted of something that wasn't even on the table. I could have stopped it, maybe. I maybe could have interceded. Why didn't I, then? Because I didn't believe him. Well, now, I'm convinced.

. It was while running on the treadmill that I realized that he's gone, and that I don't have a feeling about it. I'm not sure that that's a good thing. But considering how much my heart hurt over it, maybe it's a great thing.

. I'm not sure if I had the extra beat before it happened, but I know that at the most intense period of grieving, or really, right after that, I went to the doctor because my heart was behaving strangely. I believe that the grief caused it, caused the actual sickness of the heart, caused what they think is a tear in the muscle.

. I hear myself think this and start to feel sorry for myself, but the fact is, I wanted to cause myself that pain. Because I believe that he felt it, and I wanted to be with him, even if it was in pain.

. There are two roads to go down with him: life or death. If I choose him, I choose death. I have to let him go. Even he knew not what he did. I like to believe that after, now after his death, he knows differently. But that's a lot to like to believe.

. I am so, incredibly, unbelievably blessed by the people in my life, and am especially re-blessed by the reintroduction of old friends to my life, after many years. I'm massively thankful for all of you, even if you can't handle me right now. It will come together soon.

. I am learning what it means to be loved and treated well by people. And more importantly, to accept it, because I know that I am deserving of it.

. It's a very simple thing, really: when you reject what you are given, you stop getting it. You'll get another chance later, because that is just how life works, but really, you've got to accept it. You've got to embrace it. Give it a bear hug and fucking mean it. This is what it means to have grace: to accept the invitation to be beautiful.

. This is something that is many, many years in the making, and yet, its effect is retrograde in experience. It shows me how much others have always been this way towards me, and now my life, seen through a different lens, is infinitely, instantly, like a kaleidoscope of richness and tenderness.

. I thought I saw him at the train station. He was sitting on a stool at the bar. And suddenly I felt that it was the end of a movie. And it was a happy ending.

. I wanted to tell her off. After it had happened, I wanted to have looked her in the eyes and said "You're going to apologize to my friend, then you're going to leave and you're going to take your shitty money elsewhere." But I was in shock. I was so shocked at her casual cruelty, that I couldn't even look up at her. I'm ashamed at my weakness.

. I need to pause before reacting. I also need to improve my reactions.

. Basically, I need to be a lot better at being a raging c**t.

. I have film rolls of him from a few years ago. They may have disintegrated by now. I remember the pictures themselves, but it's not enough. It's never going to be enough.

. The CD he made me is the only thing he ever gave me. I thought of loaning it to a friend and it seemed to me that I was being asked to give up a vital organ. I didn't ever, ever want it out of my possession. Now, I really could give a shit.

. I click really well with the smart, bookish girls that come in, the ones who are really intellectual and really funny. I don't click so much with many of the other ones.

. I firmly believe in saving yourself.

. But I believe that if you can change someone, then you have saved them.

. Nothing gives me such purpose and hope as thinking this. If it's in increments, if it's by altering them in even some small way, then it's like my job is done. Life is empty if I remove that possibility. If this makes me ragingly, egregiously codependent, then, oh well.

. I try as much as possible to practice radical forgiveness. But other times, it's really a good thing to not let someone back in so quickly.

. I don't understand being hurt so much by someone that you couldn't have them in your life. Unless it's a type of physical, or mental, or sexual abuse, or they stole from you, or you just can't stand them, then I just can't understand how you wouldn't want someone who was a friend to not be in your life. What could ever be that bad? Maybe things end out of guilt, more than they do out of perceived receipt of pain.

Remember

2009-10-25T19:47:00.000-05:00

I forgot.

There was a bright thing.

It moved quickly.

It had a soothing voice, and it made me feel special and right and like a good fit.

And then I forgot.

I wake up, every half hour, or two days, or 3.6 weeks, or five seconds, and remember that it could be.

I wonder how it is for you.

Hedy Lamarr, It Was Me You Were Thinking Of.

2009-10-23T21:49:00.003-05:00

I don't know how I continually arrive at this, when it's a moving platform that at every chance evades my landing on it. But magically, supernaturally, I land it, every time, every single time.

It is frequency-hopping of the highest skill on my part, really, on the part of any human being. The greatest only constant consistency is the abject denial on my part, the refusal to see it another way other than the way I'd like for it to be, the way in which I don't have to assume the worst about other people, the way in which the illusion is maintained.

I thought that because you liked me, you were on my side. It was something I forgot: that you have interests that need to be met, and I supply the demand. Somehow, I forgot the rules of engagement. I forgot the standard of the need for the transaction, what it means, and what it comes from, and what it leaves me with, which is nothing.

The Devil Is Deep Water

2009-10-23T20:59:00.000-05:00

I can feel it; there's a wholeness to be had, and I cannot get full from what is currently in front of me.

There's a nourishment to be obtained; there is a need to be addressed and attended, just the same as a patient with a wound that will not close.

Only this one goes without alarm. Or, really, it's a silent vibration, a pulsation that can only be felt by one; but it is an alarm call that plumbs the air, alerting someone, a particular anyone, that the distress is real, that the need is great, that it's not enough to be clean and pure, but rather, we have to get wet, to get dirty, to be blended, because without the danger there is no beauty.

No Tip-Toe

2009-10-21T21:03:00.003-05:00

There's a sense of slowed-down urgency... of running to stand still.

I don't realize at certain times, for blocks of time, that there are choices being made at every moment, and others are going to assess them, just as I am going to assess and evaluate the choices of others.

It's hard not to take it all personally; after all, if someone does something involving you, how do you not take it as a direct action against you or to you? How do you not take it personally? Because even if they weren't thinking of you, then, well, they weren't thinking of you. It's hard to avoid your involvement with others in your own life.

How much should you take it personally if you don't factor in? I guess there's no answer for this, or no correct answer. I guess you just give people space, or you give them a chance to come around, or you just try to not irritate them or upset them further, if you know the things that cause them to get frustrated.

But sometimes, I just want to trample all over the eggshells.

2009-08-24T23:15:00.002-05:00

1. Fly. Like, with my own will, and arms, and body.

2. Star in a movie with Daniel Day-Lewis, because I've earned that position.

3. Walk with Russell Crowe, at the end of "State of Play", with the lights turned off towards the back of that huge office of their newspaper room.

4. Own the house on Kelton Court, and shower in that bathroom, overlooking the bay, every morning of my life.

5. Diego, running on a beach, into the sunset of southern California, while "Zephyr Song" is playing.

6. Save people. In a way that no one else could save them.

7. Him to be alive, and happy, and healthy.

8. Write a Great Book.

9. Write the next big text in philosophy and political philosophy.

9 1/2

2009-08-24T22:50:00.004-05:00

1. It was the best I've ever felt, as a woman, and as a creative, sexual, whole person.

2. It caused in me an incredible desire for both wealth and the ability to provide, for both myself, and others, in all the ways I'd always thought were wrong, or indecent, or immoral.

2.5 I don't know whether it was the hot dogs, the wine, or Ayn Rand. But let's just say it was all three, and to this effective trifecta, I say, "Amen."

3. I wonder about the lifestyle it would provide. Is it something you could inherently enjoy? Would it require a total numbing of yourself, your natural, organic reactions? Or, is it something better than that? Something inherently better than we could ever think it could be? I'm so curious to find out.

4. Nearly all day, it was as if I was walking around in a dream. It's been easily one of the best days ever, if not just in recent memory.

5. It's amazing what you can do when you walk around with desire in your head. A-maze-ing.

6. It's something others can sense, if they could be a recipient. And it's amazing to be able to hold, in your head, ever so lightly but truthfully, if for the moment, the "fact" that they could be the recipient.

7. I feel that I've been blessed with a small ray of knowledge that has illuminated the entire world for me.

8. If this is what it is to have that envy, then call me a sinner.

9. Baby, I'm drinking that wine you gave me, and the great thing? It's starting all over again. Bless you and your knowledge of good wine. Bless you. It's shaping up to be a great night.

18.5

2009-08-12T19:20:00.006-05:00

1. She has the most perfect smell. I'm not even sure my own kids could smell this perfect. I realize this is a weird statement, but hey, at least I know my limits.

2. After getting this dog, I'm not sure I could handle the intensity of having an actual child, and all the fear, love, emotion, and metaphysics that go with that. Dogs might be the cap on my ass.

3. She reminds me of myself. We even sleep the same way.

4. It's a lot of pressure.

5. His very presence has a soothing, almost an ordering effect.

5.5. When we have a deeper, more intimate conversation, I feel relieved afterwards, like a pressure has been alleviated; a knowledge I'd been seeking has been obtained. Until that happens, I actually feel frustrated. It's subtle, but it's there.

6. He comes with advice, insight, revelation, and an instruction manual about himself. This is even better than I could have imagined, even though it's not easy. It's like a continuous test that I feel well-equipped to take.

7. I'd been at a point recently at which I would say I "arrived" at my life.

8. I embraced exactly where I am, and what I do. But I stopped searching. I stopped writing, stopped wondering, stopped painting. The hunger went away. The desire went away. Is that a good thing? Buddhists say yes. I say maybe.

9. I never realized the delight inherent in the search. I also never realized contentment could feel so empty.

10. I have to constantly remind myself of how to think of you: as a treasure. As I would think of a friend. As a gift to be held lightly in the hands, not with a clenched fist.

11. And yet...there is a deep path behind you. The mystery and beauty promised on that path are something I cannot have with a friend.

12. It's pretty simple: if you have good thoughts about someone, you're going to love them. If you indulge in negative thoughts about them, you're going to want to get away from them. In this sense, you can absolutely choose whom you love and whom you don't.

13. I need to nap. A lot. Since she arrived. I didn't think adoration and love could be so exhausting. Again: not helping the whole kids situation.

14. I think of you now, and I'm not sad. The emotion is not right under the veil. I don't know if I've put it away permanently, or if I've realized you and I could never have been, anyway. But either way, I've remembered my life.

15. I miss the agony of grieving you. It was a very, very close, and very pure embrace.

16. He's not perfect, but he's determined to be better. I keep thinking, when I witness him, "This is a man".

17. Last night, when we first got her, I was playing with her and kissing her and Diego so much, that I actually had to pull dog hair out of my mouth. I imagined coughing up a hair-ball this morning.

18. So, strangest thing: I coughed up a hair-ball this morning...

322

2009-08-10T23:49:00.002-05:00

you slide back

and yet grab handfuls

out of the air,

arranging them with your grasp

and they will travel thru your hand,

up your arm,

tingling in your throat,

and as you brush your lips

against my cheek and my ear,

the words will sprinkle out,

and be caught forever in my hair.

Eleven

2009-08-05T01:32:00.002-05:00

1. Peanut butter makes me happy.

2. It's hard not to see yourself reflected in the world, or with your friends, but especially when you fall for someone. So many hopes get placed in such a tiny basket. But it makes me feel worse to think of being apathetic and just going with the first clean, money-making individual you meet. There has to be a sense of magic, a sense of eternity. And if you can't see the future in your lover, then you're going to hate yourself in the morning.

3. When I think of love, it makes me sad.

4. I really hope to get to a point at which I move past this.

5. I've desired much, and I've desired little. Desiring much is much, much better.

6. I was more creative, and in a greater variety of ways, when I was little. I wonder why the fuck this ever goes away.

7. I wish I lived with my little brother and sister at my dad's house, with him and my step-mom. I feel I got shorted on the little sibling thing but now that I have it, it's not enough to just visit. I want to feed them breakfast. Like, every day.

8. I fall for someone, and I wish that they were a certain way, and am disappointed. It keeps pulling me back to this: that it's better to be alone, to not compromise myself to anyone, to know that I can swagger down the street and kiss whomever I want, whenever I want, and not have to answer to anyone.

9. I used to tell people close to me "Don't express too much to me." Now I know how painful that is, especially when you're just trying to tell someone you love them, in whatever way you can. Funny, how it hurts you, to not be able to give. I never thought it could be that way.

10. If it's a feeling, then I always get it wrong. Maybe it's totally rational. Maybe it's as methodical as perusing a job application. And if you get along with them well, and maybe if they make you laugh, too, then you just go with it.

11. I'm still undecided.

Shell

2009-08-05T01:18:00.002-05:00

It's a shield. It's a shell to raise, to cower behind. It bears a spiny surface and it protects something jelly-soft on the underside.

Do I take it as it is? Do I respect and address and react to the surface push outwards? The hard, spiky surface that keeps me at bay?

Or do I address the frightened underbelly that has to lie beneath?

Seal

2009-08-01T00:39:00.002-05:00

Your flaws make me perfect.

I dreamt of your flaws, and of being the person they give me the chance to be.

Pull

2009-08-01T00:27:00.000-05:00

I need him.

I need to express things to him, constantly.

If mine is his outlet, then he is my outlet. I need to plug in; i need to discharge, I need to see a reaction. I need to know that something in him is being affected; that I can change something in him. That I can cause a change in him. I need to see this, and more than anything, I need to do this.

I'm writhing, and twitching, to express myself to him.

Where are you, now that I need you? Now that I need only you? I moan and I ache and I twist in anguish for you, over you, at the thought of you, at your voice.

I need you. My very heart is for you, it beats against my breast and wants to leap into yours. It reads you, like a shark. It knows you are alive, that you're in my world, and from 40 miles away, my heart desires only to move near you. It knows you are in the water and it causes me to want to swim closer to you, to hone in, to taste you, to just bite into you and shake my head and my jaws and know you are locked in between my teeth, unable to move.

Set It Off

2009-07-31T22:55:00.002-05:00

It's about a reaction.

It's about taking what someone else can give you, how big or how small, how much or how mean, how sweet or how hard, how cold or how kind.

To need to give with no limit, only to brush up against another molecule that can't handle that kind of heat, is to bounce around, endlessly, as a peg, always trying to find the right hole, never quite finding the right fit.

It's a heat to give off. It's a heat to be absorbed.

You either step closer to the heat, or you move away from it, and you can only do what you need to do.

Can you reorient your nature? Maybe.

Does it require a lot of burning? A lot of discomfort, while you move closer to the source? Maybe.

Will it be worth it? Maybe: is the red something you can get used to? Is the blue something you can live with?

Do you find the perfect purple in between?

I'm red with desire to warm you.

Here I Am, Waiting to Hold You

2009-07-24T03:17:00.002-05:00

This is just too beautiful not to celebrate.

How 'Bout Now?

2009-07-14T12:34:00.000-05:00

I want to run around my house, screaming for joy with my kids.

I want all of us to sing songs so loudly and so badly that we break down into convulsive laughter.

I want us to be goofy and jump on things and do flips over furniture.

I can't wait for all of this.

Father Figure

2009-07-08T17:36:00.000-05:00

(Incidentally, I'm having deja vu now upon publishing this. AWESOME.)

11.34 pm, November 14, 2005

It's one of my favorite George Michael songs, if such a category of favorites could exist (hey, he had some great tunes; "Freedom"? With the video with every hot supermodel from the 90's? "Faith"? TOTALLY ROCKS). But "Father Figure" has special significance because my whole life, I've gravitated towards men, always older than me, who were very intelligent, very thoughtful, and very compassionate, and it didn't take me long to realize why that was.

At one point, not too long ago, I was having a hard time reaching out to God. I tried calling Him "Father", to bring it into more familiar terms, and for a while it worked, and then the weekend was over. For whatever reason, it couldn't stick.

I am in a relationship now in which I am learning to do things that I disobeyed my mother about for my entire childhood, adolescence, and the years in which I was living at home and I was still too immature to just do what she asked. My mother was an amazing mother; but I was too stubborn to be of any good. That tenacity (to use a euphemism for "stubborn blockhead") has served me immeasurably in certain ways, but has done nothing for me in terms of shaping me - or allowing myself to be shaped - into a strong, responsible adult. As you know from my previous entries, I will have a paper due the next day, and I could be on a diet, but I will order a pizza, watch a movie, and then surf the internet for four hours from 3 to 7 am, instead of actually writing my assignment and getting my sleep. I feel I am beyond reproach, and I'm waiting for someone to scare me into doing things.

I think I'll be waiting forever.

An amazing thing happened to me today. I've been exploring Chrisitianity lately, because, well, why not, and a minister that I have befriended expressed some concerns he had for me regarding my virtue as a responsible young woman.

For anyone who knew me five years ago, that conversation, back then, would have never have taken place.

For anyone who has known me in my whole non-Christian life, this would have never have taken place.

I have known this person for exactly four weeks, and seen him a total of four times. And yet he had the love and concern for me to express things that no man in my life who should have expressed such things ever did. That is magnificent.

The weight of what that means has yet to truly make its way into my heart, but I do know that since I've been trying to become closer to God (emphasis on "trying", as evidenced by my last blog, the one with all the hatred and the expletives), He has shown me the things that I long for the most; the things that have been missing in my life. I feel as though I am beginning to find something that I have been longing for as long as I can remember, and that I have searched for in vain, and found instead only heartache and disappointment and rejection.

Lindsay Lohan recently released a song entitled "Confessions of a Broken Heart". In it she describes her heartache over not having her dad around, and suffering through abuse that I never went through, but that, as a human, we can all empathize with. In addition to being a very cute, rich little girl, she also one-upped me on the spiritual end: she was able to express her pain in such a concise way and with so much vulnerability and truth that I am ashamed that she has a song on MTV about something that I denied to to myself for years regarding the very same subject. Now, I've been a very lucky girl, and never suffered the things she had, but I think I am not alone in feeling that I wish I could have connected to my parents, particularly my father, in a better way.

I always thought of myself as emotionally aware, and perhaps more so than most other people, but it turns out that the one thing I always needed to express, I never even let myself feel, and a 19 year old beat me to it. It also turns out that I'm not alone, and that it's a real relief when you won't let yourself feel certain things, and then something in the universe reminds you that they are alive and kicking in your soul, and that someone else did the work of expressing it for you. So I'm thankful to her for having the balls to express herself, and to express the pain of millions of other kids who couldn't say it or wouldn't allow themselves to even feel it, and had no choice but to feel it, when they heard the power of lyrics put to music.

It's amazing what life won't let you get away with.

Sometimes when it catches up with you, it cuts so deep that you feel as though your heart is the desert floor, cracked open from the drought, and when the rain pours in, it burns so hard that you couldn't have ever imagined that relief from pain hurt more than the pain itself.

So Bunny

2009-07-03T19:12:00.004-05:00

I have an obsession with Playboy.

Bunnies, to be exact.

Potentially being one, to be more exact. I have no shame about this. And if I had more balls, I'd go to California and get to that Mansion and I'd be a bunny, lickety-split. But from what I've learned from "The House Bunny", I'm like, 64 in Bunny Years. Not so good. (Couldn't they put vaseline on the lens for me? I've heard that's a good trick).

"The House Bunny" is one of my favorite movies. I understand the lesson of it, but I still can't help but fantasize about the idea of what it would be like to be a Bunny. To live in a big house, with tons of girls who are like your sisters, to have a huge swimming pool, an unlimited spending account, all the plastic surgery and personal trainers you'd want, and the adoration and obsession of pretty much of all men (whether they admit it or not). You wake up every morning and the sun is shining; you can go shopping with your Playmates and eat lunch wherever you want; you travel to Paris or Vegas or New York with Hef on business - or pleasure! - and you're like this little goddess with a super cute wardrobe and stripper heels.

I've wondered frequently about the future of the Playboy Empire, and what will happen to it once Hugh Hefner passes - which will be a sad day. He worries me, he does. I wonder if he sees his bunnies move on to bigger and better lives and if he is melancholy over it at times. I wonder if all the bunnies who moved away end up returning to, say, celebrate holidays. I wonder if Hef has sweaters knitted for them, or if he gives them red bikinis and antlers to replace the ears. I wonder if he gives them dental, and what his healthcare plan is like. Besides the whole possibility of tons of casual sex, they seem like healthy, happy girls. There's a price for that happiness, no doubt, but I guess the question is, if they're happy, then isn't that what matters?

Frontier

2009-07-01T19:39:00.004-05:00

My mom and I were looking at the rows of dogs confined in their cages in the pet store tonight and none of them felt like mine, nor like it should be mine. Maybe I had no emotional peak because I know the dog technically won't be "mine", it would be my mom's, but I would think I'd feel at least something; it'd be an addition to our family.

And it occurred to me that maybe this is why people have their own children, and don't adopt. Because if they adopt, there's this little person that is not technically theirs, and doesn't have their blood, and doesn't have their smell, and doesn't look like them, and doesn't really resemble them. I think we all seek to obtain the things and the people that are reflections of ourselves, somehow, but maybe there's a point at which you stop trying to see yourself out there. What does it feel like to go about life and seek the truly unknown? To go where you don't see yourself?

I don't know what that leads to, and I don't know how to begin to list the different ways in which this manifests, aside from children and the decision to adopt or not to adopt, or to have kids, at all.

I've never been a person to step up to bat and say Okay, this is a duty, and I'll just do it. I have always counted my feelings on the matter, sometimes so heavily that I've talked myself out of duties, or outright shunned them. So I'm amazed at the idea of people who take something like a phrase from the Bible, and interpret it as God's suggestion that they should adopt, and then they do adopt, and they do it merely because another life needs them. This is so foreign a concept to me that I can actually feel my neurons firing when imagining what that might feel like.

Girls rock

2009-06-22T11:31:00.003-05:00

Words of wisdom, from my little sister, saved forever in my phone:

Girls rock boy jrowl

Sacrifice

2009-06-16T09:59:00.004-05:00

I desire for there to be a deep-seated deity in the pit of me who is never satiated and whose hunger goes unabated. Who won't be quenched even after I've sacrificed all pleasure and leisure to her.

She shall demand the impossible and she shall be wholly blind to all half-assed attempts, seeing only victory, never settling. She will be able to digest only whole bodies, my body, my soul, my bones, again, and again, and again.

I want her to wear my very teeth around her neck.

Carbon Copy

2009-06-16T09:56:00.003-05:00

He was a carbon copy of a human being.

He left residue all over me, and I couldn't clean it off for so long.

And he wasn't even the second sheet.

He was the last one, the one that you have to force the pen against the paper for, in order to hope to imprint.

Only, the words never quite make it through.

You can keep the copies.

I don't want your record.

374

2009-06-15T17:02:00.001-05:00

somehow, stepping on glassy slivers

produces not the shivers

i'd thought it would

i catch my fingers on iron spider webs

and as i walk i am followed

by unbreakable threads

i have often wondered what makes

a man sparkle

i say now that it is the

jewel of a woman

288

2009-06-15T16:13:00.002-05:00

the stars on my ceiling sky

don't glow as bright as once before

and notice this did the angel

resting his chin on my wall

the lights in my little world

do not come up as often

i've noticed, ever since

you unclothed me

i shall say, instead,

since you uncovered my red

the flowers agree as they

dangle on their vines

they slip loose pink

tile tears that dance

on my carpet

and i feel like a god

as my kingdom mourns for me

310

2009-06-15T07:53:00.003-05:00

i have tired

like the words

you say too deep to swim

and sink you quick

i am sorry for

my face, that the chasteness

in your eyes says

does not lick, from stretching

on the toes, the twelfth

layer

where crimson legs cross

and throw jade bracelets

for an offering

to which you markedly decline

and decide the

tear in this lining

unforgivable to the task

at hand

on the pads of your fingertips

and leave quicksand

on my pages

283

2009-06-14T21:43:00.001-05:00

To put it simply

your words float around

like burning butterflies

with each flap of their wings

more ashes settle in my eyes

It Was Chilling.

2009-06-14T21:23:00.003-05:00

I shake a delicate finger

at those who stop dreaming

only to be still with

the mad drive of a

mean, elaborate eternity

here for you & there

in me as we whisper

together and rob a language

beneath the shine of a

delirious sky.

A poem, from 1997.

Refrigerator poetry kit, bless you and your efficient economy.

Cent

2009-06-13T22:54:00.007-05:00

1. I have a hemangeoma in my upper left gum.

2. If it were to be punctured - which is hard to do, and I know, cause I tried it once - there's a good chance I'd bleed to death.

3. This is probably the only reason that I didn't pursue boxing.

4. And I love, love, love hitting things.

5. I also love, love, love makeup.

6. The thought of creating a really beautiful eye, with a lot of shadow and liner and mascara, and especially a really great eyebrow, is what gets me out of bed in the morning. Never underestimate the power of a great eyebrow. It lays the foundation for the whole face.

7. I paint. Abstracts.

8. For the past 6 years, I've had random visions of paintings.

9. Prior to "resuming" painting this spring, I hadn't touched a paintbrush in precisely 22 years.

10. I call my paintings "my children".

11. I firmly believe one of my paintings, entitled "Genesis", will eventually be featured in art history books.

12. I have an older brother from our parents' marriage, and he and I have two little siblings from my dad's remarriage.

13. I didn't meet them until the one was 4 and the other was born.

14. For about a year after I met my little brother and sister, when people would ask if I had siblings, I forgot to include them.

15. I don't feel guilty about this. This is merely a fact.

16. I get very uncomfortable with too much attention or affection.

17. But I find it highly irritating when people, to whom I dish out love, affection, and attention, can't seem to take it.

18. I believe that consciousness is everything.

19. I think, but do not yet believe, that the point of life is twofold: to work, and to discover that we are God.

20. I have dreamt of being the following:

21. An actor.

22. A director.

23. A marine.

24. A spy.

25. A monk. (Not a nun. A monk.)

26. If it's true that the one sin God does not forgive is cursing His name, then I'm fucked. Royally, irrevocably fucked.

27. But I'm not worried.

28. I am not a Catholic because of their idea that suicides cannot be forgiven.

29. Barring that fact, I think I'd be wearing Rosary beads as jewelry.

30. I spent the better part of a year.five believing I was the Messiah.

31. The idea took off when I intentionally deprived myself of sleep for about two weeks straight.

32. I had the most amazing visions, revelations, and abilities.

33. At least once a week, I wonder what I'd be like, if I continued thinking that way.

34. Or, if I had continued to deprive myself of sleep.

35. It made me understand, in a very different way, that gravity is what keeps life together on earth. It's what makes us interact with each other.

36. It sounds really spacey and flakey, maybe. But is it truthful? Yes. Take my word for it.

37. I have told several people that I loved them.

38. But the only time I stayed in love, was once, with a man I dated for four years.

39. My puritanical upbringing leads me to delude myself into feeling the need to fall in love with someone, when, really, I think I just want to get laid all the time, not have to deal with the boring day-to-day shit, and not feel guilty about leaving whenever I want.

40. With my luck, the first guy I try this with will probably be the guy I marry.

41. I never wanted children, really, really, wanted children, until a few months ago.

42. I once had a vision, a year ago, of having had children, watching them playing on a swing set in a backyard. I only saw the backs of their heads, the sunlight shining on their light brown hair. It was, without a doubt, the single most pure, beautiful, sweetest feeling I've ever, ever had in all my existence. I believe it was a vision tied directly to a guy I was dating at the time, to whom I felt a very, frighteningly deep connection.

43. This is a guy that no longer talks to me.

44. This was only one of many reasons as to why the cursing out of God commenced.

45. I love to dance.

46. I love to sing.

47. When I sing and dance, I remember that this is what life is supposed to feel like.

48. I plan to learn the moves to the dance-off of the MSA gang in "Step Up 2: The Streets."

49. I believe that to be the single greatest dance sequence ever committed to film.

50. I see sparks, everywhere I look. Sometimes they are the color of the object I'm looking at, but I can see something that looks like moving particles. Sometimes they're big, bright, and blue or white, or red or black. I will also look at the ground and see swirls, as if I were able to see the wind.

51. This began about a year ago.

52. I thought it was due to bad vision, but it happens whether I wear glasses, contacts, or nothing.

53. I'm curious as to whether everyone else experiences the same thing, or something equally odd but similar.

54. I once reached out to my brother to try to build a better relationship with him. He couldn't understand it at the time, and that hurt me, tremendously.

55. When he came around, a few years ago, the pain from my initial attempt had made me calloused. His attention didn't even enter my consciousness.

56. Now that I've realized that I should have been more welcoming, he's stopped calling. This hurts me, deep in my heart, more than anything else.

57. I often think about being adopted into a family, now, so that they can raise me, the way I was never, and should have been, raised.

58. I know I had a really good life, in comparison to many and most.

59. But this does not prevent me from knowing that I missed out on a great deal.

60. I have an obsession with Alexander the Great.

61. If his semen had been somehow preserved, I guarantee you, I'd find a way to get it, and carry his children.

62. It's moments like this when I think "Fuck, I'm an animal."

63. "But at least I'm a smart fucking animal."

64. Is the product of 8 x 8.

65. It took me about a decade after it first became cool, to finally embrace hip-hop as the tits lifestyle it is.

66. (I'm a late bloomer).

67. I wish I had been a 20-something chick in the 70's, when Sly Stallone hit his stride with "Rocky."

68. Because then I'd be having his babies.

69. From "Rocky" to "Rocky 4", he has, without a doubt, the most beautiful face and body of any man alive, before or after.

70. I really, actually, would like to look like Barbie, and no, I'm not ashamed of this.

71. What can I say? She's hot. If they'd made her a redhead, or a black chick, I'd be saying the same thing - in fact, I'd probably have admitted it earlier. They didn't. Get over it.

72. I believe in makeup as a spiritual tool. And no, I'm not kidding. Think about it.

73. I don't read as much as I probably should have, to spout off some of the shit I throw at people.

74. I get bored really easily.

75. If I had to take only two books in my hands while the rest of all other literature burned, I'd take Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Collected Essays", and Kimora Lee Simmon's "Fabulosity". Between Shakespeare, the Baghavad Gita, T.S. Eliot's poems, E.E. Cumming's poems, and boatloads of other texts, there's no comparing within their own canon. That said, I'd rather keep two works that inspire me under every circumstance, and that are outside of the realm of classic literature, and are like two best friends, constantly advising me and cheering me on. And no, I won't rethink this position.

76. I like a lot about life, but if there is going to be a Messiah, I'd like him to come soon, within my lifetime, hopefully before I start to get gray and wrinkly.

77. I may find a way to end it before I get old.

78. I can only commit to so much, to so many people.

79. When I found out they were hanging out, I had very violent thoughts about them.

80. God cursed me with an obsessive kind of love for people who wanted nothing to do with me.

81. I realized that you have to crawl your way out of hell to escape it. Nobody, but nobody, will ever save you.

82. But think about it: if it came down to only being saved in order to escape hell, well, then we'd REALLY be fucked.

83. Unless that messiah comes....

84. I used to take tons of photographs of people that I love.

85. I don't know when or why, but I stopped. Like, I screeched to a halt.

86. I write poems.

87. I'm not more proud of my paintings, but my paintings do give me a feeling that nothing else on earth provides me. Not writing, not love, not accomplishment. They make me feel whole with a very tangible steely quality in the pit of my stomach.

88. For a while, I wanted to marry Jesus.

89. Not like "become a nun" marry him.

90. I mean, like, He comes to earth and I get to be His Girl.

91. Since that's not looking like it'll happen, I'm gonna have to look into other options.

92. It's amazing the difference that a full face of makeup makes for me.

93. I am helplessly attracted to pretty but masculine lesbians with skinny Madonna arms - pre-yoga, like during the Blonde Ambition phase - who wear wife-beaters and boys pants.

94. I don't do anything about it, but that doesn't mean it's not hot.

95. Speaking of hot: Gene Hackman.

96. I disbelieve that Daniel Day-Lewis really wanted to do the film his wife directed.

97. I also disbelieve that she knew how to film him correctly: you don't swing the camera around when you're filming the Jesus Christ of the acting world. You keep it still, and you make everything revolve around Him. And by Him, I mean, Daniel Day-Lewis.

98. I agree with Picasso: women are either goddesses or doormats.

99. But I disagree with the bullshit that is the Madonna/Whore complex. Go fuck yourselves, whoever goes along with that idea.

100. I'd rather be surfing.

This Cowgirl Told The Blues to F**k Off

2009-06-13T20:52:00.004-05:00

It took reading one sentence from one girl's blog for me to realize this startling conclusion:

Why the FUCK am I so down on myself? I'm a fucking GREAT person!

Thanks, Cowgirl.

Yes, Those Are My Knuckles Bleeding. Why Do You Ask?

2009-06-12T23:53:00.002-05:00

I'd make an amazing spy.

I almost joined the Marines.

I taught myself how to throw knives.

I hollowed out a serious dent in my 80lb heavy bag - with bare knuckles.

I'd make a great stunt car driver.

I do all these things, and have bragged to men I've dated about these activities, for what reason?

To protect something inside of me that is as vulnerable as a bird with a broken wing.

Could You Put the Mask Back On? It's Better That Way.

2009-06-12T22:05:00.007-05:00

I have a thing about worship.

I tend to do it, a lot.

I have been a very, very lucky girl, and I happen to have had, and still have, many people in my life who simply amaze me. And I have told them this. And some of them have expressed the same back to me. My best friend once said, "I think you should be in love with your friends." I'd have to say, then, that I'm in love with a lot of people, some whom I've never technically met. ("Hi, Steve Nash? Want to follow me on Twitter?")

A guy I used to date ("Electrical Storm") was obviously trying to tell me, through his actions, that he no longer wanted anything to do with me. Canceling dates, not calling, barely responding to texts, etc. I gathered what he was doing, and I sure as hell was not about to let him off easy. This is a guy I once baked a carrot cake for, and walked around the city with it, in a bag, just to deliver it to him. This is a guy that had no response for me when I told him that I had fallen in love with him. This is a guy that I would read to, in bed, late at night, when he was tired.

The last time I saw him, I asked him point-blank. "I can take it," I said, which is true, and was true. "If you don't want to have anything to do with me, just tell me." He looked at me, eyes slightly wide, poker-faced. He couldn't say it. He looked down at his fries and picked one out and said "Are you sure you're not just trying to be hard?" "No, I simply prefer honesty." "Look," he began, chomping on the fry, "I think it's better for you if you spend some time away from me." What about me suggested that I couldn't handle him telling me to fuck off?

And what is it about brutal honesty that repels people? And I mean, being brutally honest about both the bad, and the good? Why does just hovering around zero seem to feel best to most?

When was it decided that embellishing the truth, or flat-out lying to people, was the best way to go about things? That divulging a passion, an obsession, was worse than being quiet? That prolonging a falsehood, and extending pain and discomfort, and unawareness, was better than a swift, blunt kick to the crotch? Or, punch in the boobs? Or that dispassion, and nonchalance, were somehow the ideal? And were infinitely more comforting than the warmest, most nurturing embrace?

I love honesty. I realize that in all situations, it's not wise to deliver it, but fuck, when someone asks, why not just tell them? Especially when your later behavior makes it ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that you should have just put your cards on the table?

There's a book called "The Four Agreements" that says that we agree on elements of what we call "reality" (which in many cases, can be un-truths) in order to be able to communicate, and live harmoniously. But when so many of us are so often doubting each other, smelling something foul about another's behavior, and feeling so out of harmony, then where do we begin to break the cycle? And I'm not just talking about the lies we can sniff out. I'm talking about the beauty we can feel: that the client from work would totally want to hang out with you outside of the office; that the guy you're dating is falling in love with you; that the friend living in the state you left misses you so much, they wish you could come back and move in with them?

Why can't we be a Declaration Nation and SCREAM IT FROM THE HILLTOPS?!

I try my best to come up with explanations for people's behavior, as a mass. I try to give them the spiritual benefit of the doubt (except, of course, in the case of individual guys I used to date. Their diagnoses are still TBD).

So, regarding the "unreality as reality" agreement, I would argue this: that maybe everyone, deep down, really just wants to love everyone. Maybe, since it's easier and nicer to feel good towards someone, or, to have no obvious negative feelings, people - myself included - are more inclined to go with a slightly skewed version of them. Maybe the goal for all of us is love, under ideal circumstances. If it has to be from a distance, then so be it. If it has to be by not having them in your life, so be it. If it has to be by believing that they will one day stop doing drugs, or "stop being gay" (as if that's a choice), or that you were the one who pushed them away, then that's the way the cookie crumbles. Or I guess, in this case, this is how the cookie is kept together.

Love from a distance is more pleasant. Sometimes it burns too brightly. Sometimes it's so intense, like an infra-red light, that you feel uncomfortable with it. Perhaps because love is truth, and truth feels the same way, people feel similarly in the presence of both. I don't know many people who can handle worship, or constant admiration and adulation. Most I know still struggle with it and run in the other direction. There seems to be a pretty standard frequency of expression of affection among people, and the same level seems to lie within people's comfort zones.

I see the sun as a physical symbol of the Light, or love, of God. I believe God set it up that way so we'd understand Him through our senses and our intelligence. It's a constant reminder for us, and science confirms it: the sun never goes away, it merely lights upon other parts of the earth, when it's out of our sight. Even in the darkest night, we know it will rise the next morning. And even under the grayest cloud cover, we know it is there, trying it's best to reach us.

Maybe with the ozone layer slowly depleting, we will adapt and our tolerance to light will build up, generation after generation. Maybe in a hundred years, we'll be able to embrace people we used to fight with without having to say a word, we'll be able to take in strangers off the street like they were our own children, and we'll be able to be totally honest with each other, because we know it won't be the death of either of us. And we'll be eager to honor and love and worship each other, because we all deserve it, and we'll be quick to show it in ways and with a frequency that is now beyond our reach.

To do my part, I'm going to stop wearing sunblock.

Reflection

2009-06-12T16:44:00.002-05:00

I want to come home to him.

To someone that I love, more than anything, more than anyone.

To someone who is my best friend, to someone who makes me laugh, to someone who laughs when I try to make them laugh.

I want to come home to someone I can take care of.

I want to come home to him.

Excuse Me, Have You Seen My Nose Hair Trimmer?

2009-06-10T18:49:00.009-05:00

I really, really, really love makeup.

Like, take-it-behind-the-middle-school-and-get-it-pregnant love it.

Eyeshadows. Lip-liners. Bronzers. Brushes. A great foundation. An amazing highlighter. Makeup rules! because it is a daily way to transform yourself, to transcend, to be new, different, better.

Being a woman, after all, is ALLLLLLLL about artifice. Are her eyebrows naturally perfectly arched? NO. Is her hair naturally buttery blonde? NO. Is her skin naturally so even-toned? NO. Are her boobs naturally that perky? Heyoow NO.

Bitch, please - you're gonna tell me that there's such a thing as natural beauty?

I can show you waxing strips lookin' like Chia pets that will tell you no girl, no way, no how, doesn't do some grooming or some spackling to pretty it up.

The fuckin' nature of bein' feminine is all about fakin' it till we makin' it. Come on! Dying, shaving, plucking, powdering, squeezing, freezing, frosting, glossing, teasing, shaping, draping.... It's a testament to the power of regeneration that any chick continues to grow cells and hairs on her body!!

So it bugs me when men say "I like a natural beauty." AGAIN: Bitch, please!

I can show you natural, and it looks like YOU! It also looks like the guy sitting next to you who hasn't shaved in a week, and who, by the way, is scratching his balls.

So what the guy is really saying is, "I want a girl who spent hours trying to look hot, but who doesn't actually look like she spent hours trying to look hot."

I say, if you're going to be faking it, ladies, REALLY make it fake. BE AGRESSIVE! B-E AGGRESSIVE with your beauty! If it's out there and it's transgressive, it's gonna be rad. Hot pink hair, 5-inch heels, weaves, breast implants, plastic clothing, go for it!

Make your beauty like spinach: ironic!

9.

2009-06-09T01:08:00.004-05:00

1. I take pills.

2. I like them, a lot.

3. I like to fart.

4. I dated my cousin.

5. I didn't write back to my ex-boyfriend (not the cousin), and 2 weeks later, he killed himself.

6. The day he hung himself, I went walking, and felt God was trying to show me something. He showed me a telephone pole that looked like it was being strangled by wires. I missed the significance, completely.

7. Until that time, I thought I was Jesus.

8. After my ex-boyfriend killed himself, I realized I couldn't save anyone, not even myself.

9. I don't have the strength to publish this yet.

Not for Nothing

2009-06-07T13:04:00.003-05:00

He was the last lil' bit.

The last lick, the last morsel, the last bite left on the plate that I just couldn't get rid of.

But you came along and you wiped it clean.

You replaced that last piece with something else.

Something non-addictive.

Something substantial.

Something that replenishes.

Something that doesn't deplete.

A ray of light, from miles away.

"The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray."

2

2009-06-06T21:10:00.004-05:00

There are two kinds of people in the world:

those who simplify everyone into two kinds of people, and those who don't.

Since You're Gone

2009-06-04T22:34:00.004-05:00

I'm on a tightrope and I keep falling off. I don't understand why, but I keep finding myself back on the tightrope. Sometimes I fall off, sometimes I jump off. But I always end up back on it. And my heart feels just like the guitar chords from the Cars' "Since You're Gone."

Even now, as I'm thinking this, and picturing it, I'm irritated to have to write it (visual of me, in bed, sighing, frustrated, in the dark, headphones on.)

Why?

Cuz it feels so pointless.

This afternoon I was driving down Rand Road and remembered one night, pulling over onto the meridian of this stretch of road, to cry, and cry, at about 2 or 3 am, because I had just left him, and he had said something about not being able to have a lot of time for me, for some reason, something he said he was going to be doing.

In a nutshell, here's my beef with god. I find this man who I fall in love with and live with; we go to a church that tells us that in order to be obedient to god, we cannot live together. I move out, then we break up. Then a year later he kills himself. Turns out us living together - a.k.a. me, keeping a 24 hour watch on him - was the only thing keeping him alive.

Do you see why I'm bitter as fuck?

Own It.

2009-06-04T22:10:00.002-05:00

Revel in your own destruction.

Revel in your rebellion.

Because if the ship is going to be sinking, you may as well be singing.

We trademarked that permission. That's for YOUR enjoyment.

Too Late

2009-06-02T23:58:00.006-05:00

It's a strange thing, seeing opportunities that have passed you by.

Do you ever notice, when you're with someone you know is fantastic, that you sometimes totally shit allllllll over it? Like, it seems with your every move, you are holding your middle finger up right in their face? And when they don't seem to have seen that, you kick them in the balls? (Or, shins, if they have no balls?)

Or is it just me?

I seem to be confronted with all these ghosts of opportunities past, that I was either too stupid to appreciate at the time, or too afraid, or both. Now, when time has passed, and I'm more wise, it's too late.

I know there's always a silver lining, that the grass is always greener, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone, and any other random cliche that applies. And cliches happen, I know this too. And I know that there's going to be something headed my way that will make me look back and say "See, Jess? THIS is why THAT didn't work out." That's happened before, and I know it will happen again. But I cannot help but to wonder: Did I throw away something that was really worth grabbing with both hands?

And why, why, why does this seem to happen, again, and again, and again?

Why on earth would a person shrink away from being loved?

I can think of only 2 reasons:

1. They doubt the authenticity of the source.

2. They disbelieve they are worthy.

Clean

2009-06-02T22:04:00.002-05:00

There's a mess on my brain.

There's paint all over the inner ground of it, after you slip right through its translucent sky.

But someone's taken a rag, wet with solvent, and dabbed out the stains.

With each thought of you, the rag blots you away just before you settle.

.......

2009-05-31T22:05:00.001-05:00

I am so frustrated.

I need to connect to someone, someone that I want to be around, who is fun to be around, whom I can be my best self around, and I can’t do that at this moment, and it frustrates me insanely.

I am turning to substitutes to falsely fill the need and I am shaking in my chair, twitching my legs out of nervousness and anxiety, because I am so impoverished. I don’t know how to solve this.

I want to connect to him but he’s not reaching out back to me. I am waiting for a response from him, but it’s been over a week and I’m still here, waiting. He’s the only one I feel like being open to, and with. But I sit here, unrequited. It’s very difficult.

I need to be being loved by someone whom I love equally as intensely.

I need that reciprocation. I need that reflection, that connection.

I’m dying for a connection.

It's a Slippery Little Sucker, But, It Is A Sucker.

2009-05-29T21:22:00.006-05:00

The light at the end of the tunnel.

Finally. Today I reached it. Ever-elusive, it evades, it saunters slowly or it sprints succinctly as you chase it down. The closer you think you are, the further it actually is.

Today, I grabbed that light. I put it over my knee, spanked it, and then I sent it packing with a sandwich and a juice box to elude some other poor fellow.

Because, my friends, that poor fellow is no longer this girl, right here.

I May Not "Get" You, But I'd Sure Like to "Own" You.

2009-05-29T20:52:00.007-05:00

An Ode, to All Lovers Who Say One Thing, and Mean Another

If we used a translator

in our Lincoln Navigator,

we could kick out the mediator

for wearing bogus alligator.

We could buy us a thesaurus,

Cuz you know it would work for us,

And we wouldn't be so porous

When we singin' out the chorus.

If what I said got through to you,

And if I heard you loud and clear,

It might mean less smelly poo

And yucky waxes in our ear.

I know you want me,

I want you too,

but all this bullshit

Is a kick in the canoe.

So I'm-a make a declaration

Address the state of our lil' nation

Prohibit bunk retaliation

When all we wants is rhythm nation

I say some things that I don't mean

You take for truth a black smoke screen

I swear I'll cut it, make it lean

If you can give it gloss and sheen

Cuz folks like us, we know what's true

We don't play round, we don't be cruel

We got the sparks, we got the fuel

We both love films with Mercedes Ruehl.

I'm gonna give it to ya straight:

For you, I'll never have no hate

I love you straight right through the gate

So let's mellow out and marinate.

So I don't "get" you and you don't "get" me

But let's combine the family trees

I disbelieve the sweet things you say

But that don't mean I don't want to play

So let's get on with it

Don't play no games

Let's just stick with it,

And merge our names.

Whatever Happened on Barry

2009-05-27T22:55:00.003-05:00

He couldn't understand how a person could be so cavalier with the word "love."

"It's really, really hard for me to say that I love someone, cuz once I do, ....it's there, for, pretty much - "

"- yeah."

"I just can't understand how you could be happy with someone else not being with you."

"Because your happiness is my happiness."

What he didn't see was a girl, strutting down the street, her eyes bouncing eagerly all across an electric city avenue.

She was walking quickly, and she was swinging her bags.

She had on headphones.

She was alone, but she was happy.

This was the girl he wouldn't see, because he wasn't looking for her.

Morning Prayer

2009-05-26T05:11:00.002-05:00

Give me a second chance, God.

Whatever you think you can send my way, I'm desperate for another shot at it. You know my mind; you have to know my mind.

There has been such a disconnect between the things you've sent me and what you seem to think I'm capable of holding on to.

I wonder at times if you even know me, if you even know my nature, or my thoughts, or the parts of me that I feel at times I can't even control, these empty soldiers that rise up in me to fight things, maim and destroy them, that later I end up grieving, and fruitlessly trying to nurse back to life, from death.

I need to hear you better. I need to trust that there is a you inside of me that is my thought, that is my first instinct, that is my heart, that no part of me is stronger than my desire, and that my desires are ultimately good.

I don't want to defeat myself again.

You have to come up with a better defense than I can protest against.

I see what you've set up for me, I see where you've given me second chances and I see how I've been even more blind on this second time around. I guess what I'm asking for is a third chance, a second second chance. Please don't lead me to believe that you don't know what is lying underneath the surface of me. That you don't know what is at the core, what is the well from which these ridiculous waves of fear seem to roll out from. You have to be something that is all-knowing and all-powerful because you have to teach me to protect me from myself.

Electrical Storm

2009-05-26T02:32:00.007-05:00

“Come over here, take a look,” he said. Because he does that, he just invites you over, it’s totally normal to him to have someone come over and take a look at his work. I can’t understand this, this desire to have someone share in, or observe, the work I do, but this is because everything I do is about translating thought or emotion to page; there’s no process to watch that is of any interest, unless you like to watch people type, or hold a pen, pause, write, and then pause for a long time.

I am here, at his apartment, again, because of an email. Because I forced the moment to its crisis. I did not understand why he never contacted me. And why he wouldn’t even say something like “hey, good luck with your show.” But that’s me. I cannot empathize with someone who works 16 hours a day, according to him. He’s right.

On the bus, on the way over, he texts me, “want to grab a bite? I’m starving.” Should I accept this, it pushes my train departure back by another hour, at least; and though I sense I shouldn’t, I accept.

The lightening is so bright, its flash so vivid, that for one second, it is daylight; then, the black. We sit, in the dark together, on his couch, staring at the storms intrusion. We rest our chins on our hands, which rest on the back of the leather couch.

You are able to say you want to leave it when you have it; but when you don’t have it, you say you don’t want it. In both ways, you don’t want it. But it’s good for you.

When he received your card in the mail, and when he read your email, both on the same day, he called you.

This voice kept saying in your head, “maybe he really likes you.” And I didn’t listen.

You now write with a semi-purpose. You have a job. You will likely get an apartment soon. You are getting acting jobs. But you have no one, whom you love, that loves you in return. And the ones who do love you, whom you could snatch up in literally one phone call, you do not want; you’d rather never have another lover for the rest of your life than give in, out of principle, to one of these.

He said, “maybe it’s best if you don’t see me for awhile.” Did you bring the situation to this point, with your very thoughts, that you indulged, that you didn’t have to indulge in? Did you bring the moment to its crisis?

You have to show the good face around him, because if he sees that you are hurting, he won’t want to be near you.

I do not get him.

You saw the façade of the University Club, and it made you want to leave town again. But the part of you that has majority veto is comfortable, staying in Chicago, at the job you held before you left, playing it safe in your mother’s house, taking pills rather than selling everything you own in order to get an apartment, like a normal human being would do.

It seems that, every opportunity you give him, bad or good, he takes; if you introduce even one element of doubt, allowing him an out, he takes that out.

But all you can see is the bad; you are being offered things, things that you want, and you are literally taking them into your hands to throw them away. You do this with him, all the time. Or really, you used to, when you had the chance to do this.

You are so used to the patterns of pain, and destruction, that when something opposes those patterns, you reject it immediately, like a food you cannot digest. You spit on it and destroy it, because you don’t know what to do with it, because you don’t know what it is, what it means, and you are deeply, deeply afraid of it. You are fearing the wrong things.

You don’t even have a lot of feeling with your prayers, so it seems that they are not quite coming along like you’d like.

“Jess, you can stay longer, you know; you don’t have to leave just because the rain has stopped.”

“Oh, okay…but I have to…I have to wake up at five, I don’t know…I don’t know. Hold on.”

You had a thought today that this would be the last time you’d ever see his apartment. It was said in the same voice as when it said that you would see him that day, the day he was at the same sushi restaurant as you.

You pray that it is not true, and, in fact, you reject it.

You cannot quite believe that the storm is so bad that you actually ask him if you can stay at his place for a bit. You wonder if the gods have set this up so that you would see that he actually does like you, that he is good, that you need to, literally, take a pause, rethink, and remember: "if the sky can crack, there must be some way back, to love, and only love."

And you say, ok.

Now, you want to be the one selling his designs. You wish you had taken him up on this, when you were at your worst, several months ago. You wonder if your whole life is a test, and therefore, at what point are you going to get a right fucking answer? When are you going to crack down, and understand the theorem, and fucking answer the question?

“What are your hours at work?”

“So, you think you’ll be moving into the city soon?”

“So, three months?”

“Three months what?”

“Till you move to the city.”

“Yeah, three, maybe four. I think I want an apartment in Byron’s building.”

“In Byron’s?”

“Yeah, they’ve got good spaces for cheap.”

“That’ll be explosive.”

I think what is most telling about this last transaction is, I wanted the very thing that, if he had done, it would have been him, at his worst.

This could be good. You could get back to it. If you want it, you could get back to it. It could be everything you want. I know you refute this and you argue against it, but the truth is, you could have it.

He operates like no one you know. You are trying to assess his English using a Chinese dictionary.

It could be so easy. You could love him, and you could just enjoy life, and ride your bike, and write books, and act, and make your money, and just be happy. It actually is that easy. You could just accept joy. Just work hard, be normal about it, and do the things that you want, deep down, to do, but are afraid to do. Maybe set up a challenge for yourself once a day; something you are afraid to do, that is a positive thing, something especially that you are afraid of, and don’t go to bed until you do it.

You wish you could have the balls to say something like “I just don’t do the suburbs,” stick to it, because you have the strength of character to stick to things, like he does; where if he says he’ll do something, he does it; if he says he feels something, he means it.

The lightening drives in at one spot, as if sticking in a knife, and twisting, and holding it there; you remember what it was like to be naked in this place; but now, he won’t even undress in front of you, and you are perplexed as to why. And you realize, it’s because he doesn’t want to fuck with you. This is to your benefit, because you are too wound up in him, or really, he in you.

You think of what he accomplishes, and you are terrified at the idea of not attempting the same, of not striving for something, of not busting your ass to make a life for yourself.

He has the coolest taste in music.

Really, you just love every single thing about him.

When the two of you started, it was impossible to be anything less than giddy, hovering around ecstasy whenever you were with him; he seems to conduct, as in, like a wire, electric happiness.

But you are somewhere else, lately. You are not walking with people. You have chosen a different path. One that permits you deep, deep, isolating grief. You are walking in a valley with slate walls on either side and you know there is a stream of people beyond those walls but you disbelieve everything they say. You know what you have done. And no one is strong enough to convince you otherwise.

The rain has slowed. It is no longer blowing sideways, like it was when you both ran across the street to stand under the awning of the ice cream shop, before you caught the cab that would drive you only one block up to his apartment.

You know it is time to go, and it is the thing you want most, because this staying here, to be here with him, when he's offering, is almost more painful than you leaving.

Your clothes are now dry; you had hung them over the edge of his bathtub. You gather the things in the Whole Foods bag that you had come here for, the whole reason behind this meeting: a pyrex dish that you had left when you had brought him a cake you'd baked; a pack of sewing needles and thread that you intended to use to mend a shirt of his you'd torn; and boxing pads, that you brought one day when you sensed he could use a sparring partner.

There is a loss when you walk out his door. You can feel a vacuum created when it shuts, with no great ceremony, with no dramatic closure. Only, the vacuum is not for him; it is in you. There is a cavern inside you, there has been, since you began to end things, through your insecurity, your fear. In the attempt to protect, they destroyed you further. They saw an empty spot and they sensed he could fill it, and they sealed it off, only by protecting that hole, they made it bigger. You don't even feel your body touch the ground as you move down the hall. You don't feel anything, except loss.

You have been utterly ruined by the inability of everyone around you to, in fact, ground you, like a wire.

You walk down the hallway to the elevator, and you remember the movie, and something from it that you once said to him.

"As Ray Porter watches Mirabelle walk away, he feels a loss. How is it possible, he thinks, to miss a woman whom he kept at a distance so that when she was gone, he would not miss her? Only then does he realize how wanting part of her, and not all of her, had hurt them both, and how he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life."

You Can Charm Me Out of Pop But Not $40.

2009-05-25T18:20:00.003-05:00

I'm walking towards the ENTER door at Jewel when I see a group of young guys leaning against the wall.

"Hey miss, hold on a second!"

"What? What do you need?" I say, turning, and kind of sighing cuz I know the homeslice making his way over is going to hit me up for money.

"Are you a nice and friendly person?" He asks. He has a flaw on his lip and as he comes closer I can see it's a cut. This guy just got into a fight recently.

"No, no I'm not."

He blanches and seems to halt in space, mid-air in a leap, before he lands on his on his right foot and bounds over to me.

"What's goin' on?" I ask him.

"Hi, I'm just surveying people and - don't look at my lip, I see you looking at my lip!"

"I am looking at your lip, did you get in a fight?"

He blinks hard and I got him. "Yeah, I did, everyone thinks this is like a cold sore or something but it's not."

"Well, did you hit the guy hard? How's he doing?"

"Well, it was a friend of mine, but he's got this black eye and his lips are all busted up, but I walked away with this," as he points to his lip.

"Hey, good job man, I respect that," I say and reach for his hand. We smack palms and pull away with snaps and he goes "Why, you fight?"

"No, but I box."

"Aw! Lemme do that again" and reaches for my hand and we snap even harder, laughing. I watch him reach towards me to handle my bicep as he says "Flex for me...hey, nice."

"Naw, this is shit, I haven't done much in awhile."

"I'm Mike."

"I'm Jessica."

Apparently, Mike is trying to sell magazines for a contest in his home state of Washington. He kept pulling out a black leather bound agenda chocked with envelope-sized printed papers. I know this, because Mike came in with me to shop for pop for my mom. He told me he was participating in this contest to eventually pay for school.

He was a cute guy; a bit taller than me, in a crewneck DKNY sweater and baggy jeans. He looked and moved like he could have been an extra in Step Up. Or Step Up 2.

We grabbed the pop and he said "let's sit down for a while, here's my office," and motioned to a display of a deck table and some chairs. I reclined and listened to him tell me about how he had sustained an injury which depleted him of all his college scholarships for basketball. So he'll eventually go to school to study physical therapy. "Once you get injured, man, it's all over. It's like nobody even wanted to talk to me," he said about the schools that had courted him.

Mike was a very charismatic individual, a great talker, intelligent, persistent, and he was very cute, and he seemed very honest, and I know that if we were to date, we would sure get along well and grocery shopping would be a lot of fun; I do the choosing, he'd do the lifting.

But I don't fork out money to no one. You've got to sleep with me to get that.

My Destiny

2009-05-25T18:15:00.003-05:00

Every time I come home eager to write, I feel like the Messiah is waiting to embrace me.

It Is Written That It Is Still Unwritten

2009-05-25T14:29:00.005-05:00

Diego and I went walking today and I found myself in familiar territory, in all sorts of ways.

We tend to traverse the same streets, since, well, we live in a neighborhood.

(It's a bit hard to write this, and I'm resistant to doing so, because of what it admits in me.)

So, we make a square by covering several blocks, and then Diego pulls me in the same direction...to walk the same square again.

As we're walking, I'm kind of smirking, trying to play it off to the kids we passed...again...like "Heh heh! I'm just following him! I know we just saw you playing ball in the street. How's it going....again?" And it made me pause: did God lead me down this path again by utilizing my little dog? And did I miss something that I was supposed to see the first time? I look around me and examine the houses, the garages, the lawns, the trees and bushes, the front walks. What did I overlook?

Suddenly I remembered when I first came home from California about 14 months ago. I was searching through boxes and boxes of old journals and keepsakes, reading things I recorded over a decade ago.

Nothing had changed.

Yes, I had hit a sort of apex in my life, going to school, moving out, and shacking up with someone I thought I was going to marry. And then later, after all of that had either abandoned me or I'd abandoned it, moving to California, to be with someone I loved, and trying to make a fresh start. But I've ended up back here, literally right where I began, and I'm still struggling with the same problems: I fall for guys in the same way; I'm still feeling like I'm not living up to my potential; and I've found that, as of this year, after about a decade-long hiatus, I've got the same issues with friends.

When I read these things, and realized this a year ago, it freaked me out.

But I've changed, over the last few weeks. It's been somewhat immediate and somewhat a long time in the making. It's been both all at once, and incremental. I've done it by making small, different choices, in the simplest and seeming least-consequential moments, and forcing myself to think differently, to think dynamically, and proactively, but I've changed, and I know this. I've come to accept certain things about myself that I've spent my whole life fighting. I've come to realize and more importantly, embrace with two hands, elements of my nature that are beautiful, and special, and that I shouldn't try to change, even if I wanted to. I've stopped fighting some things, and I've started fighting other things. Basically, I'm finding it a better life to not resist: stop resisting doing the things I know I should be doing.

I started to stop thinking that I need to be someone that I can never, ever be. And it's a good thing. A really good thing. Nothing is quite so liberating as when you release yourself from an impossible demand, made impossible by nature. Flowers can't be fish, no matter how much they try, and it's a better life for everyone that they don't try.

I still have much to work on, but I look forward to the upcoming challenges, knowing now that there are two future worlds for me: the way I always used to do it, or the new way. It's going to be uncomfortable, and a bit startling, and I can no longer afford to go on autopilot, but I look forward to all of this immensely. I am piloting this ship and I can choose a different future for myself. I am going to speak up. If I don't want it, I am not going to go along with it. I am not going to resist who I am, nor what I know is true and good, deep in my heart. This is my life, goddammit. It is written that it is still unwritten.

Diego and I carried along on our walk, making it towards the end of our second lap, and I found myself paused for a moment, on the sidewalk, as he sniffed around a tree. I was standing there, rooted to the ground, like I was an oak, staring into nothing. I wonder if I've ever stood so still in my life. For a moment, I was literally the center of gravity. Nothing on me nor about me moved even a millimeter.

Finally, Diego pulled out of the range of the leash and me as a tree came to an end.

We walked towards my house and I felt the lightest rain on my skin. The sky has been a muted white-gray all day, and the sun was nowhere specific but had been diffused everywhere. It was no longer a round star; it was now a round shell of white gray, covering us. It was nowhere, and yet, everywhere.

You're a Celebrity. So, Gimme Your Playlist.

2009-05-23T02:34:00.011-05:00

Jessica Cakuls's Playlist

Release Date: May 23, 2009

Total: 23 songs

$29.67

Jessica Cakuls currently sells bridal gowns to the tri-state area's most discerning clientele. She can be seen in syndication on "Watching Meta Cook...and Then Eating It," "Yes, That Is a Pancake I Pulled Out of My Purse," " How to Eat Five Breakfasts on a Table for Four," and "Obsessive Painting: The Formative Years." If you are lucky enough to catch her in the flesh, she is probably out walking her dog, and you will probably see her with her face lifted to the sky, staring at a leaf on a tree. She will one day be a financially independent individual; how she does this is yet to be revealed to her. She believes in love, she once thought she was Jesus Christ when she didn't sleep for two weeks straight, and to her, everything sparkles. Literally.

"Scythian Empires," Andrew Bird. "Really, this whole album is just remarkable. It was so hard to choose one track, but 'Scythian Empires' and its lyrics - 'kings of Macedonia' - reminds me of Alexander the Great, whom I'm obsessed with. This album was playing when I first hooked up with a very dynamic guy I fell in love with, and I will always remember being in his apartment, and the blue light caused by the night's falling snow, as we kissed. It was heaven. I also did my first painting as an adult to this album. Incidentally, I cannot break up a song from this album into another playlist. To me, the album is heard in it's entirety, or not at all. It's utterly sacred to me. Andrew Bird, you rule! I'll follow you anywhere."

"Sunday Smile," Beirut. "Again, another album which, in it's entirety, I consider to be perfection. This is the song that drew me in, but I heard about the band from Evangeline Lilly's playlist. I was haunted by the 30 seconds I heard. This album has seen me through from the most carefree of afternoons, walking my dog, to crying my heart out, in the dark of night, thinking of all the things I no longer have, and the people I've done wrong. Utterly life-changing, and so simple in how it does it."

"Sweet Thing," Van Morrisson. "This song is simply perfect."

"Little Star," Madonna. "Such a different type of song for her, a lullaby, actually. I think of it as a song to the person I know I am, the invaluable jewel, the little star that was created in love: 'may the angels protect you, and sadness forget you, little star...' I lost a man I had loved about a year ago, and he didn't really like Madonna's music, but he absolutely loved this song, and because of him, I looked at it with new eyes. Amazing, what another person reveals to you."

"Last Goodbye," Jeff Buckley. "I can remember, as an insomniacal high-schooler, being awake at about 2 am one morning, and this clip of new music from then-unknown artists came on MTV, and this was a featured song. I had to stay awake to wait to see the whole video, and it was a song that played in my head for literally weeks on end and definitely was all I could think about all that next day in class. I was obsessed with him, and I thought that I would meet Jeff Buckley before he became really famous, which I knew he would, and tell him how much I loved his music, and that he would fall in love with me."

"Lonely Girl," Pink. "This song is such an anthem for me. Starts off with uncertainty, and then she uses the same lines in the chorus to shout out her strength and defiance at the end: 'I'm just trying to make all my dreams come true....' It's amazing, and in one song, I see for myself the journey I know I will take as a person. Thank you, Pink! Your grit and your angst are the hottest and finest we've got from a woman in pop today."

"Read My Mind," The Killers. "There’s something about their guitar licks and their lyrics, to me they are on the verge of a U2-like stardom. They have an amazing ability to be completely and even painfully honest, but there’s a hopefulness about it all that cannot be denied. When it comes down to it, they really just make me feel so good, and so alive, and reinvigorated. Rocking out to this tune makes me feel so inspired and alive and energized that I feel like I could fly. I want to jump all over furniture when it plays."

"One Tree Hill," U2. "An over-looked, absolute gem off of 'Joshua Tree,' another amazing album. Utterly impossible to choose just one from their entire repertoire. I think they're the greatest rock band, unparalleled. They gave dignity to rock and roll music. You could no longer call it 'The Devil's Music' when they came onto the scene. Any song by U2 tends to be so gripping, so emotionally intense for me, I actually need to prepare myself before listening to them, because they're just too much. They hit a raw nerve that I allow to be struck only every so often."

"Paper Planes," M.I.A. "I can be fairly 'in the cave', in terms of pop culture. When I heard this song roll out during 'Slumdog Millionaire,' I was floored, by the visuals onscreen, and by this sound: so intense, so gritty, and so totally inspiring to me. I was utterly a changed person when I heard it. And I feel like the biggest bad-ass whenever I hear it. A friend of mine made up a dance to it and one of my fondest memories, ever, was when she casually performed it, at work one day. This song resonates through my cells."

"Smooth Criminal," Michael Jackson. "Say what you want about his recent legal problems and accusations, but this man put the 80's over his knee and spanked it, and it walked away with glitter on its ass from his glove, and we all loved him for it. No one had better moves, no one had better production, and no one will forget his 'Thriller' album cover. I think every current pop artist who doesn't use an electric guitar owes a lot, a lot a lot to MJ as an influence. This song energizes me in such a way... all I want to do is dance - VICIOUSLY - when I hear it."

"Trouble," Cat Stevens. "This song plays in the first 'Alias' episode, when she's telling Danny about joining SD-6. It's such a heart-wrenching song. I knew I'd heard it before, but it's forever tied to those images, and that sadness for her character, whom I'm obsessed with - I love spy chicks. When I'm feeling frightened or sad, this is the song I instinctively start humming, without even realizing."

"Hey You," Madonna. "She's the Queen, and she out-Beatled the Beatles with this one. It's totally the opposite of everything she's done, and I think it's utterly her most inspiring, most spiritually evolved song. It cuts me right to the grain, so I can only hear it every so often. When I first heard it, which was by watching the video, I broke down in tears and cried, literally, for hours on end. Heartbreaking, inspiring, beautiful, hopeful, and just divine....like her!"

"The Twist," Chubby Checker. "Probably the most classic of oldies tunes. It puts me in a good mood immediately. How can you not be? The Twist is like the first dance move every single person does as a toddler! Go Chubby C. for coining the move and making one of the happiest songs ever created. Pure joy."

"Light My Fire," The Doors. "My dad was the music guru in our family. I was listening to the Doors, Carole King, Simon and Garfunkel and Cat Stevens since I've had memory. This was always my favorite, and I'm forever grateful to my pops for introducing me to music in such an unconventional, fun, and psychedelic way. Go dad!"

"Girl From the North Country," Bob Dylan. "This song kills me. I forever associate it with the older brother of my best friend from junior high, whom I absolutely loved and adored and who I wish I still spoke to....The nostalgia of it, the heartbreak of it, the wistfulness, the bittersweet hope that Dylan clings to...it's archetypal."

"Michaelangelo," Emmy Lou Harris. "Off of her 'Red Dirt Girl' disc, this is my favorite song of hers, which is a very difficult statement to make, because she's an amazing voice, an amazing song-writer, and she got Bruce Springsteen and Dave Matthews to do back-up vocals for her. This woman don't play. She's a legend in country music and for good cause. She will split your heart right open with her voice and her lyrics and you will come crawling, begging, crying for more, it's that good."

"Lola," The Kinks. "The first time I did karaoke, this was my song. It always puts me in a good mood and it invigorates me like the first shot of Jameson for the evening. Plus, the embracing of youthful trans-gender love in a big city? Hello! Way ahead of their time, these guys. They rock hard and they do it with so, so much fun, you know you want to sing and dance along."

"The Zephyr Song," The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. "I imagine my dog, Diego, running around in the sand, while the sun is setting, on a beach in southern California. I'm going to get him there someday soon, and when he's scampering around wildly, his floppy ears flying in the breeze, in front of a radiant pink-orange sunset, this song will be playing, and life is going to be utterly, divinely, perfect."

"Rainbow Connection," Kermit the Frog. "Um, hello!! This is the sweetest, most innocent song ever! 'Who said that every wish, would be heard and answered, when wished on the morning star? Somebody thought of it, and someone believed it, and look what it's done so far....' Who else but Kermie could take metaphysics and noetics and sugar it up for the Playskool crowd? Jim Henson is a genius, as his influence still remains to this day."

"I Believe (When I Fall In Love it Will Be Forever)," Stevie Wonder. "I heard this in 'Hi-Fidelity,' and, well, fell in love with it. It made me believe in love again, in the possibility of it, in the existence of it, for me, and that it will be everything I want, and that God will answer my prayers. Stevie can make you believe in anything."

"All the Umbrellas in London," The Magnetic Fields. "This song kills me. I don't know how they did it, but they managed to make an utterly sweet and sad ballad inspire me, and make me feel hopeful. And the lyrics are TT: 'cause I've got a sense of perfection, and nothing makes much sense at all....' "

"Chicago," Sufjan Stevens. "I first heard this during a road trip to NYC. The lyrics are amazing, because even if you haven't sold your clothes to the state, or slept in parking lots, when you hear them, you know know this guy is still describing your life. It pushed me over the edge and I broke down in tears. Again, another tune that is utterly brilliant in it's ability to both make me cry and yet inspire me fully. At times I feel like he wrote it about me, and that I'm going to do something really amazing for mankind, and this song will be sung about me."

"It's the Hard-Knock Life," 'Annie' Soundtrack. "When I was little, I wanted to be Annie. I wore a dress that was pink but I called it my 'Annie' dress, and I even wanted her dirty Depression-era clothes, and of course her fabulous wardrobe once she moves in with Daddy Warbucks. I just wanted her life! I thought I was Annie. This soundtrack to the motion picture always, always lifts my spirits and reminds me of being a kid."

So, fellow celebrities who are not quite as famous as you one day will be! Let me know what you listen to and why, and why you think others should listen to it, too. I want to know what's on your mind and on your Ipod. Music is a gift and should be shared.

Original Disposition

2009-05-23T01:47:00.004-05:00

In the beginning, there was chaos.

Our philosophy class was a terrorized, perilous alternate universe smothered with villains with superpowers who were draped in the clothing of liberal arts students…and Jamie? Jamie was Superman, striding through the door, cape flying, with a single bound he’d leap on top of the desks, and with x-ray vision and undefeated strength, he incinerated the apathy of our classmates, who thought philosophy sucked and that everything was relative – and who were mostly there because it was a required course. Jamie had a giant, Gold “T” burning on his chest, and that T stood for Truth. Jamie, more than our teacher, cut through the fog and cleared a shining path to the best qualities inside of us, that reminded us of what makes us good, what makes us human, and our classmates loved him for that.

He was the most courageous person I’d ever met. He would slice your argument to the bone with the one question he knew you couldn’t answer, and it would defeat you. And you’d either love him for it, or you’d hate him (and most people hated him). But if he knew your argument was superior, he’d gesture with his arm, as if to say, “You…YOU deserve to go ahead of me”, and he’d praise you, with genuine kindness, and say, “That’s excellent. I never thought of that. That’s very good.” And if the truth was unpleasant, and no one wanted to go near it, Jamie could deliver it. This was why I worshipped him: because he could do something that I admired, and that no one else had the strength to do.

Jamie had another super-human ability. See, I have this, ultra-intense, hyper-affectionate way of conducting myself in a relationship, and Jamie was the only man I’d met who could withstand hundreds of kisses in a single day, excessive petting and small headlocks in public (where I’d throw my arm around his neck, tightly, and say “I love you so much I’m gonna fucking kill you”) and phone calls on the hour asking “whatcha doin?”; it’s an infra-red type of attention, which no mortal man could digest. Jamie not only absorbed this radiation; he’d kick back, underneath it, and toss on a pair of shades and smile.

You know those photographs of deep space that are taken with the Hubble Telescope? With those yawning gases that are blue and pink and bright orange, stretched like gaping webs across stars and galaxies? In my eyes, there is nothing more beautiful. Black holes, dark matter, comets, spiraling galaxies, I think you can look to all of these, and use them to explain and understand not only life, but human behavior. I have this book that Jamie gave me a month after we met. We smashed ourselves on the bed together to look at it, flipping through each page, and when we were done, I kissed him square on the nose and I said “You got it.”

The first time I got Jamie to myself was at a lounge, near school, where the drinks are 10 bucks, everyone speaks Russian, and the lighting makes your teeth a matte, white-blue. He sat right next to me on the leopard-print couch and while I’m holding my glass, that has glowing ice cubes, I’m trying so hard to be still, I’m determined to find a way to lock myself down to the furniture, or just contort myself, over my knees, all while I’m trying to face him, because I’m vibrating SIMPLY because I’m CLOSE to him.

I day-dreamed about an evening like this, I actually visualized it, like, creatively visualized this, while I sat in class. I imagined blue lasers shooting out from my forehead and into Jamie’s frontal lobe, and the lasers had a ticker-tape message that said, in capital letters: COME GET A DRINK WITH ME - YOU WANT TO DATE ME - THIS COULD BE GOOD. And now, his arm and thigh are edging in on mine, it felt awkward to be sitting next to him, because I should have been in HIS LAP. The darkness and the black-lights have made everything contrast, our clothing, and our skin, so we are bright blue and dark magenta blobs, floating among the black, and neon. And the alcohol? And his body right next to mine? And we’re talking about things we both felt we’d die to defend? This combined to form a certainty replacing the marrow in my bones, the certainty that my life was now different. All of it was swirling, and spiraling, and it was pulsating with a heartbeat. Jamie and I were going to leave, eventually, and we’d leave together, and we were going to combine somehow, and anything less than that would have gone against nature.

Four years later, in a café, over eggs and pancakes that we’ve barely touched, Jamie is making a face. It’s the face you make the moment right before you vomit. Where you can feel the bile rising? And your mouth is turned down, as if you’re trying to hold it back, but you know you can’t, because nature is, in fact, stronger than you, and it’s going to take over; and your eyes are lowered, because anything above the ground is nauseating.

And then his lips parted: “that’s it,” he said, and then he was silent. This is his reaction to the confession I’ve just made, about something I’ve done, that I have to tell him about, because every cell in my body that can witness something cannot bear to leave him in the dark. Jamie’s silence is unnatural, and it causes everything around me, in the café, to shoot forward at light speed, and pass me in a blur, and only Jamie remains still, and in focus, but he won’t even look at me.

Life, and dating, after Jamie, is goal-oriented: Search, and destroy. This is not so much a thought, as an instinct. Develop a laser-like focus for the type of guy who is Jamie’s opposite. Disappoint all of them – and there are many - in a uniquely devastating way, like, by getting another guys’ phone number…at the party they brought you to… while you know they’re watching.

Because you’re no longer in a relationship, you now have time to focus on yourself, so in addition to new mating habits, your hair color changes, your uniform disappears, its replaced by abbreviated clothing, you start wearing high heel boots, and one day when you look at your reflection, you actually say, out loud, “that’s not even my face.”

One year after Jamie and I dissolved, I’m standing in front of this bicycle shop that has closed for the evening, and I’m watching these gliding spots of light on the window in front of me that reflects the traffic behind me, but it’s the kind of looking where you do it to settle something inside of you, where you don’t actually care about what your eyes are resting on, but they have to rest on something, because they’re open, only you wish, in that moment, that they weren’t, because you have just heard, over the phone, that Jamie’s body has been found in his apartment, and that he had hung himself. And that it had been days before he had been found. Someone that you didn’t even realize you were STILL taking for granted, has just been torn out of your life…again.

Because Jamie is gone, you desperately need everything that reminds you of him. You search frantically through old boxes in your basement, and tears are streaming down your face because you threw away presents he had given to you, and you would trade everything to get them back. You are not sure if you threw away love letters he had sent to you, after he broke up with you: Did he really write those? You remember walking down the hallway of your old apartment building, reading a letter he had written you, but was it real? Or did you dream it? You keep searching, because if it’s true, if he wrote to you, saying “I’m sorry, I changed my mind, I miss you” then you’d have to find it, because it would exist, because you wouldn’t have thrown that away, right? You couldn’t have been that angry, and that cold, right? But you never find the letters.

I’m standing at the window of my bedroom, and I’m watching this radiant, hot-pink sun setting behind the trees across the street, and I’m on the phone with a friend of mine who knows quite a bit more about physics than I do. And we’re talking about neutrinos. Neutrinos are these subatomic particles that are so small, that if an atom is the size of a football stadium, a neutrino is smaller than a dust mote passing over the field. They carry the energy and momentum that results during a chemical decay, and they have this partner, called the anti-neutrino, which is it’s opposite; It’s like a negative energy. These random chemical decays, which rarely happen given the nearly infinite amount of neutrinos in the universe, are essentially the anti-neutrino, trying to break through.

“Neutrinos are so small, and they’re everywhere, there’s so many we shouldn’t even bother counting, we may as well just shift the decimal and look at them as something greater, or singular, like a force. What if they physically represent something metaphysical, that we can’t control, like the existence of decay, or death? What if they’re like a scientific metaphor for why things end? I mean, why do things have to end? Why do we have to die?” At this point, I feel like I’m really onto something, like, the people at Fermilab have nothing on me.

My friend digs in. “So you’re saying, if most humans are like neutrinos, then Jamie was like an anti-neutrino…his composition in this life was essentially an anti-neutrino trying to revert back to it’s original state, or it’s original disposition, which is the energy that we come from, but we just can’t see…by taking his own life, he returned to something that was home, because he had never felt right in this state.” “Yes, that’s basically it.” “Huh…” he said. “That’s…pretty good.”

My ice cubes are glowing and rattling in my glass and I have to rest my head in my hand to stop my arm from shaking. Jamie leans into me, his highball cocked in his hand, right next to his chin. He’s glancing around. “You know what made Stanley Kubrick a genius? He had the balls to say NO. When he wanted to light a film using only candles, what do you think happened? Someone fucking created a new camera lens for him! When he said ‘No’, studio executives, who would have told God to go screw himself, would say ‘Okay, Stanley, that’s fine. YOU tell US. We’ll just be standing over here.’ He’d do 67 takes of people walking down stairs…just walking down stairs! – to get it perfect. It’s true! You can read interviews with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. They were pissed.

He knew what was at stake, and he never compromised. He was an artist because of this, because he pursued, perfection: he pursued the truth. It’s so intense, I LOVE IT! You know, if a man like that defeats you in a debate, you’re a better man for it. Always, always, pursue the truth, if you’re going to be an artist, you can’t afford anything less. And surround yourself with people who do the same. I need another cocktail. Let’s go.”

Are we meant to suffer?

2009-05-23T00:55:00.002-05:00

Here's an entry I once published on an old blog I used to have, several years ago.

Though much time has passed, and many circumstances in my life have changed, these are still thoughts I own. I'm glad to know some parts of me are consistent!

5.11 pm, may 19, 2005

Last night I almost got my finger chopped off while trying to shut my living room window. It's one of those windows that's just the huge sheet of plastic and it has two little tabs at the bottom corners that are always rusty, and you have to push them inward in order to unhinge the sliding mechanism - this is the beauty that post-modern suburbia affords - and, wouldn't you know it, the window was stuck so I had to pull it down while engaging these tabs. I knew, prior to conducting this exercise, exactly what was going to happen, but the sick part is that I continued, and succeeded in smashing my finger. I'm pretty sure I chipped the bone. And I screamed the f word so many times and punched the window so many times and with such force that it not only impressed the hell out of me but it woke my boyfriend and my mother, who were taking naps (not together, though). The f word proved to be the majority of my vocabulary for the rest of the evening, occasionally peppered by the c word, the b word, and the g/d word, almost like I was a synthesizer set on "SCREAMING SWEAR WORDS", being keyed arbitrarily like a John Zorn piece. What hurt the most was not my finger, although I was concerned because I had an incident when I was a kid where I banged my knee on a piano bench - no cut or anything - and ended up with a bone infection. Now, I like my left hand, so I don't want that to be repeated. But what bothered me about the situation was that I knew, I knew that this was going to be the result. And I still proceeded. Why?

I don't know about other women, but when I get hormonal, I need chocolate, sweets, and fat as though I know no other reality. While I'm at the Krispy Kreme window, chewing on a slice of pizza, I am fully aware of what I'm doing, and I know that it is not going to be good for my constitution. I'll get a headache from the sugar o.d., I'll get fat hands from the salt and the fat, and I'll just generally feel like I've been thrown against a wall when I come down from the high. But I still do it. Why?

One could, if they wanted to simplify things, simply call it masochism. But why does that exist? If we know that it's bad for us, but we do it anyway, fully aware that it's called masochistic behavior, well, why don't we stop? Alcoholics Anonymous has a term for behavior that we repeatedly engage in, even when we are aware of it's undesirable consequences: insanity. That still doesn't solve the issue. I know it's masochistic. I know it's insane. I know it's harmful. Maybe I do it because it's harmful. Why? Because I want to destroy myself?

Who are the people in the world who see evil in donuts, prostitutes, drugs, cigarettes, gambling, pornography, whatever, and simply say no? Really, if you are one of them, and you are reading this, please let me in on your secret. You have an obligation to mankind.

I think humans like to destroy themselves. I think we are, at any moment, fully aware of the implicit consequences in our harmful behavior, but we still like to live life frolicking about the pond, leaping around on the closed mouths of waiting alligators and swinging from the vines. If I feel like I've been "good," like I've been working out, eating well, reading philosophy, calling my friends, keeping my room clean, I decide that I can handle buying another pair of shoes or getting a slice of key lime cheesecake. But what I forget is that it only takes one step off the path and then it all goes to shit. Because I'm not going to just buy a pair of shoes, right? I need a skirt to go with it, and while I'm there I may as well pick up a new shirt, and some lip gloss, and since the sandals come in two colors... Similarly, you don't eat cheesecake in a vacuum. You eat it at a restaurant, where you want some cappucino to go with it, but then you're up all night from the caffeine blast, and you've just got to get a movie to zone out to while you're digesting the atom bomb of sugar and fat in your stomach, and then you stay up until 3, but whoops you have to go to class in the morning and on and on. This progression (or regression?) is amplified when you bring in things like infidelity, drug use, gambling, etc. Because who does coke at confession?

There seems to be this consciousness lately that it's not good to dichotomize good and evil. Well, if they were meant to be gray and fuzzy, they wouldn't exist as two seperate words. I prefer to know what is good and what is bad, so that I make no pretenses when I am about to fall. I don't know many people who can take one step down the slippery slope and walk that fine balance. But there's also a difference between those who take that step, and know it's just a step, and those who take that step and think "F**k! I totally messed up! I may as well just jump off!" I know I'm definitely the latter. I'm still waiting for advice from those who are the former.

However, I've noticed that when I do one good thing, it leads to another. I didn't feel like flossing before I went to bed last night, but I did, and then I decided to read a Martha Nussbaum essay, because I was thinking about a girl I once knew who a friend at the time said was better for this guy that I liked because she was "smarter than me" and well, I just won't stand for that, so now I have a philosophical basis, predicated on the writings of Cicero, no less, as to why we have a moral obligation to provide material aid to our international neighbors.

All that, just from flossing.

Hm...sounds a lot like life.

2009-05-21T23:23:00.004-05:00

This photo above is not really a painting of mine. It was a phase during the life of one painting that now looks absolutely nothing like this image. But I had to document it because, during my baby's childhood - and yes, I do refer to my paintings as my kids - this particular moment, I thought, was especially captivating; trails of paint on the canvas, with the sun streaking across it's face. I almost wanted to stop right here. But I kept going: first, because I didn't have the courage, and second, because I knew there was a bigger story I wanted to tell.

Here are the things I've learned from painting.

1. If you don't lay a proper foundation, all the work you do has to be repeated.

2. It is impossible to duplicate. You can get something close, but even the flies who kamakaze into your painting will tell you it's not the same.

3. You start off with one thing, and it looks good, but you know you'll feel like a cop-out if you don't take it to where you know it needs to go.

4. When you spend a lot of time on it, it shows. When you don't, that shows, too.

5. When you've thought a lot about it, it shows. When you haven't, that shows, too.

6. Color is everything.

7. You have to be fearless in your exploration.

8. You cannot judge either the process nor the finished product, because if you do, you won't want to continue.

9. Having said that, you should still, always, retain standards, and raise them, constantly.

10. If you allow yourself to get comfortable, you're going to feel like s***, and your stuff is going to look like s***.

11. You have to take chances in order to get anything good.

12. You also have to know when to stop.

13. Sometimes you labor and labor and it's genius; and sometimes, it takes one little squeeze from a tube, and it's genius. Don't sweat the former, and don't diminish the latter, because the best pieces tend to be a combination of these two.

14. You have to clean your tools constantly, or you're not giving each new work it's clean, fresh chance.

15. Wear the proper attire.

16. Make sure there's fresh air circulating.

17. Heed your instincts, because they're all you've got.

18. You tend not to have a desire when you don't have the material with which to express.

19. I wouldn't know, but it's probably a lot like birth: the idea is pleasurable, but it's painful until it's completely out.

20. You can always paint over.

You know, shepherds used to break a sheep's legs, if they wandered off. Heh heh....

2009-05-20T03:52:00.001-05:00

I am completely not tired at this moment, and it is 3:42 in the morning.

I have just impulsively started and finished two paintings tonight, and have two others, also begun this evening, on pause. One of these finished paintings, of which I'm especially proud, is called "I know not what I do". Oil. Black. Glossy. With blood-red splotches swimming helplessly towards an invisible vortex.

I cannot stop thinking about two people I used to be friends with, who no longer want to talk to me. I think about one of these two quite a bit more than the other, because I had been romantically involved with him, and truly believed myself to be in love with him. It is a testament to this belief that for the better part of a year since he had and I had started dating, and basically 9 months since I last heard from him, despite attempts on my part to speak, that he does not leave my mind, no matter how much I try to cancel him out, no matter how much I argue for his dismissal against my heart, and no matter how many different ways I try to mourn the loss of him, in order to just forget about him. I've prayed countless times; I've tried to tell myself he is deceased; I have written persuasive essays to myself as to why he's not worth one moment of my time...and guess the result.

It's a funny thing, how love and thought work. And, by funny, I mean, fucked up. What do we really have control over, if not our minds? And do not our feelings evolve from our minds, what we take in with our senses, what fits in like puzzle pieces to form a picture that says to us "yes, this is it, this works!"?

Moreover, in the grandest of schemes of things, what can it possibly mean, to care so much, so relentlessly, so devastatingly, for a person who doesn't even want to see your face?

I've spent much time lately taking stock of my life, of myself as a person, of my choices, my paths, and my actions, not to mention the root of it all: my thoughts.

I've arrived at this:

Change is nearly impossible, but it's not impossible.
If you desire change, you must get very, very comfortable with being incredibly, unbelievably uncomfortable, at every second of the day.

But if you are content with who you are, as well as the limits to your nature, then you accept certain outcomes for your life, and you also accept that you will not rise higher than these limits.

Now, this might make me sound like a negative nelly, so if anyone perceives that I missed a third, positive option, let me know, because I'm more than happy to be proved wrong.

So where does this leave me, a girl who, in some cases, doesn't have a clue as to what she might have done wrong? Or, in other cases, knows exactly what she did wrong, but won't be forgiven by someone? Or, is simply disliked, because of who she is?

I don't know the answers to this. It's also a lot harder to deal with people who explicitly refuse to make apologies for their behavior, even if their behavior is, on all rational counts, bogus. Because if you apologize to people like this, for errors you know you committed, this makes you weak. It's a no-win.

I've never had a relationship, in my entire life, that, if I so desired, could not be repaired.

This year, I've been blessed with four.

Now, I have not forgotten the new relationships, and new old relationships, that have begun this year. For those, I am exceptionally grateful. But, the wisest person once said, even if you've got 99 sheep, when one lamb wanders off, you're going to go after it.

So, what do you do with this? With people who don't want you?

You move on. You remember that life is, fundamentally, change. That everything, as the Buddhists say, is fleeting. You cannot form attachments because there is no actual form to which you can actually attach. I'm going to make a slogan tee: "Life makes a Buddhist of me."

But the hardest thing for me has always been the very crux of life: impermance. I like it when the things I love stick around. But it's not to be.

Did I mention I have a real hard time with this?

How do you get wholly involved with anything, if you know that it's going to go away? Maybe the answer is, you don't. Maybe you get economic about it, and you exploit it fully, and wring it dry before you send it packing, denying it the chance to do it to you.

Maybe I already do this, and I don't even realize it. I've spent a great deal of time thinking I'm a much better person than the outcomes in my life are revealing me to be.

Or maybe I've been spared a great deal. After all, the way certain of these relationships have ended, I wonder that these people were ever emotionally involved on the level I was, and still am, with them.

It's the easiest thing in the world: you meet someone, they are nice and chatty and outgoing and you have the same interests. You hang out, you hang out some more, and about this person, you can say, "man, so-and-so is sooooo cool, I'm so glad she and I are friends!". But then so-and-so does something that chafes you, and you bring it up to her, and low and behold, so-and-so blows her top and insults you when she is confronted. This is her nature. Sure, she's real sweet when it's sunshine and rainbows, but what is that worth? You could meet a murderer on the street and be the best of friends in T-3, but does that mean they're a great person? Does it mean you should be near them when it's a full moon? H-no.

Relationships are built on the easy but they live or die by the hard. What matters is not how well you can shop or laugh together; what matters is how someone conducts themselves in a disagreement. This is the only way you can really know someone: when the gloves are on. The good has to be good, but the bad has to be even better.

So, after several years of two relationships, and several months of two others, I can now say that I know four people, but I know them no longer.

I know I haven't granted forgiveness to certain people in my life. And I know there are certain people that I simply have no desire to be around. I know that this is the case for the people who refuse to speak to me. After all, if you wanted to speak to someone, and have them in your life, even if they had hurt you, wouldn't you? Truly, what would stop you? Yes, some people are like crack, but either you 12-step them and get restraining orders, or they're in your cell phone. There's no in between; the desire to see them, continually, is either there or it's not.

So, for those not in someone's cell phone any longer, you move on. You find replacements, knowing that, unlike what one of these people said to you, everyone is NOT replaceable. Every person is unique, and they, and only they, can bring certain things to your existence. If you view this any other way, you're not seeing the divinity in them. You are sorely missing the spark that makes them a unique gift, a brand-new song, a specifically radiant sort of light.

So you have to fill what these lights, now departed, left void. You have to find new music, different songs, and in your mind you may still be, all the while, humming old tunes.

Here's to new shows.

The Long Way Home

2009-05-17T19:11:00.000-05:00

I took my dog for a walk this afternoon and experienced the most beautiful things.

An elderly man was walking behind us and soon passed us when Diego paused to survey and sniff out the grounds. Then Diego bounded off back on his way, and shook himself exuberantly while sauntering off towards the man, and I felt for a moment that a little family had formed in this moment, on this journey, and I had to laugh joyously over how full that felt. The spots of sunlight on the ground patterned Diego as he bounced along "after" this man, who was now oblivious to us, and for a few minutes, we were like a little trail of ducks.

I was listening to music on my Iphone and forgot about the song "Viva La Vida" by Coldplay on the playlist to which I was listening. "I used to rule the world..." go the lyrics and the beautiful violin and cello chords that begin the song, and it reminded me that there's so much to learn, and the first step of this is being aware that what you used to think was true was only an illusion.

I felt that it was time to turn back on this journey and head home, and something said to me, "Take the long way." My dog and I turned down a street we'd never walked down, and I saw it curve away at the end. If it were a cul-de-sac, and we'd have to double back, I'd be, well, bored, but I would take it in stride. But we walked on, and as we neared the curve, I saw that it turned out and the street continued through, and the dead-end was an illusion.

I heard the opening chords to "Once In A Lifetime" by the Talking Heads and remembered the morning I returned to classes at UIC after missing several days, after my break-up with Dayne. I remembered walking in the throes of a group of my classmates, all of us fresh off the train, and it was a crystal-cold day, and my heart was completely broken, but I was listening to this song, and I saw the sunlight scattered through the hair of my classmates and on their hats and heads, and there was a subtle pulse to the rhythm of our walk, and I knew then, that everything was going to be okay.

We passed two men standing near a garage, talking. One of them smiled at me and I smiled back. He was Indian, and he smiled at me like we were familiar.

We passed a woman in a red jacket, standing close to the wall of her house, tending a small flowerbed in a sill raised underneath her window.

We passed a lawn and I saw four mallards nestled in the grass; 3 drakes and a hen. Diego didn't notice, and I was glad, because otherwise their peaceful Sunday rest would have vanished. They looked so content, just looking out upon this lawn, at the world that lay before them.

We passed the wall of a garage that was utterly radiated with light by the setting sun. It was so bright and nearly blinding that the only distinction I could see were the dark parallel lines created by the siding. I was looking at the sun, with horizontal lines drawn in black, against the wall of this garage. It was brilliant and beautiful and it burned in my vision, and I wished I could have painted it.

We passed a little boy, across the street, throwing a tennis ball against his garage. I remembered doing the same to our neighbor's garage, in the alley behind our house. The boy stopped when he saw Diego sniffing around the ground. I smiled at him. He watched us, the ball in hand, his little windbreaker open, his hands at his sides.

We walked on and I passed under the branches of a coniferous tree and felt the long strands tickle the top of my hairline.

We passed another tree and I saw a scattering of baby pine cones forming. I wondered how some formed in some places, and not in others, and thought that God must choose every single formation of these, and He must have a record of all of them, as well as His reasons for creating them in certain spots, and not in others.

We walked along the sidewalk and I realized that I was really walking vertically, only, my perspective afforded me the perception that I was walking along a level horizontal. What an odd thing, I thought, to be in this head, and for everything to be relative to my perspective.

We continued and I saw a silver-gold splash of light on the pavement; as we neared it I thought it must be freshly fallen water, and as we got closer, and were finally walking over it, I realized it was tar, carelessly scattered across a bit of pavement, and it was as black as night as I stepped through it's painting.

We passed a bundle of sticks that had been gathered and bound with cord. There was a formation of wood that looked like a rotted root, dug out of the ground. It was gnarled and caked with dirt, and I leaned in for a closer look and saw a mountain range scattered in brown.

I sang along to "This Must Be The Place" by the Talking Heads as we crossed the street to my house.

Several times during this journey, I knew, that if I had taken another way, all this, I would have missed.

Gandhiji

2009-05-17T00:36:00.001-05:00

I watched the film "Gandhi" the other night and, as the quote by Einstein goes, I could scarcely believe that a person such as this had walked the earth.

You see films, and hear stories all the time, about epic rivalries between warring gangs, warring factions, warring nations. And when the underdog decides to take a stand and fight back, it inspires.

Yet, here is a man who knew he had to walk into the ambush, with no protection, and you could see the light and joy in his eyes as he argued, with enthusiasm, about the fact that he would be severely beaten, and he inspired his countrymen to do the same, and moreover, to do it with joy.

After this, watching a film about a war seems.... What is really being conquered? Not the mind, which is what matters.

This is the beauty of satyagraha. It is the practice of a person or group of people in possession of truth.

"If they kill me," Gandhi said, "they will have my body. But they will never have my obedience."

I'm in Beirut

2009-04-14T21:44:00.001-05:00

and very, very quietly, in love.

It Never Fails.

2009-03-23T01:22:00.001-05:00

It's amazing: if I am unkind to myself, in thought, and in behavior, the whole world appears to be on the attack.

If I am good to myself, I am able to see how much everyone around me is eager to do just that, even more.

There is no way around it.

I have somehow been surrounded by some of the most supportive and kind people imaginable. I don't know how this happened.

This is a moment of gratitude.

I'm Faster Than Sharks, So, It's Not a Big Deal

2009-03-19T15:11:00.001-05:00

It always begins with a choice, out of "nowhere", to pick up a movie, or a book, or a magazine, or go for a walk, or research an idea.

And today it happened at my doctor's office. I turn to a magazine rack, and see an issue of "Outside" magazine, and Steve Nash is on the cover.

Now, I don't follow sports, or really anything, except the scent of lotion, but I thought "Hm... Steve Nash. I like the sound of his name. I've heard this name somewhere."

It's official. I'm obsessed.

Here's why. Here's another reason why. This doesn't hurt. This helps. So does this. This does, too.

Oh my. Ok, I should go.

The First Step

2009-03-18T00:35:00.001-05:00

... Is realizing this:

Life is work.

That's the purpose. That's what we're here to do. It's what we have to do. There is no escaping, and you shouldn't want to escape it, even if you could. This is the nature of reality.

The second first step is:

Find something, anything, that makes me jump out of bed in the morning, ravenous, to chase down that thing, and make it mine.

This was so huge, and it was such a phenomenal day for me, that I believe this is in order.