techno-ballerinas need loving too!

take me away, take me away
you said that you were gonna stay
but you're always lying anyway
everyday, sinking in the quicksand
follow me down the drain
[travis]

i'm so glad i've discovered my pattern...not. is it masochistic? am i picking them? i can't tell. and it just fucking sucks that it keeps occuring in the same way and i never see it until i'm on the inside. which is difficult to escape from. because i've got a heart, ya know? it becomes attached, to little things, mostly, and i begin to grow minor infatuations. which expand. and sprout fangs. [at first i don't recognize that they are fangs, because i'm blinded. but once i'm on the inside...out they come. stuck in my sides, like thorns, ripping away. steel-tongued tiger lilies, my friends.] what is it about me that lends itself to this sort of attraction? why am i that girl? i've definitely become her, no doubt in my mind now. i swear i'm worth the time and effort and energy and love [is this the biggest one to give away? and i just come in too late? is that it?] to be first. i won't take second anymore...i can't take it anymore. i guess it all comes down to the perks of being a wallflower:

we accept the love we think we deserve.

am i accepting less than what i deserve because i haven't had evidence to the contrary, to say that i deserve more? am i just taking what i can get, and what i get is this? do i deserve more? not everyone ends up that way, in the end. the old maid is no fairy-tale. and now i'm almost afraid to get into anything because i've become so insecure about the lack of action in the past. double-edged sword! i may be a basket-case of a mental girlfriend by the time it finally comes around. please don't give up on me if i haven't managed to remedy this in a reasonable amount of time.

ANYWAY...

i'm really excited about the workers' rights center. social welfare in action, becoming more involved in the spanish community [and i realize more and more every day how much i adore hispanic culture...] finding a focus for my bleeding heart hippie-self...i think its a good thing. new goal: coffee shops. fuck the cold, i'm going up to the capitol. that's where all the adorable stuff is. if i want to find inspiration, i've gotta walk a little ways. writing. my f-ing face off. seriously. fighting through writer's block [it's going to be bloody]. drinking liberally, but not outrageously. for the pure enjoyment of it all. a nice orange martini once in a while is never a bad thing. getting my arse to costa rica, if at all possible. espero que entraré en la pluviselva a ver los animales y los árboles y las cosas hermosas del mundo. ROADTRIPPING it with my wife. we will be spontaneous, and you will hear stories, and gasp in disbelief.

did you really do that? you will say.
and we will respond, why yes. yes, we did.

being ambivalent about:
-environmental conservation [i'druther be a preservationist, but then, i like people way too much. and it's just not feasible to say "preserve this!" and then tell all the starving farmers in peru that they have to move elsewhere.]

-getting a real job. [i want to be a writer! that's it. i feel like a slacker, but i keep telling myself that's just societal pressure. the only 'real' job i can see myself having right now is working in the peace corps through something...i don't even know what. teaching in niger, venezuela? maybe i'll just keep serving terms...and come back to the states every 2 years for a bit? you think that's a good idea? yes?]

and this is how my mind has been spinning.
-dave eggers. [big blue sea]: bob schneider. [satin in a coffin]: modest mouse. becoming a techno-ballerina. [headlock]: imogen heap. red notebooks. realizing just how much anastasia krupnik and harriet the spy have affected my (pseudo) adult life. protesting the cold by adoring jack johnson. apples and cheese. apples and peanut butter. entertaining my inner (coastie, siberian husky, hermit). dark chocolate covered espresso beans. gray tennis shoes with dirt. killing my oregano plant daily, one poor shriveled brown leaf at a time. orange spice tea. [i'll be your lover, too]: van morrison.

i am a maelstrom, a monkey, a masterpiece.

happy VD. two days early. so shoot me!

We were drawn from the weeds
We were brave like soldiers
Falling down under the pale moonlight
(rob thomas makes me swoon, yet again.)

is everywhere else in the world this surreal? i hope so. kind of.

Weekends have been growing more and more ridiculous since my return to Madison this year of 2006.
Ridiculous Weekend # 1: arguments in the den, with revelations [ending at approximately 6 am.]
Ridiculous Weekend # 2: chuck norris roundhouse kicks me in the face with a jug full of blush rose/ cabernet savignon
Ridiculous Weekend # 3: mexican food segweys to brazilian dance parties that escalate into terrifically dramatic/awkward treks back to sully

i am writing a (pseudo)short story for class, and i intend to enter it into a creative writing contest, hopefully awarding a certain amount of prize money in my general direction. (when it is done - at least as done as i ever make them - i will put it on this here blog. you can read the thing if you would like. it will be rather long. i believe i'm up to 6 pages, single spaced, 10 pt. font [in gill sans] at the moment. good luck with that.)
still have nowhere to live.
my mother likes to send me boxes full of tea and espresso beans for valentine's day. included: little post-it notes with smiley faces all over them. conversation hearts. mike'n'ikes. RENT.

speaking of which...valentine's day fast approaches. still no valentine. and it's not bothering me this time. ! are you surprised? i bet not as surprised as i am. i might have changed my mind by tuesday, but as of this sunday evening, i'm happy solo. although i wouldn't mind having someone to speak to me as samson does to regina spektor:

samson came to my bed
told me that my hair was red
told me i was beautiful and came into my bed

my hair isn't red, but the verse is too pretty not to sing that part. try it sometime...it'll make you cry. i swear. [regina spektor: samson] i think there is actually something stirring, something chaotic, but i haven't uncovered all of the details, and they keep fluttering away like infinitesimally tiny flecks of gold on the breeze. sometimes boys are just as skiddish as horses. maybe if i go slow and easy, talking softly the whole time [and carrying treats? i hear boys like food...] i can get close enough to find out the truth. i'm afraid of what i'll find...but at this point, self-preservation is a dull substitute for actually living. (as masochistic as this sounds...coming from an existentialist, it isn't that terribly bad. consider me warned. you have all survived, and i have grown from your stories.)

final note(s):
-i still hate econ
-samba dancing in spanish class = amazing
-girls make friends with their enemies, boys beat them up
-i need a chiropractor
-dick cheney is an idiot
-postsecret (it's VD themed this week...)

"You start out with a good relationship with the wristband, you know its there for you and you respect it and love it...then slowly it starts to get a mind of its own, ya know? Like, it gets a little tighter, and maybe it starts to cut off the circulation to your hand. Pretty soon, its so tight, you're fuckin' dead. And then you get your arm amputated, and you see the wristband with someone else, walkin down the street all happy together, just like you used to be, and you're like fuckin' be careful, man -shows (pretend) horribly disfigured arm- fuckin' wristbands...YOU GUYS ARE THE SHIT! Aw man, you know it. Fuckin' sing! You know this...sing! Sing! Aw shit. Y'all made this the best date of the tour man, have a fuckin' happy VD. Enjoy your VD!" - Matty, 2/14/04, Ascot.

i give up

i give up.


reading something that i think is really glorious writing makes me uneasy. dave eggers is married, and this makes me want to cry. i have a terrific crush on my ta. i may be too liberal for non-profit work. the world revolves around money, and this makes me want to burn all currency and start over with cocoa beans. at least chocolate is edible. i'm getting really excited about [possibly] living in a co-op. volunteering at the worker's rights center and the therapeutic horse stable are my goals for the week. i have writer's block. putting my hair into a ponytail takes at least three bobby-pins.


i give up.

and he said wake up, there's a mountain outside
that makes no sense, she said, mountains only come out when the ocean stops screaming
he said it has
she said i can still hear the waves beating themselves into oblivion
and he started to cry.
she asked why
and he said it was because nothing had ever disappeared so quickly from view
she said nothing?, walked towards the
door in the floor, and then
disappeared over the side of the mountain.

the sound of an alarm clock makes me crazy.

i'm beginning to think i want a studio apartment. as much as i'm afraid i'd be lonely...i am more afraid that i will end up committing some sort of serious felony by living with others. boys drive girls crazy, and thus cause them to be annoying and shrill and distracting. i dislike being around girls who are currently in a state of insanity because of a certain member of the opposite sex. is it some sort of viral disease? more likely a severe hormonal imbalance. apologies to others for this affection in myself [i know it's happened occasionally and from time to time.] whatever it is, i am going out of my head.

insomnia is fun, except when you have to get up at 730 in the morning. at 730 in the morning, insomnia is like a bag of bricks swinging wildly at your face while your bed whispers in a most ingenious voice [very similar to viggo mortensen, and on occasion with a slight australian lilt ala heath ledger] "i am a hole of comfort and safety and warmth. hide beneath my blankets with your head upon my pillow and no one will know the difference" and just as you almost succumb to its wiley seduction, the bed vanishes, and in its place appears a textbook, which is dancing around, waving its flimsy little arms and chanting "no sleep for you, sucka!" i actually sometimes hear these things. is this bad? my textbooks are really mean-spirited. thus, my owly expression in the morning. but they cannot pull off the slang use of the word "sucker" (nor would they be able to pull off the word itself if they were to say it correctly, because they are textbooks, and not gansta rap stars) and so i laugh a little bit. but then i realize that i still have to stay awake, and start scowling again. ergh. i am SO not a morning person. civilization does not exist before 1045. thanks for offering, i'll be unconscious 'til then.

+ brown sweaters
+ reading poetry in the morning to wake myself up
+ understanding econ
+ naps (my saving grace)
+ brokeback mountain
+ having my best friend back in the country

- having to understand econ
- 850s
- lying eyes and uneasy social states
- apartment hunting
- back problems
- bad food

our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up
we're just a million tiny gods causin' rain storms
turnin' every good thing to rust

perusing the habits of an opal-eyed hermit

i am in a tizzy. therefore, indulging. violently. ok, not quite violently...but pretty hardcore. [i can't believe i just wrote hardcore in a blog. blech. is it worse that i'm talking to myself about writing badly online? i should probably stop this.]

indulging in what? comfort things. music, food, people, books. movies, TV, habitual activities that make me feel lighter and less dramatic. comfort things.

.righteously-angry comfort music: ani difranco [gravel]
.revolutionary comfort music: bob dylan [times they are a changin']
.beach-bum comfort music: jack johnson [banana pancakes]
.love-song comfort music: jason mraz [after an afternoon]

.spunky-yet-heartwarming comfort movie: october sky
.accepting-my-mental-state comfort movie: girl, interrupted.
.discovering-the-non-phony comfort movie: igby goes down (see holden caulfield for a definition of "phony")
.all-things-80s comfort movie: the breakfast club

.old-school-cool comfort TV: M*A*S*H
.dramatic-healing comfort TV: ER (specifically older episodes with george clooney)
.manhattans-and-stilettos comfort TV: sex and the city
.cartoon comfort TV: the muppet babies or the new adventures of winnie the pooh

.obliviously-cheerful comfort habit: dancing on bascom
.broodingly-thoughtful comfort habit: writing in the dark
.insomniatic comfort habit: listening to the lake at night
.endorphin-charged comfort habit: running to picnic point



that is all.


"I wrote 2000 poems one year. I don't know what they are about, I never figured that out, but I believed in them. I used to chase my friends around with my poems trying to get them to read them and they didn't want to because then they'd have to tell me how horrible they were."

mismatching tennis shoes on sundays

i like lists more than complete thoughts at the moment. oops.


champagne, raised in slender glasses, bubbles rising infinitely. a toast, 10 days late.
to the boys in thug boots and bling, wearing oversized sweatshirts and cornrolls...thank you for singing gospel harmony while waiting for your food. you made my day. to every woman in a car at a traffic light, music blasting, wailing along to the heartbreak songs in that throaty voice which only comes out when you really want to cry. to bad coffee and donuts at 7 in the am. to indie film makers and movies about small children with big eyes and curious voices. to slinky black skirts, white silk, and skanky black heels...every girl needs skanky black heels. [well, not really. but they're really a lot of fun.] to old high school english teachers who remind you that a) terribly amazing things are in store, b) not everyone needs to be an engineer to make money, c) not everyone needs to make a lot of money to be happy, and d) costume jewelry is never out of place (on the right person). to recurring dreams about destined cats and endlessly disappearing hallways. to awkward sentences and supremely awkward questions. to kitchens in the twilight hours: assef's, kristen's, kate's. these are some of my favorite places. to falling in love with someone because of their mouth, and to falling out because of the words that come out of it. to being dirty! eating vegetables! liking trashy detective stories about new jersey! to sleeping until noon, eating ben and jerry's at 2 in the morning, and wearing no socks in january.


.i've been thinking. [cat power]
.have you ever. [creedance clearwater revival]
.i've got dreams to remember [otis redding]
.can't cross over. [miriam makeba]
.the only living boy in new york. [simon & garfunkel]
.house of the rising sun. [the animals]
.rainy day women #12 & 35. [bob dylan]
.beautiful soul. [jesse mccartney] <--- this is my guilty pleasure song. don't give me shit for loving it. i won't take it.



like a tiger in the dark you were hungry from the start
am i losin' control am i losin' my soul just tell me, am i losin' you?

there's (no) sex in the champagne room

no ____ one ____ defies ____ artificial ____ light
I'll cut all your wires I never cared Cut all your wires What can be there? It's dead. And all the invisible arcs Are caught in my head And the invisible arcs Are caught in my head


happy fuckin' 2006!

grocery shopping in heels. wontons and apple gouda quesadillas and sex [and the city...clearly]. trivial pursuit rematch: guys vs. girls. pop culture queen. [accidentally] forgetting assef, and having to retrieve her at 1147. champagne flowing from the rooftops. party on pill hill (!) sneaking in like we're in the underground railroad. "they can't count!" huge walk in closets and nice rugs and dancing and hot convention happenings. attempting to sleep on futons and on floors and everywhere in between...unsuccessfully. being awake at 730 and wanting coffee (but not getting it until 12). mixes with rainer maria and simon and garfunkel and otis redding. losing things in the giant house of a thousand rooms and ten thousand doors. caribou with my girls. how are we going to top this?!

That's another reason I love New York. Just like that, it can go from bad to cute.

mr. zimmerman's 115th dream

Ah me I busted out
Don't even ask me how
- mr. zimmerman*

feeling ridiculously hopelessly romantic and also at the very same moment, impossibly, absolutely crying.

let me sing you a waltz...out of nowhere, out of my blues...

baby, you are gonna miss that plane
i know.


sidewalks. cafe lights, tea stains on pages. mascara shadowed eyes in the morning with ruffled hair and thinking of the truth. movie addictions. bananas foster. bursting into tears and then babbling incoherently while pacing. humming and dancing in apartments with wood floors and big windows and record players. [lists]. dr. pepper and diet coke (not together). traffic lights hanging from lampposts over bridges made of steel and suspended like unravelling film.

again with this bullshit? no. i won't take it. are you bored? i am not intermediate entertainment. there was a time when that would have left me begging for more...and i'm not far enough removed to forget how it (still) sometimes makes my head spin...but not now. it's hard to see passed all the promise (because it's there...humming in the background like some twisted soundtrack made of silk and steel wool and rusted barbed wire) but i know what's behind it...and as much as i'd love to ignore it and pretend like ignorance really is bliss, i won't. those 3 seconds, so many months and days and hours ago, ingrained themselves on the insides of my eyelids in inverted colors like radioactive heart beats, and i am not stupid enough to open my eyes and forget. i'm jaded, you're careless, and we're both walking parallel to nothing that will ever be.


"All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac." saul bellow (awfully cavalier of him to say...but oh so true.)


*bob dylan, of course.

layers

honest eyes in precarious situations
drinking catawba juice straight from the bottle
drinking smirnoff straight from the bottle
small gray puppies with blue eyes and big feet
rediscovering old dusty corners
machinery row and the electric earth cafe
yeruba mate and lapsang souchong (they both smell like bonfires...)
hand written notes
holiday naps
making christmas/hannukah/kwanzaa cards for veterans in coffee shops with my wifey
not knowing what to do with said cards after they've been made
old men singing bob dylan covers
warm skin
recognizing what i don't want
layers

Your mouth is open wide
The lover is inside
And all the tumults done
Collided with the sign
You're staring at the sun
You're standing in the sea
Your body's over me

deadly nightshade

i'm in need of some deadly nightshade.
or maybe a trip to thailand.
possibly a camera, so i can actually take pictures of things.
sleep is another possibility.
a muse? yes.
the bamboo plant i got, but what about the iguana?
bob dylan was right about everything... ani too.
i have the strangest dreams...

we were driving in the car, you with your black down vest, me with pink rubber galoshes, sticking out just past the seat. i remember feeling like it was our secret, that i was sitting in the front, that we were driving on the "wind-y" road, that we had stopped at the gas station and you let me have a sip of your coffee even though she always told you not to. there weren't many other cars, which made the headlights stretch far off into the distance; i always tried to find the end of their luminous echoes, but they moved too quickly, running ahead of my eyes. and around every curve, across every hill and valley, when another set of lights approached, with that glowing above the horizon which announced the arrival of some other being into our universe, i would stare in rapture. incredulous that they would DARE to intervene on our time, our time! and also in terror that they would discover us, tell someone where we were, break the sanctuary of that rusting ford sedan into a thousand discordantly unequivocal pieces...but would that really have been so bad?

because the world owes me nothing 
and we owe each other the world

i have one constant ache in the back of my mind, the pit of my stomache, the middle of my heart... for domino.
no matter how many years pass [has it been almost 4 already?] i look at that picture and i see this rose gray appaloosa with molten chocolate
in his eyes and i still remember the way he smelled in the summer.  there was a sort of stillness there, in the way he would come...he settled
my uncertainties, my insecurities, my doubts. as strong of unrequieted love i've felt from no other.  he gave me a body to lean against, warm and
full and steady, all the things i wasn't.  there is something that horses do which no other creature is as wonderful at doing - as strange as it may
sound to someone who doesn't have an afinity for these wildly beautiful things, the most comforting moments in my life [...surpassing hugs from old
friends and bowls of soup in january  and sleeping in on sundays...] were those in which horses placed their noses in my outstretched hands, pressed
their massive heads against my ribcage and just stayed still.  not needing to move...no place to be but there, in that place, with me.  dom did that a
lot.  hugs from horses are like hugs from people, but better somehow.  not better, i suppose, because they're different sorts of hugs...but regardless
of the fact that horses have no arms, those hugs are just as good.  the funny thing is, dom was not a calm horse by nature. as an appaloosa, he was
inherently high-strung, skiddish, and stubborn.  he was even the first (and only) horse to throw me from his back.  yet there was this surreal connection
between us, an understanding.  i did not hold those lapses in sanity against him, and he did not define me by my faults.i don't think about him everyday...
in fact a lot less often than i used to.  but every so often, every few weeks, a prickle appears behind my nose and my eyes start to grow hazy and
i bite my lip for a moment...all because of dom.


David: You're not blind. You're drinking Jack Daniels, and when you drink Jack, you start in with that...
Frank Sinatra, she shot me down, give me a cigarette, "King of Sad" thing. 
Brian: That I do. Give me a cigarette.

buggers, i'm trying to save their souls...

-mental cartoon-
.guy is holding hands with girl as they stroll on beach.
girl: i've never had this much fun on a first date
guy farts
girl:did you just fart?
guy: no, i think i stepped on a duck
-wide shot: duck running away, seriously hurt.
-colin mortensen

the entire world is being erased by snow, one cold-hearted molecule at a time. the world is coming to an end! the stars are falling all around, turned to embers and ash, and no one is making eye contact until they're forced to run for shelter in the warmth of central heating and the indoors. i really would like to be a sarcastic asshole today, but i'm in too strange of a philosophical mood. recognize!

being an existentialist can be either a) the most comforting thing in the world, or b) absolutely terrifying. i like to think that it is both sometimes, but that's just because i thrive on ambivalence. people, for example. my favorites are the ones who have so many levels it baffles my mind trying to figure every angle into clarity...except it never fully happens because they're never fully finished. you can be an asshole and i'll still adore you just as much! in fact, it's likely. as long as you make me realize big bloody-bodied truths and notice tiny infintessimally small details and really understand that you're being geniune. this is crucial.

Cuz I have had something to prove | As long as I know something | That needs improvement
And you know that everytime I move | I make a woman's movement
And first you decide what you've gotta do | Then you go out and do it
And maybe the most that we can do | Is just to see eachother through it
We make our own gravity | To give weight to things | Then things fall and they break
And gravity sings


i miss my classes.

what?! who does that?!

apparently, i do. call me sentimental, call me a loser, call me what you will. i've enjoyed the people who have surrounded me this semester. maybe it's a sort of bittersweet affection in some cases, especially when in conjunction with the grueling, grating, obnoxiously difficult work that is involved in class, but as i have a tendency to become attached to places when i find a sense of solidarity and connection, that's whats up. to my writing class...thank you for being a friend to my mind. toni morrison was speaking of something totally different when she coined that phrase, but it's really what the class has been to me. not to mention that so many of you are sooo talented i feel like a failing amateur in comparison, or that you've given me some of the greatest compliments of my entire existence, but really...its that i can see bits of myself in all of you and i really crave that. this weird haven of self-criticism and terror and amusement and ridiculousness and infatuation and identity, that only really comes when you find people together who have a surreal sort of similarity haunting their staggering differences. i hope we keep some semblance of that...but even if we don't, we'll all be able to go read each other's sh*t when it's published, eh?

[sh*t being censored because it isn't actually shitty. i refer to it as such because the connotation of that word in this particular context embodies so much more than anything else ever could. talk about a contradiction in the pervertation of the english language...i also happen to believe that fuck really is one of the most versatile words available to our tongues. i adore that word.]

ILS...i've really already discussed the very twisted way we became a group (bonding over the most ridiculous amount of studying and mind boggling information ever is rather masochistic.) but i'll miss that too. i'll miss the class as well, even if allen is a pretentious asshole. but as i mentioned earlier, i usually end up loving assholes. hating, yes...but the love is more important. the entire history of the universe according to...fair trade coffee and tapestries? i guess so. we don't know exactly what we were supposed to take out of it...but i think that's ok. existentialism and solidarity! woo.

history discussion is a bunch of crazy people talking about huge ideas that have eaten the life out of society and are threatening to eat us for dinner and spit us all out in a pile of ravaged trash and apathetic bull. we refuse! and while we're doing it, we'll make all the pop culture references and go on as many tangents as possible.

hot raspberryrum chocolate
the raspy quality of the british voice when speaking of grave things
a new ladies' man, and consequentially, colin mortensen
the onion
buttons and home-made holiday cards
dirty blue shoes
radiohead song titles


wretched little heathens. buggers, all they'll eat is spaghettios. i'm trying to save their souls, but they just won't have it.

taking over small countries

walking down the street in the cold snow...hands together

no one ever touches each other when its nice outside, never holds hands until its so cold you need the human contact just to stay sane

down the sidewalk trudging, arms linked, into the building. held beneath the protective arm, just under, up against the collar bone where its safest, most comfortable. having the most peculiar conversation, realizing what is going on - a look from one, silently whispering in the back of your mind
you're done.
down the stairs, still connected. so real! and i hear my name calling from the walls...was it you? who knows, but i'll remember the chills for the rest of my days.

i am terribly frustrated. and also sick of being single [surprise]. sick (and!) tired of writing about the same shit every time i pick up a pen. tired of feeling inadequate at life. i am angry!

least favorites:
.negative windchills.
.early morning lectures that make no point.
.boys who play hot and cold.
.always being sleepy.
.leaving behind people at semester.
.airlines.
.socks.


something needs to happen. something huge. the taking over of something, a building, a city, a country. we should all be armed and taking over small countries. or rioting. or no: an orgy. there should be an orgy.

how the universe changed color

Quis hic locus, qui regio? Qui mundis placa...
[what world is this, what kingdom? What shores of what world?]

and days like these are why i love this campus, this place of streetlights and foggy mornings [foggy mornings on buses travelling at 75 miles an hour through tennessee...i swear i saw them marching, troops coming forwards like spectors in the dim early morning light, darkness still sinking deep into the air, permeating like water in jeans, staining the place between those marching skeletons and my eyes.] this place of jasmine rice and mango lassi's and lounging on couches in warm rooms filled with laughing and sex (and the city...) and apple mango tea. senior citizens who climb fences and protest the world's atrocities, very small children who drum and drum and drum their hearts out, hippies with layered thermals and fraying jeans and dreadlocks, social causes dripping from their tongues like liquid methane, fueling their bleeding liberal hearts with ammunition to fight. fight until the whole world rests at night, beneath the silences of a global paz, lying in the comforts of their peaceful beds, filled with dreams about blackbirds who sing and men who throw themselves into the sea like porpoise, and how the universe changed color. the campus comes alive to me in small evocations of inspiration, these tiny glimmers of total, extraordinary greatness, as if the stones of the streets themselves were filled with the spirits of the muses. i see all of these secrets, tracing their paths through the eyes, through the feet and the hands and the hearts of all of these people who surround me everyday, and all i want to do is discover them. every - single - one. what does that glance of your eye mean? upwards and over, across the table, the one that no one ever thinks anyone will ever notice... but they do. just for a moment. what does it feel like to run down state without a thought in your mind for the way its freezing outside, or the way your hair is flying behind you like streaks of golden streamers, or the way the curve of your throat, head thrown back in laughter, must bring him to love you for the rest of his days. what is it about boys with cigarettes and girls with curving waists and elegant shoulder blades, the girls from the paintings in harlem and the boys from the folk songs in california...what is it about these people that is magnetic? i love these people. i love these secrets. they are like oxygen for me... the hidden qualities of people, who are so very protective of those enigmatic explosions. they are protective because these secrets determine their identities...their very insides, their bones and the blood cells and the tracings of that nervous energy which keeps you tapping your foot.

as much as i hate to admit it...i miss rochester.

listening to: new hip hop that will make you fall in love with hip hop all over again and this is a mix for tegan swanson who... (mixes sent to me by my loverly friend ms. katherine shireen assef. thanks, doll.)

reading: the master and margarita, invisible cities, and a rumor of war

(soon to be)eating:mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, and possibly some turkey. possibly. i do enjoy naps...tryptophan is my friend.


Elaine Miller: [to William] Your Dad was so proud of you. He knew you were a predominantly accelerated child.
Anita Miller: What about me?
Elaine Miller: You are rebellious and ungrateful of my love.

ecstasy on the inside of the atmosphere

some live creature on the roses...the sound of water was in the room and through the waves came the voices of birds singing...fear no more, says the heart in the body; fear no more. -mrs. dalloway

why am i so fascinated by blackbirds and seagulls?! the ocean? city scapes and war stories and curling copper wire? these are beautiful, ugly things, brutal and cold and violent. [does that make sense? beautiful ugly? i understand the paradox, but i do not mean ugly as in the opposite of aesthetically pleasing. i use ugly to mean raw and unabashed and real. perhaps ugly is the wrong word. i don't know if i can say for sure...] some things just can't be explained.

i think my adoration for seagulls stems from two places, two drastically different periods of my life, in fact...two ridiculously plain moments. regardless...every time i hear a seagull, there is a shudder beneath my skin. [if i am to explain this in chronological order] i realized my obsession backwards. the second time a seagull truly imbedded itself in my self was a lovely, humid april evening freshman year of college. sitting in the dark, with the room to myself (as cath was elsewhere) i was contemplating turning on the lights so as not to fall asleep. i had been enjoying the glow of the christmas lights too much to actually turn on the ugly [regular meaning] florescent light, but i knew that if i didn't do it soon, i would fall asleep on the floor, as is my habit. suddenly, piercing through the silence and the peacefully muggy evening aura, came the haunting cry of a seagull. once...twice...three times. melancholy and filled to bursting with this terribly evocative emotion, the bird was tearing a hole in my brain and bringing me to the point of breathlessness. i remember leaping towards the window sill, thrusting my head into the screen and staring out into the blackness, as if hoping that somehow i might find him-- surfer of the skies, traverser of the tailwinds-- and see him with my own two eyes. his cry continued to emanate through the night, but i never did catch a glimpse of his ghostly body. he never found the one he was calling for either...i think that maybe, as there was no other voice...a mate or a friend or another soul in the moment, that this is why he was so beautiful to me.
the first time i was truly affected by seagulls is really remembered as an amalgamation of my childhood, as a montage of images from my adventures on lake superior with my grandparents. lake superior is part of my history, part of the history my grandparents have attempted to instill in me anyway, as it is a foundation for both of their lives, and so, indirectly, for mine. every summer they would take me up to the lake for a day. driving in their car we passed through shadows and the feathered raptures of the trees in northern wisconsin, until suddenly bursting into the sunshine and the gusting, lustful wind of superior. what i remember does not come in totality, but rather in chunks and random images and a blur of color and sound. it will not make sense to anyone, i'm almost sure of it. but this is what comes. windblown blonde hair, turquoise slip ons, giant iron anchors dropped in the midst of land, out of place and mourning their lost lakes. popcorn in paper bags, rickety picnic tables, the intersection of pebbles and water. seagulls everywhere...begging for the contents of the pocket in my pink rubber raincoat. hopping and landing and bursting into flight, to and fro, like pieces of newspaper dancing on the invisible currents of the wind. i run, and they scatter; circling above me, they are laughing as i turn my head skyward to watch them disappear into the light.

the sun came streaming, burning across the sky and it splashed across the brick and rising concrete, steel, essence of the city...these buildings glowing red and gold and bronze in the evening light. right at that moment, only then, when the sun was right there, at that exact angle, i happened to look out the windows above the sky, across the expanse of the city. there they were, illuminated. the buildings ablaze and the windows soaking in light like mirrors, shimmering, shouting infinitely into the open air. the frames were surrounded by metal, burned copper and gorgeous in the sun light streaking, and they were magnetic. i couldn't look away. shadow and radiance, juxtaposed. i can hardly stand to see something so beautiful and not be able to express it in words. but i can't. those words, which i've just written...they are lies compared with the truth of that moment in time...when the buildings were on fire, exposed by windows made of molten epiphany and those screaming copper wires.

so apparently, my apple cider has fermented itself. i swear to jake gyllenhaal's beautiful arse, it tastes like sparkling apple cider. if only i knew how it had done so, i would repeat the process infinitely...tasty apple champagne for everyone!

scarf weather
ambitious bamboo plants encased in glass
stuffed animals who give good hugs
stamp-less packages returned to sender [and consequentially, katie s. assef]
mrs. dalloway, and the way 'the hours' contains so much of woolf's genius
hunting high and low (coldplay)
simonize and just another (pete yorn)
the concept of studying in the czech republic [and!] costa rica
completely harmless flirtation
glinting eyes
mood rings, global bracelets (cape cod, tolo, and new york city)
'john mccrea of cake, y'all'
anticipating upcoming roadtrips
landlocked blues (bright eyes) [special thanks to my durio for this one]

but did you notice my sigh? did you know that i meant it for you?

microcosmic melancholy

there is a siren moaning in time with the dusk.

downtown...
where the lights become more clear
with night, and faded, with the sun's rising.
where stones are crushed slowly
into dormancy beneath tires,
footsteps,
earthquakes. the earth
quakes, cries, for its lost youth.
rumbling in dissatisfaction,
revolting the only way it knows how -
to create chaos between its
restless limbs and the
creeping, crawling, cringing folk
upon it.
we cling, like wildfire to blades
of dried grass, blowing in the breeze,
wishing for the strength
to jump; from stands of
dried grass imminent in black sand,
surrounded by roaring, by
the sound and
the fury
of an ocean. an ocean
which dares to beat sea glass -
ragged, rugged, desperately
illigitmitely broken -
into submission. into
pieces of fragmented,
encapsulated emotion, lasting for
too long, hidden, ignored.
ignored in the grains of black sand,
in flecks of black granite, ground...
smashed, filtered and faded into
order.
flecks of black granite intermingled
with these gems of
viridian, cerulean, wonder -
laid quietly inside
the pavement, flickering
in recognition of the blinking
streetlights rising
into the air
downtown.

these floorboards are rotting, held together by the rusting, raspy voiced nails which moan and creak under his footsteps. these floorboards contain her tears, melded into the fine lines of the wood, still grieving for their lost roots as mournfully as her tears, as if the salt tinged words that stream from her eyes illuminate - magnify - release - all the secrets of the trees. these floorboards bend and warp with the whistle of the sea breeze, allowing themselves to be distressed, disrupted, because their uneasiness signals the gravity of their sacrifice; these are floorboards filled with malice towards their oppressors and heartache inspired by their daily dying, but they revel in their misery, their unrest. these floorboards are witness to the rise and fall of years, on an endless life, as the foundation present for monstrous rages, for exhausting depression, for calm. these floorboards live vicariously through the unknowing steps of her slippered feet, past the frame of the door and back towards the crumbling edge of the cliff, gasping in revelation of its height, teetering precarious upon the thought of the fall. these floorboards split in desperation, no longer carrying his weight, no longer able to bear her torment. these floorboards recoil at the spillage of blood, curling and protesting as it seeps, staining into the grains, into the knots, the imperfections. these floorboards burn silently, resigned to their reversal, return to ash, as she lies finally pacified beneath them, and he lies broken in the yard, bathed in the light of their flames.


i beg you... to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.

solitary state of mind

Something for your poetry, no? he said.

pretty sure i'm going mad. hugging trees, gathering leaves, running around like my head's been chopped off...and all i really want to do is hibernate and eat cold pizza. well maybe i'd like to read a little as well. ginsberg, eggers, caputo, maybe a bit of gowdy and heller. is there any real reason i can't just cease to function as a part of normal social society for awhile and be by myself? [not in the least bit depressed here, darlings. nor do i hate the world. i'm just in a solitary state of mind. which would be more fun if i were in new york. because then, i could also be in a new york state of mind and sing billy joel songs all night while holding aloft glasses filled with wine at pretentiously strange angles above my head and saying things like "ching ching" and "here's to you, dollface." it does not matter that i am alone in this apartment, except for the ferret named genevieve who lives in my dining room and the entirety of downtown new york, visible from my 9th floor loft. i will still sing and say strange things. alliteration!] emily clarified my life, in lieu of some very confusing boy situations. here [paraphrased] is her wisdom.
1) there are people who have a few close friends and there are people who have a lot of acquaintances.
2)relationships work like that too.
3) no one has to settle. no one is too picky. it's a heart we're speaking of, not a pair of shoes.
[emily didn't actually say the last sentence, but i'm sure she might have thought of it at some point in her life, because it sounds like something carrie bradshaw would say. and we all know carrie bradshaw is right about things of this nature.]

ready or not
here i come
you can't hide
gonna find you
and make you want me
[the fugees]

i love it when you call me kiddo.

who is 'you'? anyone. everyone.

from [HOWL]:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked...
who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to
holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all
drained of brillance...
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and
shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets...
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside
of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and
were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were
growing old and cried...
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked
away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze...
who sang out their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window,
jumped in the filthy Passaic, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot...
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salvation and light and breasts,
until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals
with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang
sweet blues to Alcatraz...
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images
juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual
images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of
consciousness together jumping with sensation...
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here
what might be left to say in time come after death...
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies
good to eat a thousand years.

-allen ginsberg.


buying used books at half price, eating ice cream in the wind, being remembered by a boy with adorably curly hair and intelligent eyes.
making scrambled eggs with cheese, 'then laugh, leaning back...', discovering that osyrus the beared mountain man is actually incredibly sweet.


i haven't been sleeping well. not that i always have in the past, but this time, it's more disruptive, more fragile. i know why. but the knowing makes it all the more difficult to remedy the sleeplessness, as it breaks my heart to be aware. what i wouldn't give to be ignorant again, just to this one thing! what i wouldn't do to have those moments back, in which everything was not tainted, in which my rose colored glasses [already missing half a lens and smudged] were still at least in one piece. i have that time trapped beneath clear packaging tape and under a dried autumn leaf, smashed between the pages of my journal. those precious few seconds float - eternally taunting me to take them in, take them up in my lungs and breathe them in so deep as to hope that their life will fill every inch of my being and give me back their meaning. but as soon as i release them, those precious few seconds... they will go drifting away like specks of infintesimally tiny tears, irreplaceable and unattainable and lost. what i wouldn't give to undo that day.

an elevator made of glass goes up into the sky for miles without end, but there is no top and there are only sides, so it really isn't an elevator at all. at least not an elevator that could conceivably hold people. there are people in the elevator though, somehow, and they're all yelling at the top of their lungs. they're yelling about how the earth is shrinking and that there isn't enough space in the whole universe for their love and about how there is no bottom on their elevator made of glass. they're yelling at the top of their lungs as they rocket into space, but you can hear a faint melody in the caucaphony their voices are creating. while they're yelling the timbre and the pitch and the verve of their voices seems upon first listen to be chaos, noise, pure and simple. but it is not just pure, one note one melody, it is five chords and a crescendo, three flats and two sharps stemming from the minor key their voices are creating while their elevator made of glass is rocketing into space.

1 day. 364 days. i still miss you, kiddo.

sun,
split like spun
glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
into the crevices -
in and out, illuminating

Invisible Blackbirds, elongated.

updated for the 3rd time...this may be the final-first draft. if that makes any sense at all. which it probably doesn't. ooo workshopping makes me nervous!

i wrote this for my creative writing class - thanks to three images, an obsession with Vietnam, and the abundance of blackbirds on campus.

INVISIBLE BLACKBIRDS.

My body jolted awake, and I realized I had fallen into a trance. Somehow, I had made it down the hallway and to the doorway of my room. I paused, letting the darkness wash over me, letting it seep into my harried thoughts. It provided a surreal calm in juxtaposition with my labored breathing; I always felt as though a freight train had run through my body after falling out of a flashback or waking from a sleepwalk. As if the crossing of time waged some sort of war on my bones and everything else that surrounded them. My consciousness fights to come back to the now, but I have to struggle against the hands of my demons, clawed and snarling, and they leave bruises in my flesh and in my mind. There was still the faint sound of the TV in the back of my ears, even though it was no longer on, and I could feel the voices coming across the space in surges – rays of copper wire twisting and wrestling for their way in to my consciousness. I struggled to ignore them as they cut through the layers, but those metallic symphonies were stronger, faster than I, and they infiltrated deeper and deeper until I could no longer feel their roots to stop them.
Gunfire. Voices – angry, urgent, hollow. Rain whistling, screeching. Explosions. Agony.
In the reflection of the window, I could see my body, its angles and edges disfigured and ragged. My face was obscured, like the men in the story Mirello always told – no face, no reality, just the phantom of a man left behind by a pair of raven wings. Yet as the door closed, a spear of light shot through from the hall and found my eyes on the enigmatic surface of the glass, illuminating their presence as though a fire had been ignited inside the base of my skull. I knew it was only a reflection, a trick of the light, but the evocation of that image brought one memory racing to the forefront of my mind and I could not force myself to forget it. My eyes were there, staring back at me and demanding that I remember. My eyes were his eyes, and his eyes were haunting. His eyes were filled with broken soul.


When I was young and strong and filled with ambivalence towards the jungle I was trapped inside, a man I knew used to tell a story. Mirello smoked too much, and his voice was hazy and rough – the kind that so often accompanies wizened philosophy and a jaded sense of apathy. He had the mentality of a seventy-five year old man and the body of a twenty-two year old, neither of which were false, and both of which he carried well. Mirello used to tell a story, or maybe it was more a nightmare, about a field full of invisible blackbirds,
“Except they weren’t really blackbirds,” he would say – as he told the story often, “they were men. Men wearing black woolen suit jackets carrying large black umbrellas through blackened naked forests. They were the kinds of forests in which all the trees were dead, merely remnants of their living selves. The kind of trees that looked like the skeletons of men, waving their branches like arms in the wind, as if they wanted you to dance with them…”
“That’s pretty fucked up man,” O’Dell would say, just under his breath, as he always did when he heard the story. “Pretty fuckin’ macabre if you ask me.” He had these eyes, big brown eyes, that betrayed some inner sense of emotion that he tried to hide from everyone. Something that meant he was only acting tough because he was too scared to admit he was terrified. The kind of eyes that are the only thing anyone can ever seem to see. “His eyes!” they’d say, the breath catching in their throats, gasping. He was around the same age as Mirello, maybe a few years younger, but the difference between them was astounding. The sound of Mirello’s voice was like the ultimate ruse that everyone allowed themselves to believe; the look in O’Dell’s eyes told us the truth he never wanted to expose.
“But these men just kept marching,” Mirello continued, as if he hadn’t heard O’Dell at all. “They just kept moving, going through the skeletons of these trees. And the light – the light was shifting, squinting, blinking between the crooks of the branches. It was streaming through the branches just like it does here,” and he would gesture towards the sunlight shining in patches through the damp, humid air of the jungle “and it would catch and cling to the edges of the trees, and the outlines of the men. They would glow in gold and bronze and amber light, as if visible emanations of their souls were drifting slowly away from their bodies – from the trees. And the men, the men never had faces, just places overflowing with empty space.”
Mirello would always stop telling the story there because he knew that everyone was paying attention, no matter how many times he had told it before. O’Dell would always scoff and feign disinterest as the rest of us clamored for the conclusion, but we all knew he wanted to hear it just as much. Some of the guys thought that O’Dell hated Mirello because he was stronger than him, more popular, less fidgety. I always thought that it was something different than that.
“These men,” Mirello would continue, his voice growing deeper, “were all striding towards a staircase – right there in the middle of the woods – and they would just march up the stairs, one by one, closing their umbrellas and heading into the sky. There were stairs missing or crumbling, the boards decaying or gone. Cobwebs hung from the walls that surrounded the flight, but there was no ceiling. The ceiling had been gone long before the men had ever been there. They’d stop at the top of the staircase, because there was a door, but none of them ever opened it. They just stood in their black woolen suit jackets, with their heads tilted upwards, waiting for something to change.” The story always ended there, and even though we all felt like there should have been more, no one ever made a sound. I heard the story maybe fifteen, twenty times over the course of that year, and it changed a little every time…but the men never had faces. And they always started out being blackbirds…


Mirello and O’Dell really didn’t hate each other, much as everyone assumed. It was just one of those relationships that never smoothed out, never quite seemed to fit. Mirello was a big man, with stocky Italian features that accentuated the gravelly quality of his voice, and the thing about him was that when he talked, everybody listened. He didn’t ramble on, didn’t speak just to fill the vacant silence; his words had purpose. O’Dell seemed much smaller than Mirello, regardless of the fact that he was only a few inches shorter. He didn’t talk much, except when it was to himself, so when he started speaking up to Mirello, no one knew what to think.
“Why you always tell that story Mirello?”
Because people like to hear it, he said, leaning against his pack, arms crossed and eyes closed.
“But what’s so cool about this particular one? I mean… it’s not funny, and its not that exciting…”
Sometimes it’s just a story kid, he said. Eyes still closed, arms still crossed.
“These men, though,” O’Dell said, “why are they carrying umbrellas if it’s sunny? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Mirello gritted his teeth and opened his eyes. “Well none of it makes any sense. That’s the point. They’re goddamned blackbirds…invisible goddamned blackbirds for chrissakes. What does it matter the weather?” He was sitting up now, staring right at O’Dell, sneering. Then he stood and walked off into the brush, said he couldn’t explain everything to everyone. Some people didn’t know when to just listen, he said. O’Dell was silent again after that.
We all told stories in the dank and the dirt…it was the only way to stay sane. Even then madness would come creeping up, and half the time when I slept at night I dreamt of everything that had happened during the day. But stronger somehow. Like the pictures of the moments in my head had been hidden under a microscope and magnified, shoved into focus. As if they had been infused with clarity while they were fermenting in my memory. The colors were always more dramatic, like someone had taken cans of paint and splashed green and gold and ivory across the whole thing. Not that the colors in the jungle were drab; everything now seems washed out and faded in comparison. But in my dreams, they were almost surreal. Funny, how colors could be so vibrant in a place so overgrown with death.


There was a depression between the roots of three massive trees, holding water from the storm earlier in the morning, and I collapsed right there against the trunk of one. My body sank deep into my bones, too weary to support my own weight. O’Dell came over slowly, his mouth open vacantly and his eyes glazed in exhaustion. His face was ruddy from tan and the reddish brown dirt that seemed to collect in every crease and fold of skin. Underneath the color, though, I could see his pallor. Streaks from his tears laced through the dirt, creating trails that reinforced the story the bloodshot quality of his eyes told. At first he just rubbed his palms together, his lips still parted in consistent silence. Dipping his hands in the pool, he began to scrub and scour, beneath his nails and in the cracks of his knuckles. Faster and faster he pushed the water against his skin, until I noticed he was dragging tracks of flesh from the backs of his hands, drawing blood like cat scratches. Stop, I asked him, but he kept at it, his reflection staring up at him through the disjointed surface of the water. Stop O’Dell, I said, and leaned forward to grab one of his wrists.
“I can’t get it off,” he whispered quietly, still fighting to cleanse his hands.
“You’re scratching the shit out of your hands, kid. Stop.”
“I can’t get it off. I have to get it off.” I could see his eyes clearly in the turbulent veneer of the water, so blank and listless, staring without seeing any sort of reality.
“I can’t get it off,” he whispered again, though I knew he wasn’t speaking to me.


I can see O’Dell’s eyes like they were mine – and they were. They were my eyes, are my eyes, the same except for the crushing sorrow that was buried in their depths. I’ve never seen eyes that go for miles like that before; they literally contained distance so great that the intensity was overwhelming. I couldn’t stand to look for very long, for fear of getting lost. Yet they were soft, and tired, weary of the blood he’d seen every day for a year…the jungle was sucking the life out of his eyes one step at a time. They watched where his feet went, though they never saw anything but the light shining through the canopy. Twisting into fragments and bits, as if it could be changed into something physical, as if it could be caught and held in his hands. Held together, like he’d done for me, like he’d tried to do for Mirello. There was just too much energy there to keep within the confines of a body, and Mirello spilled out like the light, and he’d scattered in pieces across the whole length of a year in a moment. All of him, only just there and then suddenly gone; as that energy too great to be contained, Mirello burst open and into the tropics, inexplicably and all together too fragile. I watched O’Dell’s eyes crumble in that moment, when Mirello was ripped from his arms and carried away like the light when the clouds had converged. I watched him break down.


We had been marching just like we always marched through the jungle, our necks drenched in sweat, our limbs aching from exhaustion and frustration and anxiety. Most times the only way to identify anyone on the move was by voice – when we marched our fatigues camouflaged our bodies and our flak helmets covered our faces. Mirello was about fifty feet ahead of me, his body blending in with the trees so much that I lost sight of him without even trying. I was looking into the dying sunlight, watching the last of the morning filter through the foliage before the rain clouds solidified, when the raspy bark of his voice pierced through my daze.
“Hey, guys, hold up a minute. Hold up! I thought I saw something move over there. Heads down!”My body stiffened immediately, instantaneously awakening because of the surge of adrenaline feeding from my fear. Our feet moved more quietly and our backs were further hunched as we shuffled in the direction of his voice, following him towards whatever he had seen. Suddenly, there was an opening in the forest and the ruins of several wooden hutches appeared before us. They had been burned, gutted – cleared of any former inhabitants by the ravages of flame. There was nothing else around, no bloodied corpses or hastily made shallow graves, so we all assumed that the village had been deserted for a while. Even if there had been evidence to the contrary, we would have forced ourselves to deny the truth; no point in imagining anything more horrific than necessary. A rain drop landed on my arm and I looked upwards to find the sky hadn’t totally clouded over yet. The last desperate rays of the sun were caught like prisms in the scattered rain, and the light was refracted all across the clearing. The monsoon cometh, I thought to myself. We stood tensed, surveying every shadow for signs of disruption, suspicion, but after a few minutes we had all begun to lighten up. One man made a joke about wanting a refund from his travel agent, and another chimed in with something concerning his insurance policy. A few of us were peering into one of the huts when Mirello said
“Except they weren’t really blackbirds.” Most of the guys within earshot chuckled, and a lot of them begged jokingly to hear the full version of the story.
“Yea, asshole, finish the end. You can’t just leave them there in the staircase, staring like a bunch of idiots at the sky,” came O’Dell’s voice from behind me. We were all shocked. We had never heard him say anything so ballsy to anyone, let alone Mirello.
“Don’t call me an asshole, shitface. Who says they can’t end up staring like a bunch of idiots? I see people doing that all the time…” Just as O’Dell opened his mouth to respond, a sound like the crack of lightning rang through the clearing, and then everything was chaos.


He watched as Mirello died in his arms, life slipping through his fingers like grains of rice; too small, too delicate to hold. I watched as he watched Mirello disappear – his body mangled and quaking, begging for release. Like a single pulse of electricity, he jerked once and went still, shallow eyed and silent. It was if he began to decay right there, traces of his flesh vanishing as the rain slid across his skin, his muscles dissolving and sinking into the mud, leaving O’Dell holding only his bones. Leaving a man who had witnessed life stolen. It was only after Mirello’s eyes closed that I heard it. The sound came from deep within the cavity of O’Dell’s chest and rose up, and out, streaming into the air like toxin. It grew louder and more empty, more lonely until finally, as if he could no longer hold it in, the moan broke open and he sobbed. Those big brown eyes became like orbs of molten glass, shimmering and screaming in anguish. It was not wailing, for this pain was more powerful, deeper and more intimate than that. These were wracking sobs, soon morphed into roars so intense that I too began to cry, feeling that my heart might explode like the pieces of Mirello if I didn’t open my mouth and allow it to escape into the sky.
O’Dell cried as if it was the only way to relieve himself of the immense pain threatening to crush him, as if the harder he bawled, the more he would empty his heart of the fury and the sorrow that had suddenly ruptured in him. There was a sense in me then that the whole of the earth’s weight was bearing down upon me, and my knees gave without realization, and I found myself on the ground and howling. I couldn’t hear anything anymore – the screams of injured and dying men, the moaning of those who were clutching their friends’ bodies like rag dolls, the whistle BOOM! of grenades, and the sharp retort of the machine guns… none of it existed in my ears any longer. Wild eyed, I gazed around, bits of bone and jungle mingling together until I could no longer differentiate the limbs of men from the limbs of the trees. One by one everyone but Mirello and O’Dell disappeared from view, blurring into the background, and flickering out of my awareness, as if they had become invisible.
And so we were, O’Dell holding Mirello, both of them broken, and me kneeling in the mud and drowning in my tears. Watching as they became something wholly different than men, and waiting for something to change.

an obsession with seaglass and caramel

so i guess it's cold now.

thursday study sessions that sweep my entire being into the understanding of a single class; talking and talking and talking, in circles and in arcs and around and over and through everything there is to say about hierarchy theory. but the walls of fair trade held us in and the cold night air allowed for some respite of sanity, leaving me adoring boys in plaid and waltzing [in my head] towards 137 gilman. with the knowledge that some people deserve each other and even when i'm enamored with the wrong person, that too shall pass. girl talk, late nights in the den, sleeping in a room all by myself. more studying at a table full of breakfast: mint chocolate and blue moon ice cream and (brueggers!) bagels. there is a sense of camaraderie as we all slowly let the inevitable wash over our faces, give in to the fervors of the midterm...the midterm from hell, bearing tooth and claw, and snarling as only ferocious beasts can snarl. yet! it was not as bad as it threatened, and as the bell rang, we all looked to one another as if to say 'we're done, we made it...time to be going.' the camaraderie may not last forever, or it may turn into one of those fabled anecdotes "remember when we first...". either way, it was good. my guess would be that it is a fleeting bond, one forged over the fury and the panic and the fascination. can't say that i would mind if it continued though, if that were the case...

naps. sheer mental exhaustion, leading to the complete and total shut down of my working mind. i cease to function. wake up, confused [is this new? no, of course not. the frazzled, disorientated state of newly waking is one constant in my life. i must learn to use it to my advantage, as in appearing cute and in need of care. so far, it just garners funny looks and laughter. oh well.] hockey! illegal chinese food on buses, amazing seats, amusing cheers and adorable peewee games...thanks, kiddo. onwards to the theatre (meant to be said in a snooty british accent, although it is wildly inappropriate). and to GREENBUSH. yum. sleep, yet again.

after the dissipation of my brain on friday...this weekend was highly unproductive, save for the creation, celebration, and consumption of a most sublime salad. this is quite all right with me. to the faahmer's maahket [i am in boston, apparently. first england, now the east coast. i am a world travelling floozy! except, i'm not a floozy. and i wasn't actually travelling. not that it matters.] to buy cinnamon rolls and veggie bread and victuals of all kinds (mainly green onions and peppers and beans, as well as raspberries and carrots.) sex and the city, and billy joel, and dancing with vegetables, oh my! not kidding. washing dishes, doing the laundry, wearing sweatpants with longsleeved shirts, cleaning house while watching war movies...these are my favorite kinds of saturdays. not kidding again. FRIDAs. feeling antisocial. clippings from magazines. turquoise piles of seaglass ... rosy brown seaweed frozen in crystal ... cherry wood covered in black sand ... lilies in white and pink and green ... books filled with recipes calling for oils and spices and tuscan things.

the fragile quality of wilted flowers, ten days old, the color fermenting in their petals like the etching of ink in parchment. chats with aki and emily...always making me feel more myself, more assured that i AM doing something right, that i don't have to worry about being lost in the shuffle or thrown aside. hugs. caramel macchiatos. making mixes and creating soundtracks for my days...days are always better with soundtracks. wouldn't it be amazing to have a constant stream of music for every profound and essential (or even the most demure and meaningless) moments in your life? that's what my ipod is for. i wonder what my soundtrack will be in five years? writing in fragments, single word thoughts, phrases. so opposite of stream of consciousness...and yet these are my two favorite forms for words. i am a walking paradox.

brooklyn [mos def]
getaway car [audioslave]
you got the style [athlete]
i woke up in a car [something corporate]
booty [erykah badu]
for the widows... [sufjan stevens]
oh what a night [billy joel]
how sweet it is [madhatters]
celebrate [wyclef jean]
love song for no one [john mayer]
big brown eyes [old 97s]

If I should never find you in this life, let me feel the lack. One glance from your eyes, and my life will be yours.

like black cherries

'cuz i'll reverse the earth and turn your flesh back to dust.

i've been reading love letters again, and hearing love stories, and seeing romance around every corner. which only leads me to think...

when's it my turn?!

i deserve this too! i swear it. i am a girl with flowers in bottles and boxes made of brightly colored words. i have art on the brain, literature streaming from my ears, the world exploding inside my dreams and beyond all that, i hear i'm a pretty good kisser. i'm a little bit crazy, a little bit hard to define, and i like it that way...but why doesn't anyone else? i've gotten a few to notice, don't get me wrong - but it always seems that the timing is off, or the distance is too much, or maybe it's that i'm just too goddamn picky. is that it? maybe it's all my fault...i'm driving myself into a lifetime of loneliness because i don't know how to relate to someone in that intimate of a way without scaring myself. maybe i should just throw my heart into the next pair of arms that beg me to rest inside them. but i don't want to settle! i'd feel bad, and it wouldn't be real. verdad. TRUTH. maybe i'm incapable of love. i swear that i'm a hopeless romantic, but maybe when it comes down to it, i'm just terrified of anything real actually happening to me.

being in the library for 6 hours straight is bad for your sanity. example? i go crazy, eat bagels and juice, run around in the hallway and bounce about like a squirrel. while scaring half the inhabitants of my hall into thinking i'm a lunatic. which is entirely possible.

i dare you to love me...i know you want to.

and he tasted like black cherries.