so funny

it is amusing what kinds of changes can be made in a few short hours. ... it is apparent that i in fact do not want to be alone on new years eve. but where to go? what to do? where are the friends full of love and light whom I was with last year? scattered like leaves blowing in the wind and maybe staying in bed wouldn't be such a horrible thing would it.

alone in my bed i'll smudge my makeup
but what mess does it mean
if i don't go out
don't meet up
and sit here cold.

is it okay to be alone
all i want is a little love
from whomever would like to give it
just a little love
for me from you
on the new day. new year.

but oh here comes the flood
and don't close the gates
it'll just run above
and flow down the road
into your arms
until you're buried
just like me

oh hey, 2011

so this is the new year. -dc4c

such a perfect day to end the new year on. a lazy morning and delightful brunch and kisses and then thrifting on my own, discovering new things, getting rid of the old, redecorating and preparing for all the future holds. here it is, my 23rd year of life and the first new year in a while that i will be entering without someone to lean on except myself. it feels good, it feels great. i feel free. I'm going to do all that I want because this life is for me, only me and might as well since hey, it will end.

I finally feel such a deep true love for myself and it feels pretty great. I can do this, I can take care of myself, I am so capable. and it feels amazing to finally remember who I am, with or without anyone else, friends and otherwise. pbr and annies, perfect new years eve. whole living and a comfy bed in a newly decorated room. I would be quite content to just sit here and enjoy myself. I am going out to meet some friends but I probably won't be gone long, just long enough to have a kiss at midnight and a couple beers and then back to my cozy nest.

Things will be great this new year. they will be the best they've ever been. they will.

I hope you have a delightful new years eve doing whatever it is your heart desires. Really, pay attention to what it desires.

avoidance

I'm really really good at hiding. Never picking up the phone or calling that person I'm supposed to because everything once again is wound so well that I'm functioning and it's okay this way, even though there's tension on my back. if I call then maybe I'll unravel and I just can't afford to do that now. I can't afford to break down because of all this stuff going on, I need to push through.

My book is out of the closet and living on my bedside table. Maybe tomorrow I'll take it out of the envelope. We'll see.

this is the place where
a metallic rainbow
once stuck,
you can still see the dirt clinging
to decade and a half-old adhesive.

the sun shone through it
and when i woke
the glimmer of color
washed over the supple hills of
my childish face.

this is the place where
a "c" carved into a tile once hung
and my long forefinger
fit curved inside it
like a worm in the dirt.
surrounded by green and love.

the floor, laminate brown
and her bright red walker
that slid right over my toes
and our laughter
ringing on the hour
of happiness.

this is the place where
i learned curiosity
is peeking through a hole
in the floor
and discovering the
basement, and mom with the laundry.

the cold draft blew
against my eyelashes
and batted them for me.
my voice tunneled through the opening
and she looked up
her beauty reflecting in my memories.

this is the place that
taught me walking is easy
but dancing is hard
especially with hurt feelings
and hugs are easy to come by
and hands to hold, even easier.

the crevices fill up
quickly with booms and thunders of
voices. their rolling hearts
are huge.
you can still see where they stuck,
when they said goodbye and left fingerprints.

merry christmas, new poem again, raw, just written, i haven't even read it over yet. let me know what you think.

there will be time?

yes, there will be time but what if now is the time?

be brave. you're brave, I know you are. just do it. don't wait until you're 40 something with kids and a husband in suburbia thinking "where did I put that book I wrote when I was 20?". do it now. just send it out, what do you have to lose?

I opened the envelope that houses my book today for the first time in months. Looking at it was hard because Jake was gone and I didn't have him to lean on when reading my book got too hard. I think I'm ready to go back in though, get back deep down in there entrenched in the words like seafoam tide rising up above my head until I'm scuba diving in the world I created. The characters stand up around me while I read like they have always existed, these people who just needed my pen to release them from their holding places. They stare at me and I know what they're thinking: "why do you keep us locked here? Let us out, let us be seen and heard" I know, I know. I'm trying to build up the courage. It's time though, time to jump and fall so far into the ocean that maybe the sun doesn't shine that deep. Time to prepare a face to meet the faces I will meet. Time to see if rejection hurts as bad as I think it might or if it will roll off just like all the others in my past. I can take it. I think. I do love that poem that I wrote. and the other one, oh and that one too. I have three, all in my own style, all in that style I created that sounds so much just like it's own thing. I love writing. I forgot, I think, I forgot this feeling in my chest of fullness so full I can't stop because if I do then it'll stop and breathing won't feel right at all.
ummmm I just wrote this just now so raw so so so new not coherent, hasn't been thought out, consider it stream of consciousness because it might as well be. but I need to start writing poetry again

Call Me Home

The road was bumpy and my neck
bent under the roof
because there wasn't room enough
in the car for all
of us.

Crowded laughter and windows down
to keep back
that one last shot they
had to have
accosted me.

Sirens called out into the
sky like stars across desert
highways in Bethlehem
and Jesus was at the other end
or you were.

For a moment you held me
in the palm of your hand
like grains of sand I slipped
and caught inside the crevices
of your life line.

Like Bethlehem you saved me
tethered yourself
back to me for just one moment
while the car swerved on black ice
in December.

That smell, like home,
your beard and childhood crafts
hung on walls so proud they beam.
Over the phone you wafted into my nose
and I breathed you in like
saying goodbye all over again.

Like a siren you called out
like a siren you called out
like a siren your night sound saved
like a siren you beamed out bright
like a siren, like home.

i've kinda been learnin this quick

i've kinda been learnin this quick, that to be happy you just do what you want to do right now and as long as it doesn't hurt you or any one else, it's all good. i've also been learnin that the best way to feel better or good at all even just a little bit is to help someone else out. even if you just make them smile. i've learned this week that there is nothing else in the world like a hug from a ten year old who thinks two weeks is FOR-ever, with the eye roll and everything. i've also learned this week that everyone has bad days, even the snappiest happiest folks out there, and that's okay. i've learned that there are really good things around all the corners, it's just that some corners are longer than others.


i love learning. and i really love feeling like i'm helping someone else, especially in the age of consumerism. my mom has 4 gently used jackets and 3 pairs of uggs for my after school kids and that's just my mother, much less everyone else i asked to donate, and those kids are going to flip their shit. i can't wait to see their faces. that's christmas for me. no more cold ankles!

holidaze

I wanted to give you your christmas present
her peeking face said over the corner of the door. I had forgotten tis the season and how to pick out gifts. It feels like Christmas has skipped me this year and all I want is a hug from my mom and to sit down with my dad and have a good conversation. I used to get so into it, I love making other people happy but it's hard to do when you're so preoccupied with you. I hate that I'm like that this year. I feel like I've been eaten alive by everything else in the world. My room is messier than it has ever been. I'm caught stuck behind this rock on this landslide of time and shit is moving fast around me. I am so completely out of sync with my thoughts and body and ideas. I haven't written productively in so long, I haven't created in months. it feels like years though. I don't feel like me. I want to stand alone outside at night while it snows, in a place that feels safe. like denison. I need to go to granville I think maybe. I need to just be in a place that doesn't make me feel so threatened. That makes me feel normal, or at least a little bit more like me.

I need something a little bit more familiar, something comfortable that I can just slide into seamlessly that will not hurt or pinch, something so my size. I think that's what home is. At least I hope it is.

christmas spirit

I'm beginning to get into the spirit. woke up this morning to tons of snow on the ground and it's falling steadily. Last night had a really good conversation and hope that it means something but I guess if it doesn't then I'll be just fine.

I'm not sure which direction I want to take. it's hard caring about someone. it's really hard. especially when you want it to work out in the best way possible but you're not too sure what way that is.

i got els some awesome stuff for christmas, sarah will get some cool stuff to and dad now just have to figure out mom.


i really do love christmas. i kind of just forgot to slow down and remember that.


gotta go clean the bathroom and other junk. busy busy busy busy all i want is cookie day.

christmas trials and errors

how can I say "I love you so much and miss you and care about you all the time" with a gift? I'd sometimes rather just tell the people I care about that I care about them. Give them a hug, and a small token of my love, a little pocket reminder that I'm here for them. I don't want to have to dig through stores and find something they'll really like for a month or so and then toss away. I don't want to contribute to useless spending to tell people I care about them. I think maybe it'll say more if I don't do those things, don't spend hours in stores looking for some chotchkey item, maybe if I spend some leisurely time wandering the stores in my neighborhood (if i ever had time to!) I'd find something really cool, I think that's the case at least. I want to find some awesome customized gifts for people something that's of my new home, something that is part of me and them and shows my appreciation outside of immense commercial spending.


I want to be sitting on the couch between mom and dad with a blanket and some wine watching some dumb reality show and laughing about it all. I have been really homesick lately.

there they were

Together they looked the same, like two pieces that went together always - a salt and pepper shaker set. One was not the same without the other. Standing on their own, they stood fine and looked normal but different.

He wasn't tall, but certainly not short. His silver hair and slightly furrowed brow intimidated me the way I knew my own father intimidated people he deemed lower than he - retail employees - who I was in the eyes of this man. As our conversation continued I saw his jaw slacken a little, the wrinkles eased and his brow unknotted itself and his smile began to shine through. He had begun to trust me. I knew this because they were the same steps my father goes through when dealing with someone. Expect no intelligence until it has been determined and proven, but once said person proves their intelligence he is quick to respect, trust and laugh. I knew this man. I knew him like the girl standing next to him knows him. His daughter. I knew her too. The way she respected and loved her father, I knew the jokes they shared only between them that could be told in a secret language without words and only eyebrow raises. I knew the bond that was tying them together because I have that too even though it's so far away.

It took everything in me to not walk out on them, out the front door, and sit on that bench to call my father and feel my tears freeze on my cheek in the bite of winter. I miss him and our banter, secret language and challenging conversations. That connection, I miss that. "Well laur, I'll miss having another adult to talk to in the house" is what he said to me when I told him I'd be moving soon. I never thought it would happen, but there I was, my father had become one of my best friends. It sounds cliche but it's so real. There are things I don't have to say or ask for understanding on, things I know will never be spoken of or judged because he gets it and knows that sometimes you have to be twenty two, or sixteen, or seven. He knows that sometimes you make mistakes and learn from them and pick yourself up carry yourself off and never even tell your parents, but he still knows what happened because he did it too.

So often I feel so gifted to have the parents I do and the father I do have. Fathers are so important, so crucial, and mine is the best one there is. No contest.

most interesting life of anyone i know

that's what he told me when i relayed the most recent events in my life. my reaction was "whaaaaaaaa?" you're living in thailand crazypants, you know really interesting people, THAI people! I'm just sitting here living in ohio! but then i started thinking about it and i keep thinking about it. i've been through a car fire and pulled the bag that was on fire out with my hands while jacci freaked out roadside. i've almost died in an ambulance, almost completely recovered from ptss and almost completely recovered from other things. spent years being idealistic and hopeful, lost it a bit and regained it. i survived armed robbery and put two guys in jail and rode in the back of a cop car. i've traveled on my own, with family, and with friends, and with strangers who became friends. i've written a book! i've lived on my own with an SO. i've lived through the experience of him losing his mom and us surviving it together. i've lost someone who was so close to me. i've experienced my own mother battling and surviving cancer.


wtf! is this life? is that what this is? is mine unreasonably packed with challenges and experiences or is it just how i'm looking at it now because up until this point when he said that to me i had only thought of it as my life because it's the only one i know. life is funnnnnnay

it's okay it's okay

"Shhh, it's okay it's okay" it echoes in my mind, the words, not the voice. The voice has been blacked out of memory.
"Just give us everything, give us the keys" his hand reaching out to grab my things. Sprawling, reaching limbs leaving ghost touch in their place. He rang so blind in my ears, only his words circle round and round like the wind and the snow on the highway at 7 am. It's the loneliest moment, when other people start to drive alongside and you're no longer alone. I know it seems strange, no longer alone and it becomes more lonely, but it's true. The separation of machine and person is made more evident when others join the race. There's solitude in the emptiness. I languish in it.

Your fingers rested against the curve of my hipbone and your stomach against my back. They dug underneath its edge as though you could find a way into my skin and remain attached. The tips of your fingers left their imprint on my skin. Your words remained part of my edges while you slept and I lay awake staring at the ceiling. Languising in the ghost touch of your chest resting between my shoulder blades and the spot where your hot breath kept hitting my skin moistened from condensation with your lips in such proximity. I drifted into your breathing and staring at the ceiling, lifted out of myself. Carried into the air and plucked, particle by particle. Pulled apart like cotton candy, delicate greediness. I dissipated into the white white white of the ceiling and sank inside the universe's mouth. Left you laying there with your breathing on the pillow instead of my back and cursing about my stealing the sheets.

trapeze swinger

Do you remember when we were babies and you protected me at night by sleeping under my lofted bed? Remember curling up in my papasaun chair, so college, and playing trapeze swinger over and over again to soothe my nightmares and keep me sleeping? "Please, remember me, fondly." Remember when you held me while I cried and had a breakdown and you said "look at my stomach! I'm so fat!" to try to make my relapse better and you hugged me so tightly? Remember when you broke up with your first ever girlfriend that you loved and you came to my room and we sat together and I held you and cuddled you while you cried? Remember how good we were? Remember when we stopped being friends? It still hurts me so so so deeply and maybe I'm just vulnerable now and wish I still had you as a friend but there it is.

Tonight I had a bad bad bad experience. So tonight I'm sitting in my bed, playing trapeze swinger over and over again and maybe I'll drift to sleep.

I miss you friend.

List of things to remember

Assassinations:
-Yitzhak Rabin
-Kurt Cobain (maybe?)
-John Lennon

Yitzhak died of blood loss and a punctured lung in a hospital in Tel Aviv. Shot by Yigal Amir, an Israeli student. No gunpowder was found on Amir, and no blood was seen at the scene by witnesses but when Rabin arrived at the hospital he was described as "gushing blood." Some claim that Amir only had blanks, given the evidence that there was no gunpowder found on him or near the scene and no blood on scene. There is potential for speculation that Rabin was shot within his car on the way to the hospital - but by whom? Yigal Amir has been recorded in court stating: "If I were to tell the whole truth, the entire system would collapse. I know enough to destroy this country." He had been employed two years prior by the Shin Bet in Latvia. Shin Bet meaning approximately secret agent. The assassination has been blamed by a physician on the team on Shimon Peres as a conspiracy. Shimon Peres took over for Rabin as prime minister and later became President of Israel.

There are obvious connections here to the death of Cobain which has been speculated with conspiracy theories as well. Here is some descrepancy between the two though, Cobain died April 5th 1994, whereas Rabin died November 4th, 1995. This pair did not die in the same year as stated on the website that I previously found that tidbit. It doesn't have an effect now that I have found other threads but it is important for story-telling purposes. A quote from Cobain is "music comes first. lyrics come second." Potentially unimportant, but a good note. Something interesting that I hadn't realized about Cobain is that his works are often about important huge things, like rape, Francis Farmer in Seattle, women's rights, he was inspired to write "Polly" by a story in a paper of a young girl who was raped and tortured at a concert and managed to escape by flirting with her attacker. He tackled big things. Bob Dylan is quoted on Cobain saying "the kid has heart." Cobain is tied to artists like Plath, Caulfield and Burroughs among those who wrote about the world's betrayals. That's how I feel too often, that the world is betraying me and here I am in the middle of trying to push it aside and befriend the world because it's kind of all I have and hating it for betraying my trust. To love the world is the most intense romance one could have. It trusts, betrays, convinces and gains your trust, is reliable and breaks your heart. The world is pretty human.

I feel a kind of kinship in Coutney and Kurt, I know, I know, it doesn't seem likely, but I do. Here's why: they trusted the world and they wanted to see beauty in it, they wanted the underdog to win and when they found out that the world often kicks you on your ass and rubs your face in the mud they decided to say "to hell with it" and did whatever it was they wanted until he died and well, she's quite on her way isn't she? I too often feel trapped in the flux of wanting to believe in the world and live a long healthy life and treat myself well, and the other side of just living right now and doing what I want to do with my current time. I mean, what are we preserving ourselves for?! What is the point? We all die, it's just a matter of when and if you don't do what you want to do now, then you missed your chance and oops, don't get that back do you because time marches on. It's a frustrating angering thing this world and life and figuring out how to live it. I'm certainly not doing harm to myself, I'm certainly not on par with Love and Cobain that's for sure but should I not jump off a bridge for fear I might break something and I should want to live until I'm 80? Should I not sleep late and instead get up and run so I can live longer or do I languish in the deliciousness of late morning sunlight and the warmth of the bedsheets? And if it's just about a balance then where do I find the balance? How do I decide when to sleep in and when to run and do I have to be on a schedule? I kind of hate schedules.

I feel like I need some help with direction.

Back to the task at hand though:

Cobain's death: March 1994, Cobain was diagnosed with bronchitis and laryngitis then had what Love calls his first suicide attempt




---UGH done with the task at hand for now. crying in public places has become my forte. I am a whiny baby pants. I need a hug. and some freaking LEEWAY from someone. please? can I have some wiggle room? all I want is to hug my grandparents and sit in church of the advent on christmas eve while my sister ruins all the candles and causes problems in the pew. That's all I want. IS THAT SO HARD!? I hate you, graduated life.

great big plans

I've got 'em! ... so I'm going to start writing here because if I open a word doc my computer says "NO! we are all filled up! stop it!" so I'm going to get more harddrive at some point but not today and today I want to start writing which is tough because I also have an enormous bandage on my pointer finger.

The point is, last night this painting I did when I was so mad about things fell off my wall. It has been there for three months and it just fell off. A sign I think. It is time to let go of this thing and those feelings and find some new ones. so I'm going to hide it and find something else to put there. maybe some more boxes, I might do that tonight since today will be taken up by work and writing. I need a big ol' change and I asked friends for book suggestions, one of which is Homesick, a book about Israelis, which I'm going to read and in the suggestions it said something about Kurt Cobain and Itzhak Rabin dying in the same year (he was the prime minister of Israel and was assassinated). I'm going to go to the lib and find books on this guy and maybe some on Kurt, I already know a lot about Kurt because, well, I love him. And so that's what I'm going to do - find some connections, some threads that tie the two together, I really only need one thread and I can fabricate the rest and it's not even going to be a story about them, I"m not sure what it will be yet but something, something important.


I just can't help thinking about that woman who read my tarot cards and said Susan is my guardian angel and here is this book about Israel and here are these things that make sense to me and are inspiring me. and it all came out of this painting falling and this painting that is mad because she's gone and her son's gone and all these things. My walls are too white and I need more than this.

Last night I had these dreams that all these things that I want were real and true, like my subconscious is working on the law of attraction for me. Pretttyyyy cooool.


I love it. love love love it. Thanks winter.

and there is comfort in the sound

i wish i could type sounds and smells. like this song by death cab and trapeze swinger by iron and wine and the smell of apple crisp in my house and my cold toes. i wish i could type these feelings. for a long time i thought like that, like how could i possible type out feelings and put them into words and the awful thing is that it felt too big, too difficult and i forgot that that's what i had been doing and practicing since i was 7. i know how to type feelings.

you're only across town but it feels the furthest away you've ever been. my toes ache for your warm sock feet, to rub against them under the down comforter while we make each other erupt in giggles and settle back down inside your arms. my chest misses the smell of your skin and cologne and how they mix to create a new perfect smell that's just you. i miss the way that smell blooms roses across my chest and neck even though it is embarrassing. my fingers are colder not wrapped in their clothing of your curls.


ugh i don't know i guess i'll just keep writing every day no matter how long or how shitty it is. what.ever. it'll come back to me i'm sure

christopher walken

is it sad that this just comforted me? like a lot?

http://i921.photobucket.com/albums/ad56/Trolling_is_a_art/Motivationals/motivation.jpg

the wire

i was so tied up perfectly wound so that everything could be held in and never talked about and never come out pouring like an avalanche. so perfectly bound up in wire that cut my skin it was so tight that i'd never have to feel all this heaviness, all this pressure, i could just keep avoiding it, forever. i was writing J an email though and, oh god, it's happening again right now just thinking about him being so far away, have you ever had your best friend be so far away you can't even talk on the phone? don't. ever. it's the worst and if that person is your lifeline then you're fucked. i don't let people in, i don't let people see my heart, the hurt, the shit that's all down there deep stewing. that's why most people think i'm happy all the time because of the wire keeping me so bound up. something slipped while i was emailing J and it fell out, it all came bubbling up and pouring straight out of me and i can't stop it from coming i can't stop all this hurt from filling me straight up and out and i don't know how to fix it at all i don't know what to do to make it stop and i don't have anyone to talk to about it at all. i have no one to cry to because no one sees me cry except a few people and those people are unavailable. what have i done so wrong to push so many people out of my life? do i rely too heavily on them? is it because only a few people see the real me so it's like all of it at once not spread out amongst a bunch? is that what it is? I don't feel like myself at all but maybe this is part of the recovery period, maybe if i let myself feel all this shit all this hurting and pain and deal with it on my own then maybe i'll be free of it. there's just so much of it. so much bad. i don't know where to go here, where my comfort places could be, i haven't found them yet. i need to hide though in a place that is just for me. i need a hug, a really good hug and someone to cup my face in their palms and say, you'll be fine just fine, remember? remember the last time? how fine you were? you got this.


i just need a fucking hug.

decisions decisions

I can't decide what to do with the rest of my life. A really big part of me wants to be in academia for the rest of my life, writing and being fully engrossed in the literature and fostering other young talents. But I just don't know if I have what it takes. I want to go to BU and do their creative writing program. I want to be in Boston doing that, in the cold cold winter with the nasty mean people who have niceties hidden underneath their scars. I want something good and magical and not torn apart and hurting.

Although on the other hand I want to help little kids, be a mentor and an advocate. Become a social worker, a therapist, something so I can help them see who they are. Maybe the answer is to write young adult fiction? Maybe is that what it is? Go get an MFA, dabble in some young adult fiction and volunteer or do therapy work on the side? Writing is always something that will be deep deep inside me, something that will grow and growl and yell when I stop paying attention to it for long enough. I need it, like air and water, it helps me feel like me.

This is the thing. The fundamental part of it all. Words move me, move within me, move time around me. Words are the piece and the puzzle in its entirety, they are my being. Instead of skin I might as well just have words inked everywhere because without them I am nothing, it is my mode of communication, not pen, not paint, not dance, words. I can make you feel things you didn't think you knew how to with words. They move me to emotions I forgot I had buried inside because the words dig like shovels, like tiny hands digging sand up up up from the beach to unearth the water running smoothly down there. Words, often, are all I have. I can't let them go.

something new off the cuff

her fingers were frozen in my hand, i was afraid they'd stick to my skin like kissing metal in winter. her fingers were the only thing touching me and I floated into the air shot back down like a clay bird. her distance resonated as loudly through my body as christmas bells at midnight in snow. my shoulders melted down into my arms, slouching to try and shrink my feelings. it's as though she deliberately avoided a connection with me. that's the worst part, her smirk of armor covering the potential she knew was there for something better, more than cold hands held in the parking lot. i couldn't look at her. i knew her face and saw her grey eyes looking past me already, i'll never forget that look. when all you want is a chance, to be looked at, into, the worst feeling is being looked past and not even given a chance. i loved her too much already. hopeless, i knew the potential was there and i clung to it like burnt orange leaves to tree branches but they all have to fall sometime in their decay. i could have pulled her back, maybe, asked to start over, but instead i shrunk down deeper into my bones and slunk away from her complacent fingers in mine. it's difficult to convince yourself there'll be someone better, or someone more right when you have someone right in front of you, really fucking hard. like ice bringing blood to the spot that it's touching and firing up your arteries to pump harder, she ran my pulse and stomped all over it. no reaction is worse than any reaction. i couldn't walk away though, i had hope, even though she was just a shell, even though she wouldn't show me what lay beneath her smirk.




- for some reason i felt inspired. maybe i'll start writing this way from now on, from an androgynous author perspective, it's interesting to consider my thought process when i write this way. hm.

after buddy wakefield's "hurling crowbirds at mockingbars"

if i was created in god's image
than when god was a little girl
she sat in corners and daydreamed
looking at spiderwebs and her own world.
you left me on the tire swing
sitting with gravel in my shoe
sticking into my toe
a constant reminder
of loneliness.
i tried to tell you to look at the clouds
moving like freight trains through my childhood
and you said no, i'm going with them.
so i stayed, and i stared and i saw that
the clouds weren't moving
but i was and the yellow spread out fingers of honey sun
drizzled across the blue blue blue
weren't containing me

they set me free.
so i shook the pebble from my shoe
and i ran away from adolescence,
ran away from you.
i ran into my mind and into the spiderweb world
i created where you don't leave and i don't have to run
because when i say stop, look,
it's you up there,
you don't leave for the others and the tire swing spinning like wild blue tidal waves sweeping you in to save the open spots from drowning while my lungs are filled up up up with all those moments you left.
you don't leave,
you stay and fill the empty spots between my fingers instead,
leave the empty spots inside, we'll get to those later,
but here, right now, there are stones in both our shoes.
so we compare sizes and color
until we run out of things to say and just listen
to the hum of the honey color spreading out
bleeding into the blue and turning it twilight.
until we run home
and realize home is right here, this night.

someone once said that writing is easy
all you do is sit down and open a vein
but what if you're running out of veins?
it seems i'm getting close, and why only veins
are arteries not good enough?
suffering is hard to come up with sometimes and without it writing seems
false, lame, less than it could be.

suffering is the writer's paint. ink. it is the material with which
we express all other things
but it is a sad sad way.

Driving back from home

I drove on the still-dark highway, twilight had not yet come before the sun rose. Everyone's dying. The trees are barren and scraggly like my Grandmother's hands that clutch the nurse button in the hospital. "Thanks for calling, have a beautiful day" is how her voicemail ends in her voice that quavers like a leaf in November. She is the most beautiful color of Fall, quavering on the strands of her branch. It's almost dissolved, her connection to the branch, to her tree. It stresses me out, feeling so rushed, so rushed to get it all in to say it all to hug her again and smile and see her smile her brownish blue eyes, so strange for a sicilian woman. There are things I need to know from her! About her, about food and her life, and the family. There are laughs we've yet to share! There are fragile bird-like hugs I have yet to give her fearing the whole time I'll crush her. It's so selfish too that it is stressing me out. She has had a beautiful day. A beautiful life. If she wants to stop clutching to the tree, that is up to her.

My grandfather sat at the dining table on Thanksgiving, his sugar plummeting. Sarah saw him sneak some M&Ms, he didn't have enough to eat. He always says the blessing. Always says Grace. He couldn't this year, we skipped right over it while he mumbled to himself and giggled once or twice and we encouraged him to eat eat eat. Sugar, have jello, have cranberries, potatoes, quick sugar carbs in your blood now. And after ten minutes of sitting on pins he came back "Cindy's just sore she sucks at euchre."

I hate being so afraid of losing so many people all at once. I'm scared my family will be down 5 members in one year. The worst part is having no one to talk to about it.

Home

It is so bizarre to be home. Sleeping on a cot in my old bedroom that used to be yellow but is now a shade of blue that I would never have allowed. There's this wrought iron thing hanging on the wall and some photos but it looks uninhabited. The bookshelf has four books whereas my room was bursting out the seams with books everywhere. I like to sleep under the window that faces the street so when I wake up in the middle of the night like I have every night since I was five, I could look out the window to see the street lamp across the street lighting up its puddle of asphalt. The trees look different, thinner and I no longer watch T.V. so cable seems unnecessary. It is strange to be here where my things lived, where I slept, for 21 years and now those belongings, those things that make me feel home are in my new home, waiting for me, where my bed is big enough to sprawl out on and I have 8 pillows and little things that make me smile waiting for when I wake up. Rainbows every morning when the sun shines through my crystal and a cold house when you walk down the stairs to brew coffee before anyone else is awake. Here morning starts earlier and it smells like home, smells like cinnamon and pine and cookies and coffee and rumblings of conversation and light filtering in through the bottom of the door and it's comforting but it is no longer my permanent home and that is okay. it is a little weird to feel like a visitor in this home that I drew on and cried in, and curled up in.

there will be time, there will be time

I can finally listen to bon iver without tearing up and thinking only of the bullsheet office and winter and red hats.

I am so excited for winter. I know, it's like the "dead" season but for me, fall and winter are periods of re-birth. Periods of reflection and self re-birth when I can discover new things about me and the people around me. I know that summer is the season for love for most people but I fall in love with winter every year, again and again. Maybe it's the writer in me, lover of suffering, finder of beauty in the breakdown, seeker of symbolism in clean snow covering everything. As M once said "it will be a shame when spring comes, you are so beautiful in winter." It is my season. My time for new things and better beginnings. I am so thrilled and excited. I am even beginning to revel in my loneliness. It is time to start writing again, writing something seriously.

I don't have any ideas so I might just start recording what I do and see where that takes me. I had an interesting conversation yesterday with my supervisor at the after school program about alchemy and how poetic it is. I think I might start there, do some research on alchemy and see where it takes me.


Even the WORD alchemy sounds poetic. oh I am so excited. and I will be home next week even if it's just for a little bit of time, I will go home.

I have had a pretty exciting life so far. Sometimes I devalue it because it is my life so I am used to it and know its ins and outs and what has happened it is normal to me but I've experienced and known a lot of things people and moments that not many people are exposed to. Sometimes I get scared that I wont do everything I want to do but here's the thing, life has been pretty great so far, pretty extraordinary so far, and I think I can make the next 40 years equally as amazing. At least 40 years, I'm going to live forever, be healthy forever. Got that Clinique anti-aging cream. hahahah.

things I need now

-a crossword in slayter pit with homo and brendan while drinking coffee, waiting for yohnzo and liz.


-an all nighter in slayter top floor watching the sunrise, a library back step break, watching the cars, trying to sit in the sunlit spots to stay warm

-river road.

-sunshiney people saying hello.

-boys who drink all saturday, all day, long, and goad others into joining. playtime in shep

-pine tree scents and cinnamon and the nsync christmas cd and my warm warm warm house with warm warm warm smiles and hugs and questions about what i'm doing

-burroughs drive

-hiding in the stacks

-friends. i really need some friendship time. some sit on the couch and watch tv and not have to say anything until ready friendship time, some yohn and laura tell me honestly what's going on friendship time, in person. some solution time. some "i care about you" time. someone who wants to help me figure it all out time. or at least who will be there to hold my hand while i do time.


so alone. so so so alone.

Is this it?

Is it that sometimes people are just not compatible?


OHHH is that the lesson that most people learn in high school or college or somewhere along the lines and learn to accept it because it just is how things are? I know it sounds stupid, and it is stupid, but rejection is not something I am used to. I'm being honest. I don't know how to deal with it all that well and I know most people don't but I haven't dealt with it that much, I have a tendency to break things off before I get hurt to save myself.

We are all damaged I guess, all of us have been hurt. Besides all that though it does still hurt. Feeling like you're not good enough when the right thing to think is that you're not "right" enough and that's not something you can change it just is what it is, I am who I am you are who you are and that's that. it works or doesn't.

I'm just getting tired of being lonely. Tired of being tired.

where's the lesson

Is the lesson "never date guys with insomnia" ?

Is the lesson "stop being attracted to damaged people" ?

WTF WHERE IS IT? WHICH is it and here's the thing, how do I control it or myself rather, how do I make sure I'm not getting involved with an insomniac orrrrr someone with a sordid past? i'm tired of waiting around with no response because oops fell asleep and i'm so sick of broken promises and plans and tired excuses and the sweet apology. i'm sick of being a sucker, but i'm also really sick of being lonely.


I just want to know what I should do differently. Stop the heartache.

i am the bad one

maybe i am the bad one. maybe i am the one who hurts the way i fear being hurt. and i think the worst part is that i lure people in with my supposed sweetness and niceties and cute funny things. and then i am mean preemptively because i am so fearful of getting hurt so i hurt first. i push away and for some reason i have reasoned this because i think maybe the ones who get past my hard pushing are the ones that are good for me. but maybe i should just be easier on people.



you pulled my hair just a little too much and it hurt
but i liked it because they were your fingers tangled there.
your blue ocean poured over me and when
you made that face dancing it reminded me
of people and person and past and fun
it made me think never let go.

but everyone has to let go sometime.
hands do not last forever.
skin falls away
and bones disintegrate
and smiles fade into bed sheets
while sleeping.
will you just stay for a little while longer?

the best conversations

I have this friend. We talk and have some of the greatest conversations. He helps me figure out what is real and what is not.

we talked about me being unreasonable. here's the thing, it's not good to blow off friends and i would have understood! I would have said yes okay wonderful great have so much fun! But only if I had known earlier, it is not nice to tell someone late at night that you cannot hang out with them because you are with your friends. I'm not in the market for getting hurt. I've already been there deep down inside it and I'm good, I'm pretty full up of all the hurt I can handle for this life.

We talked about what I want in a person. I said this: someone who wants to be with me, and thinks i'm great and likes even just sitting around because we can be funny together but also is interested in adventures

and my friend said "that's it?" and I said "kind of, but no, more like this: someone funny and smart, with dark corners that take a while to discover, and a big big smile who kisses me without hesitation"

he didn't know what dark corners meant. I tried to explain but those secrets, it's hard to tell someone what they are. The little moments when noses are touching on a pillow and sometimes your hand can reach up and grab my jaw and then there it is the secret escapes and I say something like "oh no I can't believe I said that to you already" and he says "it's okay it means you trust me, that's good. I'm trustworthy I promise" and I say "okay" but I think "oh no. oh no. what if this is the end and he uses it against me?" and then eventually I'll find out one way or another if he's going to use it against me or if he's going to hold it locked up inside his ventricles and atria so hidden inside those cavern walls surrounded by the rhythmic pulse of life flowing around it.


I think I had such a strong connection with J for so long that now everything is compared to that and nothing is ever that again ever so now I'm confused about what dating is supposed to be. I don't really know how to do it and I keep looking for someone who will just love me as much a J did or does, I don't know, someone who will be comfortable but comfort doesn't just crop up like that, it happens later so much later. We had years to find comfort. YEARS. The other night W said "we're too young to have been in a relationship for 6 years" and I said "I know, it was on and off, but I know." Too young to have so much big experience.


I would love to find someone who's as screwed up as I am.

Fear and Hesitations

There is no place for fear amongst the artistic. Those egos that we're said to have are self-induced inflations so we feel less dumb about putting our ideas out there. Just like a little girl standing in front of a boy saying "I like you" it sounds dumb, or could, if she isn't sure of her words and their weight in the air near his ears. Instead we learned to stand tall, build ourselves up and say "yeah I know that this could be dumb and sound stupid but here I am and this is what I've got"

I'm watching Andrew Bird on Ted.com and he's talking about feedback loops and the environment and how if things in nature get too close to where they came from bad things happen (feeding cows their own brains=mad cow disease, incest, inbreeding, etc.)

Today I didn't do much of anything. I changed the clock in my car to account for daylight savings time.

What about this idea about circles and cycles? What if it was translated to emotions like if the emotion gets too close to its originating point it becomes self-destructive. Can that correlate with heartbreak and self-analyzing? Sometimes I am so far deep inside my head that I don't enjoy the situation that I'm in, or don't experience something fully because my brain is thinking about what it is and what it means. The biggest problem is that I can't figure out how to make it stop. And this process of thinking rather than feeling is often self-destructive because then I prevent any kind of connection from occurring. I don't know what's wrong with me. Something for sure though. Maybe I am a self-destructive feedback loop.

POETRY is sometimes the best way to say how you feel

this is a poem I wrote likeeeeeeeeeeeeee 6 months ago maybe more.

The Etiquette of Tragedy

Do we eat?
Tiny hunks of cheese and grapes slid around a plastic plate
and a napkin with a couple crackers,
at your Uncle John’s house in New Jersey,
they were the only things we had eaten in twenty four hours,
since our roommates had forced us to eat. They had gotten us
through the shock and rallied around us and passed around hugs like
the family they had become.
They took our minds off of the plane crash
when it could not stay off, and danced
around the kitchen and us like figure skaters,
they gave us jobs to occupy our confused hands and said
“that’s okay” when we said “I just can’t.” They fed us
and hugged your Aunt Eva when she showed up. I was surprised how Eva looked
not like your mother and remembering your mother’s dark curls,
I expected someone like her. Later
I realized how they were alike, their laugh was the same.
Can we hug and kiss, say things like “Happy Valentine’s Day?”
Is it selfish to be upset about our missed reservation and
the day we had looked forward to together?
We were going to spend the day in bed drinking champagne.
New York City instead, to bury your mother in a cemetery in Queens.
Is laughing okay?
Holding babies and thinking about other things besides sorrow?
Talking about the Gollum with Eva?
Learning about your mother’s Judaism and
her life growing up? Is it okay to talk about Safta
and the disgusting meals your mom told us about? The lung
and brains she had to sit at the kitchen table
and finish? And to laugh about it again,
like we did once with her around your kitchen table?
Is it okay to talk about anything
except the tragedy?
Is it okay to sleep close? Can I put my hand on your chest?
Do you want me close or far?
Can we kiss? Sensual and soft? Is it okay to feel passionate?
Are jokes alright and will you forgive me
if I made the wrong one?
Is it okay to stop worrying?
Is it okay to notice the little girl on the playground
and giggle at her cuteness?
Are distractions okay?
Trapped in the flux of mourning.


This is one I wrote in April RIGHT right right before my manuscript was due, the day of actually, and I still like it, I still think it's written pretty okay.

Birds Fall

We made the morning last longer
talked in bed and I moved my fingertips over your skin
like tree branches across the pigeon-colored sky.
We hadn’t put our feet on the carpet yet
as though we knew
that mourning would come.

The weight of the sun tried to sneak in bed
with us between the sheets and rub its legs
against ours bare under cotton,
but we ignored it and shoved it off the mattress.
As though we knew
that mourning would come.

Downstairs voices of those who had awoken
rang in the hallways and the mumbling
of the coffee pot started to spread
its aroma, but we stayed in bed.
As though we knew
that mourning would come.

In the United Kingdom, starlings fell
out of the sky, there was no known cause
but speculation that their flight pattern had changed
suddenly. They flapped broken wings on the ground
as though they knew
that mourning would come.

That night another flight pattern had changed
from “we’ll land shortly folks,”
to “God, oh God.”
We both startled awake at 3 am and stared at each other
as though we knew
that mourning would come.

More than one hundred birds rained down
from their cloud perches. There was no poison found in
their lungs, no toxins. Their graceful patterned flying
turned into falling
as though they knew
the mourning had come.


I'm trying to write more stuff, more new stuff, but sometimes I think maybe I should slow down and work on what I've got right now. I have so much material that I need to clean up and organize so probably I should just clear that stuff up and away and then deal with new stuff. maybe. we'll see.

Things That Piss Me Off

1. Middle-Agers on Facebook. No, not really the fact that they're ON facebook so much as their lack of internet-etquette and it's reflective glare in their status updates. Somehow somewhere along the line of the internet developing we millenials figured out what etiquette and tact looked like online. They must have missed the boat. Sometimes it frustrates me SO MUCH. And maybe even more so because I know that I should just accept it and move on and not look at it and it's not my place and blah blah blah and there's nothing I can do about it but whatever. Still pisses me off.

2. My duplex neighbor watching T.V. until 4 in the morning. His bedroom or T.V. room must be right next to my room and I swear he watches it SO LOUDLY. I thought my housemates were having a fight! Or that someone was crying! It was just his stupid T.V.

I think that's all the hate I've got inside me right now. Being sick will do that to you I think, because I'm not feeling well, nothing seems right. OH WELL sometimes you get mad.

Conscious

I am making a conscious effort to reclaim all the things that I love. They do not need to hold memories that will make me sad. They do not need to be anything but what they are, a song, a season, an article of clothing.

I felt so guilty the other night when Bon Iver came onto my iTunes and I was with someone that was not M and it was only because of that night when we stayed awake until morning and listened to them. I cried. I admit it, I teared up and hid my face.

So here is my reclamation of all the songs and artists and moments and seasons and clothing that I love that are mine and are what they are without your fingerprints dotting them. This is for the moments that existed, the moments that are in the past and will never happen again. This is for the moments that were great and the moments that were horrid. I am packing them away in their place and leaving them there. I will no longer look back or forward too far, only right here like a horse with blinders on. I will focus on right now and only what's next to me. There is no reason for me to give up the things I love because they are tinted with shades of you. The only problem is that I had to give up you. And I loved you. So it resonates that I should also give up the other things we shared and loved together. They can be all mine though also. Just my favorite things.




It is supposed to snow on Thursday and I cannot wait. I know I already messed up and didn't write yesterday ... sorry. I'm sick, that's not an excuse but it's the truth.

November is Here!

Yay! Finally it is Fall in Ohio and the weather is lower than 60 degrees every day! I love Fall the most, well, second most, I really really love Winter the most.

I have promised myself that I will begin writing every day and I don't see why I shouldn't since I don't have much else to do besides look for a job. I'm just not sure what to write about so I'm going to use this blog from now on as my daily reminder that I need to write. This means I'm going to write here every day to exercise my writerly needs but... it might suck, no it will suck sometimes, my writing will be so horrible sometimes that you might lose faith in any kind of skill you thought I may have had at some point. That is just how it goes. Other days I'll be alright, some days I might even be great, but it is just how it goes. You know how you have good days and bad days and you can't really REALLY control it? It just happens and you're grumpy? Sometimes that is how writing is. I can try to make it better, I can work on it later and improve and take things out and edit and rewrite, but sometimes the first time around is just out of control bad. That is not the point though, the point is to practice, to commit to writing every day, to use my art and over time maybe it'll get better. No, it will get better. And then eventually, maybe I'll have some kind of coherent idea and be able to write a book again... yayyyyy! Everyone will be happy if that happens.

So here it goes for today:

Writing Exercise 11/1/10

For a few moments before I opened my eyes I didn't want to feel anything except the patch of warmth on my cheek where the sun peeked through the blinds. I like when it hits my cheek rather than my eyes. Every morning I feel like a runaway sun-convict with the slats of light striped across my skin. Hitch-hiking my way to morning. Riding on the tail ends of dreams. The middle of the darkness is the worst part, the eye of night. Every night I am trapped there. Surrounded with my hands in the air by nightmares and creeping spooks behind my eyelids. Staring at the ceiling works for a little while but eventually my eyes become heavy and slide down in spite of me. The bad things creep back from the corners and attack again with their chest-tightening harshness. Scaring me away from sleep and dreams all together. When the sun hits my cheek in the morning, or even my eye, I do not care about brightness and annoyances. It releases my shackles of nightmares. Even my dream catcher can't stop the creeps. But without darkness there is no light and here I am every night falling deeper and being retrieved. The sun's slats kiss my shoulders.


Bahhhhh see what I mean? Sometimes, most of the time, my writing will suck. I am out of practice. BUT I just wrote for a period of time that was more than none and I guess that's the goal. Maybe tomorrow it will be better. Maybe I should start writing poetry again.

Possibility

Listen to this song. LISTEN TO IT. preferably with headphones in or with the volume so loud it's the only thing you can hear. I swear it will get inside you and fill you up with wind.


It makes me see myself differently and the world around me. I am such a sucker for beautiful emotional things that other people find stupid and cliche and too emotional. I don't know if it's just me or if it's a writer thing, like because as writers we're so intuitive to the people and things and situations around us that we prefer these emotional things that make us feel less alone in our hyper-feeling worlds.


I don't know but it's something I don't and to grow out of or give up, it feels too good when I have it the right way and feeling bad doesn't even mean anything

goodmorning and goodnight

There's this website that I love called goodmorningandgoodnight.com and sometimes at just the right moments I stumble on the most appropriate and perfect quote on there. I found this one this evening while waiting like a dumbass, yet again, waiting, for someone to show up and realizing that it's just time to let go of whatever I think should be reality or ways to show caring and just accept that other people see it differently and see love and the world and life and interactions differently, and it's not bad it just is reality, it just is. I need to stop projecting my beliefs and practices and decisions about how things should be onto other people and just let other people be who they are and who they decide to be and act the way they want and it's not the way I would act, nor the way I would want to be loved or in the way I would expect mostly to be cared for, but it's their way and that way is right to them and the way they expect to be loved and cared for and that just is how it is because everyone is different.


http://www.goodmorningandgoodnight.com/?p=984

That's the link to the quote but here is the actual quote:

“Because, that’s the thing about love, really. No one will love you how you want to be loved, they’ll love you in the only ways they know how. Life throws everyone down drastically different paths so how can we expect everyone to love in the same way? The person you’ll spend your lifetime with will love you in their way and you’ll love in yours, and maybe you’ll meet in the middle and it’ll last. None of us know what we’re doing, you see, we’re just fumbling for matches in the dark. If you’re lucky, you might eventually just strike the right one.”

I assume because there is no "speaker" at the end that it is an anonymous quote or unknown author. But it is profound, at least to me.

everything really is going to be alright

I think it took a while, but finally settling in is happening and this is indeed my home.

Hopefully a job is around the corner.

"I am a dotted line and you fill me up with whatever you like." deertick is pretty great.

And Lykke Li does an awesome remix of "Will you Still Love me Tomorrow" you should listen to it.

Maybe, just maybe, sometime soon I will begin my writing once again, something coherent and real not just little babbles.

What's Going On?

I'd like to know what happened a year and a half ago that spurred this series of horrible events in the lives of people around me? Was there some kind of cosmic shift?

I'm so sick of seeing sad people, and consoling friends and family and myself. I'm so sick of it and so sick of dealing with all these bad things happening to such wonderful people.

What's going on world? Preparing for something big? Care to clue us in?

Death - Something new

I have been writing this for about two days but it is still a rough draft, idea. I don't really know what I'm doing with it but my writing needs some focus. Maybe I'll do something with death, some kind of creative non-fiction memoir from my perspective after death. I don't know. We'll see. Ideas ideas. Please let me know what you think, I desperately need criticism.

Death, it seems is everywhere lately whispering its chilling breath into the ears of the most undeserving. I looked out of the car window at the clouds, which pulled apart slowly like cotton candy, wishing to stick together still. Liz had just texted me asking about her outfit for the viewing. She worried if pants or a dress were appropriate and which sweater would go best with it and if it was alright that she felt ignored by her boyfriend who’s brother had just died. Before I could answer she had texted another question. Pants, dark purple sweater, and no.
I have become the go-to person for death. Sometimes I feel like I reek of black clothing and somber thoughts. All my life there has been a cloud of depth surrounding me. It hides all the parts you know are there but you don’t really want to know are there. Hides them in plain sight, you know the strange dark places exist because the cloud is there to cover them. I don’t put up walls but instead a steam of intimidating sobering self that seeps into little places and cracks open your curiosity and right when it’s too late you are intrigued and want to help. The thing is, me and the cloud got it covered. We’re all good, at least we want to be and I know you want to help but I’m not going to let you. I never understood what it was about those parts of me that were so interesting to other people and men in particular. There’s something about darkness, something about hidden secrets that will probably never come out unless your cheek has lines in it from laying on my pillow all night and it is late in the afternoon and we are still under the covers while it rains outside. And even then I will try to hide my dark places.
Death acts the same way, hides right there in plain sight and lingers long enough for us to curiously prod it into some kind of submission but it never gives in. Hiding all its dark places in whimsy and clouds and brighter places, but we know better. The covered up spots make death more intriguing and we want to dig our hands deep into the sand of it all and discover there’s water under there. But the sand keeps sliding back down into the hole. We’ll never make it all the way to China like we tried when we were five on the beach in Florida. We weren’t even on the right degrees of longitude but it didn’t matter. We kept trying and deep in there somewhere we realized looking for it wasn’t going to help. Looking for the reasons why and how and what to do when death slides its way into our lives and takes up residence like a stranger who sits at the kitchen table every morning and stares while we prepare the coffee will result in longer stares. Death will beat us, wear us down until we choose to not look anymore, choose to stop paying attention.
When you stop prodding me and curiously attempting to discover what I have hidden under my skin, what I have embedded so deep into my heart that you have to crack it open like an egg to see it slide out like the yolk, then I will show you. Maybe. Death and I like to see what you’ve got. Prove your worthiness. We need to know that you can handle it before we show you what there is in the dark places.

Reconnection

Here's to finding support in the strangest of places.

A boy I knew in middle and high school who intimidated the crap out of me with his confidence and some kind of strange good looks accidentally messaged me on facebook. At first my reaction was like "no thank you, I don't want to have a conversation where I try to condense the last 5 years of my life into 60 words for you" but I did. And I'm so glad I did! We talked about writing, and he's going to school for journalism after some rocky years figuring it out and we connected on something real in both of our lives that I never expected we had because I always thought of him as someone shallow just looking for a little bit of nothing. It takes a lot for me to get to that place of giving up on someone but after a lot of years of knowing this person vicariously as a sixth degree separation friend I gave up. AND I SHOULDN'T HAVE. there is a real person in there, a real person who knows real shit and cares more about other things and is so honest. I can't really believe we're having a conversation right now that sounds like friends talking. It's pretty weird but really enforces that whimsical faith in people that I had when I was younger.

Sometimes I just really love people a lot. I really love humans.



On another note, last night was our housewarming party and it was so great. There were lots of people and fun and friends and blah blah blah. Fun. I'm glad we know the people we do.

Halloween

Hey mom, remember when we made these? http://mssinglemama.com/2010/10/11/halloween-craft-boo-ghosts/#comments We did it in the dining room on the table and I think we stuffed the heads with cotton balls and used tissues for the ghost body. I remember it, it was a great great time. I still have that feeling that I remember from those moments, like how you suggested we do it together and it was something special for just us and you wanted to spend time with me doing this new thing. Thanks for being my mom

London

I think today I decided I have to figure out how to get back to London. I forgot that I love it, and I was reminded this morning. Maybe I can do some kind of work there or maybe WWOOF ... MAYBE they have some kind of urban farm that I can work on - that would be the coolest.

I just want to be in the same city as big ben. I feel like the three weeks I had there just weren't enough, it was a small little taste and yeah while I did get homesick while I was there I think the main reason was because I missed J and now that I am fancy-free it might be easier to be there all on my lonesome. It might just be what I need. Too bad it will have to wait until at least August, but that's alright - it will give me ample planning time.

new orleans

i regret not going to new orleans. especially now when i don't think i can use the ticket. and time is running out. but when i think about how good it could have been i regret it more and maybe sometimes i think i caused you to regress into yourself rather than keep growing into the great spectacular person i know you can be. maybe the point is that you have to find that person without me though. and i have to find a way to not hope people are what i see inside them and to accept them for who they are right now. maybe that's the point.


regardless, it would have been fun.

different

what a difference a couple hours can make.

i feel broken and weird and just kind of lost. i need a paycheck and to stop spending money. i need things to get easier and not harder. i want to not feel like crying and that i should just abandon lease and move back home. and i also want to stop kicking myself for feeling those things. why am i such a little wussy baby?

i miss my person. i miss being able to pick up the phone and talk about bullshit nothing for hours with j and not get bored even though he's not the best and even though there was a lot of hurt between us, i still want that voice on the other end of the phone telling me about something silly and making me forget just for a little bit about wanting to cry. it just digs right in, knowing that my person is so far, when i hear and see s and a together. i'm so glad they are happy, so so so glad, but i too want that person who gets what i'm saying before i even say it. thailand is too far.

Garage Band and that Fateful Moment

Everytime I attempt Garageband I give up about half an hour into the endeavor. OH my Gargoyles I just can't figure it out. FOREAL. Which is a little dismaying because I like to consider myself pretty savvy on a computer and I played two instruments for 10 years each but computer instruments are not the same at all.

When we were younger we had this Tarzan computer game that had a pretty rudimentary version of garageband on it called trashin the camp or something like that and you had different keystrokes for different monkeys holding drums and jugs and instruments like that. It was easy but I mean it was also created for children.

The point is I would love to be in a band, or make my own music, but I am hitting a slight tiny road block called "I can't figure this shit out!" I hate to say it but I may resort to singing over tracks on youtube ... no no no I'm just kidding, hahaha wasn't that funny!? That will never happen. Only in my car and non-recordable will that happen.

I'd really really love to create something soon though and I'd really love to have friends who want to create some kind of big project with me too. I just want to get my hands dirty and paint or explore somewhere and take some photos.

Yeah yeah yeah. Let's do that.

Awful

Do you know about this horrible thing called love?

It's been the driving force for music, art, writing, poetry, desires and maybe life sometimes since forever. Everyone knows about it so don't even try to kid and say you don't.

It's the worst. The problem is it's also the best.

I love my friends and I love my art, my writing, I LOVE my books and could be in a relationship with them for the rest of my life if only they had arms to cuddle and voices to respond or laugh at my bad jokes and stupid little goofs.

Maybe the problem is I love love, I love relationships, I love caring about people. I love having a relationship where two people care about each other and support one another and introduce each other to new things. I am thrilled at the possibility of new people but I also like familiar, comfortable people who just want to sit together on a couch and joke around and smile together.


I like alone but I also love together.

Hating love is a lot like loving it I think. It's hard. I'm sad I left my painting stuff in Buffalo because right now I would like to paint and get messy. Maybe I will draw instead. draw out all these thoughts.


Oh good thing I have friends that I love, a life without that would be a sad one indeed.

ARMS

This band is my favorite band right now. they are so so so great. It's like a big warm fleecy hug when you're outside in crisp fall air and holding a mug of hot tea and then getting warm enough to dance around. Really, that's what they sound like. Sometimes I wish I could type sounds, because you have to listen to it and make your own connection to get it. It's beyond delightful though.

Here's their myspace, seriously, check it out. you will fall in love. http://www.myspace.com/armsongs

ARMS! please please please come to Columbus! PUH lease. They also have a remix of their song heat and hot water which is pretty wonderful. It takes their mellow but dancey sound and makes it more party-friendly.


love love love.

Huh

I guess I should change the title of my blog ... since I'm no longer living with my parents but I'm not too sure what to name it. Adventures of a Grown-Up? HM...


I have been kind of weird lately. It's strange moving into a new place and trying to call it home in two weeks. It's cool, I love my apartment and I got a bike, it's a blue Schwinn from the 70s that says "varsity" on it ... yeah. And I've been going on interviews. But I still feel strange and dirty and used from the interview I went on yesterday. It was for this company called The Art Connection and it's basically a door to door salesperson for art that you'd find in a furniture store, and buckeye art of course. I felt like they took advantage of people who didn't have a lot of money to begin with, and they lied and weaseled their way into a place and then took as much money as they could from these people. Also during the interview they didn't ask me one thing about me, not one thing about who I am and what I can do nor did they during the day-long shadow interview even allow me to try it to see if I'd be good at it! I'm sure I could have done this, I love talking to people. But the capacity that I love talking to people in is more like getting to know you and then helping you succeed at something rather than sucking money out of you.


I could just really use a hug and some more testosterone in my life. I love that I live with Alex and Sarah, they are wonderful. But I miss Yohn's approach to things rather than touchy-feely let's talk about it, more like "Drink a beer you'll be fine" and I miss Homo's dancing to the same song over and over and over and over again. It's good that I have who I have for roommates I just miss having other people down the hall ... I guess that's what it is to not be in college anymore, the accessibility of friends is squashed. I want to make new friends though and tonight Brendan will be here and I think we'll go see Olivia! So that will be delightful. I need to clean up a bit downstairs I think and then go to the store maybe I don't know I guess that can wait until Brendan gets here, we'll see. Tomorrow we are having a pumpkin party. Carving pumpkins and drinking cider.


Okay roommates just woke up. see yaaaaa wouldn't want to be ya

COLUMBUS!

I have moved to columbus and am no longer living in my parents' nest! I have my own and it's still a mess with boxes everywhere but we're getting it moved in soon ...


So you should come to visit! and we will play! yay!

Music

I understand that the quest for new, original and hip music is an unending one that consumes quite a bit of listening time. But some serious time and merit should be devoted to those delightfully wonderful songs that you found at one time or another. Seriously, why did I stop listening to "You are the blood" by sufjan, or "Two Weeks" by grizzly bear? ForRealz. this shit is good and instead of cherishing it for a little longer I tossed it aside like wilted lettuce!

OHWELL COMEBACKTOMEBEAUTIFULMUSICTHATILOVE!


this weekend is denison's alumni weekend. my emotions are pretty effed up about it. i'm not too sure what to feel. obviously i am excited beyond belief to see my lurvely friends and laugh with them and get sloppy in brews, but i am also pretty nervous about arriving for the first time as an alum and experiencing something that once was my home and no longer is. OR is this the place that will always be my home? no matter how many other homes I grow out of? Is that the point?


OHWELL. that is my new motto. OHWELL. I am going to use it to remind myself that somethings are just completely beyond and out of my control and do not deserve worry, stress or thought beyond an initial recognition. It exists, it will happen and whatever the outcome is, I will attempt to make the best out of it. WHEW. self pep talks are draining sometimes, especially when you post them on the internet and realize that EVERYONE can see how littlebitoffyourrocker you are!

OHWELL!!

Desires

I think my desires are rather simple, or at least they are simply defined, but perhaps among the most difficult to achieve:

Happiness
Someone with whom to share happiness

Maybe I have decided that it means one thing when in reality it means something else.


I just want to satisfy myself and not ever feel like I didn't live up to my own standards and potential. I think that would be happiness. and I want a buddy to cuddle and watch T.V. with, but that's what dogs are for, huh?

bored to death

I read an article that stated people who have more meaningful deep conversations lead happier lives. I think the inordinate amount of time I have spent conversing the mundane and shallow topics that I have, is directly correlating to my current mood.

I want to read meaningful poetry and I want to wander the enormous library until I find it and then I want to share it with friends.

I want to discuss this whole thing in Iran with the hikers with friends and the politics of their letting the female go but not the other two and the whole deal with the descrepancies between the president's ideals on the situation and the judicial body with which he has to deal and sway.

I want to discuss the potentially philosophical meaning of the song classic cars by bright eyes ... no matter how lame it might feel at the time. I want to sit on a moldy old couch in a windowless room and listen to music and share it with someone and postulate.

I think maybe I will never be satisfied, it is a scary thought.


Also I dislike Wilco. What of it.

Crutches

I am trying to rid myself of my crutches. especially since one has left for good anyway I figure it's a great sign to start in on the others. First step, identify crutches. Second step, ignore them like a boy you're crushing. Third step, forget about them until they beg you to take them back. Fourth step, instead of doing what you normally would ... finally giving in and allowing them back, walk in the other direction, don't look, I said don't look! And finally, feel better about yourself, realize the benefits you are reaping.


UGH I need to start writing some legit fiction, maybe if I let go of my hulu crutch that would happen. Instead I am producing this dribble. I am CRAVING an english paper right now, all I wanna do is hop up on my high horse with my thesis that I invented (probably not, nothing is really original) with my own support from the text (which I might have to manipulate with some elipses) and draw a brilliant conclusion about the moral standing of humanity and what 18th century british literature has to say about it (probably some bullshit that I came up with as I was drifting to sleep in the wee hours of morning).


I so badly want to learn. But what? I think I just want a liberal arts education all over again ... maybe. oh I don't know. Maybe English Lit? Social Work? Writing? I just want to learn. Hm ... maybe from now on, or at least until this craving ends, I'll only read non-fiction books. I've already started "The Whale" but I put it down in favor of a fictional tale, perhaps this is the moment to pick it back up again and learn about flukes and maguerites and how whales were put on display in the circus! (I made the last one up, lists look better in threes, don't they?)


Onward to finish reading Freedom by Jonathan Franzen before I can begin my adventure into the sanctum of knowledge that lies between the pages of Phillip Hoare's book!



One last thing - I've been getting these weird almost-fainting spells lately, if you know anything about it, let a girl know! WebMD is SCARY!

places i want to go this year

let's go on an adventure!

I want to go to California and Portland and Seattle, how about a northwest roadtrip!? EH? EH?

Also, I want to go to Vail and Las Vegas.


And Chicago.

Go places with me! Who needs jobs!? Who needs money!? I do! but ... I think I need travel too.

BAM!

Please buckle your seatbelts and prepare for a bumpy ride, I am about to spew some deep knowledge on you.

Ready?

Parents are people too.

I know, you're probably sitting there holding your hair in your hands and tugging, your face has melted to the floor and your mouth is wide open "WHAAAAAAAAAA?"

Or maybe not.

But here's the thing, I knew this for a while but I really just realized it, like really realized it. My parents are real life people with just as many flaws, dreams and ambitions as I have! They lie! They get mad about stupid shit because somebody that morning cut them off on their drive to work! They laugh about teenage angst! They think they're funny sometimes! They read books, watch reality TV, grocery shop, attempt crossword puzzles, and sleep at night. It's true, they are people.


It's this really weird feeling realizing that parents don't just automatically become the best they could ever be once they find out they're pregnant. There is no "perfect" switch that gets flicked, making them into some admirable person who is always truthful and loving and happy. That doesn't happen. What does happen though, I think, is that they are set on a path to that person, like hyper drive, because who wants to be the crappy parent - no one I think. So they're climbing up this roller coaster steadily, but slowly, until they find out they are having a child and will soon be the reality of how people are for a little person, so they are sent flying down the coaster up and over and around, leaping through experiences and ideas trying to navigate it the best they can. So now they are fast tracked on their way to becoming this person that they may have only become when they were eighty but it's happening now, that they're forty, because they have a kid who looks at them like they can conquer anything so they feel like they have to make good on that promise and they try.

Before I become a parent I want to make sure I am completely, totally, absolutely honestly ready to become that better person. To give up selfishness, to give up on sleeping in, to give up on eating ice cream for breakfast, to give up on swearing at other drivers who cut me off, to give up laying around in bed all day some saturdays and watching movies, to give up on all the self indulgent things that I allow myself because if little tiny eyes are looking at me and saying "I'm hungry" "I need this" and I am the one who is capable of providing it, I need to be there and be available and be completely theirs. I think that's what it is, it's giving yourself to someone else, that's what parenthood is. Maybe.

Awakenings

I feel like I have been living with false assumptions and hopes for who people are. I have been unconscious sleep-walking through what people really are and who they are not, that my hopes and truly my beliefs are completely wrong and based on nothing more than my own assumptions. I can't tell what is wrong in this situation, I think it is me though since I did the assuming. No more.

Finally I am waking up. I am realizing that my hopes for how people are that my beliefs in how they might be are all wrong, untrue, and based in lies. I am hopeful, I see potential, maybe for my own benefit, probably for that, but also for the benefit for those people that I see that I don't think they can. But maybe that's it, maybe they see the potential and they don't want it. Maybe they like how they are. Maybe I am hurting only myself by living with these facades that I have painted across my perceptions because it is not the truth.

It has never been okay for me to not be alright. I was never allowed to hurt, irate, depressed, doing wrong to someone else and I always thought that was a rule imposed on me by other people. Now, I think I am waking up to the fact that I have imposed that rule upon myself. That's fine, but now I also need to wake up and realize that other people have not done that, they are not to resent for it, they are not targets of my anger for it, it is my own moral encoding that is to blame and I somehow created a structure for myself to live in. I feel so foolish for thinking up until this point that others were to blame/resent for my feelings of misunderstanding. I felt like no one heard me ever, but I wasn't even talking.

Now I have to figure out if I have spent too long being silent or if it's okay to start screaming (singing?) now.



This summer has been a very rocky ride for me. I felt like no one noticed. I hid though, hid in my room and hid behind going out, I smiled as I shut the door and cried in the car while I drove. It really is my own fault. Everything just felt like it crumbled down so swiftly. Things with Max were so wonderful with the impending knowledge that it would end. That feeling of complete despair, like nothing good could ever come out of so much hurt and pain especially if it was from letting go of someone who had been so good, taught me so much, smiled so often with me. Then I turned to Jake for solace, he has been my best friend since we were sixteen. It felt natural to turn to the person who knew everything, I didn't have to explain, I could just cry and be hurt and he didn't care why he just held my hand. That was nice. But out of that came so much hurt and confusion and I felt so lost, like I had opened myself up and compacted my own personality, wants and needs down into the depths and closed myself back up with a hardened cover. I didn't feel real anymore. And everything with Tamar all summer. I didn't know her well at all, we had hung out once or twice and I so enjoyed her presence. It was difficult for me when Jake told me she had passed. On top of all that I have the natural stress of where my life is right now, between school and the rest of my life, what do I do now? And the stress of an apartment, moving, jobs, school maybe, traveling. I didn't even have time to give creative thought room in my brain. Writing was my outlet for so long and then I eliminated it completely.

It is nice, really satisfying, to wake up and realize I have been the one inflicting the most pain on myself, because at least I can become cognizant of it and start to do something. I can choose to speak up, choose to not hide, choose to do what I want to do with my life, choose to not allow others opinions sway my decision making. I don't need to move to do that either I can do it right now right now.


It feels good to open my eyes.

the mad ones

Fall always seems to be a time of reflection for me. Whether it's the sweaters and cozy spots for curling up and thinking in, or the changing leaves completing their cycle of life, I don't know, but it gets me to thinking about all the stuff and people in my life. It makes me love writing again, maybe that's because of school and I'm used to having a little break over summer because during the year it's so crunched, but this year is different and I will have to crunch time myself like leaves under my feet. I love people who aren't afraid to stand up and say what they are. Who are weird out loud and so unapologetic about it. I so adore honesty about how we actually are. Sometimes I am not honest about who I really am, but sometimes I think what is the point if we are not honest about it!? That seems like some time wasted not finding our best friends and missing out on some really spectacular opportunities for skipping and idea-making together when we realize how wonderfully we both think!

I was thinking about this today because I met my friend Sarah's friends at school and Sarah and I have always had those moments with lightbulbs flashing like the red carpet and our ideas are so weird and great together because fear of being self is just gone. I just love everything about us being together and hanging out sometimes! It's so easy and fun and delightful! And her friends are all the kind of people who are that way too, so unapologetically weird and easy to get along with and it's like we are each our own wonderful beautiful swirling spiral design in our favorite colors and they just happen to compliment each other so well that it's amazing we haven't been friends forever, matching our colors and designs in the strangest most beautiful ways.


Sometimes I don't make sense, but also that is the point. If you get it you are the best.

People

I feel like I'm living for so many other people and their goals that I don't even have time to think about mine.

I'm doing this Dale Carnegie class because I'm sure it will provide good knowledge and growth, but it's not completely applicable to my life right now and it doesn't entirely just fit in with all the other things I have to think about. But I'm doing it because my Dad wants me to and because it was offered to me.

I'm working because my dad wants me to. I'm not doing anything at work, I'm not crucial to the process of anything I sit, and sit, and answer phones, and make copies, and sit.

I'm making certain choices because of the implications of other peoples' opinions.

I need to just leave, build my life somewhere else away from this stuff because it's starting to give me heartburn again. I'm always on some kind of edge, especially if I choose to care. If I decide to not care then I'm fine but then I don't care and I feel like a zombie!

I'm so frustrated in this little blunder of a place. I need to move, I need to leave and I need to grow on my own away from opinions, in spite of opinions, on my own time, terms and in my own directions.

OOOOOOOOH FRUSTRATION

A new story

The Man with the Snakeskin Boots (tentative title)

Robert worked in a bottle factory. Every day he made sure caps were screwed on each water bottle properly because sometimes the machines went too fast to be accurate. He loathed his job. Well, not entirely. He had Brenda to look forward to at the end of the day and she made the job worthwhile. Without his job he wouldn’t be able to afford Brenda.
“Hey Rob, how’s it going today?”
“Oh, okay, how about you Tim?”
“I’m great, nothing to complain about. The wife’s making my favorite for dinner, pot roast, can’t wait ‘til quittin’ time!”
Damn, pot roast, I wish I had a wife who made dinner for me, Robert thought. He had a T.V. dinner waiting for him in the freezer. He hated how the entire thing went into the microwave at once and the applesauce always got too hot. Robert didn’t even like hot applesauce, it was gross like baby-food or old-people mush.
The bell went off at the end of the day ringing on the hour of “go home.” Robert checked the last of the bottles and made sure their caps were screwed tight and sealed. He slid into his rust-covered Trans Am and let out a sigh as he sank into its worn velveteen seats. With his hand on the cold leather-wheel, he turned the key and anxiously waited the heat to turn on. It was the dead of winter in the rustbelt of Buffalo, NY and all Robert could think about was getting home to his Brenda.


--------------------------copyright Laura Masters (this means if you copy me I will hunt you)

Facebook

Can we just talk about the problem with spelling and grammar people have on facebook? I know your hands move faster than your brains, but come on, did you really just leave out a vital word in that sentence?

The great (or not so great) thing is that we all know what the intended message was anyway. But is that just an excuse for laziness, for a lack of thoughtfulness, an excuse for people to stop paying attention and being mindful?

I hate facebook because we just go through these motions and it's not us. it's not the reality and even if it is we just don't care enough to have a legitimate interaction.

I miss humans. Straight-talking real life, let's go to the museum and pretend to be smart humans. Whatever happened to dates!? Let's talk about that.

things i miss

it's sad to say, but it's so so true. i miss the library. i miss the way it smells and the cozy lighting and the bright lights in the stacks, i miss it all. the library was reason numero uno why i chose denison. i miss it. i miss the people and the laughs and the silly faces as morning came closer. i miss all nighters and the stinky couch in the bullsheet office. i miss running into everyone i loved in one day. i miss that the most. i miss feeling so important even though i wasn't. i miss feeling like i had direction, like i was going somewhere. it's like someone just uprooted the rest of my tracks and i'm here at a stand-still. i need to write. i need to send my writing to be published. i need to sing in public. i'm going to find a band when i get to columbus. i need to do things that make me feel productive and as much as it may not follow other peoples' goals for me, productivity does not exist behind a desk in a flourescent-lit office for me. productivity may not be in helping others realize their goals right now for me, it may not be writing for a magazine or publishing, it may not be graphic design.

yesterday as i complained about how boring work was to my dad and how today i would have a twelve hour day because of this class i'm taking tonight he said "welcome to the working world". i cried. i know i'm lame, but i did because i refuse to believe that this is reality for me for the rest of my life. i absolutely refuse it. i am going to love what i do. i will. i am going to travel and not be locked into a 50- hour work week for the rest of my life in the same damn place and then settle down and pop out babies. that is not my life. and for someone who sees such wonderful things for my life to welcome me to 12 hour days doing shit work that i loathe ... i know he didn't mean it that way but i saw it as a way to wake myself up.

i'm going to be poor. i'm going to not be able to have the things i'm used to. i'm going to be hungry and i'm going to be cold and out of those places, the lowest deep down depths, there i will find myself. there i will strip away all the fluff that is masquerading as me right now and i will get to the core of myself and begin to write again and it will be brilliant and i will publish it. and i cannot do that if i am working a comfortable office job doing menial work that i do not care about. i do not want to live one day of my life doing something that i do not care about. passion is so vital to who i am.


there are a lot of things i miss. a lot of people i miss. if i could just get one day back to relive, just one winter day at denison, when it's snowing outside of the library, with hot coffee in my hand and a red hat on my head and smiles everywhere. contentment. that's what i miss, utter contentment. nothing was so hard i couldn't do it, nothing was so easy i was bored. everything was just right. and right now i feel simultaneously bored out of my mind and in a paralytic state because life is so looming and hard. all i want to do is play. and write. and hold hands. i just need to realize that i can do those things anywhere, not just at denison, i guess i'm mourning the loss of four years in one place that i grew to love deeply. even though we're supposed to move on to bigger better things, a period of grief is important.

the horizon is not too far.

Gentiles

Let's reflect for a moment on my life thus far - first boyfriend, gentile. second serious boyfriend, jewish. third - gentile. and from there the rest are jewish with a gentile thrown in here or there but the majority of my dating life has been laden with bagels and yom tov's.

I've dated jewish so many times that I even know some hebrew, what is kosher for passover and when the major holidays are. Probably more than those boys can say about their minimal knowledge of my santa-loving, jesus-believing religion. Dating across the religious spectrum though has allowed me to realize and confirm my own beliefs and create my own spiritualism.

Regardless, I never fail to be the shiksa-wannabe in the crowd without even trying. I swear, it's not like I'm seeking these situations out and sometimes (okay most of the time) I feel really isolated because of the closeness of Jewish people, especially Buffalo Jews (ie. my friends). they all know each other! they all went to camp together! their brothers and sisters know each other! I can say for absolute certainty that that is not how it was for me and my Christian brethren. we did the whole sunday school thing but I was not nearly as invested in forming life-long family-linked friendships with these people simply because we both believe in Jesus, Santa and Mary. It becomes awkward sometimes and I feel like an impostor because who would assume the girl who hangs out with all Jewish people who knew each other at birth and appears to be Jewish on the outside really is the odd-man out? And let's be real, I can put on a good show, not purposefully, just based on the knowledge I have accrued thanks to my relationships.

Can't wait to return to Denidoo's New England-style white Euro-gentile laden land. Hello Big Red Weekend, thanks for opening your arms to me. Seriously, college was the one time when I wasn't constantly surrounded by a group of jewish friends who had known each other forever and I still dated and befriended those of the Moses persuasion.




**Disclaimer: none of this post is meant to insult, degrade or emotionally harm anyone person or peoples. I love all people, but you have to admit the uncanniness of my life-long jewdar.

Fonts

Do you think the creators of Google ever regret using that font? They're stuck with it forever now ... what is it, a Helvetica, it's not Times ... regardless they are trapped in that font choice until Yahoo or Bing surpass them - which, let's be real, will never happen.


I wonder what happens when you choose a font for your brand and then you decide five years later once you're a big corporation that you despise that font and that it doesn't really represent the values you once held.



I spend a lot of time thinking.

I have finally gotten to a place where I feel exactly like myself. I'm ready to go out and be outgoing and independent and introduce myself to people on the street that I don't know it's like that story SJ wrote about me, I feel like that person again. Let's buy some flowers and give them to strangers! Let's go to parties where we don't know a soul! Let's make new friends! Let's climb the waterfront tower and sing songs together! Let's run around the city and take pictures!

I want an adventure and I want it now.

In other news: Who will go with me to Wordstock in Portland? I'm considering driving, but I also have this Delta ticket to use so if you want to go with me, I'll split your plane ticket with you cause I don't have to pay for mine! And we can camp!


Wonderful things lie ahead waiting for me

little things

As I plugged my phone into the charger tonight I leaned a little farther than I usually do and there was the gold band bracelet I had lost for about a month now. At first I was extremely upset about losing this bracelet, it's awesome and I love it and it was a constant reminder my graduation since it is probably the last thing I will have ever purchased from the gypsies.

Sad, morbid. True.

Alas, after a couple days of moping, or rather blaming my moping on the bracelet, I decided there were bigger fish to fry, er, cry over, er, spilled milk? Meh. You know.

SO I returned to my adolescent adage of, set it free and forget it, if you're supposed to have it, it will come back to you somehow if not, forget about it. This is a motto that got me through some pretty big losses. That rubberband I lost to a rainstorm, I had written the last stanza to Anne Sexton's "Wanting to Die" on it ... sad, morbid, true. It had also gotten me through to loss of a really awesome grey beanie with a pink zipper flower on it that I never did find ... maybe a sign. And it got me through countless moments of heartache. At a very crucial point in my life when I had chosen that I was too old for this motto, that it was whimsical and nonsensical and unrealistic (redundant? perhaps.) Here it is, proving me wrong and my motto right (really a win-win situation for me since I'm wrong and right either way). But I found it! And perhaps it's a sign that I need to return to my roots a little bit, embrace the good parts of my adolescent self and hold on to the sparkle magic rationale that got me through so many other hard times, why wouldn't it work now? Because I'm no longer sixteen!? Bullshit. Sparkle magic always works and I have my gold bracelet to attest to that simple truth.