little bits of beauty

 to get through these trying finals
i am writing and reading and writing and writing and drinking tea on top of tea on top of tea
coughing up a lung
failing to record by other means for too too long, so here:
talked to my momma for an hour and twenty minutes today, which was happy-making and calmness-inducing
took a nice hot shower and spent time just being
got a phone call during which sufjan's voice, not quite clear of the words, began coming through my phone speaker and into my heart along with the laughter of the masses, so it must have been funny
one of my greatest friends here got the kiss she's been waiting for and while she is now indifferent after obsessing for a week, it was a sweet story to hear on a night like tonight
received two refills of fizzy water from the boy with the grin and the eyes and that nasally voice
but learning to be content with lacking, i suppose

there is more to it than this, i suppose

Things like I more or less revived this blog a little bit over a year ago because I was at one of the lowest points in my life and needed a diversion. Things like I am in a completely new and different place now, and it's hard to believe all of it was a year ago (more!), the time when I was maybe the saddest I have ever been. Things like not really believing in February and May and August. Things like not knowing how to detach myself from my body from my mind, my mindlessness in my body, my body's wants and wants and needs and never ever having. Things like getting drunk and calling four other people so as not to say his name, because if I say his name, people will know, people will know that there are feelings in the way I walk in every Tuesday night and ask for fizzy water and stay until closing so we can walk home together. Things like everyone knowing anyway, confirmed by chance encounters on the bus and questions to which the only response is blushing and nervously, sheepishly, shyly nodding, yes, it's true, I do, I do, but we are capital-eff Friends. Things like chopping pumpkins for roasting while giggling over the fact that you do like him, you do! But I will not analyze any of it, I won't. Things like curried lentils and greens from the garden and candy cane tea and so much of it, so full, so satisfied. Things like walking home at 2am, through mist, inebriated, wandering down the hills alone in the brightest dark I have ever known. Things like warm wool socks and dripping cold outside and warm heavy blankets covering warm heavy brains. My diversions have changed, my diversions are many, my diversions are this beautiful life, I suppose. Gratefulness. Yes. Gratefulness and sleepiness, the number one most felt, and who needs a diversion from that when there's coffee?

like before

i want to cry every tear out of my body and into your cupped hands and heave my deepest parts out onto you, into every pit and breadth of you, matted hair falling past my face and touching your thin winter arms, breathing sobbing becoming new beings, pulling fast forward tied tight gasp sob deep breath, we are so clean, so young, so ready to be ready, so ready to be new

i am so alone here

on falling in love, on not knowing what love is, on something that is maybe not love at all

Loving people you've never met is like anticipating the next four years without thinking about the next four seconds, which, in all honesty, I do all the time. Loving someone you've never met makes no sense. Do you know how it feels to love someone about whom you know nothing? To fall in love with a stranger, a stranger, except you do know the minutest facts about them, the facts that they choose to share, the feelings they are feeling on a regular basis, their thought processes. But with the deletion of the blog comes the deletion of the human. No longer privy to thoughts that were once readily shared with the internet, thoughts that could never be presented in person, thoughts that are so beautiful and bare and stripped of pretension, stripped of insecurity. There is purity in reading about the sadness, the loneliness, the mundane. Our human parts are made up not of the extraordinary, but the daily experiences, the quiet moments when we don't realize what we are thinking, when the mind is running without meta-analysis, the mind running faster than it cares to keep up with itself, but still so slowly, still in monotony, still only interesting to those who truly love you, those who truly care, or those who care to be voyeurs; though, aren't we all voyeurs? Aren't we all interested in the thoughts of those who are not ourselves? Don't you want to know what someone who is not you is thinking in a situation in which you have also been? Don't you want to know what someone who is not you is thinking in a situation in which you have never been? The human mind and all its complexity, laid bare for the reading, bare for the taking, bare for the breathing. This is how I came to know you. This is how I came to love you. This is how I do not know you anymore.

the long and winding road

The hills beneath the Griffith Observatory during Venus in transit. You can't tell here, but cars were parked way deep down, covering the hillsides, resulting in a walk that wove through trees and traffic lasting about fifteen minutes or so, and lordie is was so beautiful all over the place. This day also included a long car ride and the most delicious Indian food and reading about galaxies over shoulders and grazing fingers and gathering grass mountains on small folded legs while gazing at shy eyelashes and overlooks onto the bright city lights kissing the dark night sky.

I still don't know how to feel about this summer.

gripes and melancholy in a hot summer haze

There are moments I would like to squeeze into a glass bottle and pour down my throat, deep into myself, on a night like tonight. There are moments when light, rays of late-afternoon sunshine through branches of trees, touched my body, when the wind gathered my hair up off my face, when the leaves on the ground underfoot crunched as I trampled them, moments when I walked on thick, unsturdy planks of wood over water, tip-toeing, pretending I was a speck of dust falling softly on bookcases filled to the brim and overflowing with stories to be drifted in and out of.
This body, this skin, had been present in a million different places, a million different situations. I carry moments upon my skin that I do not remember, that I may never remember again. And then there are moments that my body has known that I will never, ever forget. What I remember most is what was exchanged between us, the pieces of you and the pieces of me; your anger, the way I could see you swiftly closing your computer and stomping away from my sight, furious, in a fit of rage, fists clenched. I remember, I feel, the sadness, the melancholy, the remorse. I remember the feeling of autumn, the indescribable cold that settles in only to be met with the knowledge of a long winter ahead, the knowledge that the bitter breezes, the cloudy greyness, it is all for the best, that feeling that seeped through your every word. The way I can still feel you when I listen to this song and this one and that, it scares me to my very core.
When I picture you, I picture you walking, always walking, nose rosy, buttoned up and pulling tight a flimsy coat collar up around your face, guarded from the elements only because of the layers of sweaters beneath it. I wish you would walk here, to where I am, because although there has been longing elsewhere, although there have been moments with others and will continue to be moments with others, I somehow find myself in the same state, 1:22am, longing for the moments when my skin was something you longed to touch, dreaming of the moment when you actually will - a moment that honestly may never exist. But there is still so much I have not told you.
There is nobody I hold closer. There is nobody who is farther away.

let it be known

-e. st. vincent millay

times are strange and tough and crazy, but i am most certainly the recipient of the best and truest and most loyal love from the few who know me well, and i am filled with joy at knowing those whom i know, and i will be forever grateful for this time in my life (or at least the soon approaching one), no matter how easy it can be (very often times) to forget the wonders that surround me without cessation, and i must say this week has been one of the best of the year, and i do hope that there are many more like it to come

summer anthem

shyness, let it go, never have to be alone
shyness, let it go, never have to feel so lonely
shyness

note #2

Tonight, I came home, walked directly into my bedroom, and sobbed into my hands for four minutes, feeling myself tremble in silence. I had every intent to be in bed two hours ago but instead I am awake, drifting through the notion of school, the idea of paying for school. It's all rattling around in my brain and I don't know what to do with any of it except let it all come out by way of tears. I wonder if I am setting myself up for failure, I wonder for how long I will feel not-good-enough, not-smart-enough, not-pretty-enough. There is some inside part of me gaping to get out, and all the while, it cannot, it cannot, it cannot. I graze the surface of feeling well. I smile and know it will work out. In the mean time I feel suffocated and unimportant, I know I am small and unimportant, I don't know when I will feel well again, I don't know if I ever will.

note #1

most days i think i'd like to disappear.

photo c/o lisa ann wilson

haven't been journaling as i ought

haven't been doing as i ought, haven't been thinking as i ought. every day the weight of a new day hovers over my head and tells me, you have to do this right and then you have to write about it. my journal goes untouched, though. sloppy handwriting from more inspired months fills the pages, fueled with desire and longing and the willingness to hope and also the deep sorrow, the depression that leads to my best thoughts and ideas, the sadness that i find myself quivering in, secretly enjoying the little bursts of inspiration that come with not knowing and feeling down-trodden. the past two weeks are a whirlwind in my mind and all i can think is, why am i so dry and where am i coming from and why do i even exist in all this and where am i going.
i could start with the rejection from berkeley. i wasted a week of my life, prior to receiving said rejection, bemoaning the future, knowing what was in store. if i'm honest, i flounced my way through admissions letters, wrote a personal statement that said nothing about myself but the fact that i'm a bumbling daydreamer who we all know would never be able to handle the full coursework at a prestigious university, would not know how to manage being surrounded by ego and competition and emptiness. probably it was a blessing in disguise.
the week after, i swept myself up in daydreams of vermont, tiny liberal arts colleges with hip student bodies, students who have interests as diverse as mine, who wear cuffed jeans and flannels and thick-rimmed glasses and look so happy and fun and who seem to love the earth, at least, if the website photos are to be believed. my dream school was discovered too late and is too far out of reach and i am making peace with that. come autumn, i will be living in the redwoods, along the coast, two and a half hours from my new friend annabel in davis, one and a half hours from san francisco. i will be as on my own as i have ever been, but i will also be surrounded by people, surrounded by people just waiting to be met and adored and hopefully kissed.
my birthday was just yesterday and it feels like seven years ago or even as if it didn't happen. i stayed up 'til midnight, the day before, the day of, and now. twenty doesn't feel so different. i am a new woman but i have done so little. my birthday was crummy, as i expected, but crummier than expected, but okay, because tea and starbucks until closing, dreaming of visits up north, visits to portland, visits to canada. i am falling in love with the idea of leaving. my heartstrings tie themselves up and away from this little old town more and more each day. i am ready to leave, as scary as that is to say. i am twenty and i have done so little and i am ready to leave. if school is the only way to manage that, then so be it.
deciding to major in politics didn't come easily. literature, i always said, as if i knew the greatness of whitman in my heart, as if i'd ever touched the taming of the shrew. my fingers have grazed the spines of a million cherished tomes that i most likely will never, ever know. i am coming to terms with the fact that studying literature would not be true to myself, not really. my real self, whatever that is, longs to be informed about everything, longs to be responsible and make informed decisions, doesn't have the attention span for an hour-long film but would really like to be immersed in the arts, would really like to have the mind that isn't bored by analyzing character inflection and movement, the surrounding environment, the way that everything is new in fall. maybe everything is new in fall because it just is, maybe we should all just learn to read and enjoy it. no. literary analysis is for other people, people who have big imaginations and bigger dreams than mine. i am a realistic-idealist with a romantic edge, is all. i want to study politics, i want to represent a female where it seems very few females are represented. i want to be strong and independent and refrain from feeling intimidated despite the fact that i just might not understand.
more than anything, i want to feel the earth in my palms, spread myself wide under a hazy-blue-cloudy sky, look up and feel myself knowing and learning more, look up and feel myself being alone and alive and also hopefully loved at some point. everything is scary, but i am learning more each day. offer of admission, to be accepted soon. room, to be packed soon. my life will be in boxes, my life will be starting anew. everything will be new in the fall.

hi, hullo, it's been a while

here is a beautiful girl holding some beautiful cats, from my new favorite flickr pool, people holding cats.

all images c/o the marvelous ali bosworth

i got a haircut yesterday that i've been playing with all today between writing papers and walking. i woke up in a terrible, no good, very bad mood, which translated to tears in my eyes and then all over my father's shirt,  so my mother insisted i go on a walk with her and things began to feel better and right. it was a very long walk in the very hot sun and we both grew very thirsty. it feels like summer and i am ready for summer and i just want summer. i 'graduate' from community college on may 31st and it's a sort of odd feeling, but everything is odd-feeling lately, including my insides, including my outsides. i swim around in murky water that is crystal clear every four years. i say that i don't want to get old, but that just means i don't appreciate my youth. changes are on the horizon, as lenin said, as lenin said, change is on the horizon, whatever that means. do people ever reach the horizon? aren't things always changing? every day is the same, until it comes time to look back and everything is different. soon i will be different. i already am. 

nothing but my rambling words

Taking the time to pause and document more of spring break in short clipped sentences because I know not what else to do with myself.
Today was another day with kids. I was much calmer today than I usually am while baby-sitting; I could feel myself brimming with some sordid mixture of compassion, patience, authority, the strength and energy go down the slide seventy-two times with a child in my lap, a mixture which does not often make itself apparent on any usual shift. I spend a lot of time putting off that which needs to be attended to, including, unfortunately, my duties as a baby-sitter or whatever it is that I am to them. They seem to love me, and I love them, deeply, but it is easy to fall into the routine of simply watching them play and breaking up their fights when necessary, to forget how to be a kid and have some fun while still maintaining the balance and structure that children need from people who are looking after them. I tend to feel like a huge push-over, because it does not take much more than saucer eyes to persuade me. But I also grow so exhausted constantly interacting at school that my interactions elsewhere become shallow and fragmentary. I think the time on break has allowed me the time alone to refuel and collect my thoughts so that I have so much more of myself to pour into the time I spend with those beautiful little creatures.
I dressed the baby in pink florals and cuffed denim today, and she looked like a dream, her big blue eyes peering up from her porcelain face, her short, wispy curls sitting atop her head. She's the sort of baby who does not beg for attention in any way--quiet, observant, but beginning to grow more energetic--and yet upon seeing her there is some sort of intense magnetism that comes forth and all I can do is pick her up and smile at her and kiss her and do whatever else her heart desires. The second-youngest held the baby's hand as we walked home, two sisters walking along grasping palms and smiling in their tiny jeans and patterned tops, and it was one of the sweetest moments I've witnessed in recent memory. But yes, we went to the park and played. Someone asked if I was a stay-at-home mom, to which I replied, "Oh, no, I'm just the baby-sitter!" She invited me to join her anyway, her and a group of other moms who were gathered at the park for their "mom club" while their toddlers toddled around the playground. I said thank you, but opted to go down the slide with the baby. We did crafts and had pb&j at home afterward. Mundanities, but mundanities I've grown accustomed to, even approached cheerfully today.
The afternoon was spent at the library with my father and brother and sister. Manny had a mustache painted on his face, Nikki a giraffe. The community room was all a flutter with vibrant banners advertising the different stations where kids could go to play horseshoes, make bookmarks and paper flowers and various other paper crafts. I sat at story time and watched the eyes of the little girl sitting next to me light up. Those library volunteers are magical, so wonderfully enthusiastic, and I think that all the kids who were there appreciated the effort, even if that's not necessarily something that kids ever think about or communicate. I appreciated the effort. My dad took us to dinner at In-N-Out (well, I drove) and we four ate our fries and burgers (veggie, for me) and made conversation. When I have days like these, I realize how much of my family I am missing while I am at school, and it makes me sort of sad. I only have such a limited time left with them, and even then, my time is not going to be spent with them. When I go away to school, I will miss even more of their lives, not to mention how much I will miss them.
I finished The Bell Jar today. I am anxious to begin drafting for my papers but already feeling overwhelmed and wondering if it's something that can even be accomplished, 36 pages (12 pages each) over the course of one month, plus normal schoolwork, including short papers. I haven't researched enough, I can tell you that. So, it's beginning to look like a hopeless task, but I suppose if I spent less time talking about it and more time actually doing it, it would be halfway done by now. Oh well. I don't really have much else to say. I'm glad I got this out. I'm glad to be alive today, which is much more than I could have said four months ago. Awash with all sorts of emotions, but a feeling of contentment is definitely at the top of the list. I keep reminding myself, when I am driving, when I am walking, when I am talking to other people, It is a miracle to exist. Because it is. And it's something I want to take to heart and keep remembering to acknowledge. It makes things rosier. It makes challenges seem surmountable. It is sappy, but it's true. When I begin questioning why I am here, doubting myself, wondering whether I am able, whether I'll ever have made anything of myself, I try to remember, It is a miracle to exist. Then everything else is extra. Everything else is acknowledging the miracle and allowing it to emanate, permeate, making it even more miraculous. Surviving the things I've survived, doing the things I've done. I've accomplished a lot more in the past year than I care to give myself credit for, and it's so easy to push it all aside and say, look, I've done nothing and feel completely worthless. But existing is a miracle. Being alive is a big deal. I survived a car accident. I could be dead right now. Why would I want to waste something so precious, that I came so close to losing, my life, on doubt and misery and insecurity?
That's not to say I'll never have depressive phases again, but I think for now, on a day like today, and hopefully moving forward, I can get through more than I think if I focus on the miracle that is simply waking up in the morning, getting out of bed, having a nice cup of coffee, and breathing while the sun shines through the sliding glass window and my family sits around having breakfast. I think that is a miracle in and of itself.

past and present and bits of reflection

I spent the day in a misty mood, cheerfully reading The Bell Jar and a bit about the history of Marxist views on homosexuality, both for research papers. Anna played the ukulele and we sang "After Hours" by The Velvet Underground while we were both in our pajamas this morning. We went to the library after dressing, and I bought a book of Kerouac poems and eagerly exclaimed upon finding Brian Andreas' Mostly True, so I bought that, too, and I ate good food, my mum's special pasta sauce (my great-grandmother's recipe) and vegetarian meatballs for dinner. I feel as though something is shifting deep down inside me, and I'm not sure what it is or why, but I think it's maybe for the best.

Shiny, happy people sun-bathing, c/o indigo_mint

This video is strangely, somewhat horrifically enchanting, and also much more erotically charged than anything I would usually choose to feature anywhere, but somehow it's become a video I come back to over and over again; maybe because it's so strange, but maybe mostly because I would like to lounge around in a peach-colored leotard and pale pink knee socks all day. The tones are like ice cream. The rest is a bit cultish and overtly sexual. The unusual juxtaposition of the two may explain the semi-addictive nature, along with the music, a mix of "honeyed harmonies, hypnotic rhythms and bright beats," which I suppose is the actual point of the entire operation to begin with.

meddlesome little feelings

To kick off spring break, I watched a million Grimes videos, grew sick to my stomach by way of yogurt-covered pretzel consumption, and baby-sat. I have a presentation tomorrow that I feel less than prepared for. My confidence is waning. There is a bad mood brewing beneath it all.

While watching the little ones today, I lay on the couch and closed my eyes, listened to their noises but didn't pay attention for ten minutes. This is a bad way to go about it; why would anyone want me to watch their children? But I have a headache and my eyes were begging to be shut.

These kids. Two blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauties and two brunette, brown-eyed mischief-makers, each with a true blue personality, each with a smile that could light up the heavens. I will never get beyond how telling the faces of small children are, especially those one knows really well, those whom one has taken the time to look at. Sometimes the baby smiles at me and my heart stops. Sometimes I look at their feet or touch their hair and I cry. Everything is so fleeting and transient and also so wonderful, sometimes I feel as though I am failing to take it all in and process it adequately.

I went to return Martha Marcy May Marlene to Redbox and the couple in front of me was a well-dressed, hipstery type. He wore a blazer and hat. She had a line of words tattooed down the middle of her back, what they said I couldn't decipher, and her left forearm said "always." in typewriter print. People being people, being light-hearted, discussing food or something. People. People people people.

the sun through the storm

It's been an interesting week, a strange year, and I feel like taking a second to document it this way, publicly, despite the fact that I could use a journal, because something I have been thinking about a lot lately is being more open and learning to connect with people. I don't think that being online and engaging in constant interaction via our various technological gadgets comes anywhere near the sort of true human connection that we need for maintaining a healthy sense of well-being, but I do think they can help when used correctly. While it is depressing to sit around looking at other people's lives and not actually living, upon deciding to leave the house and make an effort to talk to and connect with people, good things do begin to happen, and I think that being on the internet and having that sort of reassurance that comes from online interaction, whether it be with strangers, close friends, or acquaintances, can aid in that process, or has at least helped me a lot at this point in time. 

I have been feeling lonely and self-centered lately, there's no denying that, but I also made a long-winded post about it and, while my feelings are still mixed about whether it was a good idea to share the details of my most intimate thought processes with a very high number of internet strangers, it helped me realize a few things; it is important to be open and honest and talk through feelings, it is alright to not have all the answers, and it is alright to worry about what people think of you, write about it, and then put that writing up somewhere as a way of getting beyond that worry, because in the end, the people who think well of you will always think well of you, the people who don't care won't care, the people who don't like you still won't like you. And that is all okay. Realizing all of that made today go a lot smoother. I had a group presentation, which I was really nervous about, but I somehow wasn't nervous on the drive there and during the moments leading up to it, I didn't let my voice quiver or tears begin to flow while speaking. I tried to engage myself with the audience, think about the fact that people are just people, and an interesting discussion ensued between my group, our classmates, and our professor.
After being so successful, I told one of my supervisors in the writing center and she was really proud of me. "You?!" she said. "YOU gave a presentation and didn't get nervous? That's fantastic!" I asked her about going to observe a religious ritual with me for my anthropology class and so we are going to do that either this weekend or the one after next. I am getting involved in other things I never would have before as well, like going to see The Hunger Games with my favorite English professor and her family, along with a few of the other girls who were in my adolescent lit class, which just sort of came up as a last minute plan. I had a long conversation today with someone who was in the ten-day class I took over summer and asked him questions about his life prior to college, because he's twenty-eight years old, and I always wondered how he got to be where he is now. He has a refreshing point of view about school, truly appreciates his teachers and enjoys his classes, maybe because he has a bit more life experience to back it up. Even a month ago, I would have never actually sat down and asked questions and made conversation after something so simple as making eye contact on my way to clock out. I am excited to be branching out and trying to get to know people better, especially in light of the fact that I will be going to university soon and have a whole new crop of interesting personalities to begin to understand and enjoy, even if I will very much miss all the wonderful people I am just starting to truly get to know here.
One of the beautiful things about humans is you meet each other once or twice, maybe go separate ways, but the connection is always there, and perhaps you meet again somewhere down the road, and there is even more to ask about and understand. And if not, there will always be fond memories.
While walking today in the beautiful sunlight, with a wonderful breeze kissing my arms and face and hair and moving my dress around my legs, I thought about all the beautiful days I'll miss in this little town when I'm elsewhere, and also all the beautiful days I have missed and will miss elsewhere. It's kind of mind-blowing to consider that there are beautiful days happening all over the world, and most of us are privy to only the minutest percent of those beautiful days, and it makes me wonder why I spend so many of those beautiful days holed up in my own little world, not going out, not getting to know people, not getting to know my environment, not doing the best possible work I can or creating anything, when my time to do so is so limited. So I suppose this blog post is a celebration of sorts, and also hopefully a glimpse into the sort of documentations I intend to continue in this little corner, one in which thoughts will flow and be shared without embarrassment or forethought (just as I suppose it always has been). A celebration and contemplation of the little old life that I am so privileged to be living.

mind-numbing textual interference

thinking strange things
having strange feelings
disengaged but so tied-up all at once

treading lightly
treading swiftly
treading slightly

making a concerted effort to care (about both myself and others, more and more) 

and coming home at the end of the day and feeling drained but better but still so conflicted 

but it will get better, won't it? 

wishing the night away

I'd really love to see a Darger in person. These slides are pretty amazing.

sometimes i think

Sometimes life is so exhausting I just want someone to share it with. My marvelous lover will eventually, someday, come lie around with me, reading, breathing, watching. I want a strange detachment. Automatic detainment just isn’t my style. I think there’s much to be said for the couple who can care without suffocating. Everyone wants to know where everyone is. I want to know how everyone is. I want to love a million people but focus on those who will love me back.

Sometimes I think about people who say they think too much, but after thinking about it, I don’t think one can ever think too much. Our minds are meant to transcend our own painful existences, and I think this is only possible if we think through all of it. The key is ceasing to dwell on the unknown. Think about the good things, and the bad, but don’t go full thrust straight into angst-ridden anxieties that have yet and probably will not come to pass.

The most beautiful thing I can think of is calling someone late at night, just to say, hi, I love you, I hope you sleep well tonight. Sometimes we need to share a million things, sometimes we need to share everything. Sometimes we need to share nothing, because it’s automatically understood. I hope someday I have someone who will be silent with me. I hope someday I have someone who will let me breathe and think that in and of itself is a wondrous occurrence. I think the ability to sit and be is becoming a lost art, and I think we all need to further our studies in it.

I think sometimes it’s not important to know every cultural reference, but it is important to know the color of the sky and the shape of the moon and the color of your best friend’s eyes. 

(Written June 8th, 2011. 
Sometimes I think this little bit of writing the only thing I've ever written that holds any merit. 
One time a boy I liked made a video of himself reading the last half to a camera and sent it to me in an email,
and I watched it over and over, and now I read that part in his voice, the only voice that has ever read my writing aloud.)

something like a book review

"You have your wonderful memories," people said later, as if memories were solace. Memories are not. Memories are by definition of times past, things gone. Memories are the Westlake uniforms in the closet, the faded and cracked photographs, the invitations to the weddings of the people who are no longer married, the mass cards from the funerals of the people whose faces you no longer remember. Memories are what you no longer want to remember.

-Joan Didion, Blue Nights, Pg. 64

After being on the library's hold list for three months, I inhaled Joan Didion's riveting memoir of her daughter's death in five hours. The writing itself is fragmented, feels extremely stream-of-conscious-y, and permeates with grief and regret. Her memories of Quintana are sharp and seeking, filled with bittersweet details. As I finished, I couldn't help but contemplate the place Didion is in at this point. At 78, she has spent about three-fourths of her life in the public eye, yet is left behind without her husband and daughter, a picture of senile loneliness. The reason any of us wants a family is so that we are not alone, and it feels as though Didion has been left exceedingly alone, prematurely, unable to cope with what was "not supposed to happen," even unable to forgive herself for passing through the moments that she commemorated but didn't fully appreciate, something which is so incredibly human and universal. Blue Nights is a painfully resonating read, and a good one.

Also see this interview with Didion at The Believer.

My favorite excerpt:

 VIII. FINDING THE RHYTHM

BLVR: When do you feel like you’re most writing?

JD: When I’m finding the rhythm.

BLVR: Are there times when you’re writing when you feel like you’re evading writing?

JD: Of course there are times. There must be times when everybody writes when they feel they’re evading writing.

BLVR: And what is the nature of the evasion? Not thinking?

JD: Not thinking, yeah. Not thinking.

perpetually sorry, perpetually having feelings

Tonight I feel really alone and missing because it's Friday and I don't remember the last time I had a hug and I am in perpetual need of a hug
and one can only say all that so much before it doesn't mean anything despite the fact that one still has not received a hug.
I want to blossom and feel something tangible in my soul but it seems all I am is empty, empty, empty.
Also, I cry in the car a lot and touch my hair a lot and eat a lot, for future reference.

skirmish attempts at creativity

While watching the first half of Duet for Cannibals tonight, I made a little book out of graphing paper, so here is a sampling (three out of four) of my rather amateur (possibly unfinished) collages.

yup.

boys with flowers

It is cold and rainy out, and I am in bed with lots of research and reading,

finding solace in the form of blues and pinks and flower crowns,

 reminders that someday there will be blues and pinks and flower crowns for real

1. Lizzy Stewart  2. Boy with a Pipe, 1905, Pablo Picasso

speaking in silence

(holding onto all the magic)

This blog really doesn't seem to know which way it wants to go, so updates may continue to be sparse, as reasons for updating are somehow growing to be few as my other pages become more active. I am considering side-stepping Flickr and creating a haven here for my little ol' photos, but then there is the issue of spaces in time between developing rolls and the spaces in my fuzzy ol' brain and the need for privacy, which I suppose is ironically offered in this corner I've been slowly carving. I want to tell everything somewhere, but I tell everything all over the place and in doing so, feel as though I still don't tell anything. Mostly I am missing, but also continuing to feel better than I have in a while, with lapses of sadness and self-doubt growing to be somewhat fewer and farther between. I want to peel away the layers and find the core of whatever being I've been for all this time, I want to cultivate the exposure of truth and nothing but. 

Earlier I stumbled upon a two-year-old post on my Tumblr, regarding the inability to trust after heartbreak. That I post personal feelings on the internet, without care, seems to be following a general, modern rule rather than shaping myself into an anomaly. We are all ever-more capable of finding solace in the knowledge that others are feeling or thinking the same sorts of feelings and thoughts that we are, but we are also more isolated than ever. My day after work was spent in my room, in my bed, sleeping or staring at a screen. I do have trust issues, I do have love issues, but it seems that I am both too trusting and not trusting at all, both contentedly in love and yet unable to find it. Even now, this is maybe the makings of an intimate conversation better to be had with friends, but it is going to be quietly public because I don't have the energy to confide to someone in person, or to a single soul rather than many. Expression is a wary part of my life, as so much can be said, both good and bad, by way of printed word which might never, ever properly leave my lips. I tend to fumble, tend to grope around, sifting through the whats and the whys, but in the end, most important is that I remember I am small and not the center of it all, and that is really a very good thing.

young folks

 

“I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?” 

This weekend has been a lot of lying in bed and reading, putting off homework while thinking of Sylvia's words; they stay close to me because Lord knows I don't know who I am, Lord knows I am nothing if not fragmentary, Lord knows I dislike conflict and insincerity, Lord knows I like nature and people and collecting whatever bits, particles, and pieces of themselves they'd like to give me.

photo c/o milkshakenhoney

my family lives in a different state

. . . and then I decided to spread my heart thin and happy, because why would I want to keep it all in one place?

prints c/o Bio Diversity Library

sometimes lonely times

On a side note you can’t love without risk. Sometimes love is a terrible idea, except that it’s not an idea. Sometimes love leaves suddenly and it’s as if you were lying to the other person all this time, or they were lying to you. Sometimes you love someone and they don’t love you back the way you want to be loved back and you think if they’ll just hear your case, if you present the evidence before them as if in a court of law, they will concede to your argument and love you the way you love them, forever even, and then you both get to be happy. But that’s not how it works. You jump from the plane and hope your parachute opens. The other person is that parachute. If you can, jump over water, and from not too great a height. But what am I saying here? As if you had a choice; as if love was a conscious decision. As if, “But it will never work” was some kind of valid argument. I was just thinking about a girl I liked and so I thought I’d say that. I’m stupid with my affection.

--Stephen Elliot

Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold onto something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it’s so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn’t come back. You’re left so alone that you can’t explain.

--Henry Rollins

(i was lonely/confused/all of it and etc for a long, long time, with only myself to blame, but things are getting better all the time.)

always new and always familiar

One day in December:

One day in January:

"What do you think being in love feels like?"

"I think it feels like being cozy underneath a blanket and reading a good book when you know there's a storm outside. And also like frolicking through fields. Mhm. What do you think?"

"I don't know. I really don't know. Maybe it feels like spring after a rain, when the air is chilly but nice and the ground is dewy and the trees are getting their leaves and the flowers are showing their faces. The promise of warmth. I miss that feeling in spring . . . Or like biting into a truly delicious apple and feeling the equally sweet and tangy juice on your lips and remembering how good apples can be and how all the mediocre apples in the world make this one perfect apple worth it." 

"Aw. Definitely. I think it's nice and safe and comforting and exciting and always new and always familiar."

excerpts

It would be so much better if we could share our insecurity, if we could all venture inside ourselves and realize that green beans and vitamin C, however much they nurture us, cannot save lives, nor sustain our souls.

--Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

I remembered a summer day in 1970 when John and I stopped for a red light on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans and noticed the driver of the next car suddenly slump over his steering wheel. His horn sounded. Several pedestrians ran up. A police officer materialized. The light changed, we drove on. John had been unable to get this image out of his mind. There he was, he had kept saying later. He was alive and then he was dead and we were watching. We saw him at the instant it happened. We knew he was dead before his family did.
Just an ordinary day. 
"And then--gone." 

--Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

If you are sad, ask yourself why you are sad. Then pick up the phone and call someone and tell him or her the answer to that question. If you don't know anyone, call the operator and tell him or her. Most people don't know the operator has to listen, it is a law. Also, the postman is not allowed to go inside your house, but you can talk to him on public property for up to four minutes or until he wants to go, whichever comes first. 

--Miranda July, "The Shared Patio"

Maybe that was just life? One orphaning after the next. They should tell you when you’re born: have a suitcase heart, be ready to travel. 

--Gabrielle Zevin, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac