Paradigm

No rhyme with reason singing tunes
To play among the sinking dunes
Of miles and miles of empty
Colored faces

When I reveal myself to one and all
I’m facing yet another wall
Too weary still
of many high up places

To the mountains and the skies
Olympic strata lullabies
Rock our baby souls
To sleepy dreaming paces

But now all I can see are wars
Between the oceans and their shores
Spitting bones and bodies back
Onto their bases

So instead I often stay awake
Try to decide which bumpy road to take
Will I choose the one
Who already knows the cases

Cuz the thought of leaving him
Makes my heart so sick and dim
and without him there are
black and frightening spaces

So I lay here in the night
Afraid to sleep and see the fight
Of subconscious fears
And conscious feeling’s traces

In my drowsy wishful head
I feel him next to me in bed
And these sensations trump
The darkness he replaces

How could I ever say goodbye
To a man who made me cry
But who brought such
Simple peace and humble graces

Who's Fault

In the middle California there’s a crack in the earth.
It runs deep down into the crust, striking through rocks and great boulders and layers of primordial clay until finally it reaches the steamy center of magma pools eventually down to the burning core.
Spitting and boiling there is the force and pressure that opposes the universe expanding. One day it will spill over but until then a delicate bargain has been struck between order and chaos and somehow the grass still grows above.
All of us carbon-based life forms, we exist atop invisible valconoes, in our towers of glass and our illusions of wealth. The earth is kind and self-effacing, and most of the time it tolerates us. It even cradles us, feeds us, like a beautiful majestic mother bear.
But she is unpredictable. And one day the cracks in her lovely countenance will crumble open and swallow us up, and only then will we face the charred and scalded face of our mortality. Only then will we taste the fleeting flavor of our triumphs, when it is too late to return and reap anything more from the poor crop we’ve sewn. The land is ravaged and the minerals too few in a once nurturing soil. If we break land, we’ll only find more cracks and be swallowed up all over again.

________ makes the world go 'round

any guesses?

so I find myself after this year exactly where I was two years ago. Which is ironic because I feel like so much has happened - but the only real concrete change its fashioned is the big fat 0 in my bank account SO here I am.

I got a job. Which is alright. It pays about 13 dollars an hour, more if I make above average comission. That being said, I have to get up at 5am. You win, you lose.

I'll tell you one thing I've really been enjoying: my bed. My giant queen-sized bed, all to myself. Which I'm sure will make me sad by the end of the summer, I mean the fact that I'm all alone in such a big bed, but right now I'm quite enjoying it. I stretch out sideways and I throw my arms splayed out like a snow angel. Its lovely.

I still don't know what I'm going to do in August. Don't ask me that.

My mom and I had a long conversation about my new view on life the other night after we saw The Skin of Our Teeth. I was deeply shaken by Mrs. Antrobus' announcement that "life is never how you hoped it would be, but somehow you go on". I was almost scared to, but I asked my mom if that was true. How horrible if that is true. I do hope I might get SOME of the things I hope for. I'm not asking for fame or fortune, I would just like to curl up at night with a man who loves me and feel good. I don't see why that wouldn't be possible, its not a lot to ask. And to do something that means something to me. That's all I really want. I want it to MEAN SOMETHING and feel good about it. There are people who get that sort of thing. Aren't there?

Anyhow it all feeds into my new realization: that you cannot live your life for the end result. It is the journey of life that makes life worth anything. Because you should never quite get there maybe - maybe death should interrupt it all, and then you should say, "Oh I was almost there, but look how far I came!" I don't know.

I saw 'Away From Her' with Julie Christie, who I imagine is the most beautiful woman who ever lived. She has the most profound and untarnishable beauty and grace. I would like to be a woman like that. Her beauty is pervasive, it spreads around her and splashes and spills away from each footstep she makes. Loveliness is a halo around her head and she makes everything lovely by shining upon it.
I would love to be a woman like that.
Its ok if I'm not, but I aspire to that. I suppose you are born with it or you aren't. She was probably that beautiful from birth, and I have never been that beautiful. I am normally beautiful I suppose, but no more than normal. I am not extraordinary.
I would like to be, but if my exterior is never extraordinary that would be fine.

I am feeling very mournful today. Somehow I feel like as each day passes, time slips away from me and is wasted.

I'm not doing anything that means anything.

I'm just making money, and sleeping at night in a big bed. What the fuck is that accomplishment?


August. I must [not] think about august, I must not not think about August. I must not. August. Fuck it.

Dinner. Fucking A. I'm having a glass of wine. Only alcohol could make this tolerable.

Suck It

A, A-, A-, B+ bitches.

Best semester ever and how much did I smoke? A lot.

The Arrangement

Two of my best friends got engaged the day of graduation. Sammy has a big fat rock on her finger and everything. Its crazy. I just can't fathom that we're now of the age where people trust us with decisions like that. I feel like someone should shake us and say, "what are you thinking?!" It makes perfect sense for them, though, of course. But it baffles my mind, thinking of being at their wedding.

Meanwhile I'm crawling back into the cradle, crashing with my parents this summer because I'm broke. Working full time, helping my mom around the house, trying to take care of myself as well. I still haven't decided if I'll be going to France in august. I can't think about these things.

I was walking home from Sammy and Eric's tonight, through the quiet streets of New York (it is monday night afterall) and I was looking around at all the things I really will miss. But most of all its not New York itself that I miss but the feeling, the sentiment of my life here. The freedom. The endless hopefullness. The expanse.

Its both easier and harder to feel caged in. Its a bizarre dichotemy.

My plane leaves at around 4pm, so I'm having breakfast with Meg & Sammy. I realize this could be the last time the three of us hang out until Sammy gets married next year. That's crazy! I'm used to seeing them every day!

I just feel very dazed and dizzy and filled, as usual when I'm headed home, with a great sense of dread for the drama that I know will be going down this summer.

Sigh. Here we go.

Endgame

it ends.

next year is the last and yet it feels like i've got many mountains to climb before then. i think about the next three months and i see an incoherent blizzard of confusion and familiar torment. i no longer look forward to the things i thought that i could count on. to put it in colloquial terms: it sucks. i've had a strange eerie uncomfortable feeling all day, a gentle inclination of the horrified.

i don't know. i'm putting off communicating and asking the important questions, maybe because i'm afraid i already know the answers.

meg is leaving, my best friend and my angel. not having her around is going to be hard, she was one of the only people i felt really at ease with, unfrustrated, uncomplicated. And sammy too, my little sunshine.

it feels unfair that i'm nostalgic.

but i suppose life is unfair blah blah blah.

i just don't want to make any decisions. i don't want to move. i want to stay imobile and rot if i have to, instead of splattering on the bottom of a cliff.

enjoy the image.

i'm getting some much needed SLEEP. what fucked up dreams will this night bring?

The Last First Time

The first time I said I love you it was while your back was turned away from me and I said it without sound so you wouldn't hear me and I wouldn't hear myself.

The first time you said it you said it in english so it didn't mean anything and yet you could hear yourself say it.

The first time I thought you meant it, you didn't say it at all, but thought about saying it and I felt you but you didn't know.

We communicate in codes of organised silence and signals that only you know the meaning of, you hold all the keys but you keep the doors locked between us.

There is the you that you speak.
And the you in your touch.
And the you in your eyes.
And the you in your myspace blog.

I just don't know who you are and I'm tired of waiting for the silence to mean something when all it is is silence.

I'm shut out. I'm in this all alone. And that's too much to risk.

I'm not an angel. I'm not all goodness. I'm so sick and tired of being that to you, as if my goodness will somehow be there to save you some day. As if my martyrdom is some testament to your worth. I am boiling and burning inside and I keep it there hidden, not because I want to, but because you want me to. And I want to do anything to make you happy.

But in the end this silence gets stale and it ferments into a rejection so stinging and palpable that it disgusts even me when I look at what I have become in your eyes.

You cannot be my mirror, because when I look at myself in you, I see something that is worth nothing to you.

I do not blame you. I should have let go long ago. I was foolish, so foolish to not accept the place that was available for me. To not realize I could not shrink myself down to the available space in your heart and your life. I thought somehow I could make it grow, but that is such a typical mistake.

I love you, truly, deeply. But someone must love me too. Someone must.

Untitled (for now)

My papa used to sell used cars and when we were kids we would walk down to his lot on summer days and buy ice-pops at the store next dear. We’d troll the lots looking for what Papa called “stealers” - which cars were bogus. Which ones Papa had filled with sawdust and which ones had their meters turned back.
I learned real quick to see the bullshit behind the battle. That’s what Papa called it. “Don’t fall for what’s in front of you. Go find the bullshit behind the battle. That’s what you’re really fighting against.”
I was always real good at pickin’ out the phonies as a kid and my Papa was real proud of me. “That one’s got a good eye,” he’d say, and he’d wink at me.
When I was 11 my Papa started letting me come down to the lot to watch him work. He didn’t approve of having women in the family business, I couldn’t work in the chop shop like my brothers did when they were older, but I didn’t mind sitting in the showroom with Papa so much. It was air-conditioned. Plus I got to watch him with the customers.
Boy was he a killer. My Papa could sell glasses to a blind man. The first trick is to get real humble, just telling ‘em that you ain’t got nothing good enough for ‘em. Not special enough for someone like them. Then as the two of you walk to the lot, you make sure the first car they see is a real doozy. You know, show ‘em something that’s way out of their range. Papa used to keep this souped up Chevrolet he had just for this very purpose. No one in our kind of town could afford anything like that, plus I’m not even sure the damn thing still had a motor in it, it just looked real nice. Shiny chrome fenders and caps, glossy black paint-job, original leather interior – every small town boy’s wet dream.
You’d just sit there and watch ‘em blush as they walked by, all them boys with their first few month’s paychecks in their pocket. They’d look at that beauty in front of them, and they’d know they wanted a car just like that.
That’s the first step: you plant the dream.
Now they’re not thinking so much about getting something simple. Just to get to work. They’re thinking about cruisin’ the strip on a Saturday night, they’re thinking about some pretty gal in the backseat, they’re thinking about being a real hot shot.
Then you explain, “Oh you like that Billy/Johnny/Timmy/Joe? Yeah she’s a beauty, she is. Maybe someday, eh?” And you chuckle in a very wise way as if you knew everything there ever was to know about their dreams.
Then you show ‘em all the crappers. Cars you wouldn’t sell to your worst enemy for about a million bucks. You dumb ‘em down. You show them the ideal, and then you show them the bottom of the ol' barrel. This will pour a whole lot of cold water on those visions of pretty gals and they’ll start getting antsy, getting scared.
Now here’s the clincher: now you take ‘em by the car you want them to buy. You got to have a car ready for any guy who comes on the lot. Some piece of wreck that you fixed up real nice on the outside but who’s got a few screws loose maybe. It ain’t too hard and don’t take too much time to throw on new tires and rims. Cleaning up on the inside is a whole heck of a lot harder. And it ain’t no job for men like my father, that’s for sure.
So they see this car, lookin’ pretty hot. And their mouths start to water. They can hardly believe it. And you see them droolin’ over this car so you say, casually, “oh yeah, this one here. She looks real good, almost brand new, owned by an older woman who ain’t driven her much. But she’s got some rust damage on the inside, you’ll have to tinker around in there some. Nothin’ too hard, if you don’t mind that sort of thing. But I don’t know if you’re that type of guy” and you say this like it’s the biggest compliment you ever told anyone.
Now it’s a matter of machismo. Now he’s lookin’ at this car like it’s the damn holy grail of man. You let him poke around the interior. He’s thinking, it’ll be my creation. My resurrection. My triumph. And damn ain’t she pretty?
You’re sold. He’s ready to buy. He’s so distracted with joy that he don’t see the contract that he’s signin’. And you get as much of the money up front as you can cause God only knows how long that wreck will drive before the motor falls right out the bottom onto the road.
Needless to say we moved a lot when I was a kid.
Spending my summer’s down at the lot wasn’t so bad and after a while I kind of enjoyed it. It was like watching a movie clip over and over. Sometimes I felt a little bad, especially as I got older and those boys started lookin’ kind of nice to me. But they are all the same suckers. All wanting the same thing. Some idea of a dream that don’t got no insides. And that don’t do anybody no good.
Not me. Not my Papa. Not none of them boys. Because a dream that’s nothing but a shell will always cave in on you someday. You just end up sittin’ around, waiting for the bottom to drop out.

End Of The World Party

to sum up last night, tequila = death.

but since I spent so much time in bed this morning, post-tequila damage relief, I had a good while to think about things.

in the end it doesnt really matter how I feel. And I mean that in the sense that I will feel how I feel regardless of how others react to it/think about it. I can either try to rearrange myself every 3 minutes and just give myself more problems, or I can stop trying to suit myself to other people and be happier for it. I have no reason to be ashamed that I have a deep emotional connection to what happens around me, in fact I consider it my greatest strength. And if you can't deal with it, than why would I care what you think anyway? If you don't respect me than I don't give a damn what you think, basically.

Amen.

And this includes him too, I guess. I can't keep stressing about my feelings for him because they are what they are. If he lets them slowly wear away because he's afraid to love me than he turned away from true happiness. And I move on. There is more love in this world than what we offer each other and somewhere out there there is someone who can love me as much as I can love them.

I am not alone on this planet with a heart beating harder than anyone else.



I also gave a lot of thought to what I want to do after school next spring. Most of my friends are graduating this year (as I would have if I didn't have 3 majors and a heap of hang-ups) and watching them move on to the post-undergraduate abyss that is the world inspires me to think about my options. Everyone in Senior Showcase this year got a call from agents, casting directors. That would be LOVELY if that happened to my group but I'm already understanding that maybe it won't. And that's ok.

I'm just not a young girl on the inside and until my inside matches my outside (read: probably another 5 or 10 years) I don't know if I just want to sit in New York City working some dead-end 9-5, auditioning my ass off and never getting anything except face-time with casting directors. I realize that is somewhat valuable, but not enough to sustain me emotionally for that much time! I mean I would go completely bezerk!
So here's my plan if I don't get an agent out of showcase:

1. Graduate.
2. Get a job (any job will do. That pays at least 12 an hour. Hah.)
3. Save up 1000 bucks.
4. Get my TEFL certification (teaching english as a foreign language)
5. Get some teaching experience under my belt in new york.
6. Get a job in France!
7. Move to France.
8. Be wildly happy.

I figure I'd stay for maybe a year or two. Just be a person in the world. I would love to do some sort of theatre there, that would be amazing, but maybe I need some sort of de-tox. Anyhow, then I would eventually move back to the states and go to grad school. So what if I'm 27 when I go to grad school. Who cares. Whats the fucking rush anyway?

Life is what you make it, not what someone tells you it is. If this is what's right for me than its right. End. Of. Story.


Oh and everyone should listen to Feist. She's an amazing canadian songstress (and I have never used the word songstress before in my life and will never use it again).

Do you realize?

He’s got this uncanny ability to strip me down to my bones
And then keep throwing stones...

The Return

I passed her in today
gave her over the counter medicines
but none of them worked
so I passed her in
I asked for a refund

They put her back on the shelf
And people looked but never
Bought
And slowly the dust settled
And every time I needed
A new razor or some gum
I’d pass her on the shelf
And see it gathering on her eyelashes
Like little feathers

Once I tried to blow it off
But my guilty conscience
Just made her sneeze

On Sunday in the paper
There was a flier with her picture
“half off” it said
And I figured I’d go down there
And explain

But when I got to the store
And I stood before the door
I still hadn’t decided what to say
So I just got in my car and drove away

I can still see her on the shelf
In my mind
Under the fluorescent lights
The rouge on her cheeks
Looking feverish
But her eyes I never see,
Sitting there with her feet dangling,
because
She never once looked up