Wednesday 23 September 2009

ten: time passes. who cares?

It is disheartening to know that the unsettled anxious feeling that nestles into the hollow of my being is the only thing to rouse up any sort of words. It is hard to describe the feeling of crawling away from happiness for me. I am generally pleased with any state of my life because I have made the choices to get where I am at all times. Happiness is not how I have described the status of my existence in the past. I have been happy but never have I thought that I am happy.

I have been uncomfortably happy for the past oh-so-many-months. I was happy. And today. Yesterday. A few days before that. I woke up and pleasure and my innate ability to be in control of how I behave and feel sank in, again. So, I write. I am no longer claiming happiness and somehow the sheer distaste that dwells in my mouth with my present situation inspires me to pour out once again.

How repulsive I am. The sweetness and the sex and the security fades and I must find comfort in the spaces between the lines I write. I wish the sweetness never ended. I wish the comfort was constant and the lines would always form.

Thursday 12 March 2009

the tenderness of wolves

If I had but the choice I would walk into that wilderness of white and lay before them. I imagine that they would come and inhale the very blood from my veins through my thinning flesh as I lie, blinded by the cold and the sky that somehow blends into the irrecoverable colors of the landscape. I think of you as the stench of their sweetness and leftovers combined, pass over my own breath. I can only hope that I am a piece of meat like any other so that it makes the process all the less painful. They may shred and rip through all that amounts to my entire self and I doubt that they would reach or come to know places that you seemed to have stained. An animal of blood and bones left to be devoured by whatever dares to have it. I remind myself that I was the one that walked into the wilderness. I lay myself down with a knowledge that only those who hope to be eaten could ever muster. The colors are irrecoverable here. This is not your fault. This is not my fault. I whisper to them as they brush nose to fingertip. I am not to be taken. I gave myself to you. You are not wronging me. You are playing the part that I gave you. I am playing the part that I gave myself. I am glad that you will never know the wilderness and stopped at the edge of the forrest where you belong.

Monday 16 February 2009

eight: superglued soles





I locked myself in a luxury apartment in Prague. I paid for the third and fourth nights of sleep in one year of traveling. I basically paid to lay in an incredibly marbled bathtub filled with hot water, bottle of wine in hand, box of chocolates not too far from reach. I stared the steam down and contemplated the state of my life. My life is fairly simple which leads me to believe that I should be hard on myself for all of the complaining and circular problem solving I do. I didn´t come to any grand conclusions during that weekend but some days later I realized that I have lost a certain textile side of me that used to come more naturally than most things. My bag was always stashed with the first aid kit of life. Colors, little things to make things of simplicity more interesting. Lists poured out on found scraps of paper. Ideas, and quotes, and reminders were overflowing out of all my pockets. A stitch of colored thread made its way into the mesh of most of my clothing. I wanted my fingerprint to be found on most things that graced my presence in the world. I found myself lying in the bathtub wondering if I could possibly leave the apartment as though not even a ghost had been residing there. Tip-toeing around, wiping all surfaces clean, remaining a sly being in my own space (however rented and temporary that space may be). My whole life I felt the pressure of being emotionally irrational, untamable, wild, dramatic...... and now I find myself equally owning up to the other extreme. I get lost in the fabrications of how I choose to pass my days. I would rather pace a room, force myself to do sit-ups, see how long I can resist the bar of chocolate than go out to socialize in the scheme of small town affairs. On some days I unknowingly create myself to be a person that I do not particularly like. A person that longs for something more but refuses to walk out the door in the first place.

We all have our times and I think that is what I learned in the basin of the bathtub. We can materialize many things with our lives. We can make many things possible. When I find myself doing nothing that I always hoped I would be doing. When I do not find small surprises at the bottom of my bag but only perfectly arranged papers, I get depressed that I may be becoming someone I do not want to be. I am reaching a point of re-evaluation. I am not afraid that I may be eternally bound by how I am thinking in these time but I am also ready to shed light on some of my loftier hopes for my life. I miss feeling bound to something other than my own expectations of myself. I don't know if that means I miss deadlines in school or a relationship that reaches beyond no expectations at all.

I am excited to be near family and loved ones. Although the prospect of remaining unknown is more than likely, family has expectations of its members. History and friends bring pain and pleasure that you cannot avoid. I am fleeing towards the arms of my mother like I did the first time the dark took hold of me. There is no shame in taking comfort, in seeking shelter from my own storm. I will one day miss the upset waters and ever moving atmosphere of my disheveled life and step back into it.

Tuesday 10 February 2009

CARTOGRAPHICS

They drafted floor plans late into the night. Their arms crossed in confusion as they carried lines from one page to the next. Floorboards and walls joining to make corners were remembered and traced onto the blank spaces and old lawns were rediscovered from the past. They shared the history of dwellings once dwelled upon by loved ones past and present. Sharing the actuality of each others known spaces was more than a tease. It claimed progress and potential. They had never known the others´ world outside of the terms they chose to define them by. They were refined to the encasement of one room and it was not a blank canvas but a means to cage in dreams and reinforce a static state. The land laid itself out before them and it was hard to keep imaginations at bay.

She snagged her summer skirt on the hedge as she struggled through the gate with her basket filled with freshly picked flowers. A waft of bread baking escaped from the open window and fled into the fresh air. She whistles and pays no mind to the torn paisley and left the scrap of cotton behind for decoration. He pulls meat from the smoker and watches from the window as she walks towards the back of the house. He sighs to himself and let her bare feet against the summer grass take his breath away along with any remembrance of harder times. He traces the simplicity of her lines with his eyes and recalls the first time he asked if he might hold them in his arms. She walked in as she had always done. She walked in as she imagined she would that night they drafted floor plans late into the night. She walked in. She follows his movements and the weight of his thick head of hair and remembers the first time she dared to run her fingers through it. Kiss me she secretly whispers as he turns with a smile as though he felt her and all her demands before she entered the room. A flower falls to the ground at the same moment that a drip of fat releases itself from his covered fingers. She nestles into him and breaths him in as he resists spoiling the patterns wrapped around her and keeps his hands at bay until finished with preparing the meat.

He stood on solid ground and was etched into the grains of tradition. She was the unkempt red ribbon that was carried by the wind. Somehow they defied all odds and managed to occupy the same space in the most complementary of ways. She had never been defined or restricted to carry out her flare. He had never been forced to have an opinion because he had only ever known one existed.

The very walls trembled when light was shed the first time she opened the door to that house. It was judgment day and any one of them could be knocked down with disapproval. She could live anywhere, she recalls saying, but that by no means stated she wouldn’t make all efforts for it to be the best it could be. Even a tent would face the possibility of her redesigning its poles. He believed in function, she believed in freedom. He believed in the normality and the following of trends, she believed in the ability of unique to be comfortable and cozy. It started with the sharing of foundations. This is what I know to be home. This is what you know to be home. It started with the drafting of floor plans late into the night. “Does he have an opinion about where the couch should be, or which rug is more fitting?” she wondered that night. “Could she imagine living here?” he ashamedly asked himself as he described in detail the layout of the land. She decided that if he did she believed in compromise and conversation. If he didn’t then she believed in self-satisfaction and relentless creative input down to the doorknobs. Whether or not she could was forced out of his mind and deemed unthinkable.

She washed the dirt that was pushed into the rifts of her fingertips and let the hot water remind her of taking shelter from the scandals in the womb of the shower. “As long as the water is trickling down the curves of our backs,” she thought, “we are safe here”. He took hold of her from behind the sink and laughed. “This sink was a battle,” he said to the length of her neck. “Yes, but the tile was a compromise and there was no fight over the stove,” she replied back right after shaking off the water from her hands and running them past the lines of his jaw. He had an opinion so not to be forgotten in the design. She created battles for his sake knowing that her mind lent itself towards creating the perfect environment for him just as much as for herself.

They drafted floor plans late into the night. Their minds crossed in confusion as they tried to keep lines on paper and imaginations at bay.

Sunday 8 February 2009

seven: the chase

I am being pushed around the puzzle pieces that fit so perfectly together to make up this world. I hop all of the cracks because who wants to break their mother's back? The ink was spilled somewhere alone the track and I am now leaving inkmarks and blotches behind me wherever I go. I eat little cookies and drink tonics to grow bigger and smaller. In times a certain urgency pulls me into drafts and planning. I wasn't really made for these designs I say aloud.

There is no place like anywhere but home but home pulls at a person from all directions and all paths lead to it. I lend a softened self forward to the hopes of nestling gracefully into the past and hope that I have earned enough stripes and callouses in all of the right places to make it out alive.

Tuesday 3 February 2009

six: the consequence of fear not

At some point, or maybe continuously through out the remainder of my life, I need to process what I think about sacrifice. I wish there was another word because even the mentioning of it seems to be somewhat painful but I am sure that is the word that I am looking for to describe all of the mixed up thoughts that I hope to someday sort out. The more I come to know myself the more I have to come to terms with this known fact: I am capable of just about anything. Now, I know that many are raised to believe that the world is open to be explored and the options are limitless but not many choose to bring those very true facts into actualization. Maybe it is out of fear, I wouldn’t know because I am generally not one to be afraid of anything, but I find that many would rather settle or even have their life plotted out for them as though it were a map to be read and possibly color coded with pictures as a reference. I will admit that I too long for the answers and the directions to reveal themselves in my own life at times but this feeling is driven more from anxt and impatience rather than the desire to avoid confrontation with decision making and active living. While I don’t wish to criticize those who choose to take life as it is handed to them, no questions asked, I will openly express my own personal distaste for such a way of living. There is another characteristic that can be found in variants among people that I for one seem to have an excess of and that is a serious and genuine desire to love people and to be a part of others’ lives. I don’t want to just have friends and a social life I want to be a part of peoples lives in a much bigger way and feel like I can not only learn from others but also teach all that I have come to know. I have found that many choose to distance themselves, which is interesting because I think that many people do not truly know themselves and that it is hard to protect something if you do not know what it is that you are protecting (once again I will fall back on attributing this behavior to fear), and by distancing themselves they deplete from any real chance of having a positive impact on other people. I now reach a roadblock in my existence. On the one hand, I have found and proven to myself that I can do what I damn please, whatever it may be, and do it successfully. This makes me a con, a lover, a liar, a mistress, a friend, a conqueror, an artist, a traveler, etcetera, and so on. I can create myself as moments pass to anyone’s desire and especially to my own. Sexuality seems to be a good example and rarely turned down if properly executed. Of course we all face rejection at times but I am not afraid to say that I have seldom left without the object that I chose to give my affection. This brings me to the other hand: an unwavering love for the world and a thirst to change and love it unabashedly. These two methodologies of being that I have come to be kindred with can collide due to a conflict of interests. Again, sexuality seems to be basic and raw enough that it depicts what I am going through now and have gone through before. While loving people and having the ability to love them do not so much contradict each other their underlying facts do. In order to love some, and especially to make them feel loved and as though that love is unique, you must make them believe that they are unique and different. While it does not matter to me how many I have loved previously, and in fact I must attribute my ability to love each person now due to all of the experiences that have built up to them, I know that for some, feeling as though they are one makes a difference. This brings on a process of fabrications and melting many experiences into less.

One describes a slut as someone who sleeps around and spreads her legs with little reserve. While I know that I have submitted to the pearls between my own thighs to more than the one I will marry (which at this point carries little weight in my life) I give the love I feel much more credit and as I have aged I have blocked out the times that I did not respect myself or others enough to keep my legs closed for the sake of real love. While I have come to know the shape of many backs by the palms of my hands and the touch of my fingertip, I would never deny someone the thought that my touch affects them and no one else. While I have learned how to travel the lines of a body that does not mean that every body is just another. This may be a product of my ability to disillusion even myself. I can easily convince myself that everyone I love and come to know is the one and when they turn out to be the wrong one I work to let it go in my own way.

It comes down to sacrifice. Do I bring all those to the alter and slaughter them dishonestly, sacrificing them at their own blinded will? Do I sacrifice the red ribbon that I bind them with and blind them with? Or do I become a person that I do not know and sacrifice a way of determination that comes naturally and easily to me? It is not about the sensuality here. I feel like it is important to clarify. Intimate moments can be shared from a distance immeasurable and you can impact people and be impacted far beyond intimacy. An old soul bound to my own told me what to do a few days ago. "You are very powerful," they said "be caring and compassionate." Our ties will never be severed but I am not going to hesitate to admit I do not like being told what to do and have specifically declared to the world that I would not be, but it is an order that I am desperately going to scramble towards following.

Wednesday 28 January 2009

on the side

My writing is becoming more of a daunting feat than a sigh of relief and expression.