The air in my apartment smells the same, the grass outside is the same color. My bed is still just a bed, and my hands are the same size.
I have a few more clothes than last year, and a larger collection of DVDs. There is less food in my apartment. I have gained a few pounds, lost them, gained them back.

My hair is longer than it ever has been. My fingernails look the same. The TV is still dusty. The sign on the door saying "Check: turn off AC" is still taped securely. I am still five feet nothing. I listen to new bands. I listen to old ones. I have read more books this year than any other year in what I consider my "adult" life.

I still worry, I still get upset. I'm on time sometimes, and sometimes I'm late.

I am more assertive than last year. I am more uncertain than ever, but in some ways more sure. I still don't know what happiness is, and I'm not sure if I will ever find it. I have made so many mistakes, consciously and unconsciously. I have learned about the destruction of inertia. I have learned that I choose my problems that are the size of looking at a cell phone, whereas Gandhi turned to bigger problems.

My toenails are painted silver once more. I'm wearing the same rings.

My heart has been torn open, but only because it has been open have I been able to look inside. Only through clawing through darkness have I experienced light.

There are roads here, where we used to follow them. But where we're going, we don't need roads.

"Out beyond ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. I will meet you there."



Meet me in Montauk.

these wars will be fought again,
the sleeplessness, the desperation, the hope, the shame

these boundaries will be crossed again,
curiosity turned distrust,
alcohol and ambien


i have been told to let go
in more ways than one;

the coaster is just a coaster, the sheet of paper just paper
that we spend all the time holding on, for dear life we expend this energy
fingers peel apart,
light as a feather

rolls of film will go wasted,
the fog will creep in
and morning will rise again

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

Leonard Cohen, as written on rachel's fridge

sometimes the dreams dress in white,
and hide in the softness of the creases.

i am unsure.


-


carrie's gestures about my photography, that her standards get higher every time, and somehow i manage to reach beyond them anyways. her words always make my heart swell with incredulousness, with gratitude.

"well, what do we do now?"
"i guess, we just keep dancing."

I read today:
"why are you so faithful to your fears?"

"the bad thing about beautiful buildings is that you cannot see them within them."

i can't find where i read this today.

rainy, climbing fences, belly dancing, pigs in a blanket, conversation with j, stretching up with my leg, i prefer to dance close, you don't dance close enough, are gin and tonics girly?, dirty hands, hands on hands, his name, laughter, singing in the car, his hands, i don't care if they are dirty, steady, we are bound to trip, but no, he won't catch my fall

my friend Sriram sent me this today. these days, the things that can make me turn to pieces in my office during the day are also the only things that hold me together.

A Girl You Should Date

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

– Rosemarie Urquico –

the idea of tragic is just that. an idea.
for, many people take tragedies
to be serious until they are told
they are actually comedies

and dancing is dancing until
it is no longer dancing
and really my hips are moving like water,
because i am water,
and you swim in me

and we built this kingdom together,
skyscrapers and volcanoes that take just
one-one-hundredth of a heartbeat
to cave in and destroy
here, first you take a whack at it,
and then it's my turn.
and now, yours.

and we can't recreate memories,
but what if we accidentally forget the past?
then the accident wouldn't be a tragedy anymore
instead the sun would rise just like yesterday
yet we would see it with unborn eyes

and in the accidental comedy you laugh until you cry,
but you won't understand why,
and you will swim in many oceans
swallow so much water
and forget many kingdoms,
and this city is just a city
and the moon will start rising
what is the diffference?

i suppose there was a window,
but perhaps we never looked outside
even at the darkest,
it could have always been morning.

"I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.”
― foer

"Use mornings of courage, light and optimism to draw the roadmap that will work in the darkness." -Alain de Botton

the heels of my hands dig into your collarbone, deeper, deeper, in which i dream that i am creating kingdoms where i can live again

does it get quieter, less visible?
does understanding it make it feel better, do the questions come faster and stronger and then there are no more questions as the closeness fades?

"that was the year... when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it." -meghan

will we talk about it enough that the words fly from our mouths and rejoin together so that they may disappear from our own selves? do we find ourselves less weighty once that gravity leaves us? do we find ourselves lighter, or emptier?