rose in midair

2012-02-26T23:14:00.001-06:00

it's just far too easy to go backwards
to read what she used to write,
to see what we used to think was art,
to listen to the songs that moved us to tears.

and what of the present?

2012-02-26T23:12:00.001-06:00

“ There was a time
only certainty gave me
any joy. Imagine—
certainty, a dead thing. "

Louise Glück

2012-02-26T21:24:00.001-06:00

Love and hate are emotions that easily ignore the boundaries between people; madness too knows no boundaries.—Juliet Mitchell.

2012-02-26T12:38:00.001-06:00

How is it I remember everything
That never happened and almost nothing that did?
- Donald Revell

2012-02-26T12:29:00.004-06:00

remember when we were at a coffeehouse, and it was the first time we had ever met, and you wanted to prove that you could dance salsa so you played Shakira on your phone (after I told you that you can't dance salsa to Shakira) and we danced in the middle of everyone drinking their saturday night coffee?

remember when we were at a wedding, and you stood up among all the bored married couples waiting for cake and danced with me at the table?

remember when we were walking outside Dave and Buster, and there was salsa music playing, and we danced on the concrete while passersby gave us funny looks?

2012-02-26T11:48:00.003-06:00

i stayed in bed this morning
i walked out to the balcony briefly
there is sunlight but it's a little chilly, so i stayed in.
made some tea, the mango green kind that you and i discovered together at the grocery store.
sunday mornings should be spent this way.

2012-02-23T01:41:00.000-06:00

holy shit i found this tonight

deeper
December 25, 2008 – 10:49 am
"
what’s so frustrating is that not everyone shares the thirst to really understand the moments, and speak about them, and communicate about them. we all live on this one physical planet, but there are all of these wavelengths, all of these dimensions, all of these planes. and we’re all hovering around each other, making contact where it hurts, joined at the hip, grinding at the hips, smoothing over skin, and still we’re in different places. “long distance” isn’t just geographical.

and i’m going through the different phases of realizing why i was with you.
before, i thought you had tricked me. it was all a lie, the words, the letters, the conversations, your eyes. everything. i thought that you words flowed nonsense from the pages, and i was sucked into a love that never actually existed except in writing.

but now i realize, you spoiled me. everything might have been true, the way you felt, the way you spoke, the way you wove everything into stories and explanations and imagery while waxing poetic. but what i held onto desperately was the fact that you had a voice that could respond to mine. that when i said “i feel guarded around you,” you would know exactly what i meant. that you used those same three languages (only two of them spoken) to the fullest extent, and you carried me along with them.

and now i know why i despaired at your absence. i may not ever find you again.

2012-02-22T10:22:00.001-06:00

I had a good day and then another
I was married to mountains on all sides of me
- Donald Revell

I have begun to learn in sleep that sleep
Plummets from the skies
- Donald Revell

Is it just pain that keeps us separate,
that forms the frontier of our loneliness
and without it we would all jumble together
into one bright color?
- Stephen Dobyns

2012-02-22T00:27:00.000-06:00

Language purports to fill a need. But what if, as the eye can see, there is no need? Why represent what is surely present? Too, our language is the material of our thoughts. But what if the lavish providence of reality requires no repair, no thought? We must somehow learn to be careless. Though we cannot be unlanguaged we may, perhaps, sometimes by poetry, be unburdened of cares our words presume. Here's a passage from Book III of William Carlos Williams's Paterson.

Only one answer: write carelessly so that nothing that is not green will survive.

The poetry of attention thrives on carelessness, even as it outspeeds our cares. Greenness is a current even that must keep current (courant, running) to survive. And so, it seems, to abolish doubt we must study velocities. It's easy, just as Goethe implies. The eye, after all, is well acquainted with the speed of light.

- donald revell

2012-02-21T17:07:00.001-06:00

"[T]here were obstacles. You have to go against or through them, or climb over them..." - from Pina

I wish I could have written down the entire movie

2012-02-21T16:36:00.004-06:00

Notes on the weekend:

- M&A so happy, the crocuses blooming, our walk to Hawthorne, the camellia blooming, happy smiles and talking about the choreography in Pina. The wind.
- R is just like me, sharing stories about our love life and understanding the behaviors stemming from our culture
- Resistance, in dance and in life
- How it felt to "come home" and be in front of the heat lamp and read
- Meeting B and talking about life for a brief time
- Japanese tea cake
- The rain.

2012-02-21T15:25:00.004-06:00

Last night, I awoke awash in something that may not have been your true feelings. I felt at sea, mareada.

I had fallen asleep reading sentences I no longer remember. Your hands I do remember. I remember not knowing what time it was. I remember afterwards I strained to look at the glowing hands of your watch to make sure it was not yet morning. This was the first time in many months. I remember the other time, when we were in Freeport, and I could hear the faint crashing of the sea. I remember the last time, when I felt the faint crashing of you through my bedroom door.

I fell asleep and there were dreams. Colorful ones, of dance parties and people other than you. Some were just acquaintances, some were strangers. But none were you. I think this is a commentary on something, but I don't yet know what.

This morning, what was real? You, or the dream, or neither?

2012-02-16T12:57:00.000-06:00

"What I came to understand is that change is not a choice. It happens, and you are different."
- Traci

I can't decide.

2012-02-16T12:56:00.001-06:00

This morning:
"más vale lo malo conocido que lo bueno por conocer"

2012-02-16T10:41:00.005-06:00

The possibility of time vacated, rather than the burden.

This morning I awoke after three hours of sleep, an hour and a half before my alarm went off. I didn't think about oceans, but I did think about cobwebs.

What do we call that feeling as we convince our minds to overcome the body's fear of the obvious delusion of jumping off a cliff into blue water below? It is the moment after fear, before elation.

--

Sometimes the Unsaid is more important than what was said.

"Do you want strawberries?"

2012-02-16T02:35:00.002-06:00

project that seems (not insensitive, not sensistive, not groundbreaking) but not sure what word to call it

treat each other as if the other has cancer. or has only one day to live. or is an alien who will leave the world in 3 days. or as a stranger you'll only see for an hour.

go.

2012-02-11T11:24:00.003-06:00

I'm sitting in my car in a parking spot that is particularly bathed with sunlight. On NPR, a particularly interesting and relevant piece about making decisions and choices to be or not be in a relationship.

"Sometimes you don't know where you need to be. And sometimes the best thing you can do is to hold your breath, take a guess, and jump."

2012-02-10T23:41:00.001-06:00

"Sometimes, the world in which you've experienced the most conflict also happens to be the world you're the most drawn to."
- Addie's flickr

2012-02-10T19:06:00.000-06:00

i didn't plan for this dream, i just dreamt it.

2012-02-08T01:12:00.000-06:00

if we could harness this power instead of fight it

2012-02-06T13:55:00.000-06:00

I say we were

never silent. We read each other’s lips and said
one word four times. And laughed four times

in loving repetition. We read each other’s lips to uncover
the poverty of laughter.

-ilya kaminsky

If you will it, it is no dream.
—Theodore Herzl

2012-01-27T23:20:00.001-06:00

he doesn't always smell good, but the mystery that i haven't solved is how i always love how he smells

2012-01-27T23:17:00.000-06:00

note to ask her:
what are things you cry about?

2012-01-26T14:25:00.000-06:00

my friend asked me what I was like in Kindergarten. I told him I was very solitary, super quiet.

And when I was a teenager, I slept a lot.

Maybe I used up all of that. Maybe that's now I can't be alone, and I can no longer sleep.

2012-01-26T10:11:00.000-06:00

Off we go, more run than care, more dance—
If a polka could be done not in a room but straight

Ahead, into the beautiful distance, the booming
Sound of the phonograph weakening, but our legs

Getting stronger with their bounding practice:
This day, that feeling, drunkenness

Born of indecision, lack of focus, but everything
Forgiven: Today is a day exposed for what it is,

- alberto rios

2012-01-23T13:35:00.002-06:00

notes:

- i was talking about having been sad for the past few days, and she said that every month if she hasn't been both happy and sad, it is an incomplete month. because if you're not sad, it means you're not stretching yourself, if you don't fall, you're just not trying hard enough. sadness isn't negative.
- creating
- giving yourself away
- this is about my insecurity, it's not real, it's not based on anything real

2012-01-20T14:13:00.003-06:00

it's hard to be an island

"just because the process doesn't yield a product doesn't mean that the process isn't valuable"

2012-01-19T15:38:00.000-06:00

"I loved to dance because I was scared to speak. When I was moving, I could feel."

-Pina Bausch, on dancing as a child.

2012-01-19T14:50:00.001-06:00

sometimes i am convinced more than ever that when you close your eyes, you close more to me than your eyes.

2012-01-19T14:36:00.004-06:00

he asked me if i thought i wanted us to be together because i idealized our relationship.

i think about this often, because missing someone doesn't mean you should be with him.

i have experienced distance in the past. this is the kind of distance and i feel nothing for. the kind of distance that in fact creates emptiness. the kind of distance that makes me realize that the substance of a relationship was insubstantial.

but in him, i see the extraordinary, whether there is distance or lack of distance, the fact is that ordinary becomes the extraordinary, and isn't that what idealism is about, and does it in fact become fact instead of the ideal?

2012-01-18T22:13:00.001-06:00

"Will it be worth it?"

If we have to ask, wasn't it already?

2012-01-18T22:11:00.001-06:00

As when a long forgetfulness lifts suddenly, and what
we'd forgotten—as we look at it squarely, then again
refuse to look—is our own
inconsequence.

-Carl Phillips

2012-01-18T21:06:00.012-06:00

Today B. sat with me in my office all day. and it was so nice. He reminded me that the most important thing to be successful is the ability to fail.

--

On the way back from lunch, we passed Jones Hall and I commented about an advertisement for the Rachfest, which I surmised involved Rachmaninoff's music. He didn't know who that was, so I hummed what I believe is one of Rachmaninoff's most famous piano compositions. And I said that the composer probably had really big hands.

B. commented that I seemed to know something about a lot of different things, (I said mostly I know one small fact about many things, but not very much) and he asked me if I could name some things I don't know very much about.

1. Politics
2. History
3. Current Events
4. Cooking

That's as far as we got.

Then I added that I was raised not to fail, but I think that my biggest weakness in life is my fear of failing. So after he reminded me the importance of failing and being able to accept it, my goal this year is to stop being afraid of failing. This also means spending time on things I believe in, but that I may not succeed at. This also means not equating things that aren't actually failure, to failure. This also means trying to achieve perfection all the time.

I want to waste film. I want to eat cake even if it means I'm failing at eating healthy. I want to try and fail at catching a lot of footballs, but end up succeeding sometimes. I want to cook, even if it tastes terrible. I want to stop being embarrassed of the fat around my belly. I want to spend Saturday nights reading books or reviews of books deciding whether or not to read them, and not feel like I would be better off somewhere else. I want to sit down instead of dancing, and love that I am watching the art of dancing (and not regret that I am not dancing). I want to sing, even if I'm offkey. I want to give things away even if it means I won't have them anymore. I want to risk heartache for love that's worth it to me. I want to throw away things that I keep only because I'm afraid of letting them go. I want to try handstands and fall. I want to sweat. I want to stop being so afraid of my insomnia, because some of the greatest, most intelligent, most artistic people do not sleep. I want to be okay with missing some smaller things so that I can do grander things. I want to write things and just keep them as drafts. I want to be honest even if it means it'll hurt.

2012-01-18T20:53:00.002-06:00

I was sitting close to a couch which wasn't mine nor yours. Maybe it was the bed that we would sleep on that night, two girls with our pajama party.

I sat on the edge of something. and I started crying, and crying.

And you reached over and touched my face. and smiled, your famous smile that pairs so well with your now-blonde famous pixie haircut. and you told me quietly, "You are so beautiful when you cry. I wish I were beautiful when I cry."

And I cried harder, because no one had ever told me I was beautiful when I cry. The only thing I had ever been told when I cry, was to stop crying.

2012-01-17T14:17:00.000-06:00

—the wideness, the
foolish loving spaces

full of heart.

Walking on walking,
under foot earth turns

Streams and mountains never stay the same.

The space goes on.
But the wet black brush
tip drawn to a point,
lifts away.

from Finding the Space in the Heart, gary snyder

2012-01-17T13:54:00.000-06:00

dear love,

you dream in the language of dodging bullets and artillery fire.
new, sexy diagnoses have been added to the lexicon on your behalf
(“charlie don’t surf,” has also been added to the lexicon on your behalf).

in this home that is not our home, we have mutually exiled each
other. i walk down your street in the rain, and i do not call you. i
walk in the opposite direction of where i know to find you. that we
do not speak is louder than bombs.

there are times that missing you is a matter of procedure. now is
not one of those times. there are times when missing you hurts. so
it comes to this, vying for geography. there is a prayer stuck in my
throat. douse me in gasoline, my love, and strike a match. let’s see
this prayer ignite to high heaven.

- barbara jane reyes

2012-01-17T00:23:00.004-06:00

for two years this blog has been set to record Pacific time. i think about the Pacific a lot. the way it feels to be alone at the water, how it would feel to put my hand in the Puget Sound. whether my hair would tangle in the wind, and if i would comb it out with my fingers like i have a bad habit of doing while sitting on other people's new couches. how confusing it is to be cold while standing in front of the sand of a beach. how much my calves hurt after dancing in the sand. how tall the trees are. how bitter the wine must be. whether the air must taste like tears.

---

"That the thing about which I feel the most shame in life has to do with email and not just one email but many and specifically a great lack of email on my part, that making photo-collage seems to be a staving-off of another project maybe a sort of Pasttime Until but I don't know what comes after the Until, that often I am happier than I let anyone know which is saying a lot because I might be the happiest person most people know.

"That the same goes for my sadness which doesn't seem to have a bottom and doesn't render me passive but active and I have to regulate that part of myself with a steel chain mostly because it doesn't scare me mostly because it's the only power that matters and it's the only power we have."

- Traci Matlock

2012-01-14T20:54:00.000-06:00

Isn't it interesting what we are afraid of doing?

Isn't it interesting that we will do many things what we are ordered to do, without question or doubt, but when our hearts command louder than the gunfire, we insist on ignoring them?

I suggest we raise a little hell.

2012-01-14T20:18:00.000-06:00

we sat on the floor of the store, looking through books. she looked through books about organic living and i looked through books about happiness and how to love one another.

i sit in my bathrobe, watching the movie i promised myself i would never watch again.

i'm writing you a letter, and deciding not to send it.

i'm singing you a song, and you're looking at me with shocked eyes.

i'm throwing you a football, and you don't catch it.

when my hair falls in my face, you thoughtfully knead it away with your fingers.

i just woke up one day, and i knew what i was never sure of.

with you.

2012-01-12T01:37:00.001-06:00

there are windchimes outside
the wind makes them chant your name

2012-01-09T23:22:00.000-06:00

"There's the loss that accompanies knowing.
And then there's the loss that accompanies knowing only that you did not, could not or would not know."
- on t's blog

2012-01-03T14:31:00.001-06:00

from a text message I just received from a friend:

"There are years that ask questions, and years that answer"

I'm sitting here thinking to myself, perhaps that hard part is knowing the difference.

2012-01-03T14:20:00.001-06:00

Notes for the New Year:
- multiple exposures
- trees, branches, sunlight, fog. the sunlight after seemingless Endless rain over Christmas weekend
- the word for "swing" in Spanish is "el columpio"
- it gives me particular pleasure when i remember the words "ardilla" and "berenjena"
- light and spontaneity
- 20 minute walks during the evenings
- sometimes i write you a really serious email, and then i delete it thinking i should write you a funny email, and then i delete it thinking i should write you an email talking about the bee gees and/or blues traveler, and then i delete that one thinking i should write you an informative email, and then i delete that one thinking that i should write you an email asking you about politics. every day i conclude that i will be hard pressed to find anyone i want to write so much to. meanwhile, i know you think i already write volumes, but if you could only see the kingdoms i contain(!)
- creaky knees
- being alone
- starting anew doesn't mean being without you

2012-01-02T22:05:00.000-06:00

“About dreams. It is usually taken for granted that you dream of something that has made a particularly strong impression on you during the day, but it seems to me it's just the contrary. Often it's something you paid no attention to at the time -- a vague thought that you didn't bother to think out to the end, words spoken without feeling and which passed unnoticed -- these are the things that return at night, clothed in flesh and blood, and they become the subjects of dreams, as if to make up for having been ignored during waking hours.”

― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

fog. streetlamps. your posture. our certainty, clothed in absolute uncertainty.

2011-12-31T21:02:00.000-06:00

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.

2011-12-31T20:51:00.001-06:00

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

2011-12-29T15:13:00.000-06:00

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

2011-12-29T01:53:00.000-06:00

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.

2011-12-27T16:12:00.000-06:00

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

2011-12-26T18:54:00.000-06:00

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

2011-12-19T16:26:00.000-06:00

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

i can't find where i read this today.

2011-12-16T15:08:00.000-06:00

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

2011-12-15T15:51:00.001-06:00

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 –

2011-12-15T11:19:00.000-06:00

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.

2011-12-05T21:28:00.000-06:00

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

2011-12-05T21:04:00.000-06:00

"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

2011-12-05T14:43:00.000-06:00

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?

2011-11-17T15:42:00.001-06:00

she called me about a relationship that ended 2.5 years ago.
she couldn't believe that something about that relationship could still trigger feelings inside her, after so long. she is still looking for answers to a question that can never be answered.

--

we were driving together in the night, and he sighed and told me he hadn't slept much the night before. he said he had taken a five minute nap, and during the nap had one of those intensely vivid dreams. he said he dreamed only of their hands, his hand holding hers. and when he woke up she was not there, and he felt intensely sad.

somehow he knew it was her hand he was holding.

2011-11-17T13:18:00.000-06:00

Also- Yo Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, and Stuart Duncan's
Tiny Desk Concert

2011-11-17T13:13:00.000-06:00

“Si le niegan la boca, ella habla por las manos, o por los ojos, o por los poros, o por donde sea.

Porque todos, toditos tenemos algo que decir a los demas; alguna cosa que merece ser por los demas celebrada, o perdonada.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

2011-11-17T12:47:00.001-06:00

sat with my mother and talked about trust. talked about intention, and about the inexistence of wrong and right. about obsession versus love, about possession over loving.

about my dad, and how he truly didn't think he did anything wrong. and explanations and apologies. about intention, intention, intention. sex and the city, where carrie lies to aidan about smoking when he asks her. she says "i must have liked him a lot" to have lied at first.

and what is rote existence anyways? and what makes us interesting? what makes us dissatisfied with mundane, yet yearn for stability?

why do we coin phrases like "ignorance is bliss" and "painful honesty"?

2011-11-10T23:08:00.000-06:00

Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play

And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues strong
It’s always darkest before the dawn

And I’ve been a fool and I’ve been blind
I can never leave the past behind
I can see no way, I can see no way
I’m always dragging that horse around

And our love is pastured such a mournful sound
Tonight I’m gonna bury that horse in the ground
So I like to keep my issues strong
But it’s always darkest before the dawn

And it’s hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh woah

I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I’m gonna cut it out and then restart
Cause I like to keep my issues strong
It’s always darkest before the dawn

And given half the chance would I take any of it back
It’s a final mess but it’s left me so empty
It’s always darkest before the dawn

And I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t
So here’s to drinks in the dark at the end of my road
And I’m ready to suffer and I’m ready to hope
It’s a shot in the dark and right at my throat
Cause looking for heaven, for the devil in me
Looking for heaven, for the devil in me
Well what the hell I’m gonna let it happen to me

And it’s hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh woah

2011-11-10T17:56:00.000-06:00

if you think in the past it has been the "harder" task to give you space, it is not so. it is not about easy or hard, i see now, as in the past few days without you i have laughed and smiled more, but simply in the presence of your typed words my tears flow free for no reason but the absence of your affection.

t talked to me for a while.
she said, write, write profusely, write all the time.

i have, as the mountains of words unspoken and letters unsent grow.

"Love never dies by natural causes. It dies because we don't replenish its cup."

i promise myself i will let myself cry without the guilt that has grown over these years. i promise myself i will no longer feel wrong for feeling. i promise myself i will allow myself time to sit still. i promise myself i will not feel weak for wanting what i do.

2011-11-10T10:59:00.001-06:00

out beyond ideas of wrong and right, there is a field.
i will meet you there

rumi.

2011-11-10T10:51:00.000-06:00

“Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you.”

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”

“Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names.

It was love lashed by its own self that spoke. It was pride half slain that fluttered in the dust. It was my hunger for your love that raged from the housetop, while my own love, kneeling in silence, prayed your forgiveness.”

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being,the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

“When you love you should not think you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.”

“Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.
For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.”

“Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you can not bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond that pain.”

the one and only gibran.

2011-11-10T09:15:00.000-06:00

i think it was March. i was sitting in the car with you, and i was thinking that for some reason it was funny to have you drive me somewhere.

we were both quiet, and i just remember your quiet heartache speaking to mine.
my baby brother with his new heartbreak, not saying a thing.

i told you i was sad, too.
and you reached over and gave me a brother-hug, this sideways hug. it was like on Big Bang Theory when Sheldon hugs Penny. and i knew it would be all right.

2011-11-08T14:06:00.000-06:00

i've been doing extensive searches on letting go, learning to love being alone, lying, truth, and forgiveness. these are searches that occur on Google and in my heart and in verbal dispute and more mistakes, and disappointment.

"For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?" - Bell Hooks

2011-11-01T16:55:00.001-05:00

what it looks like, i don't know yet. the shapes, or sounds, or tastes of it, i don't recognize yet. i didn't know then, i don't know now.

2011-11-01T16:24:00.000-05:00

whether it seems likely or not, from the moment i stepped back into my home, i felt your presence and absence everywhere. i felt the expansion of time.
and i sank to the ground, not having touched the red towels neatly folded, not having looked at anything else.

the emptiness of having been forced to say goodbye to you once again had sucked the hope out of me. and yet it still took the strength of every fiber in my mind to stop myself from calling to you, from telling you i looked for you at the airport, oh smoldering hope. i searched for you in every face, in every body. in every dream i fought the memory of you.

i punished myself for doing so, because i thought you were already gone. i punished myself for my puny, smiling hope.

i picked myself up with our simultaneous pain. i thought you were gone. i convinced myself you would never come to save me. who am i but a liar to myself?

“While I can’t have you, I long for you. I am the kind of person who would miss a train or a plane to meet you for coffee. I’d take a taxi across town to see you for ten minutes. I’d wait outside all night if I thought you would open the door in the morning. If you call me and say ‘Will you…’ my answer is ‘Yes’, before your sentence is out. I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you. For me, imagination and desire are very close.”
― Jeanette Winterson

2011-10-26T13:38:00.000-05:00

“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”

“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”

― Steinbeck

2011-10-26T11:38:00.001-05:00

My Meadow, My Twilight

Sure, there’s a spell the leaves can make, shuddering,
and in their lying suddenly still again—flat, and still,
like time itself when it seems unexpectedly more
available, more to lose therefore, more to love, or
try to…
But to look up from the leaves, remember,
is a choice also, as if up from the shame of it all,
the promiscuity, the seeing-how-nothing-now-will-
save-you, up to the wind-stripped branches shadow-
signing the ground before you the way, lately, all
the branches seem to, or you like to say they do,
which is at least half of the way, isn’t it, toward
belief—whatever, in the end, belief
is…You can
look up, or you can close the eyes entirely, making
some of the world, for a moment, go away, but only
some of it, not the part about hurting others as the one
good answer to being hurt, and not the part that can
at first seem, understandably, a life in ruins, even if—
refusing ruin, because you
can refuse—you look
again, down the steep corridor of what’s just another
late winter afternoon, dark as night already, dark
the leaves and, darker still, the door that, each night,
you keep meaning to find again, having lost it, you had
only to touch it, just once, and it bloomed wide open …

By Carl Phillips, found here

2011-10-22T14:42:00.001-05:00

“When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer

2011-10-21T14:36:00.000-05:00

there are some coincidences that are not coincidences

2011-10-21T13:41:00.000-05:00

today i pulled cello suites out of the river
and Bach rose from the remnants of your voice,
and i looked back to 2008,
wishing we were in bed, the mornings of the years to come still spread before our feet.

2011-10-20T11:42:00.001-05:00

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

- charles bukowski

2011-10-19T10:47:00.001-05:00

for two nights, i have been dreaming of people that haven't appeared in my real life in months or years.

you were in the house, it was a rented house, with couches, and kitchen countertops. your things were everywhere, your backpacks, your cameras. you came in with your red hair wild and free like it always is. we didn't speak much, we shook hands like we had never met.

2011-10-18T17:44:00.000-05:00

it was ours to fight for

2011-10-17T22:07:00.000-05:00

there will come a time when you think everything is finished. that will be the beginning

- louis l'amour

2011-10-17T21:48:00.000-05:00

oh. even when i don't go looking for it, it is in front of me.

--

Nothing is ever guaranteed, and all that came before doesn't predicate what you might do next.

It's funny, as you live through something you're not aware of it.

If we can't face death, we'll never overcome it. You have to look it straight in the eye. Then you can turn around and walk back out into the light.

- Maya Lin

2011-10-17T21:25:00.001-05:00

we grow bigger
we swallow
we conquer, and are conquered
we divert
we diverge
we kick
we scream hoarsely
we make out in stairwells
we swell, but disappear
we dig without movement
we hope without hoping
we end without beginning

they lied, healing doesn't exist- forgetting makes us pretend to be better,
anger takes over, lets you forgive without feeling blame,
exhilaration because finally you are no longer prisoner to guilt,
the guilt in which you lived in (but instead you named love)
reeks,
aching and stale
shirts open
mouth on mouth
wounds like flags in the sky, white like clouds over the ocean

2011-10-13T08:45:00.000-05:00

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.

jack gilbert

2011-10-12T21:42:00.000-05:00

i've been reassessing the way i talk. even my writing is indirect and passive and not wholly truthful. i avoid eye contact when i don't know you. i avoid names when i speak or write. i'm terrified of being straightforward. i keep saying it was about how i was raised. what the fuck do i do about this?

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom." Anais Nin

2011-10-12T17:52:00.001-05:00

it is absolutely necessary, this expanse of time in which i toggle between optimism and mourning...

And when I use others' words as my own, or others' words as yours, since there is emptiness where our love once stood. The mountains, though silent, stand there still, whether they are in front of us or behind us.

"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides."
- Carl Sagan

2011-10-12T17:43:00.000-05:00

I read an interview on louchelink.

Two simple questions and answers that i loved:

What is your biggest fear?

Loss in different ways...people I love mostly.

How would you like to be remembered?

As a person who laughed a lot.

2011-10-12T15:46:00.000-05:00

"What's the difference between hesitation and waiting?"

-tm

2011-10-12T15:45:00.001-05:00

someone asked me once why i don't write humorously.

i guess in the cases where i would write with humor, i'm just already too busy laughing.

2011-10-12T15:13:00.000-05:00

there is a balance to this, i swear it

"In order for the most banal event to become an adventure, it is necessary, and sufficient, to retell it."
- Jean-Paul Sartre

2011-10-12T12:15:00.000-05:00

you never call.

hearing your voice after not hearing it for months was shocking.

i am so proud of you. little boy into a little man, entering the world.
your conversation is deliberate, and your vocabulary is surprising. you're not 8 anymore.

i like the way the silence sounds when you're listening to me talk.

i have never been a good sister.

2011-10-12T09:44:00.000-05:00

i had a conversation with S. the other day, and she told me about how her brother married a girl before he had lived with her.

S. said that her brother calls her every other day, complaining about things that his wife does, things that are mundane but matter a whole lot.

i think i told you once that i felt like we were always going through something. but when i look back on it, i realize fondly that i know how you will react in these situations, and i like the familiarity of knowing how you take care of things, the way you think through them with reason.

even though there were some very dark periods, there is a familiarity to your pragmatism, a familiarity to your emotion, a sweet expectation to the way you leave your wet towels on the bed and your empty coke bottles on the coffee table.

there was a growing tenderness to the way you would touch my belly when it hurt, or kept me company when i lay on the restroom floor with pain.

the little things are the ones that helped drive my heart back to you.

the incredible warmth of your hands whenever you touched my skin. i remember maybe only one time when i took your hands in mine and they were cold. but even when your hands are cold, they are not clammy. they are smooth, like rocks in a riverbed.

the way your hair feels between my fingertips.

the roundness of your eyes, the slight droopiness at the corners. it was in your eyes that i could tell you loved me, the way they would soften across the room. i could tell the times you felt nothing for me, and the times you felt everything.

your expression when you're driving

your laugh

the way your face changes with embarrassment, the cute kind, where you smile in a square shape

your feet

i used to think that the methodical way you spoke was analogous to hardness, but you are just that way. your enthusiasm comes in volume more than animation, and your animation comes in your hands.

2011-10-12T08:31:00.000-05:00

this morning i woke up at the sound of the alarm,
which usually doesn't happen
it's not as bad as it once was,
but somehow still,
feeling
my heart palpitating and feeling the desperate heaviness of life,
somehow confusing it with the lightness of death.

i touch my loneliness with my fingers
and stroke it softly
i make love to my loneliness, because there is nothing left,

and no, good intentions are not what matters in the end.

2011-10-12T08:30:00.000-05:00

my boots are heavy

A Pity. We Were Such A Good Invention

They amputated
Your thighs off my hips.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all surgeons. All of them.

They dismantled us
Each from the other.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all engineers. All of them.

A pity. We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.

We even flew a little.

-Yehuda Amichai

2011-10-10T10:15:00.000-05:00

and you said you knew
how you were gonna take it
that you'd take it all
that you knew my heart was not that small
and how could we ever manage
carts and horses could never carry

all I want to give
not give enough
I want to give
not give you love

I chose the strangest little cup
to drink you from and stir you up
and you were beautiful it's true
and all I ever wanted was
to be good to you

and when you see me cry
you ask me, but I think that
you already know why
I'm staring up at the sky

and you said you understood
but promises are not that good
in this improper marriage
love and justice found miscarriage
at the only embassy
with an office for the damaged

and when you see me cry
you ask me, but I think that
you already know why
I'm staring up at the sky

-thao & mirah

2011-10-10T10:06:00.000-05:00

it was love that set our fragile planet rolling
tilting at our perfect twenty-three
molecules and men infused with holy
finding our way around the galaxy
and paradise has up and flown away for now

but hope still breathes and truth is always true
and just when we think it's almost over
love has the final move

something right went very wrong
but love has been here all along

- C.R.

2011-10-10T10:05:00.000-05:00

words carry oceans on their small backs

- l.y.

2011-10-10T00:20:00.001-05:00

I suppose there is something strangely cathartic, even magical about the shamelessness of crying on public transportation during the early hours of the morning

2011-10-09T02:51:00.001-05:00

Slow and sweet were the nights.
Now is bitter and grinding as sand--
"Let's be sensible" and similar curses.

And as we stray further from love
we multiply the words,
words and sentences so long and orderly.
Had we remained together
we could have become a silence.

- Yehuda Amichai

2011-10-09T02:42:00.000-05:00

probably a house,
probably leftovers in the fridge,
probably shelves and shelves of books,
probably safe,
probably walkable from good or bad coffeehouses,
probably potholders in the shape of farm animals,
probably too many things,
probably full of plants we want to keep alive but never do,
probably flowers on the counter,
probably lots of trees, yes, trees

2011-10-07T22:57:00.001-05:00

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

— Franz Kafka

2011-10-06T18:47:00.000-05:00

"fate rarely calls upon you at a moment of your choosing"
- the transformers movie i'm watching while under the blankets in a hotel room

2011-10-06T09:13:00.000-05:00

i find shelter, in this way
under cover, hide away
can you hear when i say?
i have never felt this way

maybe i had said, something that was wrong
can i make it better with the lights turned on?

could i be, was i there?

it felt so crystal in the air,
i still want to drown, whenever you leave
please teach me gently
how to breathe
and i'll cross oceans, like never before
so you can feel the way i feel it too
and i'll mirror images back at you
so you can see the way i feel it too

- shelter, the xx