I just found 4 more journals. 4 more.

I have been looking for it, that inspiration, that thing I need to succeed in this...I have been looking for it outside of me. Which is good. That should always be, in order for things to be balanced.

But I think that it is time to find it inside. I think I am ready.

Music. Music makes me cry. Like a hungry baby. A soul aching for a cleansing. Touch me please, so I can feel. Alive instead of numb, feeling instead of thinking. My brain is a force for my heart to reckon with and most of the time my brain overpowers and poor, poor heart. It cowers. But music restores it's strength and it's belief that the struggle to be ok with emotion is not all in vain.

Ben Harper's Welcome to the Cruel World album makes me particularly ridiculous. There was a time when I lay in my bed in the dark and looked out the window at the stars while that album looped over and over through my consciousness. Rare are the times that I will be still long enough to do that; I believe that those songs and that stillness were healing me. Since I was prone to breaking myself over and over for no aparent reason, it felt so good to surrender my bruises and scrapes to something outside of me that could tend to them. So that I didn't have to do it for once.

One song, The Three of Us...Ben doesn't even sing. No words, just two guitars. And it's like the guitars are speaking...more than just words. It's like he gets that sometimes words just aren't enough to communicate how you feel, there aren't enough words in all of the world sometimes to give justice to that beauty, that hope, that rage, that despair. So all of that gets infused into the guitars, the notes become the words.

When I am tired of all of the words, music is my solace. Something to curl up inside of and surrender.

(May 2001)

Remnants of sandcastles
dissolve in the sunset
sweetly forlorn;
minute statues
built in honor of
the blissful day.

Most of the series of poems above and below were written in my late teens early twenties. A few were written when I was 15 or 16. I knew that a book of my poetry existed, but I thought the contents were paltry at best...but there are 43 poems in this one book alone. I am a little shocked that I had forgotten this, how much I loved writing these words, and the fact that I have so grossly underestimated my ability to communicate what I am thinking and how I am feeling...

I can't believe that I lacked such faith in something so dear to me.

Wow.

(Written sometime in 2001, 2002)

Every light in the house
is on
trying to drown out
all of the things
that we didn't say -
darkness shifts around
in the corners
waiting to seep into my light
and permeate my brain
my heart beats
ever now and agian
it's only doleful desire
to beat for someone
with another heart
dancing in honest light
intoxicated with love
that is so powerful
it could never create anything
but what it is -
Truth.

Deficit In Philosophy

Exhaustion gained
after much sleep.
Distraction to the extreme,
Fidgeting
Fighting
Then taking steps forward
back towards what
away from that.
Explosion?
most likely,
although contingent on the
Facts
THAT CHANGE
scattered ecclectic collections
forever to deplete
my store of
Sanity.
I struggle
against chains
that tighten as I move.
Peace answering me
must consume my
Raging contempt
seal my hot mouth,
bind my contradictory wrists,
and shut down my brain
so I can Breath again,
normally.

I might imagine
that I look a certain way
a carefully crafted facade
not fully done at the seams
whether it be nails
or string
or fine silk thread
that I use to keep it together
it is faulty material
and it is not working

Things
grotesque unsavory and unflattering
Things
leak out, ooze forth,
staining and spotting and spreading
horrified I see it coming
I see the tiny leak, the pinprick hole
in the dam of ridiculously emotional water
I see it dripping and know it's only a matter of time
before the dam bursts

I could call out, I could shout, I could
stick my pinky finger in the hole
super glue, cement, a freakin' band-aid...
I could do something.
But I don't.
I watch as the infinitesimal speck becomes
larger and grows until
others start to notice
they look work worried
they look at me and wonder why I don't look worried

It's because I knew it was coming
I did nothing to stop it
and I don't know how to fix it
I just sit in my brain and watch what makes sense
become a ruin
and know that it didn't have to be this way.

"You are a girl who never looked in the mirror."

Pictures. Lots of pictures today. I could look at pictures, take pictures, monkey with pictures, all day everyday. I am obsessed with capturing that moment...sometimes I think that I should put the camera down and just BE in that moment; I've gotten better with that, the camera is not as attached to my face as it used to be. But I still get that itch. Maybe I can scratch it now by just doing something with those photos.

Speaking of being in that moment...that Moment's Gaze...I am trying to take each little teeny tiny little thing, every happy happenstance, in as I would a deep cleansing breath. I have the sentiment tattooed on my wrist, figure I should try a lot harder to live by it. It's hard, really hard, to not get caught up and bogged down in the day to day. But just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not doable.

I'm sayin'...

Written July 9th, 2008.

I am the kind of dork that likes to type. I like to hear the sound of the keys click-clacking, the fact that I've been able to type without looking at the keyboard since I was about 10 or so. I like to watch the words form quickly, letter by letter across the screen. What was once vast whiteness is now marked with something that I created. Even if it's just an e-mail.

I like writing with a pen better, though. Especially using pens with that richly pigmented ink. I like to watch it sink into the papper, tattooing the pulpy skin of a fresh sheet. I like to imagin writing on my own skin, letting the ink sink in and mingle with my blood. Ink and blood in my veins. Words to spare, sentences forming as quick as the sheen of sweat on a muggy day.

I got your stories. I got your words. I got it all right here...

...yeah. Right here.

Take the rain. Not in waiting for the sun, but as another, different beauty to enjoy about life.

I stood

with my back to the sun.

Open.

You faced me

Sunlit

Held up your arm to wave.

I saw the shadow

of my heart

in the palm of your hand

and grinned.

You came to me.

"How I wish you were here...
we're just two lost souls
swimming in a fishbowl,
year after year...
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.

Wish you were here."

- Pink Floyd

MOTION WITHOUT SOUND (1st draft)

I type
and I stare
sigh
and I backspace
oh good god, oh god, delete
delete delete delete.
Humming hollow
through the pages
of my far too often on holiday brain
is something complete,
rich in texture
heavy with substance
and warm in embrace.
but, where is it really?
my fingers ache often
trace the shape of letters in the air
hoping that just once a black & white word
would hang there
sweetly crisp,
like contrail in the sky...
a wisp of a clue.
my lips form words
my mouth a study of motion
yet without a sound.

I think I will come full circle back to you. It's the being patient for that Moment's Gaze that I'm gonna have a hard time with...

This made me cry...

VIRGO:

A woman I know was invited to a party where she would get the chance to meet her favorite musician, psychedelic folk artist Devendra Banhart. On her last look in the mirror before heading out the door, she decided that the small pimple on her chin was unacceptable, and gave it a squeeze. Wrong move. After it popped, it looked worse. She panicked. More squeezing ensued, accompanied by moaning and howling. Soon the tiny blemish had evolved into a major conflagration. Fifteen minutes later, defeated and in tears, she was nibbling chocolate in bed, unable to bring herself to face her hero with her flagrant new wound showing. The moral of the story, as far as you're concerned: Leave your tiny blemish alone.

We live in bars...and what, and what, and what do you have to say? You live in a: office, a house...a cave? Send me you love, from your perch of regret. I will have fun, but you will forget.

I chose this life.

Take this from me...

I imagine holding my head in my hands, gathering the worry from my skull like dandelion fluff.  Letting it collect on my fingertips and palms, holding it out as an offering and blowing it away, onto the wind. 

Inspiration

...from my friends comes in small, potent doses, just when I need it.  I am a packrat of bits of encouragement, direct or by example; I tend to forget about these little gems but always seem to stumble upon the when I need to hear them again.  Like this one:
 
"And by the way, you don't have a tiny oragami boat.  You have a kayak.  Turn the one oar on its head and use it as a paddle, then you can move forward."

 

It's like your "rules of engagement." Not that kind of engagement, stop freakin' out. I shudder to think of what would happen to this friendship if I came at you with my own version...we never really leave the backyard, do we?