Relaxation Techniques

These always make me happy

hemlock

You are a sentence with no punctuation, a kaleidoscope full of colors that I don’t remember learning in elementary school. Your voice is a sound that I’ve been looking for my entire life. Your smile is the only sunrise worth setting my alarm clock early enough to see. If I could, I would shape shift into the first thing you think about in the morning just so I can be reminded of what it’s like to wake up next to you.

I love you in a language I don’t fully understand; in words I haven’t found enough courage to forklift out of my chest. I heard that karma is a vengeful and also a light sleeper so I’ve chosen to love you like this. Quietly.

So I’ll call your phone and hang up before it actually rings. I’ll write you letters that you will never read and when I see you in public I’ll stick my hand inside of a bag full of things I haven’t done since you left me and pull out a smile. I’ll say something like, “Hello, it’s nice to see you.” And I’ll keep walking.

-Rudy Francisco


SO. freaking. magic. I post a lot of his stuff, but everything he writes is so marvelous, I can't help myself.



here is more
-------
there will be days when you will feel like peacock with no feathers, you will feel flightless and undeserving of attention. 

But listen, listen to me listen, you have to stop getting out of bed like you were an oil spill. You’re not a flat tire at 2 am, so stop acting like an accident. You are an apple on a pine tree in a room full of lemons. And you come from a long line of swiss army pocket knives: men who are small, sharp, and dangerous when not handled carefully.

-Seventeen, Rudy Francisco

words like violence

Nice bit of chillout.  I adore these songs and maybe you will too.   I am stressed out.  but not as much as I should be because honestly I don't really care about college or grades anymore.  If I did I'd be much more stressed. but I don't. so I'm not.  How many times do I have to ask people to run away to California with me before it becomes cliche?

 

call it chaos call it lost, beautiful delirium

discovered this amazing blog:  http://7alaabdullah.com/
here's a sample

Woman

\

To my yet-to-be-conceived daughter.

When they tell you that you have a void in your pants in place of your independence, you will tell them that your independence lies in the creases of your fingertips and at the tip of your tongue.

When they tell you that there’s a bulge in your chest in place of your freedom, you will tell them that freedom beats at a steady lub dub  beneath your ribs.

When they tell you that you are a forbidden entity and bound you to chains shaped by their sick society, you will tell them you are as holy as a baby’s first breath.

When they tell you that you are one third of your male counterpart, you will tell them that your head will always be held as high as your brothers’.

Never lower.

Never sheepish, never hesitant.

You will be stronger than a lightening bolt. You will not be blind. You will wave away diamond rings and find your own shine. You will marry your dreams and solemnly swear I do to the stars nestled behind your eyelids. You will be fearless.

Your passionate nature will not disable you. The length of your hair will not define you. The curves of your silhouette will not make or unmake you. You voice will be as loud as a lioness’s roar. Your hands will always keep slaving away for more. For better.

You will be better. You will not be afraid; you will not depend on luck or your ancestors’ names. You will not be degraded; you will not stand down. You will make something of yourself and always stand your ground. You will never know what it means to be thought of as “less”

- like I did. Like my mother and my sisters did.

My little girl, promise me that you will never be silenced. Swear that you will never allow your tribe’s honor to burden your back. And when the whole world rests on your shoulders, never allow your knees to kiss the floor. Invite it in wholly. Let it sink into your skin. It will disappear in shame once it sees the universes you hold within.

I don’t know you yet. And we may never get to meet.

But I know that if you come to be, you will get to bathe in your own brilliance. You will dress yourself in grace. You will care more about your future than the color of your nails.

I will watch you soar up into the sky using wings you’ve built up all on your own. You will show everyone that there is wisdom in your voice; not shame, and that there is beauty in your face; not disgrace. I will build you up with bricks I’ve had thrown at my face.

I will teach you to be human. I will teach you to be kind.

I will give you all the strength in me that I have had to hide.
You
will
be
    divine.

And when they feed you hideous lies, darling, and when they tell you that you are a diamond or a pearl in their eyes, tell them that’s not what you want to be.

Tell them your mother taught you that you are a woman.

See, I wrote this poem in my own spinal fluid. I put it on the backbone of a white flag so before you read it you’ll already know that I’ve given up. I’ll just keep you here. Shackled to the most important chapter of my life story, pressed into the basement of my eyelids like liquid salvation so I remember you beautiful with amazing underneath your wings and an orchid smile, you gorgeous earthquake. You cracked hour glass with sand spilling from behind your ribs, you wasted my time.

How dare you linger on my lips and then kiss me like a stuttering apology with excuses stapled to the roof of your mouth. I still remember you like a dream, tattooed to the inner walls of a long term memory but some days… I wonder if you even existed at all.

And of course, you wanna know how I got these scars.
I got these scars the day I fell in love with you.
I landed face first.
 -
omgsh rudy francisco, JUST AMAZING.

I got home tonight and someone is sleeping in my bed.  I feel like one of the three bears. 

blerch

America is stupid.


Why? WHY can I not legally go out and dance?  grrrr my roommate is 21 and everyone is going out and everyone is an adult except me. 

perhaps I will finish my painting tonight

perhaps I will finish any one of my three papers that are overdue.


perhaps I will wallow in tears.  underage tears.

perhaps I will be happy I am not WRINKLY AND OLD.

 Thanksgiving was fun.  Goodnight and peace.

via http://whoartgos.tumblr.com/

wont you spare
a glance for me
today? in between
swinging arms…
beat heels to
rise heartbeats
head spun like
vinyl and cigarettes
are incense to
anoint borrowed time

yesterdays are
scraps that
litter floors, flecks
of stardust kept
in vials and jars,
abandoned clothes
shelter no one

tomorrow is the
anticipation that
comes while we’re
watching the flames,
surprisingly the
sound is the best
part, water escapes
fibrous tombs to
achieve billiance

portrait in various shades of melodrama

I am nervous

 unsettled, unprepared,
impressed to the point of
intoxication

perhaps I am playing the part of

a girlchild, reincarnated from something striped

hands-shaking, violin bones (high-

strung)

perhaps it is/has been/will be

you

is it cliché to make comparisons to

kryptonite, to

an envelope delivered with a

white settling of

anthrax?

your smile tangles with the

half-poetry you breathe out instinctively, sharp and

wintered

you are surprising like

frostbite. the soft teeth of morning

freeze; and I, dull, wordless,

naive and lightning-struck

I am nervous

 ----

I like boys with strong convictions
and convicts with perfect diction
underdogs with good intentions
amputees with stamp collections

-Kimya Dawson, so nice, so smart
--------------
hm enigmas.  you don't meet very many of them which is sorta the point...  or you could argue that everyone is an engima.  or that no one is.  but please don't.

Always it is the poet waiting for
something he or she can't remember, like
a pot to boil when there is no pot, or a
piñata to be broken when

there are no children around.  Or a day
that goes by when there is a way to
forget all of it.

-Heather Bell

http://aliquidlucis.deviantart.com/art/Dreamcatcher-336849102

wha BAM

jacked this from:  http://heathersday.tumblr.com/

half the time I get what I want I realize I don't actually want it, and sometimes the grass is really just plastic and that's why it looked so green from here.  time to chop up perspectives and bask in some new found naivety if I can conjure any up from today's sun-drenched faux-cynicism.  Because I'm never cynical.  The naivety is sorta fake as well, and I guess most of this paragraph has been a parody or satire or well the obvious word would be "lies".   vaguely content...

tonight...

general guidance for myself

this is the result of
chasing shiny things like a demented
crow and
open your head open your head your head let out the
jealous stuttering
child, kicking at mirrors and
throwing fits (you
wretchedly)

stop,

this isn't anything you want
and you know you always end up
hating
(oh that word's a reputation killer)
nine tenths of what you can't have
(careless, care less, and anyways, most things
are)

birds have more self control
perhaps and
rhythm

I've been there, caged/uncaged
but now I settle for stripes
and leave the feathers to the
drag queens

here it is
nothing worth having
comes easy

nothing worth having
comes at all
----
 so I was feeling sad-ish because I couldn't have what I wanted to have but hey! there's a few billion other fish in this crazy pond and
I just had the best day ever.  love Fargo.  love swing-sets, the river, and snowball fights when everything's melting.  Also I realized that I overthink my writing wayyy too much.  I need to just let it spill out in an obscure mess because that's when I end up liking it the most.  I edit and edit and edit which kind of kills it.  This one I like though.
and here is some slug for you:

"and if she has the nerve to let me drop a couple last words, I'ma turn to the earth and scream
Love Your Life"

-Slug

listening to emo music from my childhood.  take a gander (listen?)

entmologists are _________

dear samantha
i’m sorry
we have to get a divorce
i know that seems like an odd way to start a love letter but let me explain:
it’s not you
it sure as hell isn’t me
it’s just human beings don’t love as well as insects do
i love you.. far too much to let what we have be ruined by the failings of our species

i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night
i know you would never DO anything, you never do but..
i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night

did you know that when a female fly accepts the pheromones put off by a male fly, it re-writes her brain, destroys the receptors that receive pheromones, sensing the change, the male fly does the same. when two flies love each other they do it so hard, they will never love anything else ever again. if either one of them dies before procreation can happen both sets of genetic code are lost forever. now that… is dedication.

after Elizabeth and i broke up we spent three days dividing everything we had bought together
like if i knew what pots were mine like if i knew which drapes were mine somehow the pain would go away

this is not true

after two praying mantises mate, the nervous system of the male begins to shut down
while he still has control over his motor functions
he flops onto his back, exposing his soft underbelly up to his lover like a gift
she then proceeds to lovingly dice him into tiny cubes
spooning every morsel into her mouth
she wastes nothing
even the exoskeleton goes
she does this so that once their children are born she has something to regurgitate to feed them
now that.. is selflessness

i could never do that for you

so i have a new plan
i’m gonna leave you now
i’m gonna spend the rest of my life committing petty injustices
i hope you do the same
i will jay walk at every opportunity
i will steal things i could easily afford
i will be rude to strangers
i hope you do the same
i hope reincarnation is real
i hope our petty crimes are enough to cause us to be reborn as lesser creatures
i hope we are reborn as flies
so that we can love each other as hard as we were meant to.
— Jared Singer, An Entomologist’s Last Love Letter

macrohttp://struller.deviantart.com/

Happy Diwali

 it's Diwali.  go hug an Indian, go eat some candles.  here is my gorgeous roommate from Delhi

 also here is a poem for you.
--------------------------
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver

I got friendzoned.  brutally and horribly friendzoned.


seriously. this doesn't happen to me.  I COOKED for this guy. 


this is what I tell myself:  "come on, you weren't even that into him"


LIES

I mean. we weren't really compatible.  essentially, he is attractive.  other than that I know almost nothing about him.  ugh.  men. kill. me.   I actually don't feel friendzoned at all.  we were never really friends.  I feel dumped.  I need to go about this whole "men" thing, completely differently.  There are some key tactics I am missing.

another sun-soaked season fades away

http://nemanjaj.deviantart.com/art/fog-and-fishermans-334407940

The Fall

There was a man who found two leaves and came indoors holding them out saying to his parents that he was a tree.
To which they said then go into the yard and do not grow in the living-room as your roots may ruin the carpet.
He said I was fooling I am not a tree and he dropped his leaves.

But his parents said look it is fall.

-Russell Edson

I swear Russell Edson is one FABULOUSLY INSANE creature. love it.

“Let us consider the farmer who makes his straw hat his
sweetheart; or the old woman who makes a floor lamp her son;
or the young woman who has set herself the task of scraping
her shadow off a wall….

Let us consider the old woman who wore smoked cows’
tongues for shoes and walked a meadow gathering cow chips
in her apron; or a mirror grown dark with age that was given
to a blind man who spent his nights looking into it, which
saddened his mother, that her son should be so lost in
vanity….

Let us consider the man who fried roses for his dinner,
whose kitchen smelled like a burning rose garden; or the man
who disguised himself as a moth and ate his overcoat, and for
dessert served himself a chilled fedora….” 

-Let us Consider
----------
Winter is coming.  (and I am quite clearly reduced to creating statements that no one can dispute)

I'm already trying to rid myself of expectations for the weekend.  
(it's not working. my hopes are high, my fingers are crossed,
 please please please don't disappoint me)

PREACH!

listened to Taylor Mali today in poetry class.  This is an excerpt from Silver-Lined Heart, and the video is What Teachers Make

I’m for reckless abandon
and spontaneous celebrations of nothing at all,
like the twin flutes I kept in the trunk of my car
in a box labeled Emergency Champagne Glasses!

Raise an unexpected glass to long, cold winters
and sweet hot summers and the beautiful confusion of the times in between.
To the unexpected drenching rain that leaves you soaking
wet and smiling breathless;

Here’s to the soul‐expanding power of the universally
optimistic simplicity of the beautiful.

-Taylor Mali

presents

along the brittle treacherous bright streets
of memory comes my heart,singing like
an idiot,whispering like a drunken man
-ee cummings

and here:

“Most of us have love in our lives. Most of us love other people and are ourselves loved by others.
But make no mistake: you are alone in the world. You were born alone, even if you were born conjoined. And you die alone, unable to bring a single person with you.
Self-pity means waiting for that man with the glass slipper that perfectly fits your foot to knock on your door. Self-pity is waiting to be bottle-fed your dinner.”
-Augusten Burroughs

annnnnnd my last gift for you today (this is what I sing to my old people):

Everyone in this town is seeing somebody else

“America is becoming like an untreatable paranoic narcissist—you can’t tell us anything, because we only hear the parts we like.”

—	Matt Taibbi

manifestos

http://art-by-doc.deviantart.com/art/Ready-To-Release-The-Shackles-335911497

beautiful works of magic by The Magnetic Fields

 and there you are

unconventional enough to
resuscitate my heart

the way you make me feel something like
13 years younger is
uncontrollable, manifested in
how I show you my art like
maybe you'll tape it to your fridge

I am in complete admiration of
the way you hold adjectives and nouns
captive
mangle them up and sew them together
in a colorful mass of
tangled syntax

and I'm in constant
jaw-dropped
awe

everything you do hits me hard enough to
shatter my communication skills
brain-dead my
inhibitions and (oh now)
I'm a greedy child,
only three words saturating
my veins

mine
mine
mine
--------
something random, I haven't been writing much lately that's worth anything.  I had a good weekend.  my Bollywood (or Tollywood I guess they call it when it's south India) dance for Diwali night went really well.  met someone who has the capacity to make me actually wish I wasn't single. but I'm sure that will pass.  it always does. 

cage

"Rose Madder" is why I do not trust arrogant/overly confident men on a very deep level.  Excerpts.
---------------------------------------

The concept of dreaming is known to the waking mind but to the

dreamer there is no waking, no real world, no sanity; there is only

the screaming bedlam of sleep. Rose McClendon Daniels slept

within her husband's madness for nine more years.

-----------------
Come over here, sweetheart, I want to talk to you up close.
---------

Get out of here, that deep part of her said suddenly. Get out of

here right now, this very minute. Don't even take the time to

run a comb through your hair. Just go.

'That's ridiculous,' she said, rocking back and forth faster than

ever. The spot of blood on the sheet sizzled in her eye. From here,

it looked like the dot under an exclamation point. 'That's ridiculous,

where would I go?'

Anywhere he isn't, the voice returned. But you have to do it

right now. Before

Before what?

That one was easy. Before she fell asleep again.
---------

 Her feet, clad in white lowtop sneakers, patted the floor in a quickening

rhythm (the buzzing was now mostly in her head, rattling her brains,

heating her up), and what she thought was Fourteen years.

Fourteen years of having him talk to me up close. The

miscarriage. The tennis racket. Three teeth, one of which I

swallowed. The broken rib. The punches. The pinches. And the

bites, of course. Plenty of those. Plenty of -

Stop it! It's useless, thinking like this, because you're not

going anywhere, he'd only come after you and bring you back,

he'd find you, he's a policeman and finding people is one of the

things he does, one of the things he's good at-

'Fourteen years,' she murmured, and now it wasn't the last

fourteen she was thinking about but the next. Because that other

voice, the deep voice, was right. He might not kill her. He might

not. And what would she be like after fourteen more years of

having him talk to her up close? Would she be able to bend over?

Would she have an hour - fifteen minutes, even - a day when her

kidneys didn't feel like hot stones buried in her back? Would he

perhaps hit her hard enough to deaden some vital connection, so

she could no longer raise one of her arms or legs...?

----

'I'm going,' she murmured. 'I'm really, really going.'

But she stayed where she was a moment longer, like an animal which has been kept in a cage so long it cannot believe in freedom even when it is offered. She reached behind her and touched the knob of the door - the door that led into her cage

 'No more,' she whispered. She tucked her bag under one arm and took her first dozen steps into the fogbank which was now her future.

-Rose Madder, Stephen King

autumn, Invisible Monsters

Autumn just makes my heart hurt. f'real

photos by:  http://janek-sedlar.deviantart.com/

 

 http://alexandru1988.deviantart.com/

and http://oer-wout.deviantart.com/

“Tell the world what scares you the most” says Brandy.
She gives us each an Aubergine Dreams eyebrow pencil and says “Save the world with some advice from the future”

From Seth:
When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?
A kiss and it’s off on the wind toward Ballard.

Only when we eat up this planet will God give us another. We’ll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.
Interstate 5 snakes by in the distance. From high atop the Space Needle, the southbound lanes are red chase lights, and the northbound lanes are white chase lights. I take a card and write:

I love Seth Thomas so much I have to destroy him. I overcompensate by worshipping the queen supreme. Seth will never love me. No one will ever love me ever again.

Brandy is waiting to take the card and read it out loud. Brandy’s waiting to read my worst fears to the world, but I don’t give her the card. I kiss it myself with the lips I don’t have and let the wind take it out of my hand. The card flies up, up, up to the stars and then falls down to land in the suicide net.
While I watch my future trapped in the suicide net, Brandy reads another card from Seth,
We are all self-composting.

I write another card from the future and Brandy reads it:
When we don’t know who to hate, we hate ourselves.

An updraft lifts up my worst fears from the suicide net and sails them away.

Seth writes and Brandy reads.
You have to keep recycling yourself.

I write and Brandy reads.
Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known.

I write and Brandy reads.
The one you love and the one who loves you are never ever the same person."          

—	Chuck Palahniuk - Invisible Monsters

I love this book.  messed up, twisted, and downright weird as it is.

I stay wrecked and jealous for this one simple reason

you know those people who smile like the world is all theirs?  These are the ones I can't help but love.

I like happy people. and I've only really met two in the last three years that I'd classify this way.  These people I just watch and watch and watch, because everything they do intrigues me.  Confidence without arrogance is a rare and beautiful thing.
------------------------------
My heart has ADD.

----
random A.B. quote

“It seemed obvious to Bebe that she needed to remedy the situation, curb her spending. So she put away the bill and logged on to Amazon.com to look for a book on the subject. She did a search and found ShoppingStoppers: The Breakthrough Best-seller that Can Help You Curb Your Compulsive Shopping. She clicked on it. The book jacket appeared on her screen. Beneath the book jacket, the text said, ‘Customers who bought this book also bought…’ and then listed seven other titles. So Bebe purchased them all, along with a book about investing in Chinese artifacts. She logged off feeling tremendous relief.” 

-Augusten Burroughs - Sellevision

In other news I've been listening to Taking Back to Sunday all day, (their 2002 album, Tell All Your Friends)  and it just takes me back to my junior high days like nothin' else. the first band I ever really loved.

Fargo life

One thing:  "You have a great personality" is not a valid pickup line if you don't actually know me.     For real,  the men of Fargo need to get some better lines.   During these two minute interactions, you see a combination of what you want to see and what I want you to see.

Certain brands of confidence freak me out.   It's the predatory arrogance I can't handle.  It's all because of a little book called Rose Madder by Stephen King. After reading this book I became very frightened of men who are too sure of themselves.  (did you know you can download this book as a pdf?? I didn't either:  http://gpnp.net/backshelves.gpnp.net/the%20shelves/authors/Stephen%20King/Rose%20Madder%20-%20Stephen%20King.pdf)

And okay, I'll be honest.  I REALLY like being fed lines. I love being told that my smile is "radiant"  and "lights up a room".  but come on.  I know you've given this crap to a million other girls and I'm not going to fall for you that easily...  I will however sit there with a big grin on my face consuming your flattery like a huge slice of apple pie. 

Tonight I am dancing to a Bollywood song in front of a huge crowd of people. annnnnd I'm still nervous as anything so pardon me while I go practice.