It descends.

Spent the afternoon trying to remember that feeling so lost is something to appreciate, savor even. Part of the journey. A chance to awaken to a myriad of opportunities and chance gifts from the unknown that is life.

Trying, at least, to remember that, to believe it. It's something.

Just returned home from a screening of The Other Boleyn Girl. Beautifully crafted and visually stunning... but let me just say it is not what I would recommend for viewing on a day already darkened by personal shadows and doubts. My God so dark, so vividly and achingly dark. I crave the sleep that seems to come only with the aid of medication, unmarred by dream or thought or any such consciousness. The kind that seems to come after several glasses (bottles?) of deep crimson wine, that hollow detachment and deceiving liberation from reality.

It has been a day of clouds, dark thoughts. That strange and unfamiliar urge to let go of tears and fling myself head-on into a cathartic emotional breakdown. Not by nature a cryer, emotional certainly but only internally. That physical release that is so often characterized as feminine is just not... me. Nobody seems to think this is healthy but alas that is another issue for another day... or another therapy session at least.

So much is collecting in my mind, weighing my thoughts like lead anchors. So much has happened of late and I cannot seem to process anything. I don't know what to do, how to respond, where to go, what to consider.

I'm so overwhelmed. So... paralyzed.

I just hope that each day that I get out of bed and carry myself on through my daily pattern and routine will be one day closer to aligning myself with the rainfall of change that seems constantly to drizzle around me.

The balance of my life depends upon my ability to interpret my world, contemplate and analyze and categorize and solve and understand. Without that... I'm just floating aimlessly along an unidentified tide.

It's difficult these days. I don't understand myself, don't recognize the revolving masks of those I love, don't know up from down. And it hurts, I'm feeling the hurt so intensely for the first time in months, really feeling those emotions I have for so long buried and cast out, denied, distracted myself from in so many different ways.

I am a happy person, a joyful soul, according to my healer. And I believed her then as she spoke, heard those words fall as truth, and I believe her still. I am a happy person. I do think I'm meant to reflect the glory and light of life, destined to illuminate, radiate, emit my own personal incandescence somehow.

But not today.

Not today.

Ouch I have lost myself again
Lost myself and I am nowhere to be found,
Yeah I think that I might break
I've lost myself again and I feel unsafe

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I'm needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

At last, she sleeps.

Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved. The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep, so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing. Paul lay against her and slept; whilst she, always a bad sleeper, fell later on into a profound sleep that seemed to give her faith.

- D.H. Lawrence,
Sons and Lovers

oh god. I sent it.

... and now I'm about to go desperately gulp down a bottle of red wine. Fast.

Prodigal Daughter.

I've never seen the blackest of nights emerge so luminous as Wednesday did. Missed the pinnacle of the eclipse by half and hour, but was shocked to gaze upon the snow-glazed hills behind the house as they radiated the moonglow hours later... so bright and crystalline, so illuminated in the night. The kind of world one imagines the Masters were envisioning in their nocturnes, quiet and serene. Alive but hushed in that ethereal pause of night. A rare moment of appreciation, reward for sleeplessness.

This week has been the second half of the boomerang effect, a return to origin, home, status quo to a degree. That which goes up must, inevitably, fall back to earth again. Being home - for the first time since the new year - was refreshing. Complicated, even through my whiskey-colored glasses. Troubling on an internal level, like some small undercurrent of hysteria bubbling just below the surface. We stand on the brink of change, and for the first time none of us is certain of what will happen next. So many unknowns, so many long-buried secrets and repressed feelings... spring has undoubtedly become our season of 'airing out the laundry,' 'spring cleaning,' what have you.

It has been a long and difficult three years.

[I don't know what to write to him.]

This is further compounded by a relentless headache and desire to escape into the beckoning arms of fantasy - a book, a movie, a poem, the piano, something. I feel paralyzed by reality, frozen in the high-beams. How much longer can I postpone my life?, I keep demanding of myself. What catalyst will finally end my inertia? For god's sake, what must I do to overcome this irrational, self-defeating fear? What changes are necessary? What sacrifices?

I must clean something. 'Dirty house, dirty life,' I always say. Frustratingly, just one week ago I did the same thing and have returned after so many days away to a home in the same state of perpetual messiness as before I devoted so many a long hour eradicating the dust of winter life.

I think today is a day to dig the Xanax out of the cabinet. This hostility is ridiculous. I cannot let this affect me, I must be positive and clear and open to the world... the February sun is making a rare appearance, after all.

Not going out tonight. Not. Not. Not.

"Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?" - James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room

_____________________________

The Moment

It was a day in June, all lawn and sky,
the kind that gives you no choice
but to unbutton your shirt
and sit outside in a rough wooden chair.

And if a glass of ice tea and an anthology
of seventeenth-century devotional poetry
with a dark blue cover are available,
then the picture can hardly be improved.

I remember a fly kept landing on my wrist,
and two black butterflies
with white and red wing-dots
bobbed around my head in the bright air.

I could feel the day offering itself to me,
and I wanted nothing more
than to be in the moment - but which moment?
Not that one, or that one, or that one,

or any of those that were scuttling by
seemed perfectly right for me.
Plus, I was too knotted up with questions
about the past and his tall, evasive sister, the future.

What churchyard held the bones of George Herbert?
Why did John Donne's wife die so young?
And more pressingly,
what could we serve the vegetarian twins

we had invited for dinner that evening
not knowing then that they travel with their own grapes?
And who was the driver of that pickup
flying down the road toward the single railroad track?

And so the priceless moments of the day
were squandered one by one -
or more likely several thousand at a time -
with quandary and pointless interrogation.

All I wanted was to be a pea of being
at rest inside the pod of time,
but that was not going to happen today,
I had to admit to myself

as I closed the blue book on the face
of Thomas Traherne and returned to the house
where I lit a flame under a pot
full of water where some eggs were afloat,

and, while they were cooking,
stared into a little oval mirror by the sink
just to see if that crazy glass
had anything particular to say to me today.

- Billy Collins

Gunn for President. Greatest Interview Ever.

How it felt.

[Len Prince/Jessie Mann - Untitled]

sunshine daydream

The kind of Saturday afternoon that leaves folksy guitar melodies in my head and the desire to ride bicycles or spin in circles in the grass until I fall down. Take the dog for a walk. Sip tea. Paint. Hike. Wander through art galleries. Shop. Sing. Organize something. Redecorate. Laugh. Dance. Create something beautiful.

Be happy.

Proven true.

There was definitely a pervading air of desperation amongst the single bar-goers, lots of agitated crowd scanning and eyeing of each other like ravenous wolves.

Felt fantastic to admire the general awkwardness.

Survived the evening with little more damage than lack of sleep and smudgy leftover eye makeup... which my boss actually mistakenly complimented. There is just no explaining my life.

for the record

Valentine's Day 2K8 and I'm happily single, thank-you-very-much. I'm dressed up, I look fabulous, and am headed out for a grand evening of jazz and cocktails with my fellow sassy singletons. I did not spend any cash on silly trinkets of love and adoration, I didn't have to fight for romantic reservations, there is no pressure to be more delighted with my significant other than I really am (because he doesn't exist... except in the form of a charming gay fiancee of mine), and I'm not depleting Nature/greenhouses of unnecessary bouquets of blooms or botanical treats.

And I'm also not the last-minute jackass trying desperately to find suitable gifts/stuffed animals (gross)/Hallmark cards at half past 6 on a holiday.

... and for these reasons I'm off to celebrate.

Feb 12, 2007: Blizzard... Feb 12, 2008: Blizzard

Very grateful not to have been a traffic statistic today. These sleet-iced avenues seem to have a mind of their own... and the lack of respect for them seems only to aggravate the monsters within. Putting mankind in control of beastly steel machines on wheels certainly seems to bring out the inner immortality complex, icy streets and gravity be damned.

I truly don't know how this climate - today's current sub-freezing bite - can be what some call home. It's romanticized, this 'winter wonderland' of icicles and blustery breezes and Frosty the Snowmen... except in reality it's mostly street-grime-slush and ice-slick sidewalks that never seem to clear and minutes and minutes spent scraping my car.

Not to complain. The briskness of winter can be invigorating and there is always that sense of half-nervous, half-excited anticipation before a storm hits... I just truly cannot fathom waking up to this for 9 months out of the year... or more.

Like in Away From Her, that beautiful coupling of cross-country ski tracks and fuzzy matching turtlenecks and poetry in front of the blaze of a warm fire. Growing old together in a Robert Frost glistening snow globe world.

"Shhh... you're sexy. Stop talking."

Spring Cleaning.

Time to take an inventory of my life.
Time to make it happen.
Time to grow up.
Time to fight for everything.
Time to act.
Time to detox.
Time to help.
Time to acknowledge myself.
Time to fix flaws.
Time to love... and be loved.

Today I want it all. It's scary... but it's possible. I have to believe that. Terrifying changes on the horizon. Completely, paralyzingly terrifying events. If I'm not strong now, I'm going to be completely drowned. Time to be the strong one after so many years as the unstable mess. They deserve that.

[I'm frightened]

And my heart aches for them. Why did they both have to suffer the same fate as I? I'm just so helpless, so devastated on the sidelines while the all-too-familiar pattern repeats itself in their worlds. And he's so young! Exactly the same age I was when the storm descended and the darkness blackened a decade with its soft whispers of inadequacy, failure, disillusion, hostility, bleak acceptance, loss... why this horrible legacy? What can I do, the one who should most compassionately understand, when all I feel is this despondent helplessness? What if I can't fix this one?

If you can't stand the madness, get out of my life.

Brief overview:

Tuesday: work. Tatiana's poetry reading. Chance encounter at Steak n Shake with Bro White. Cocktails with Karson/Eric in 'Mardi Gras' plastic cups. Crash with the Prince.

Wednesday: work. Hangover. Straight from work to Retro. etc. Typical madness. Crash with the Prince AND the Princess.

Thursday: Hangover. Play house with Eric. Rearrange things. Start projects. Dance around the house. Complain of hangover. Shudder at wednesday's photos. Wish we had champagne. Magic carpets inspire fantasy vacation sequences. Rush home and prepare for interview. Meet at Skyline. Home after in sweatpants eating applesauce. Change. Walk across the street for Jesus Christ Superstar. Fall madly in love with Corey Glover and debate whether it is sac religious to have crushes and inappropriate feelings for the disciples. What can I say, I love Jesus Chic. Walk home. Change... into matching tshirts/heels/perfume. Head down the street to watch IU kick some Illini ass. (deservedly or not). Hit up Metro karaoke. Come home and crash drunkenly into bed as a collective.

Friday: Hangover. Work. Eddy comes down for the most incredibly decadent spontaneous girls' evening complete with delicious wine and long overdue conversations. [P and E for life] Head north in the rain. Meet Matty for one drink. Head home early and collapse. Sleep in my clothes. It's fine.

Saturday: Finally... no hangover. Head south for gymnastics invitational... which was amazing. Now home and motivating to get in the shower before birthdayfest commences.

Oh, and I'll give you a hint at tomorrow: hangover + work. pretty excited about it.

"I don't know why I go to extremes" - Billy Joel

A typical Wednesday...


...followed immediately by a Thursday trip to an energy specialist/holistic healer.

Welcome to my life.

Lessons, today:

1. Be careful what you wish for.
2. Embrace the unexpected.
3. Bring extra lip balm.
4. Enjoy sunshine in those rare winter afternoons when it appears.
5. The 'snooze' feature on my alarm is a dangerous trap.
6. Take some dayquil and be optimistic.
7. Always travel with Halls ginger ale cough drops.
8. Don't bother with makeup if you plan on spending most of the day blowing your nose.
9. Never doubt the possibility that Superman III and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert are linked.
10. Dreams often fall short of reality.

hope.

gravel angel in front of the Virginia Tech memorial.

maybe I'm just sentimental, maybe I'm over-medicated on dayquil and vitamin supplements (home, sick/miserable), maybe it's hormones or cosmic star-crossings... but this to me is beautiful.

I realize the paradox of symbolism - it has the power to inspire and yet lacks to power to itself act or promote change... so often many of us hide behind labels, flags, emblems, slogans, membership cards, resonant rally cries and yet maintain our lives of distance and quiet, turning a blind eye when we're most needed because we're uncomfortable or unwilling to risk our voices, time, reputations, comfort, money, self-image, etc.

And ironically it is most often the smallest and most minute of events that serve as catalysts for significant changes or enlightenment.

So often I think people just need someone to listen to them. The elderly are a perfect illustration of this... fear of mortality and the mysteries of life beyond our own tiny understanding of the universe compel some desire to leave behind us a legacy, some proof that our existence not only was real but somehow mattered.

We none of us seem to truly relish the fact that we are transient beings, just one of a succession of billions... Our misinterpretation of our own importance is the heartbeat of our ego-driven madness and anxiety. We inflate our worth far beyond the truth, develop grand notions of entitlement, as though the world owes us something. We live! Is that not enough?

Beyond that bizarre miracle our lives are our own, destinies our own, choices our own. Why is gratitude for existence so continually sneered at and discarded? The world can be terrible, cruel, wrenchingly painful, devastating, hopeless, unjust, and maddeningly overwhelming... and yet the sun rises, the tides change, leaves turn, and winter is always followed by the promise of spring.

It begins, it ends, it begins anew.

And in the midst of this we have each other... and angels made of pebbles as a reminder.

So kiss me when I'm hurting, whisper loving words in the ears of children, stare softly into the eyes of friends and extol their beauty, believe in the possibility of happiness, lend your strength to others, tread softly upon the earth, dance between raindrops, and sing in the starlight.

Gifts

My dream is the dream of a pond
Not just to mirror the sky
But to let the willows and ferns
Suck me dry.
I'll climb from the roots to the veins,
And when leaves wither and fade
I will refuse to mourn
Because I was dying to live.

My joy is the joy of sunlight.
In a moment of creation
I will leave shining words
In the pupils of children's eyes
Igniting golden flames.
Whenever seedlings sprout
I shall sing a song of green.
I'm so simple I'm profound!

My grief is the grief of birds.
The Spring will understand:
Flying from hardship and failure
To a future of warmth and light.
There my blood-stained pinions
Will scratch hieroglyphics
On every human heart
For every year to come.

Because all that I am
Has been a gift from earth.

- Shu Ting,
translated from the Chinese by Carolyn Kizer

self-improvement.

1. surround myself only with those who bring me joy.
2. more involvement in the arts scene.
3. remember to take more vitamins.
4. personal focus, internal: honesty despite the cost(s), sensitivity, forgiveness
5. personal focus, external: punctuality, accountability, return of ambition.
6. more naked time. obviously.
7. resume letter writing.
8. yoga.
9. 'in the now' mentality, carpe diem attitude, joie de vivre, etc.
10. channel energy toward positivity, light, calm, compassion, happiness.
11. happiness.
12. de-clutter physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
13. remembrance of those lost.
14. activism.
15. travel = priority.
16. acceptance of life outside of 'perfect.'
17. independence.
18. take more initiative... in all things.
19. read the rest of all these damn half-finished books.
20. release of unnecessary vanity.
21. reach beyond my comfort level, explore the world of the new, the mysterious, the unknown.
22. willingness to sacrifice... even the good times if necessary.
23. admit fear.
24. vacuum more often.
25. unconditional allegiance and love to those who love me.

Because this is what you do

because this is what you do. get up.
blame the liquor for the heaviness. call in late
to work. go to the couch because the bed
is too empty. watch people scream about love
on Jerry Springer. count the ways
it could be worse. it could be last week
when the missing got so big
you wrote him a letter
and sent it. it could be yesterday, no work
to go to, whole day looming.
it could be last month
or the month before, when you still
thought maybe. still carried plans
around with you like talismans.
you could have kissed him last night.
could have gone home with him, given in,
cried after, softly, face to the wall, his heavy arm
around you, hand on your stomach, rubbing.
shower. remember your body. water
hotter than you can stand. sit
on the shower floor. the word
devastated ringing the tub. buildings
collapsed into themselves. ribs
caving toward the spine. recite
the strongest poem you know. a spell
against the lonely that gets you
in crowds and on three hours’ sleep.
wonder where the gods are now.
get up. because death is not
an alternative. because this is what you do.
air like soup, move. door, hallway, room.
pants, socks, shoes. sweater. coat. cold.
wish you were a bird. remember you
are not you, now. you are you
a year from now. how does that
woman walk? she is not sick or sad.
doesn’t even remember today.
has been to Europe. what song
is she humming? now. right now.
that’s it.

Marty McConnell– survival poem #17

courtesy, caitlynintherye

Full Time Whore.

This weekend's antics have inspired me to recreate an old college tradition... the Wall of Shame. Home to scandalous visual evidence of all one's sins, regrets, revelry, merrymaking, misbehavior, general mayhem, and civil disorder.

... and photogenically-challenged moments, of course.

Because everyone needs to see their darkest hours face-to-face... and there has to be some marvelous place to collect all of the things too inappropriate for public (and/or online) view.

The past 5 days... let's just say I won't have to dig too deep into the archives to fill the WOS.