yes:
tea: earl grey, matcha, oolong, starcraft, guitars, wine, scotch, e-mails, letters, music, writing, afternoons, the rain, karaoke, love


some days, i live with a mist, and i don't want to shake it, this dream-haze. it's this border between wakefulness and death, and i exist in all worlds, physically here, and emotionally, there, in the space of magic and the subconscious. when i was young, i thought i had to choose.

there was a doorframe, where i lingered. some people walk past doors, and they live in the world. there is only one. but i didn't. i wandered. sometimes i got lost. to some people, there is only one space, and it is their own. one universe of existing.

to me, there were many. i always picked when i was young. i would pick one, be happy and then slowly grow dissatisfied, pick another, and then slowly grow dissatisfied. i liked my spaces, belonged in none. the only place of comfort, was the uncomfortable frame, the gateway, the fences. the space that was both entrance and exit.

birthdays & age.

grey mornings and my hair is wet. i'm over my ex. i've discovered this, by the sinking feeling & knowledge that i've spent a good part of my celebratory night, sitting in a black dress, and six inch stilettos, and my feelings, under city lights, in the bad magic of drunk calls. someone else. 

i don't remember. not much anyway. i've gotten rid of the evidence, but it happened.
maybe i don't know how to be happy about things, but i think i'd know to be happy when i have things to be happy about.

i don't know how this happened, besides weakness.
i wish i wasn't so imperfect. i don't like pedestals, or the illumination of good feelings because i spend so much time finding solace on concrete sidewalks. especially lately.
i think i need to wean myself off whatever i'm letting myself do to me. i'm not old, but i'm tired of the things that've always made me tired.

about seven months ago, someone said, "i'm not going to abandon you." and i laughed, "i don't have abandonment issues."

it's one slow conversation. all the silence fills the gaps where the beat is supposed to go.
if this was a heart, it's pretty much dead.

i feel like a ball of curled up kitten.

i've got a silver ring on a black thread. what's it signify?
a silvery fancy that caught my heart on a sunday afternoon.

a little fish found me mid-way a book.
i think of warm oceans. the sun set on one end of the world, as the moon rose on the other, and i was a girl playing with the little fishes, in the light & color between.

i have a feeling, & it puts the dance in my step.
all the alleyways & side streets.

they are dark & old stone in city shadows, lit only by the high-gleaming windows that only have eyes, for the late summer blue. all the old men and strangers catch my smile.

i feel like the wind and liquid sunshine.

--

it's the way you grow up. your parents only bickered, or were quiet and bored. they ignored each other, with never a kiss or a hug, or those things that you see couples do on t.v., and then one day, as a ennui'd seven year old, as you came trudging up the stairs from playing outside, thirsty for water,

and summer was ending,

in a sun-soaked bedroom, you saw your father pick up your mother. and she was lovely, in a blue, periwinkle skirt. he hugged her close. he spun her around in the air, and they were like dancers in a lovely movie. and on their faces, you saw it, happiness & bliss. you were still thirsty for water, but the smart cookie you were, you slipped quietly back down the stairs, and back outside, before anyone knew that you knew, that love was real.

i wanted to talk about love, but said nothing worth saying.


there was a boy i was in love with, three years back, and he did not love me back, so when i woke up in the middle of the night beside him, i curled up safely into myself, and watched him sleep. and he coughed in his sleep, so i gently massaged his chest until he stopped. and in his sleep, he took my hand, and held it close to his heart, as if we were already close, as if he had done this for years. and right then i knew, that if he could've loved me back, he would've, but he didn't. he was already in love with someone, and she wasn't with him. when the sun came up, i kissed him goodbye, and promised myself i wouldn't see him again. i never knew if he wanted me to stay, or to go, or what he was looking for. maybe it was intimacy, or someone to take his mind off the special one that was gone. i could do neither.

more than a year later, i'd meet someone else. i'd write him off as a distraction, laugh often, at others, with him, at him, at myself. i'd leave. and then i'd leave, wondering if i wanted to stay, or to go, wondering if he wanted me to stay, or to go. and then he'd ask me to stay, so i stayed, and there was ice cream from cartons on countertops in the dark, and rain on fire escapes, and i think, love, but i would never use the word because i didn't know whether it was even important to talk about love, when the feeling was there and not. and then the whole thing made me sad, so i left, and he let me leave, because i don't think he was happy anymore either.

it took a long time before i could walk in rain and be happy again.

some days i wake up, and the only thing i want to do is go home.
the problem is, i'm already home.

say anything. i'm full of shit. it's like a bad dream i'm trying to forget, except instead of a bad dream, it's a pretty little facet i can't make peace with. sparse threads to the world, but at least i'm not lying to myself. the truth is a stupid thing to have alone. flickering lights, & trains that don't come. i'm tired of waiting, but i do it anyway. i always take the long route home, ride sleepy in the corner of the light, long, blue seats. what is the difference between ten minutes or two hours, when you don't know how to get home? is it the journey, or the getting there? even in  my bed, on the softness of black sheets, i'm still on some midnight train, and i don't know where i'm going.

ha. i'm happy.

things that help:

sitting in the space of shaun tan,
showers,
strumming end of summertime songs on the guitar,
tech startups,
storyboarding drafts,
stretching,
shanghai restoration project & other chaotic soul-auditory pretties,

things:

listening to the heartbeat on the sheets of a bed with a pressed ear,
three types of banana bread,
a man found love & hot sex and vanished into the world with his not-so-secret secret, mid-aged mistress, leaving your sick mother and three younger siblings & all their bills & rent for someone else,
work,
work,
other work,
art,
pixel ink on white light,

the future is here.

The set of characters.


1. Eva. At the end of her mid twenties. Greg. The man who is fascinated with her, is at the end of his mid 40's, & greying.

They see each other often, late in the evenings, til late in the night, 'til the bars close shop.

They talk. They drink, & they talk. They go for long drives, without music. They lay on the grass, on blankets, with poetry & wine, and contemplate silently, separately. They go to riverside towns. They drink on the rooftop-bars of the respectable adult society.

They toast & make friendly banter with a CNN reporter, a doctor, a wife, and a somebody else. The man is charming & polite. It looks like they're going to be bantering small idle talk all evening before dinner, so his girl, is bored, and so, charmingly & decisively, says, "Babe, there's space over by the water, let's go sit." Lovebirds, you know. And to the crowd of old boring fogies, "It was such a pleasure to meet you. Have a wonderful rest of the evening." She names their names. And then she smiles at the man, and takes his hand, and leads them away from proper society's summer-dressed folk.

They sit. He says, he thinks what she just did, was so cool. He would've never done that. He would've just gritted his teeth and bullshitted & smiled his time through hanging with these boring people.

She is secretly angry. He took her here as a surprise. Dinner reservation. She wasn't prepared & was rocking her artist black jeans, and an art print on her t-shirt. She looked practically like a young teenager about to go off to college, while he had a casual blue summer button-down. He fit right in with this aging, suburban bourgeois yacht scene. She looked right out of East Village. He liked her for the rebellion he perceived, that he highlighted & enforced by context.

They're happy anyway, strangely enough. The evening is beautiful. The city is both far away, & close.

Next week, things would be different. Next week, she would be having coffee with his ex-wife.
Next week this would be over, and they would never see each other other again.

all those moods & ghosts.

when the joy strikes, i am out, sidewalk-skiing on my own mania & sunshine, lit by some internal fire or sun-glow. i take life like liquor.

the things that burn on the way down, kills you deep & slow.

played the music box right on my chest,
slow-cranking the tiny, dinky silver lever.

i think some days, when i am nothing but only tired, and even the lively edge of bitterness is gone, i'm just not there. like, hello, eleven-year cycle of fatigue & sleeplessness, i did not miss you. what is there?

i could spill away; i think about it. i think about how love saves the day, but only hand in hand with the truth, because love alone is just feeble, aimless emotion, and truth alone is too much of a cool-hearted, solitary companion. these things temper each other.

well, i don't know where love is, but i've got a lot of honesty, which is the thin safety blanket that i'm sitting on. what does a girl have to do, to disappear?

she said that she found that sad things troubled me more than i think they will, and she's right. at least i've got my guitar. i spend time holding onto its hollow body.

it was nice for a while. i thought things were going to be different.

i laughed.

these people caught in their scripts. spirituality, signs, mistakes, love & home. free spirited. up and down tones of their voices, & they're running their lines, signing their papers, finding their next space for their things & their bodies. are you annoyed?, he asks. leading questions, i think, to misdirect into an argument over negative emotions, instead of finding growth. the woman loves him; she thinks he is a more honest, fairer, kinder, more beautiful man than he actually is. we both see his potential, but for her, it is enough, and for me, well, darling, we all have potential. she likes the organza of romance, and he likes to weave, because all that is keeping them going in the largely unfulfilling rote of their lives, is this grasp of flimsy human interaction, which truth be told, bores them existentially.

he is casually cruel, or desperately stupid; likely both, and disrespectful of himself & others in an inherent way. he is entitled and lazy and bad to his art. he is fearful, and insecure. he hurts others, knowingly, and blames it on moods and foolishness and temperament. he is the everyman in short stories, but the one that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, because he doesn't move his soul or behavior to transcendence, but cops-out, continuously, repeatedly, from person to person, situation to situation, until he dies a largely ordinary death. he fails to live his life truly & compellingly, but slips into occasional acts of style & ability. most things are done with some fear, which he could overcome with acts of bravery, but he has yet to do it. maybe he'll accomplish it at 78, when he is old, and a grandfather, in an act of true moral courage before a child, and be a changed man. i doubt it.

not because humanity is not beautiful, but because he is a man who chooses cowardice & ease when he could be the man who chose to live vulnerably & beautifully. i would never love the former, and to the latter, i'd helplessly, willingly lose my heart to.

wher're you gonna run to? you want a hideaway or rescue, but all you're going to find, is talk. and you're going to want real bad that you didn't run, but that you stayed, & fought, flight or fight, even though you really thought it was going to be a losing battle anyway, for the chance to reap the emotional reward of finding something you always wanted to be real and yours. it's a person on the other side, someone battling the same losing battle with these ghosts & choices you've made, to go  hand-in-hand with you, to make different choices than the ones you would've made alone. it's a pooling of dreams & strengths, where hopefully the strength in one arena, could cancel out the permanent cracks in other's flaws.

it's like saying, i know you're a coward and not that into me, but i'm going to stay anyway. and you see how you feel about me, whether you need me or not. you read me wrong, so read again. everyone needs me, why wouldn't you? we all need each other. who cares who stands to gain or benefit? do you want this? yes? no? well, i'm here and i've got faith in you. so don't let me down. because i care. that's all love is, at the end of the day. it's care. if you care, it's love. and if you don't, then it's not.

---

we all have a downtown hell. spend a few years bonding over tragic stories on the bar counter. i wish i had a drinking buddy; someone different & new, with no investment in my life to trade stories with. 

sometimes the music doesn't come

well, internet people, i could jump up and down on my bed for catharsis, but you know, i just did that thing where i put myself in the shower, and showered it all off, plus some tears, because, hey, you could soak your psychological pillow, or you could just get it all out until you're done and move on, like a child. what child holds on to hurt? they just cry it out for as long as they need, and then they're okay.

it's not that bad. i could get all bitter and be like, hey, never opening up again, but y'know, actually, i'm pretty happy and comfortable with myself, 'cuz you know, what the hey. what the hey.

the art director tagged my name in silver on my favorite midnight street; so young, so young, all the bars & streets are adventures when the city is a ghost town on a gorgeous night at 3something. we kept it consistent, tully neats, many, because the rise of the other irish whiskeys, is just a decade's worth of subway marketing coming to fruition. when we are old, they will say that only old men drink jamesons, because the young will be drinking something else.

i've got a silver ring on a black thread. what's it signify? a silvery fancy that caught my eye on a saturday afternoon. i've got my third tungsten replacement sitting in the bottom of my book bag. a pretty aging thing wore too many diamonds, dangling from two symmetrical holes in her lobes, a tiara, because all gold-diggers are princesses, a cuff, a collar, and so many rings, except for the commitment ones. she mostly ignored her slightly sleazy, ugly, beta-y, significantly older date. i bet she tells him that she's old-fashioned and likes to be treated like lady, and is wide-eyed & girlish at all compressed carbons.

as a child, when patrons came in, and i'd be doodling or doing my math homework or sometimes reading the paper, because intelligent children occasionally like to read expensive rags, i'd suggest the pink ones, because regular ones were boring. when did shiny cut & polished crystals begin to signify love?

love is a poem. love is fiction. love is creativity. love is not roses, but a bouquet that i deconstructed, into a richly-colored blossom, left on every lonely parking meter, or bench, or closed shop door, for the first stranger to claim it.

love doesn't happen on a beautiful tuesday afternoon when all i want to do is lay in my bed, or move to some new space in the city, where i can be alone in all the sunshine.

i want to curl up in the quiet. next boy that i fall in love with, i need you to know, sometimes, i just need to lay there, and if you'd hold me, that'd be nice.

blue. jazz in the shower, & then requiem in the city. yesterday was beautiful. played guitar on my fire escape, baked banana bread. watched a ginger fluff play.

feeling a little vulnerable. don't know why. it's not a feeling i like.

gonna go sit in the pretty feelings of sad, smoky chanteuses/pianos/bass/guitars. that's what good jazz bars are for, besides pre-hook-up cocktails, and honest conversations with strangers.

i don't like disappointment, so i push. maybe if i was less combative, but i'm not that comfortable with easy intimacy. we could fuck, yes, and that's about it, isn't it? more is hard. the bare minimum is the bare minimum. not that sex is so only or so little; it's great, but i'm wanting for something a little more emotionally satisfying. i was made a little unconventional when i was grown in a woman's body; loner, blasé & introspective type with all the girl parts, and i kind of like myself as i am.

the poetry & the music comes, because for all the languages i acquire, the emotions speak less straightforwardly. i have poor mastery of satisfactory communication. i'm never satisfied with the words i use.

i don't want to say things like, i love you, because what does that mean? but i want to make love to you, to you, beyond just your body, and deep in where you feel, because you inspire that feeling in me, to want to do things beyond my own gratifications. words are easy, and you mean more than easy. for what you do for me, because you exist, because you live your life, because you love what you love, and dislike what you dislike, and simply are you because you could not be anyone else, you deserve a rap song both serious and playful, or a melody, or a well-executed blowjob and then some. feelings and feelings. existence is colored with emotion.

do you feel? what makes you feel? what are all these generic questions that you're going to have difficulty answering? how could you possibly love a weird girl?

and then it's more questions, but then, i'm not talking to you anymore, but myself. why do i need to be comforting? it's the need for connection on that specific level.

lonely people keep going out, having hope in unlikely places, looking to make a lasting connection. so much disappointment, in that little way, that is sometimes easy to deal with, sometimes hard. i don't think about forever, but i want you to be happy in the moments i've got with you. i want us to be happy, and have that feeling that feels so good, even if it's gone in a few hours, gone in the week, gone & gone.

i do have questions. i have so many questions, like, what makes you lonely? what made you cry last? can i kiss you? can i be close with you, even though i'm not comfortable with closeness most days when i'm feeling vulnerable? sometimes i feel vulnerable even though i know i've got a resilience to me.

woke. don't remember the dream.

mixture of physically tired, restless, wistful, wanderlusty, and cold. the humidity's been bothering me. i don't think i've been warm all day. sometimes you just want to wake up in the middle of the night, wrapped in warm blankets, in a hot room, because that moment of temperature-contentedness will be just what a soul needs, to fall back asleep easily, & happily.

i fell asleep pretty comfortably.

sleeplessness is probably how i got to know pbs a little too well.

this is a little bit of what living alone might feel like, when everyone is asleep, and i am awake. i'd take a walk, but this isn't the neighborhood for it, at this hour. i'd take my dog for a walk if i had one.

when i was young, this was prime paper-writing/ web-designing / painting time. bad sleep habits never quite go away, i guess. i wish there was someone awake to talk with. i'd exhaust my brain.
my mind's so loud. people just want to exhaust their sex drives; what about my brain?

playing cerebral games solo is like masturbation; at some point you just want another brain, another living mind to fuck, to make love to, to battle, maybe collaborate with, creatively.

thunder & lightning in the city, and i'd like to go sleep. i'd like for so much.

busy weeks, busy years. i love my friends. i love my true collaborators even more, who are my favorite souls. it's the hunger & drive & the need for fantastic execution, and they get it. so many easy routes to success, but they don't satisfy or challenge in the way that both hurts and feel so good. you can follow a clear, straightforward path, or you can just veer and go your own way. i have the best partners in kicking ass.

maybe i'll die before i achieve all the things i want. notes on mortality, things i think about generally, but lately, it's less philosophical musing, and more like a felt-reality. emotion makes all the difference in a concept being a cerebral plaything, or a factor in how one lives, presently.

i love my jazz. dead singers, melody, you are my fave companions. / i wonder how differently i'd be sleeping if i went out to catch tail instead of staying in. i could've theoretically rescheduled my morning, or've just made it work, but i didn't. i'm tired of making little inconveniences for myself. it's little sacrifices, and nobody really cares if i dick myself, or if i don't. (ha, ha, ha.)

i still want to move. i need a new space. i've been looking, so whatever. i don't want just any new space, but i'm sure i'll find the right place. while i'm being wishful, i want someone to love. i mean, i know i'm not at a dearth for friends & people to love, but it's that desire for a partner where it's like, hey, you, if you're sick, i'll make you soup because you need soup, but also, i kind of adore you, for just being human & alive in a je-ne-sais-quoi way that makes me happy.

love is like finding the perfect book, and it just makes you happy, because of the serendipity, but also, because you exist in the same universe of this wonderful thing, and you have found it, so you are never existentially alone anymore.

i don't feel like i'm existentially alone, which is excellent. my dude is out there. maybe i already met him, and i'm just oblivious to the obviousness of how awesome it'd be, or maybe i haven't yet, and we're about to encounter, but whatever. life is life. is short. is a rose, or rather, is a chrysanth, because i love those flowers. they're hardy and bold-beautiful, and they smell amazing. sure, they're not as soft or conventionally floral as other flowers, but they don't decay ugly.

a boy stopped by my bar the other night to tell me that he sold the little puppy that i loved, to a good owner. then he left. later, he came back with a rose. he picked up a bouquet for his friend's birthday, and decided to bring me a flower too.

i think gestures are cliche, but recognizing the cliche doesn't make it feel any less sweet. it made my evening a little lovelier. i talk cynical-cerebral, but i'm touched by all the little things. the thought counts.

also i really wanted that puppy. i cradled that adorable dude for the longest time.

on a different tangent, orgasms are great, but i want a guy who'll love me for being my silly weird self. high demands, i know. earlier i was kidding around with my best friend, and i was all like, man, some girls just want a guy to like them and do mushy boyfriend stuff like get dressed up and go to restaurants and be quiet at each other and give each other stinky flowers, and i just want a dude who likes hanging out with me and playing videogames and doing dorky artsy stuff. not that i'm not down to femme-up and go out, but i can already do that myself. the problem is that plenty of dudes are down to hang, but i have zero desire to sleep with most of them, and most of them aren't into good music or videogames or most of the stuff i like. that's like, zero connection. maybe i'll die alone because i need a guy to be funny, intelligent, relatively cute, relatively genuinely kind, driven, ambitious, self-aware, passionate about his interests, AND be mildly superhuman, while being also super human & mildly flawed in ways i'm going to find endearing.

also, i suspect marriage is for 50, 60-somethings. they seem to like it best. everyone else seems to kinda just grit their teeth through it, but maybe that's just the having kids & a family thing, which seems a little forced. contractual child-rearing!

the stuff of rainy day dreams

i took a trip to another coast, another city, to get away for a few days. it rained. the trip still exhausted me.

the truth is, the only solace is within the city in my heart, which is the city i already live in.

i just need to spend some time alone. took a long drive to the airport. was late for my flight because of the rain. missed it. a whole slew of people were late because of the weather. they would put us all on the next flight, comp'd. in the waiting-auditorium full of hundreds of chatting strangers, i spotted friends.

they had also taken unannounced vacations. some were in a group together; my old poker-playing/gaming cohorts who i spent my late high school evenings with, who i haven't seen in a few years. my beloved theatre duo, who broke my heart by growing cynical & bitter & ugly in humanity. they were happier now, growing beautiful again, separately, with different souls. they all were caught up in their return trips, & the chaos of flight delays. so many people i was once close with, and i was relieved to be unnoticed. they looked wonderful from far away, and i wanted to keep it that way. i slipped off for quiet & to buy duty-free souvenirs for my littlest sister.

and going different paths, i ran into him, my last ex-lover. the rush didn't come. he was like a stranger who i had no bad feelings towards. i apologized in passing for some antics that didn't matter anymore, and we laughed, not too deeply, and that was it, we were off to different destinations.

all these strangers. i went back to the waiting room, and tired, i fell asleep waiting. i woke to a mostly empty room. i missed my flight again. if i was traveling with my best friend, she wouldn't've let me miss my flight, but i was traveling solo.

they weren't going to comp me another flight, and i realized, it didn't bother me. i could afford a flight home. i could afford a flight, to anywhere. i perused the available flights.

it was still raining. i could go anywhere, and it'd likely be raining. there's always a route home. all other destinations, are optional interludes. the next direct flight home, was tomorrow morning.
 i left the airport, and went straight to another one.

i walked the long path to the other terminal, in the rain. i've worked in cold pouring rain, in dirty, flooding slums, in mostly darkness, for hours, for what i loved. rain in the dark, was nothing, especially on a paved, clean asphalt road. the light in the distance was enough.

i've taken longer roads on mountain paths, in marshes & swamps. i've been cold, in snow & ice, & too hot. with various companions, & also alone. i love my streets more than seemingly endless plains of grass, more than white, sandy beaches.

i've seen my city in fog, & i've wandered in it.
i've seen my city with fireflies & lovers, and it is always kissed by everything, from lamplight, to rain, to dusk, to all the moods of the poets, & the steps of souls.

they had a flight leaving in the next hour, so i took it. and then i woke.

chalk. chalk, black paper. the
methodical nod, up down
meaning in the crushed, compact bones
set against a grain of soaked
emaciated pulp.

there is a girl
in my mind
who walks barefoot in the rain
which comes
down like starlight
through the broken lens
of storm drains.

if there was poetry, she would be going somewhere, a character set in some tragedy, in the midst of suffering, before triumph, and beauty, and dry clothes, in lovingly crafted rooms.

what is this feeling? when the girl finds rooms like the ones in the interiors-gallery of the city-museum, what is there, but floors, to sit on quietly?

beds, and chairs. cushions & sheets. the stillness of life, kills. babies wail down the hall, though the floors are waxed & gleaming. this is a very nice kitchen. knick-knacks here, salt & pepper shakers there. the ugliness of napkins, in this utilitarian holder here.

this is all a cave.

Sometimes the old, familiar fog settles in, the inability to be present.

This room could be any room.

The sun shines in, weightless. I hug my pillow for sensation, and it is soft, but not so much that I want to keep holding on. I get into the experience too deeply, and it doesn't seem all that pleasant. The fabric of my body weighs. I feel like something massive had struck me, and had knocked me out of my body, and we just don't know yet, my body & I.

Sometimes the world inspires very little feeling in me. Some internal holding pattern, and I don't know if the plane is going to land, or if it ever lands. And if it crashes, I'm not feeling a thing.

fanny has adventures in nola-land

i. Flew in late Thursday night; dinner at some swank-esque place; food (braised beef cheeks) was melt-in-mouth perfect, wine was dry Austrian. Good wine always reminds me of former lovers. Waitress was a Stuy-girl, and well, I love my Stuy-people. It's brethren; finding a Hunter-kid never happens, so Stuy kids are the next best thing. We know & run adjacent city-social-circles. Bought her a shot; her husband is currently doing Batman comics, which is awesome.

Staying on the Champs-Élysées. (If I could time travel, I'd have a chat with Roger Zelazny about his literary use of the Elysian Fields.)

--There is a nickel-loading automatic music box at the foot of my bed. Forget paying for ad-free Pandora; for the price of a loaf of bread in the early 1900's, I have saloon piano tunes.

ii. Friday was wrecked houses (I love decayed, decrepit structure), & fried chicken at Willie Mae's.  I don't feel like reviewing the food; it makes me feel like I'm doing a literary instagram. Would've rather explored the remains of the neighborhood than nom on greasy bird, but whatever, I can do that when I'm not traveling with my best friend.

Swung by the art museum on a whim; the temp exhibits (Mel Chin, Camille Henrot) were interesting. Chin was cool, the work was good, but his thoughts/consciousness was loud. I liked Henrot for not getting in the way of the work itself. Art is cerebral amusement/beauty, this era anyway. I harvested a few concepts: ocean of thought/subconscious, & multiple perspectives/experiences on one visual.
In the reg. collection, the statues from the Hindu pantheon creeped me out a little, though not to the degree that the Met's collection does. They were my family's ancient gods, prior to their migration across the ocean & lands in the late 1800's. My mother's patron bodhisattva/goddess was standing on the top floor, time-worn & alone. It was a strange note, to find something core to my family lineage, from gone centuries, on this other side of the world. She was worshiped; people prayed or meditated to her, and now she is a permanent piece on the topmost floor of a beauty-mausoleum on the banks of the Mississippi.

Afterwards, decompressed on the grass & made a bouquet off the bayou. Hit up a Creole sausage establishment for gator sausage, wound up on a spontaneous tour around the factory. Nadine fed us freshly smoked sausage: gator, spicy, boudin, french chorizo (chaurice), cut from endless yards of hot links with a machete-esque blade. We picked up gator meat for our city-foodieboys & stopped by the local supermarket. 

Couldn't find wine that suited my mood, although there were the essential Sancerres and Riojas. A local boy tried to flirt and impress with his taste for Verdi sparkling wine (sketchy bodega sugar booze!) He was friendly, rambled about football and the Giants. Seemed like a good guy, but dude, not that I'm a city-slicker kinda chick, I mean, I'm pretty weird/idiosyncratic even for New York, but sports aren't up my alley, except when I want to put the discomfort/sense of psychological distance into the guts of my academic/nerdy ilk. Plus giving up things for Lent/religion isn't in my thread of a happy existence. I give up nothing for mythos. Not that I could really be with a boy who talked Joyce or pretentious-literary either. Truly loving a thing, deeply, is one thing; talking endlessly about it, is like a dude who talks about how he's good at sex to anyone who'll listen. Anyway, enough commentary. At least Freud was coked up when he got into the psychology of things. It helped him bullshit, self-assured. At the core of it, dude was saying, "Yes, you." & I was saying, "You? No."

We prepped dinner; standard garlic & olive oil on everything for the grill. (Oil for cooking, butter for baking; not a rule, but nobody has to eat well as a rule either.) Then we hiked out, saw Washboard Chaz at The Spotted Cat. The bartender was new. You can always tell. (No, you can't.) Music was great; got me nostalgic for New York jazz & people though. I try to be present. It's hard sometimes. Home is home, so I like to forget it for a bit, even if I love it. It's right where I left it, with all my good sentiments. Was excited to leave the city & am happy to be here, but I'm pretty happy and content with life. It's a recreational vacation, not an escapist one. / Everyone (drunk) streamed in as the evening grew late. Our hosts were enjoying themselves; everyone was dancing. I stepped out for air, chatted with the bouncer (Honduran first-gen); he looked like a cuddly friend I once knew in my teens. Then I hit up the art market next door. 

People keep talking about how friendly people are here, but I think people are as friendly or unfriendly everywhere.

Dinner is dinner, was light & lovely in the backyard.

Me & Alair (alair & i) afterwards wandered the quarters, found the local bars (opposed to tourist bars; less vacation partiers and more people just having a drink or two), hit up The Spotted Cat, again, & then wandered the open air gallery.

On a side street, I ran into a poet with a typewriter. He's 27 and from the city (NY) too. Was a native, but not my kind. He was a private-school K-12-er and I was public school magnet. Post-bohemian money versus cutthroat intellectual meritocracy.
I requested a poem, and offered one in return. He typed, & I scribbled in dark green ink on my heavyweight notebook paper. He was selling his poetry to drunks. I started readings in the city. It's worse than two communists in the same room; it's two native NYC poets of different circles on a New Orleans street. He had his bottle of hipster beer that he kept spilling and I had my novelty go-cup of scotch. We read our poems and exchanged them. I wished him in life, everything he deserved, no more & no less.

Afterwards, me & a. wandered the empty streets and window-shopped the closed storefronts. We found ourselves where we had dinner the night before. There was a young couple sharing a sandwich on a doorstep. They were in love, & happy. You can always tell by the way they look at each other. I wanted a bodega sandwich, so we had one, and it was good. Late summer-night bodega sandwiches are always a highlight.

I noticed some incredibly shady guy turned around from his path to follow us, so I casually modded our path & lost him; we slipped down a long dark alleyway, & into an open-air atrium of sleepy apartments in the dead of night. I've been losing creeps for years. Also finding secret tranquil places of gorgeousness. It was moonlight & lamps & water fountains. If this was Starcraft, my hero units successfully avoided detection from lame enemy units and entered a cinematic cut-scene.

We sat & talked about dating, and how we'd fail Bechdel on a technicality if we were a movie. Sometimes we love people we know it won't work out it, or how sometimes we fall in love with ideas or a relationship but never get to know a person. Dating is difficult; I've kinda been writing off everyone I'd ever meet in my twenties. It doesn't even matter if they're the right person, because I'm not ready, but I'm thinking, maybe that's the wrong way to go about it too.

It's easy to love people at their best. It's when you love them, even at their worst and most flawed, and you know you won't kill them, that you might work out. Maybe I write off love, & people too easily. I get so avoidant. I don't want to commit to something, just to have it fail because hey, I'm kinda a little guarded bitch when it comes to my feelings, but eh. Suck it trust/control issues. Just gotta let go to be happy. I've gotten excellent at going with the flow in most arenas, except love. The more emotionally invested I become in someone, the more guarded & detached & distant I get, and it sucks. It's that stupid hangup that once I let myself believe in something beautiful, it's going to break, and then I'm going to be so damn sad. The funny thing, I've learned though, is that even if I write off something on a cerebral/rational level, apparently, the ups and downs are still there. Tenderness still happens, and soul-gutting heartache still happens. The only difference, is whether I'm honest & vulnerable about it when it still matters. Crazy sex is easy. Love, & the willingness to be emotional when it's infinitely easier not to be, that takes guts. Guts. Who gives a shit about sexual godhood when you're a copout when it comes to feelings? !!! Intimacy & trust is sexy. And really honest communication.

Anyway, afterwards, we wandered into the local Irish dives. We pretty much found the best lowkey places and avoided the rest of the world.

We hit up late-night voodoo shops.

And then, I spotted pole-dancers in a sketchy looking window in a sketchy part of town. Alair was iffy about going in, but I promised to get one-drink only and we could leave immed' if it was too sketch, and it was victory! Pole-dancers were up front, but then I was like, hey, there's a back! And we went. It was a huge diva drag show/mostly nekkid twerk party in the back. So good. Made the night.

The dancing ended. We wound up chilling along the dewy Mississipi; it reminded me so much of Bensonhurst. We ended with pizza. A mistake, because when people outside of New York order pizza, they are ordering a disgusting, fat, bullshit, tasteless travesty that passes for pizza. All good. It was 4am, which meant it was 5am in NYC; which meant it was almost bedtime.

Cabbed home. That's like, at least 15 different things crammed into a long, long day.

We're hitting up the swamp next.

when i'm down, she puts the water on for tea, and water for the orzo.

i wish i could be a little bit of something else. could do with a little love.
everything is so different when the feeling sweeps me from myself.

i don't like the disenchantment that i live with. i want different eyes and a different heart; i want my ease to fall. i'm too young to be like this. i want all those things that made me harder, to erase away.

yes, there were bad choices, and yes, there were mistakes. yes, someone took something from me.
i didn't let it kill me and make me rot, but it's another scar on my psyche. i wear all these things.

up and down, i don't know who i am, and then i do.
i'm starting to think about buying out on my mind. who needs this navelgaze garbage in me? i don't need this in me.

everyone's gotten different. people who were bright have dulled out. it's always cold. people aren't warm anymore; they just lack that life. dead fires all about. it's the mellowing. i'm so exhausted of feeling that nothing holds. this numbness becomes mine too, more and more.

i'd rather hurt than feel nothing. i miss the pain. all this impotent, flattened, restless rage.
she was unhappy, and then she was numb, and then she stopped being the gorgeous girl she was.
i don't want to be like that. i don't want the internal death.

bodily mortality is nothing when there is a chokehold grip that suffocates from inside.


..okay. enough bullshit. gonna shower it off, gtfo, & find a good laugh.

wherever i go, i'm still there.

sometimes, coming to terms with yourself means coming to terms with the things you can't change. i could learn a new language, write a new song, paint something moody & lovely. i could dance. i could drink, but it's not an escapism i care deeply for, and i drink for the taste anyway.
life is whatever you fill it with. i don't want a lot.

maybe i could do music for a while. what is love anyway?

i remember existential ennui at two and a half, and now i'm twenty five and a half. all the flavors but everything starts looking the same, feeling the same. self-medicate with everything, music, sex, drugs, afternoons alone, novels, art, television, paint, strangers, friends, urbanscapes, wandering.

at 8, on an august day, the baby was asleep, so i sat on my window sill with the voyages of dr. dolittle in a favorite skirt. there was no guard rail or screen; only myself on the little ledge, right over the backyard. and i thought, if i jumped, i'd break bones. or i could grow up. i could become a lawyer, or anything else. and maybe things would be different. maybe life would become magical. i didn't believe that good or evil existed. there were only brief people, with their streams of drives & desires, some doing pleasant things, others, unpleasant things. i was waiting for the age to begin, where i'd have my multiple careers, my art, my lover, my children, and my cohorts.

and the world has progressed and merged a little more, but my interiors haven't really changed. the same emotions & possibilities exist. people drift in and out of my life. i try different jobs and arts. some appeal more than others, depending on the day. i am the same girl i was at 8, but with an older body and more awareness thrown in. what is joy? books are my companion, as are my own thoughts. i love a lot, and i don't love a lot. tastes & colors, i am an easily bored experimentalist trying to find something that sticks. and i don't want romance. and i don't want ugly cynicism. there is only reality. the rat races go on, and materialism goes on, both spiritual and physical, and people weep, from happiness or suffering, and i am a strange outsider with only a taste for the unworked truths.

i want the world, and all the worlds that exist in souls. i can stay put, which is a hard choice, but nothing holds me down.

i. exes, new boys, old boys, ex girls; i don't want a thing but myself & my guitar.

ii. cherub rock, get lost in it. i like it until the a.d.d. kicks in. too much cabaret-emotion and i go. it's never been long enough. these interactions do nothing for my soul.

i hate when it creeps in their eyes, this slow-growing adoration that comes too fast. i guess we all know at the beginning where we potentially stand with someone. maybe it's timing.

i don't like to touch or be touched.

sometimes i look at the crap i write, and i go, really? fanny, i'm going to fuck you up. there's reality, and then there's the bullshit you weave when you're riding some pretty space in you. yeah, it's a romance in its own way. you change the party-line & the vocabulary, but you are still a liar. you have no loyalties to beauty or love. you have no loyalties to anything but your whims & gratifications. fanny, i'd fuck you because you're hot and are made up of strange dichotomies. that's the prettier way of saying, inconsistent. boys look, and sometimes they call you chaos, but you know that they're just stupid and too dumb to accept that you're mercurial and not a muse of any kind. they want a girl to embody some eternal ideal, and you just want a body & psyche to play with until you want something else. romance is your bitch and territory, and you don't give a shit.

The concept is frames.

She asked where I hid it, and I said, "With my art supplies." People know to not touch my instruments.

--

If you gave me the alphabet & the colors, I could tell you how I felt, but without them, I am mute, trapped in the ocean of myself, where I am washed in waves and drifts, and there is only myself & the sky, in the dark colors of a storm, and the ocean, which is more than any storm.

I'm not lost.

I am in an endless ocean which I cannot control. Sometimes I go under, and sometimes I surface, tired & I am afloat, not purely of my own will. The next wave will knock the breath from me, and I will choke on strange water, and drown. I don't expect to come back up, but I don't think about coming back up. The wave hits me, and I am kicking and kicking, but it goes dark and I am drowning.  And then I wake, exhausted and worn. I am like a girl stumbling out of a fever, weak & dizzy, and still fighting, because if I stop, even when there is nothing in me that can, I will be dead.

--

There is a thin paper sheet between death and myself.

I lean against it, the way I'd rest my body on my bed, if it were a hard relief. Soft beds are pleasant, but I could do with smooth, dark stone.
I don't need it to offer me much, just a reliable resting place until I can keep moving. Sometimes I need to kneel, alone, and just take in the quiet. Sometimes I need to curl up, into a fetal ball that needs to hold onto myself for a moment. Sometimes I just need to lay my body down, and shut my eyes.

--

Bodies are okay.

I like them for sex or making love, whatever my mood is. Moods of a woman, people make humor, but we're lucky for the variation. There is a monotony of having only one experience during physical acts. People think they want the same thing over and over, but there is no constancy.

A body is a body, although I prefer healthy, expressive ones. I don't need a body by mine unless it's the right one. I don't need love.

So many strange souls are drawn to me. They want to hold me and carry me. They think, if they do, I will look from their thrown-upon-me safety and love them. There's the ugly flaw in this show. There is no love in force. They have their brash hero narrative, this romanticized evolution of caveman instincts, and I have my awareness. I have nothing for this self-made hero, this self-centered romanticizer. I am not the token object in somebody's amateur fantasy.

My love is pure; it cannot be bought with romance, nor material. It is not the prize, the digital achievement award dished out after trial & victory, in a game. I don't care if it's requited, although I wouldn't mind.

I don't want a bootlegged kind of love.

Love is truth and nakedness. People are stripped down of their aesthetics & identities, and it's not a play at anything. It's just two souls naked together, and both are wholeheartedly, earnestly saying yes.

hungarian sundays

hungarian sundays

i drink my coffee black from the paper cups
under dim barlights.
there's a strange comfort to being alone
with your fogged self where nobody really knows you.

the professional photographer has his beer over mortality,
and on one side we parry unfairly,
and the musician, he has his cheap red wine & himself, which is not bad,
but seat-side i am with me. i don't want to know.

as a child, you always ask,
as a child, you are always hungry and you need to ask for sustenance,
and if you are lucky, someone will have kindness enough to feed you.

but sometimes, you just have to feed yourself,
or not eat a thing.

gave my piece away; under.
ill & light. mouth &
things, child.

it was a choke and you are the sick toy that the girls grow bored of.
lights and orgasms, dimming and you are the wrong temperature.

i could, but i'm okay with the dirt on my skin. stones, below,
i am climbing along concrete, rusted metal frames
leave red on my palms and i am so close to the night sky.

i don't write for you, i don't sing for you, and i don't fuck for you.
the comics are eager to please, the laughter abates
a bitter toxin that runs in them; they could do with a breathmint.

i am laughing at the bar. the more it costs,
the slower i go. and they are so easy.

what makes it like this? what makes you think
that love had anything to do with this?

could've spiraled into self-loathing & shame, but i didn't.

i had a bad night.
i was numbing my feels for a while & venting in overproductivity, which is great, in some ways.
i get beautiful work done. and then shit was done, and well, y'know, you can't avoid dealing with things forever. plus it was killing my music.

if i cried like a normal person, i would've cried, but i wasn't raw like that, and it's been coming out in all the other ways. people love swooping in and trying to play shoulder & hero when i'm down, but i keep my sadness safe from bored parasites. some people are dissatisfied with their own lives so they try to live in mine instead of working on theirs, but i've gotten pretty adept at keeping superficial people out.

it was too much gin, & the perfect amount of mac & cheese, & all the feelings i didn't want.
grief and despair and anger and goddamn honest vulnerability. and it was the admitting to myself that i was still holding on. and it was the letting go.
i don't think anybody meant to hurt anyone. nobody needed the bullshit.
we were building a scary nothing-castle on storm clouds, and when the rain came down, we were just wet kids, strangers on the playground at dusk, needing to go elsewhere. you didn't need to go home, but you couldn't stay.

i woke up in the morning and laughed. it was okay. i did music.

people fall in love all the time. we always think the last one or the next one is it. we want to stop looking but i think love just happens whenever it happens. it just works out better when people are also genuinely happy/satisfied with their lives.

---

i looked through the sin rostro two-year anniversary photos for the first time, and there was this adorable one where i was crouched on the stage during the intermission, watching everyone have a fantastic time at the show, and i was beaming & super happy. i did a thing, and it was beautiful and heartfelt and so many friggin sharp writers & artists & musicians & comedians & storytellers & crazy projects came out of the scene. and i am so proud of everyone. it was soulful expression & perfected aesthetics, and the things we really wanted to do. it was a venue for worthwhile work that didn't fit prescribed scenes. we're on hiatus at the moment, until i can do more hands-on work, but this is my baby. i started from nowhere on this, at 22, and i did right by sin rostro.

there was a choice there; it could become a regular consumer product, or it could keep being the vital loved thing. people don't always see the difference, but i know it. i don't half-ass anything.

-

one of my friends from college got all passive-aggressive moody at me because i've been busy, and she was all like, "some people think you're selfish and insincere." and i was like, "well. i've been busy, so i don't know who these people are." and she was like, "i'm not naming names, but i feel this might be true."

and then politely, i was like, "well. considering that i spend all my time running from work to project to work to project to work to project, kind of endlessly, 8 hour heavy shifts to 13-16 hour shifts and back and forth with no time for myself, where i work my heart out on multiple projects in pouring rain or the freezing cold or swampy heat, with like no sleep, while also staying emotionally level & singlehandedly taking care of my mother while i watched her almost die, awake, but quite slowly, like her heart stopped 8 times, in the e.r. in the last few months, while maintaining all the jobs & productions i love, & meeting all the deadlines-- i haven't really seen anyone except the people & kids i work with, & a stupid, incredible amount of doctors & e.r. staff. and i still was there for every friend who was legit going through a hard time too, whether it was death of a loved one or terrible illness or sudden unemployment. the few people i do see, are also working their asses off & are doing a million things. ...but, to cut it short, i probably don't know who these fantastic people are, who've got the luxury of all this excessive time & energy to deem me selfish & insincere. i mean, if i had that much time, god, all the cool things i'd do."

there was no finesse, but she had nothing to say after that.

how i knew

i. the sense of adventure, of sneaking away from a loud, boring, obligatory place with dressed up people and bad music, for quiet & idle evening cards, which became conversational intimacy under bright florescents, in an alcove of an adjacent building. 

i was disappointed that the boy i was interested in, wasn't interested in me, but was being graceful & pragmatic about it, at thirteen, in a size zero chiffon floral. it was summer, and night was vivid, stars out above the balcony, stars out above the highway. the girls wanted to dance & kiss & flirt, but the familiar crowd in the cool dark of the dance hall made me want to be alone. we lost our euphoria-hungry friends.

you babbled like a little boy about the girls you loved, and i felt so old, even though you were older than me. sober & sad, you cried about the failing relationship between your parents, & about mortality. and i said the comforting things that people say. you got your secret sadness out, and the world was okay. and then i had to go.

i fell in love with the humanity, and you fell for the way i made you feel.


sixteen, and it was raining early in april. there was no happiness. the tortured romantic drama kept things interesting for a while, but then we were bored of playing our caricatures. the sun came out in the pour, and there was a rainbow. drenched in all that rain, we kissed, and there was nothing but cold & rain.


---


ii. we were at the ocean. there was another couple with us, and they were playing. the sun was glittering in the water and in your sunflower-sea green eyes which only looked into me.

we ice-skated. i saw the way you looked at her, so later, at the bar which we loved, over casual beers, i asked you when you were going to go after the girl you've always loved. and you said never, because you had me & i was good. later, more drunk, you picked me up & spun me in the candlelight of your kitchen, & said you loved me, and asked but why i couldn't be more like her. i said i loved you. and the next day, i called to call it over, and you were a little angry, but said okay. i don't remember anything beyond that.


---


iii. it was everything about you. the world was ordinary & bleak, and then it wasn't. it was your hair, the smile, our mutual love for good wine & lit & music. it was the end of summer & it was the way you existed. it was when you slept, when you laughed, the way you sometimes woke in the morning. it was the way we made our bodies close, a little fearful, but wholeheartedly.

i turned away and you turned away. we didn't touch. it was just gone. and when it was time to leave, i got the fuck out, running on the inside with my numbness. i don't even remember the kiss goodbye, because there was nothing in it, even if we wanted there to be.
i wished so hard. i didn't even know what i was wishing for. i wanted you deep, and i wanted to give you myself, and nobody could do anything. maybe nobody knew how.

i am happy, so i'm writing. i love the way he has humor in a true way. i love the russian blue who i keep company with as i tend bar for the souls who like to communicate in music. i love covers of audioslave, also cheeseburgers, & reptiles. if this was a love letter, i'd say, hey babe, i'm only a phone call away. babe, i'm only a phone call away; so are you, yes, i should find you soon, but here, let me play my guitar for a while, and sing the things i love to sing, love to feel, love to love, which there is so much of, in the springtime-summer loveliness of new york.

the way i feel about you is with me, in a good way, in a good way, like a ska song, which fuels my jazz, which lets me coast on my soul in the rocky sweet love of things. oh life, ah life, oh sweet life. i think of you in feelings of ephemeral nights, and my love makes me love the human nuances & accents of souls, which is not really your business, but it could or might be. the thought of you is a really lovely haze that lights me up on the inside. people have beautiful souls sometimes, and you have one that's pretty nice.


all this happiness. i used to think i didn't like olives, didn't like pancakes, but i just didn't like where i was or who i was with, or who i was because i let myself accept unhappiness as the norm. my happiness, is like green olives in paella, & blueberry buttermilk pancakes; things i rather like making actually.

i got rid of all the parasitic people who brought me unhappiness with their semblances of love, and y'know, it was a barren world at first, in a painful way, but i grew into my life, & filled it with only good things, and it worked out. i write you songs in my heart, with my heart, with my fingers on my guitar, with my imperfect voice which i also love. this poet sings.

gonna transition from rhythmic to drumming. fuck that shit, i can drum.
if i can't find the amazing drummer, i'll be one. arrhythmic poets are where it's at. you've got to have a feel for rhythm to break it, & to smash it together. so many boys/girls are so a-to-b, start-to-finish; it works but lacks the complexity i get cravings for.

the key, is to live to your music. if you are the drum, the bodies beat.
are we gods, or are we the reptile in our hindbrains? both.
humanity is not the poles, but the between.

bedding & sheets. i could get tangled up in yours, i like them, but i have to know that you want it, right where it hurts.
it's a waste to have a love in your bed otherwise, to have the image of what's desired, but to not feel it. feeling is where it's at.

some people edit for technical performance & structure, which i appreciate. aesthetics are important. i get a kick out of sweeping in & doing my work on the soul/heart of the piece. it is the sun. everything else, is just flowers & dark space.

richter gives me chills.

---

boys are adorable.  i'm hard hitting on an edge in me & it's all my jazz standards in the shower, all lovely-resonant, & sudden midverse beatbox-rap thigh-slap-drums, wet rain grooves.

most words dissatisfy. most moods, too. burritos.
and this is where the guitar falls into my hands. sometimes song is just beautiful aggression.

i do think you're beautiful. do i have to tell you?

how to learn to read

I was waiting, and waiting.

It was the speed of Hemingway lunching late, while the protagonist was waiting for a thing that no longer required waiting.

Tables go unwaited when the cafe is empty and the evening nears close, closing whenever the owner deems it time to close shop, to retire upstairs for the quiet evening cup of tea.


When you're young, you think, one day, I will be.
I will grow into this ideal, where happiness arises, and everyday is satisfied. There might be a career. There might be art-on-the-side. There will be friends, and a more-or-less permanent-partner. It's this hazy, fictive suburbia-soul, even in our cities. Apartments. Cats. Fish in a bowl, or in tanks. Coffee mugs, & espresso machines. Vitamins, with food, because taken alone, it will give you nausea & that nagging headache.

My last fish died, three years ago, this silver moon of a fish, with its lovely billows, & thread of pink & blue, and I wept, because I could not keep it alive, despite the PH-perfect tank, & the filter, & the food. I did right by the fish, and it died anyway, new, young, & beautiful.


Moo-moo died when I was seven, so I learned to read, prolifically. She was the only person who knew my tongue.

My parents were never around most days; my mother was away, dealing with a family crisis, & took my little brother with her. My father worked 'til late.
There was school, where dark-haired Asiatic children who looked a little like me, didn't speak my language, & nor did the others, the jewish kids or the italians or the spanish.

When my mother called, I'd make up stories about playtime. I didn't want her to know that it was loneliest part of my day, where all the other kids had their groups. I said so-and-so was my friend, and so-and-so & I played house, and so-and-so & I raced cars. I did not say that I fiddled idly with the unloved toy-space of the day, and that I thought that playtime would never end.

Moo-moo would pick me up after school, which was the best part of the day. And then we'd go on adventures. She'd wander the neighborhood with me, and when I was tired, we'd sit on a bench, and I'd eat my snack. And then we'd go home, and she'd peel her snap-peas & make dinner, and I'd watch, and she would read me stories from her newest comic-collection.

all cycles:

i. meet someone, don't meet someone, meet someone almost special but not
ii. drinks, food, coffee, tea
iii. friends, more than friends, best friends, family
iv. sex, love, things in between, and things not at all
v. fantasy, wishes, hopes, dreams, dreaming about work, work, off-time from work
vi. adorable children, frustrated aged-children, bitter young people, bitter old people,
vii. kindness, the ease of finding happiness when not expecting it (happens all the time, babe)
viii. behind on work, behind on art, ahead on some other things, which makes life pretty okay
ix. break down, or actually, not, and not be surprised at all
x. play guitar, write, sing, sing in the shower, dance in the kitchen, bake cookies, bake brownies, bake cake, bake sometimes
xi. wine, poker, spend time with people you easily enjoy the company of
xii. minimalize on the bullshiters, the whiners, the negative, the ugly-at-core, the manipulative
xiii. depression is real, bitch, and so is anxiety, and stress, drink water, drink less, be objective, & be more importantly, in-gut kind to self & others in positive progress in emotional well-being
xiv. kindness is not fucking easy; it's an internal, conscious choice against other innate instincts; it's not morality that drives it, but the choice to decrease levels of various forms of suffering that exist
xv. life is suffering, life is a hand of cards in a game with shifting rules, and you can futz it a little if you have the energy for it; life is happiness in the agency in personal realms
xvi. people are not pawns and non-players in your life, but developing players in their own lives, so don't be a mean little bitch and fuck with someone else's saved game when they're working on something.
xvii. if they take time to help you, whatever, cool, thank you for the pokeball, keep moving if you want those badges, or quit if you're done; yellow, blue, crystal, ruby, pearl, you do not have to get a nintendo 3ds and play the new ones unless you want to
xviii. you can become a traveler in your own city, you can take a vacation in your city, just do it justice & not half-assed
xix. live. death is okay too, but you only get one real one of each.
xx. love is not something that happens like rain;
it is a act from within someone, and it's not always easy, and it's usually not. nobody deserves it or doesn't deserve it. sometimes it is beautiful, and sometimes, it is a hot disgusting mess in a bad way. love is not romance, nor is it a video game where you win at the end after playing well. it's just one of those things, where it is, or it isn't. it is inherent, & arbitrary, and sometimes it is there, and sometimes it is not there, because it is a feeling in your guts & brain, and there is no wrong or right about it-- the only thing fairness has got to do with, is your actions, & sometimes it is relevant in relationships & human interactions,--- but fairness has got jackshit to do with love,
& love, might just be the satiating feeling of happiness that occurs in a being because of concept/thing existing in the universe.

how to frost a cake

the crumpled letters i send, or the handfuls i don't.

in the last century, you could mail a letter, and it'd be gone. paper & ink, and it's out of your hands. everything exists in digital these days, so yeah, all the re-living, re-experiencing, & re-interpreting.

take the photo. if it's good, print it, & hang it.

wherever you go, your life exists in record. there is no escape.

i think about moving. i think about quitting everything i've started.
why is there this need for continuity? why can we not have one-shot beautiful projects?

there is such a need for career narrative, for journey & goals, in this long novel, but maybe my life is poems.

this was joy in lunch in my mother's kitchen, on a restless afternoon. that was croutons from a box, poured into slavic soup made by my best friend's mother. that was winter skies, all pale and grey and bright. that was a soft darkness on my hard floor in the room where light seeped in from the hall. that was the radiator, and the highway is a slow sweep. what is light, but orange streaks of evening on the walls, when you are awake & existentially alone?

one boy sees a sad girl he wants to save, another, a muse. one boy sees creative mania, another, a fierce drunken mess. one, a bullshitting hustler, another, a wide-eyed innocent. one, a crazy girl for pure hot fucking, another, a sweet lady for a doting wife. this one, a strict, mean-mouthed bitch, another, kindness, kindness, kindness. what is play, and what is heartfelt?

detached or a gush of emotion. it's lenses. they all see something different, and are either aggressive or intimidated, angry or sad, adoring or bitter, this or that. desire is a bitch, but they are the ones driving these emotional fantasies in their minds.

i'm just a girl, but girls are an easy medium for gratification, psychological or physical.
if i wasn't a girl, i'd be a bottle of pills. one pill gives you orgasms, and another makes you weep, and yet another does nothing at all, so maybe you change your prescription, which may or may not help you find happiness or satisfaction, or the different lens of experiencing the world, that your soul seeks.

love is hard because on the rare occasion i find someone i feel about on a deep-in-my-guts level, sometimes i know i am just a form of escapism for his soul. he doesn't know me. i mean, he knows bits of me, to be sure, and maybe has a sense of what i look like, but what he loves most, is this idea of me that he's got, and he doesn't want to ruin that idea. he's already in love with this idea. how do i compare with her?

well, i don't care how i compare with this ideal, but i can sense when a boy is falling in love with some idea who shares my face and body, but not my soul. i'm not mad about it. it's just not what i'm looking for.

it's not too hard for me to fall in love, because i fall in love pretty damn easily, but it feels pretty bad when i fall in love with someone who's already in love with an idea of me, so i stop myself. it's like a stop & go, which doesn't feel fantastic, but it's okay.

i'm complex, but not complicated.
i like cheese & bartending. i like poems and long wanders. i like the rain, & playing my guitar.

if i didn't love so many things in the city, & the city itself, and if i didn't have family (who don't need me, but sort of do), and friends who are family, - i'd leave. i'd move to some other city, somewhere warm, and i'd bartend, and spend my free time writing, & making music, & wandering beaches. i don't need a lot to be happy. i do a lot, & help people create & do what they love, because it is the next best thing, to doing what i love, which can wait. people are in your life, for loving.

if i could, i'd have even more awesome people in my life, and maybe the less awesome people already in the fringes of my life would become better people to themselves & others, but whatever. we're all doing our best.

i thought i was falling in love last year, but eh. our lives weren't falling together, and i didn't force it. there was so much uncertainty. if i could, i would have him in my life. it would make me pretty fucking happy, but it looks like he's moved on. i'm all on and off missing him, but i've been mature about it.

what is love? / i don't know, but i know when people are special to me.

some people just make you happy because they exist. for the last part of the year, when my mom was in the hospital, and we were in the ward thinking that she would die at any moment, we talked for a really long time, & honestly.

i've got an overachiever's streak, but in the face of the lives of others, i realize that i don't really care about the rat race. i have nothing to prove. i don't need money or fame. i do what makes me happy, and not at the expense of others.

if i died tomorrow, it'd be okay.
maybe i'll die without finding a romantic partner, or having created a child, but i did awesome stuff already. everything else in life, is just frosting. my life is a cake, crafted with all these shades of love.

i only wanted a small bite.