FUCK stage 4 cancer.

Summer 09

The Decemberists album The Hazards of Love has been the soundtrack to this summer. With Bon Iver, The Tallest Man on Earth, Good Old War, The Shins, Modest Mouse, and my friends The Fervour all mixed together. Listening to friends play acoustic in the Mt. Joy graveyard.

My two-day 21st birthday in Harrisburg and then The Batdorf with all of my silly friends.... Most of which happen to be guys I've noticed. With the exception of my best girlfriend who's like a sister, I find guys to be easier to hang with in a lot of respects. Girl time is always fine, but fate has just put me around a great group of musical/creative/interesting guys this summer.

The Shins w/ John in B-more.

Seeing Patrick Wolf and Jaguar Love in Philly w/ Lancelot and Olivia. aaaah so good.

Fourth of July/Avalon weekend with Chad and Lancelot.

Back of the Astro-Van.

mushroom adventure/experience

10+ shooting star sightings. :)

Monday MJ's nights with coffee and chainsmoking.

...being described as a "bubbly tough girl"

Winter Harbor/Otisfield/Acadia National Park, Maine

running/biking/transforming.

losing my phone/inappropriate cuddling ;)

........Realizing that I'm at a place in my life that can be enjoyed.

This summer has been a perfect mix of hardwork/solitude/and shenanigans.

As these August days evaporate in my wake I can only smile and laugh at my missteps. I've come such a long way and hope the coming cold air will only solidify and steady these wild hopes of mine that have come back to life. :D

I'm alive again and happy after some time in between and growing. :)

Just finished "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It is beautiful, fantastic, and addicting. Pick it up.

'sleeping lessons'

I am seeing The Shins this friday in Baltimore.
It's so simple and so complicated as I can't help but feel I'm dancing on the shale slivers of possibility :D
I'm just here for the view.

...and some mischief too.

a little deep, a little down

but what's the sun

without the stars 

Get what you need

If this isn't the life you wanted, please put on the grown up pants and realize Jagger may have had one or two things correct.  Some things just are and nothing is really fair across the boards. 

 It's sickeningly naive to believe you will find your footing in the world and love every aspect of your work simply because possibilities and hopes have been sung and whispered to us for such a long time.

Giving up isn't easy, it's rather suffocating actually. You can change paths, but it's not as though you'll start down the new way with the same old feet. There are blisters there you couldn't change from miles of pavement, and gravel, and dirt. They've changed your fingerprints, reactions, and memories. 

Forget your umbrella and unusually cool spring months spit in your face. Then I can tell you that you don't throw a fit.  You don't freak out over your hair falling out ( only in the wee hours, of course) . You shouldn't freak out at all, not when the real world doesn't care. But, you don't quite accept defeat either, you simply walk on knowing your jeans are dragging and that running would only get you wetter faster. 

I don't understand the attitude that everything must always be either great or awful. I can speak on an aspect that makes me feel awful, but that's not the whole of my experience. I am everything at once, with emotion and consciousness giving precedence to immediate factors.

Immediately, right now, I am twitchy, uncomfortable, and adrift. My roommate makes me cringe when she's done no wrong, while I am preoccupied with the situation I've dug for myself through months of getting caught in my own webby nonsense.

I swear I'm a highly functioning mimic. or worse. unsatisfied and insecure.

I watched Vicky Christina Barcelona, and if I can steal some Woody Allen....I only know what I don't want. 

I don't know what I want, or rather, I want a life that seems further and further away from fruition. 

I always believed things would just fall into place if I worked hard and did what I was supposed to do. 

Trying to be happy was one of the worst mistakes of my life. Maybe I should have let them break me completely. It's a shame I woke up one day with the realization of where I was heading, like after going to confirmation classes  with a best friend in middle school only to be scared off when I realized the classes were meant to lead to being a member of the church.

I feel like I'm not able to fully process concepts until I've seen an example or been in the thick of it.

There's no one to model after now and I don't want to be a carbon copy either. 

I've made that damn near impossible. 

I find my contradictions excruciating....I sway between meeting expectations and fantasy, unsure where to plant my feet and how to run from there. 

"You can't always get what you want..."

"caught between all you wish for and all you see"

home in bed

When good things finally come, they're going to be that much sweeter. 

Some things will balance past, present, and future 

Others'll keep life free-wheeling

Until then.... I'm here

Snow in April? Really?

It flurried intermittently all day today and into the evening. In just one day it snowed more than it did last month.....That's fine. 

A.E. Housman- "Alta Quies" 

Good night. Ensured release,

Imperishable peace,

Have these for yours.

While sky and sea and land

And earth's foundations stand

And heaven endures.

When earth's foundations flee,

Nor sky nor land nor sea

At all is found, 

Content you; let them burn

It is not your concern: 

Sleep on, sleep sound. 

If I had a kite.....

If I had a kite, a paper bird, I would be flying it now the way we flew them at Northside overlooking basketball courts and swings. It's gorgeous outside. 

At home too, I remember a rope net of sorts, plastic yellow, strung between the apple trees. 

When Cole wasn't using it, I would drag out the old mauve blanket, climb up to swing in the spring breezes with a book. The best times had a slight chill ,afternoon light ripening, and an atmosphere filled with apple blossoms. 

Pale pink petals would float down to spotty grass. I was curled up in that cocoon strung between warped trunks, yet still elsewhere, tucked in fantasy. 

Do Good

I think I might want to go into the Peace Corps after I graduate in two years. 

Somewhere where they speak Spanish, so I could muddle through. 

Not quite sure....I have no idea where I want to put roots down and I'd like to do some good.  

Not sure. 

We'll see, I guess. 

evocative object

So,we had to pick an evocative object from our lives and write it on an index card today.

I thought of my bike and the trails, 

but there was another something that wouldn't be ignored. 

I couldn't stop thinking about my lost mystic topaz ring .

Synthetic, but That big bauble of a cocktail ring...too big for my fingers. 

I lost it the first night I ever went out at college. 

It slipped off my finger when I tripped and fell

2006, On a college lawn in Muncie.Indiana

early September.

I lost my only real piece of jewelry my mother had bought me at that point.

The silver was hammered and gorgeous.

I was hammered that night and not so hot.

I lost a lot of faith that night. 

Hell, I almost lost a lot more than just my dignity that night. 

I feel like if I just got back that ring I'd be a little more whole.

Fuck. 

Every time. Thinking about that ring makes me embarrassed, mad, and achingly sad. 

He said We could find it later. It had made sense at the time. 

I wonder if anyone found it. It's hard to imagine it not being found

(I hope it was, but I almost hope it's half buried and waiting)

It was gorgeous, and meant(means) a lot to me. 

I had just wanted to go back to my room. Didn't feel well.  That's all....

and I lost my topaz ring. 

.....gah. That's one object I'd like back. If there's anything I regret and would definitely change from Ball State.....it's that night.

I wish I still had that ring, and maybe then everything would have been alright?

No, definitely not, 

but I feel like If I could just hold it in my hand again

 Id look into the cabochon, 

its facets and feel relief maybe absolution. 

I was just a stupid little girl. I've never drank that much again. 

I should have been taken care of. I should have had some sense, but couldn't see past the 'cervezas' 

It was like a premonition for all that came after....

......But i'm good where I am. 

I just don't wear rings often. 

...I lose my breath just looking at that one. 

I don't mean to seem shallow.

There's just a lot wrapped up in that image. 

........and I slept through Lear last night :/ ...

Summer can't come soon enough. 

King Lear

Ian Mckellen in King Lear on PBS tonight at 8. Yup, i'm there. :P

(I needed a change of scenery. Thank you Hoodlebug Trail.)

I want to curl up in the small earthy places of the world. They happen under pine tree hideouts all full of  soft needles. There the warm cushion of silence, singular to evergreens, can soothe all anxieties. I want to get lost in the plastic bagged sandwiches, orange soda, and fanny packs of the past. Crushed mint leaves and rain water in a cup. Tree sap darkening my hands. 

Can't wait for the summer sun. :)

-make your(life)self-

disconnect

I know when to soften myself

 curve a corner

lean peacefully beside another. 

I know how to give people what they want

 to see, to hear, to be

 I'm just not sure how to make them fit with me. 

(with few exceptions)

just wanna sing

  I need tomorrow to come (Friday), not because it's the weekend, but because it means I can sing. I can sing as loud as I want to in my van tomorrow night and I'm pretty excited about that The walls are too thin here, or else my shower would be a perfect performance space. :)
    My voice is nothing special, but I haven't been able to stop singing since my babysitter nursed me on musicals Labyrinth, Gypsy, and Les Mis anyone? :) I feel sorry for my friends, that means my Labyrinth love is not only current, but nostalgic, and thus....it's never going to go away. I should probably apologize to the friends I put through CATS in middle school. :) Bring on the dance sequences and solo stylings.

  

  

I wore a sequined bow-tie and a spangled red belt in elementary school chorus and sang show tunes. I even did a handful of community theatre shows, and had one-step-above-the-chorus parts in our 3 middle school musicals. As a HS senior I came back to the stage and loved it, even when my voice cracked. :P
 

  I just love to sing. I don't necessarily love the stage, but I love to sing. I don't think it can be helped at this point. 

Secret: I've always had the fantasy of singing at an open mic night and playing acoustic guitar....but instruments mystify me and I'm very sure my voice and nerves are best suited for the interior of my AstroVan and my 'lucky' friends. hehe I'm not too shabby on a tambourine though. la la la

Non-Secret: get me in a sing-a-long in the car and quickly turn the radio or switch songs and you'll be sure to catch me unawares. It's on my list of least favorite things. :P

Recommendation: Do not quickly turn the radio or switch songs on me when we're having a sing-a-long. You'll make me blush, if that's not a rare enough event. XD

......maybe if I just hum in the shower i'll get my fix for the night. 

Secret: I do miss it sometimes. 

Oooooh and Neil Gaiman (hero) is going to sign  my ' graveyard book' at the sigma tau delta convention in minneapolis next week!!!!!! I wish I was going along, but I'm sure my fellow STD-ers will do me proud and project some fangirl vibes. :D  ::giggles like a little girl and does a dance:: yayyyy

Two Days before the Vernal Equinox=sunshineeee

life felt like this today.... 

....so sunshiney that  I wished I had a tambourine 

or someone to play guitar while I danced like an idiot :D

Don't say 'cunt and/or pudding' around me

cunt and/or pudding
Besides it's social and gender connotations, 'cunt' is a very harsh sounding word. the 'K' and "nt" are like a slap in the face.
And 'pudding'.....well besides pudding looking like snot, it's not one of my favorite sounding words either. :D

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

bit o' fiction.

    ......after a long day serving the masses...and too much anthropologie.com

Cám ơn ông

She goes to the salon because the old Vietnamese man with paper skin will hold her hands for the price of a French manicure for her brittle nails.  He doesn't have to look her in the eye or attempt broken small talk.  The name on his station is An and he's a saint.

Along with polite grimaces, both know the acrylic dust in the salon will someday choke his airways and metastisize.  Nonetheless her grubby nails were buffed and the dead skin deftly shaved away each appointment.  He held her hands delicately, ordering her with jerks of his chin and pointed looks, while mumbling abuse in a language beyond her comprehension.  She rested in his gentle hands.

Most of her days are spent laboring at Ethan Allen; goddess of lacquered wood and overpriced luxury, slave to the rich and tasteless seeking safe haven between four poster beds, a beacon of shining silverware atonement.  Her own apartment features packs of ramen noodles stacked on a three hundred dollar side table and a designer duvet half on the floor.  It overflowed the two-layer stack of mattresses in the corner of her bedroom.  The whitewashed cupboards featured songbird porcelain pulls hiding only boxes of oatmeal with little else to hide the bareness from the shelves.

Somewhere in the upper cabinets, not easily reached, an ancient bag of Spangler Circus Peanuts leans, which she was thinking about righting, as the woman buying the two hundred dollar sheets in safe, safe, cream fumbled for her cell phone.  She was surprised the phone didn't slip like a silver fish from those neon acrylic claws.  Somehow the woman managed to toss her credit card from the bouquet arranged in a Coach clutch.  They glittered in the flourescent  light; betraying their debt. The unfortunate one of the other side of the speaker must have displeased the lady, because as the salesgirl asked about her shopping experience, the woman's lips bulged angry with cheap Restalin.  They looked like two bloody strips of T-Bone trying to make a run for it. 

"I don't care if you have the flu or the bubonic plague Virginia, just get it done. God, you never gave your father this trouble.Fine. Fine."

Now, she knew better than to make careless judgements, but after three years in the retail of fine home furnishings and accessories, she could tell when to play the unassuming help and when actual opinions and signs of intelligent life, or at least when enthusiasm for the client's third set of dinner plates in a calendar year, were needed.  The woman's lack of taste showed through the layers of barely matched labels worth more than the salesgirl's rent and withered any common ground the two might have found beyond how great cream is, because yes, it really does go with anything.

"Did you find what you were looking for today"

The lady tossed over a platinum card of plastic and grabbed the girl's hand in the process. Rubber met velvet. 

"Hold , Hold on Delores." she tapped her understated manicure and smiled. "You should really get tips on. These make your fingers look stubby. Where do you go?" Her smile was more terrible than her permanent sour disposition.  Her teeth were broken white tic-tacs.

"Mrs. M-"

"It's Ms. and never been more satisfied. You should see the young thing I've got on the side now. Amazing what a divorce can do."

"Uh, yes. Ms. Mannfield. Thank you for shopping with us. I hope you enjoy the sheets, they're fabulous and maybe next time you come in I'll have found a new manicurist, you never know! I go to a little place in Westwood. I'll see what they can do. Thank you , now."

Since finding out the world wasn't all sunshine dust and giggles, she'd found a special talent for giving customers what they wanted to hear.  As a rule, in life she had trouble distinguishing between the desires of others and her own needs.

Her name is Mary and she subjects herself to Ethan Allen and fantasizes about stale Circus Peanuts she'll never open. They were collecting dust fast from childhood.

Her name is Mary and she knows exactly what to do when she sees expectation in the eyes of others. 

Mary imagines what An's family is like and if he smiles for them.  She's never seen him move those thin lips into a natural genial expression. When she goes to the salon next week she will squeeze his hand and give him her thanks. Only in their carefully negotiated silence has she learned to be at home. 

2/17/09-a ruckus abov'us.

I fell backwards in my chair tonight. Straight back to the floor. It left a ringing in my ears and silence.  The snowy coat and dirty towels dampened the sound as I caught my weight, palms down, elbows bent.  My friend adrenaline flushed beneath my skin, tingling as I lie there holding my breath.  My left leg was perfectly straight up in the air.  The lack of sound was more alarming than the expected crash, but more so was the fear my neighbors below would react.  My early morning/late night movements must have been profound- heard through the cardboard floor of a  foundation built to last less than 10 years. 

~namaste

2/16/09

I want to sprint the finish- drop lines -become the snow bird. 

i'm waiting for a break in the sky

to fill my solar panels 

and fly

Buses make me nervous in the most belittling, unsettling way. So yes, this morning, half asleep to the day, I boarded and idly sat in the nearest empty seat.  But, awareness slowly crept in to make it apparent I was sitting in one of the handicapped areas.  If constantly fearing the bus would take me somewhere off the route wasn't enough to dampen my pits. 

The next 5 minutes or 10 for me were somewhere between a cycle of ragged breathes and a lifetime. Before I could get off or reach for the line that rings the bell,  I felt the back of the bus bristle still with derision.  I gripped my hot pink razor cell phone instead of the stop line; a gift from my mother. 

My neck. My crumbling feet. My life

Of course I'm handicapped and I'll sit where I please. I couldn't just move. I was paralyzed. 

I'd been sitting for at least 5 minutes. I qualified to sit here.  If anyone asked I knew what I could say. Ugly bitterness pooled on my tongue and I choked as I swallowed unused spit. 

Then, the crazily speeding bus lurched to a stop and more college students entered sleepily. They sat across from me in front of the blue handicap sign.  While less exposed, I felt removed and amiss. 

My body was concrete and steel in rigid form before I shook off the rust and got off at the next stop someone else requested. 

I was halfway across campus, nowhere near my destination. I was a mess. 

As I speed-walked through campus center, I watched 

my feet navigate the cracks and icy puddles. I resent authority and yet am painfully aware of societal expectations. The 30$ in parking tickets that morning did not help my disposition or take on the day.  I walked faster.

We're aware of the painful faults of society and its constructs (us), but must abide by the rules to coast on and prosper.  We (at least most of myself and my friends) are itching at this security but fear the unorganized free for all alternative. The possibility of ambition is endless, but crushing.  We know something else would be better. We know we're spoiled even with our mouths stuck with mud.  I don't think we could settle on anything less than forcing back the mechanical hands of time to a fresh naked world. 

I feel society imprinting on me, but yet I can't give up the benefits of assimilation to then progress into the unknown. 

I'm feeling more like a rabbit thinking you can't see her if she stays still. Her eyes are large and waiting for the jig to be up, up, and away.  I'm thinking I either need to break apart and live like small apartments with bathtubs in the kitchen sink or find a something somewhere that woos my whole commitment like a thief. 

This bus is lurching toward all my dystopian fears. 

"You look like a stranger in your old-fashioned hat"

Everyday life gets a little stranger, with our without a hat. Today I did need a hat. The snow, which has become so typical switched to rain and iced everything in a dangerous sweat. Today instead of scratching poems on the backs of lovers like Anais,  I'm scratching my hands trying offset the onset of cabin fever. I want to run up there and wring out all the clouds and blow away the cold back to the floodgates of the mountains. Some days I'm thankful for the nature of each day's slow progression, but there's too much dampened need waiting to rush out. Today I'm too much of a spoiled child to appreciate the stillness.

Today I just want to run.

I'm much too impatient for a future in which I can't see a footing to hold me.