Saturday, January 30, 2010

THINGS I DO SOMETIMES

write things
eat things (snickity snacks)
drink things
drink things that i'm not supposed to yet
throw up in my backpack
covet smart wools
make lists
text message people
look at my hair in the mirror
pretend to be artistic
jump out of my skin to music
listen to folk music
love things
hate things
get stomach aches
stare at people with patagonia down sweaters (both hooded and not)
feel tired
love my mom and my grandma
covet wit, where is mine?
nothing
curse my lack of social skills
get made fun of by my friends
get made fun of by myself
untangle my hair
feel awkward
make other people feel awkward about my awkwardness
being anti-social
WUH OHs
SING SING SING SING SING SING SING SING SING




WE FOUND A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO LIVE IN NEXT YEAR AND I HAVE CRUSH ON PINCKNEY STREET.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

GOD HELP THE GIRL

"I hear the midnight birds
The message in their words
The dawn will touch me in a way a boy could never touch
Their promise never meant so much to me

You have been warned, I'm born to be contrary
Backward at school, I wrote from right to left
Teacher never cared for me
Preacher said a prayer for me
God help the girl, she needs all the help she can get"

I don't know why, but I love this whole idea but particularly this specific song (God Help the Girl).
I've been less and less concerned about what people are thinking about me, and more concerned about what I am thinking about myself, though I hope I am going about this non-chalance the right way, I don't want to lose myself in myself completely.
"you're self awareness is both a blessing and a curse my love"

i've been losing myself into the technological world, which i am starting to think is ok, because i have always done my best to shy away from the culture i am stuck in, making me always uncomfortable, making me always feel like i am doing something wrong, and i think that as long as i don't become a slave to it, it will be ok. i still want to go somewhere else, africa most prominently, a place that is a little less dependent on technology, or at least, easier to escape it, but i don't feel like i am being crushed by it anymore. i am immersing myself into school, not in a forceful, dangerous way, but just because most all my classes are really things that i want to do, and want to learn, they are just giving me a little more incentive. and because i have friends here, but we aren't on quite the same level as my friends and i who live further away, and sometimes it seems strange, and i just want to be by myself, not because i don't love them, but because i am not quite sure we are positive how to act around each other yet. i am looking forward to next year, and to tomorrow, really, i am just looking forward, and i feel like i should be scared that all of this forward thinking will make me lose a large part of myself, but i am not worried, i never seem to be too worried these days, even when i probably should be. i am sure that my neurosis will return to me sooner or later, and i will probably welcome them, because without them it is calm, nice, but a little bit empty, and if i were feeling like myself i would probably miss them, long for them, but this me is happy they are taking a vacation. i feel so unlike myself, and by that i mean, i feel so like myself, so comfortable with myself, in a way that i have never really been, but i feel like there is maybe a noticeable change in my aura, and i don't think that anyone minds, but i wonder if anyone has given it any sort of thought. i feel better this way though, more prone to talk to someone i don't know as comfortably as i talk to someone i do, sort of like being drunk even when i'm sober.

it's a relief, a real calm, i don't feel like the ocean, which is a little disappointing, i feel more boring to myself, but more interesting to everyone else, and mostly i just feel good, and i am not quite sure what i am supposed to do with that, but i am sure that i will either figure it out, or make myself some waves.

i am not the same as a was four years ago, or two years ago, or two weeks ago. people are always talking about young people finding themselves, but i don't really buy that because i think we are always changing, and our whole lives are just a series of finding ourselves, sometimes just inwardly and sometimes finding ourselves in other people, but we never just settle on oneself, but maybe just collect them, they are piling up in my notebook, all over the inter-web, and filling up different parts of my brain. there is some essence of ourselves that is always the same, a large portion of us that has not changed since we were born, but as for the rest, we are fluid, if we let ourselves be, and maybe that is why i've always related to water, spent ours staring at it, feeling as though i AM the water, in a weird way.

i am tired, i should have been to bed an hour ago, but it is important to write about things even when you don't think you want to.

Monday, January 25, 2010

YOU ARE HOME

Her hands are small, shrunken really, by 90 years of living, the arthritis has bent her fingers this way and that, rendering them less useful than they were when she was younger, another reason she resents growing old. They are covered in those little brown spots that your skin seems to develop with age, they say they are sun spots, but maybe really they are age spots and if you were to count all of them you would know how many years a person has. She is holding a ball-point pen with these flimsy fingers, doing the Saturday Stumper. [It is hot with the fire of love and hate, a constant clash that someone started a long time ago but no one has been able to end. It big and confusing and perfect, but most importantly it is full of hope, real, true hope, a way of living really.] "you are home." (both of you) "hmm?" she asks, slightly frustrated that her ears have failed you once again. "Nothing Grandma." And I scoot to the end of the couch and try to help her with the puzzle.

I wrote this during class yesterday, and I'd like to do more with it, and I keep forgetting to put aside time to write and then I get all sleepy and unmotivated.

I've been feeling so zen lately, minus a few less-than-zen incidents here and there, and I keep saying over-generalizing hippiesque statements about life and the world, it is strange, but i think i like it.

I will write more soon, maybe tomorrow be on the look outs for SADNESS DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE because it is the truth, and I want to do it justice.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

WHEN I'M A TREE I WON'T BE LIKE THIS

If I shook my fists enough times I'd probably get some arm muscles. Somedays i just feel so thoroughly unimpressive. Feeling unimpressive is unimpressive for sure. Maybe I'm just faking it. Somedays, most days, i feel like i'm slipping through the cracks, but it's only because I am an awfully jealous sort of person. Part me almost likes it, a sort of "look at me all on my own" sort of thing, but most of me does not like it, because it reminds me of middle school slumber parties when I used to hide and see if anyone noticed I was missing because I am passive-aggressive. They didn't, or at least it took forever, and I would cry and cry and then be mad at them for the rest of the night, which is probably the only reason I hid in the first place. Somedays I just wish I didn't love things because mostly it just hurts and other days i just wish that everyone would love me and tell me so and most days i want things that i shouldn't and don't deserve and that don't even make sense. Somedays i ask myself "why are you crying" and tell myself i'm being silly but I am never convinced, even though I should be because myself is making a very convincing argument. Someday is feeling farther and farther away, and my regrets/thoughts/feelings/everything is piling up around my room, and I can feel it slowly creeping up to the height of my bed and i want it to leave me alone. and I want to stop wearing make up, but i've gotten so used to it that i can't and i want to stop always trying to impress people, because it never quite works, and I want to stop depending on anyone but myself, and I want to stop telling everyone what i think and feel and hide, deep inside myself, just to surprise people. And how annoying is this that I haven't found a proper way to round up these feeling and tame them into something that actually sounds pretty. I just want to be right for everyone, all of the time, but mostly i am not, but mostly that is not even true and i am just saying that because i have spent 19 years practicing self-pity and i am a pro. Just when i thought i was getting past my waiting, always waiting, i found myself laying on the ground staring up at the ceiling expectantly. it has nothing to offer me, whatever it is i want, i really ought to be going out to find it. Sometimes i just kinda want a reach inside of people and take what i want from them. Not in an intrusive, rude way, sometimes I just hate having to tip-toe around everything, and I hate that people always try to sneak around what they are feeling, which is just stupid to me. Sometimes I don't even know what i'm feeling, but I still ride it out, it seems important to stick with it right? Some people don't even have feelings. That's weird, right? And what about people that are able to talk themselves out of their own feelings? and what does that say about your character if they are able to talk themselves out of liking you? SIMPLY RESISTIBLE. (I wrote a song called that once.) (simply resistible, but i'm doing the best that i can, simply resistible, that's just who i'll be, simply resistible little old me!)


People are exhausting, but spending time with myself is just as tiring really. I am so bad at not caring, which is an important skill to have. How come our strengths are our weaknesses? If they were separate things then it would be easier to get rid of them.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO WHOOPS

BLAZING WINGS
hair dye
whiskey
being yourself
going out in public
too many pancakes
middle school
time
lots of other things

are we moving apart together? where are we going? why don't people put me in their pocket? i am tiny, i can be quiet, i'd fit nicely in there.


we crave the proper proportions of self-hatred, because for some of us, it is the only way we know how to live with ourselves. i am happy, no, just content, just not a pile of sad bones. i am afraid that i will always be shaking my fists and pounding on doors, trying to find the place where i belong, while always suspecting that it is nowhere in particular or everywhere to some lame extent. it's why i dream of places i've never been to, places no one i know has ever been to, because in my head they are mine, and if they are mine, then maybe i am theirs. my brother says i'm not a normal girl and i agree. i did my best to raise myself as a boy, but we we both got stuck with sentimental hearts, and with all the shit we put in them, they really weigh us down.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

THINGS I FOUND TODAY

are we moving apart, together? where are we going? why don't people put me in their pocket?

some days require more sentences.

i am not that into cleansing.

hungoja kwa mwezi ilinisema kwa vile nina mwaka mbili, hufurahi kwa vile nina mwaka sifuri. ninaweza kungoja na kufrahi........

i'm eating apples in protest. no more candy. it hurts.

she drinks out of the toilet. she heard that really, the water's pretty clean. she sleeps on the floor, she curls her knees into a tight ball and shakes herself to sleep. she's losing weight. she forgets to eat. she reads. she cries. she looks in the mirror. she cries. she is punishing herself for making it so hard for herself to be happy.

i started my war with words when i was 5 and i was swinging on my stomach, and i got a feeling in my belly that made me feel strange and i didn't know what to tell my mother. i started my war with paper when i was 7 and i peeled it off the crayons and ate it, and it sat heavy in my stomach.

i will use these one day.

in swahili culture when someone asks how are you, you always say good, or OK and then if you are really not so good you follow it with a "but......". the theory is that nothing is ever really BAD. things are always good, but sometimes there are kinks. i like this about it. when i remember this, i remember why i am going to africa.

THINGS MY MOM SAYS THAT MAKE ME LOVE HER FOREVER

starting something new
makes a world of difference
embrace it and weep
(1st post-card received at college)


I talked to my Grandma on the phone today. It made me miss her something fierce and I kind of wanted to just stay on the phone with her forever.

My friends tried to be my therapists for the day, but I am not so sure we made much progress.

I've been trying to act on instinct more. To do what i WANT to do, not what I think i should do. But that in itself is kind doing what I think I should do, because people are impressed by people that just follow their instincts. It is hard to figure out what is right just because it is right and what is right because it fits some sort of expectation.

i am sew sleepy and i miss my grandma, and I want to be standing in the middle of the cold cold lake with some mulled cider, half drunk, talking to my cousins.

Today S writes
"I am stubborn and loyal to a fault. My heart has been damaged beyond belief and it is still the biggest, strongest part of me. I've survived unparalleled hypersensitivity and the requisite pain and heartbreak for 22 years. I will not, do not, give up on the people, places, causes I love."

and she is really a person i love, because we are kind of the same but different, but we have the same strong attachment to everything, we piece our lives together with memories, sentimental things that we hold as dear as anything else. Those of us that have this, this over-whelming attachment to things, such a strong attachment that we swear we can trace the string that ties our heart to the places and people and things we are attached to, not just feel it and trace it, but picture it, tiny but strong, like a spider web, clinging to all the things that have ever happened to us. We get this from our grandmother, and sometime i just want to ask her if her heart is being weighed down because she is 90 and has so many strings attached to her heart, and I think that she would know just what I mean, and I think that I will ask her, if i get the chance. today i just wanted to tell her everything, because she always has the greatest advice and she loves us, us as individuals and us, us as a whole. My grandma gave me this stubborn love, through my mother, and it is fascinating to know that 7 people came from the same place, but can be so different. and I wonder what my grandpa was like, i mean, i have heard stories, but i know that he is a part of me, perhaps the glue. Mostly I am just trying to find a new way to say what i say so often. I love you.

Monday, January 18, 2010

THINGS THAT ARE WEIRD

hands
faces
summer sausage
silence
ranch dressing
things that don't make sense
things that remind me of fish eggs
fish eggs
FEELINGS
people that don't have feelings
time
things advertised in infomercials
stuff my brother says
rigor mortis
celebrities
TELEVISION the thing
TELE-VISION the word
your mom's haircut


Lately, I've mostly been thinking about things in terms of other things, in terms of nothing. But mostly I've been thinking about my cousins and I drowning in our Welchiness and about my brother and about how we were born to never stop moving, and how I keep defying that birth-trait and how i should go more places, faster, and how I shouldn't even be here by tomorrow, because I should always be on the run. I think myself and I are getting along charmingly these days, and I would not lose my mind if I ran off, and the fact that I can, just go, wherever, whenever, is frightening/exciting and I think that people forget that we have so many options. I think that maybe, I want to be in awe of everything always, and I want to start creating more moments of awkward perfection, because if you decide to love everything with the proper amount of awe and openness I think they are easy to make. Perhaps learning to love each moment as a separate thing as opposed to one fluid thing, will make it easier for me to be happy. Learning to love yourself is important, but perhaps a certain amount of self-hatred is ok, and we can compensate for it by loving each other.

Today something told me that I'd be alright on my own.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

SWEET ESAME

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL0T1yUYkbs&feature=related

i can't find this song anywhere else but youtube, and I know i've talked about it a bajillion times but really really, I am enamored with this song, perhaps because in my head, it is me. In general, Joanna Newsom can bring me to tears pretty easily, but this song does it every time without fail. I wish I could write something so magical, and she is probably what is keeping my belief in magic in tact. It is silly to use words to describe words and it is silly to use words to describe music, so I won't even bother, but she is really just spot on, all the time.

I have been noticing that metaphors makes more sense to me than saying things straight, because metaphors make a more specific image or feeling, and saying things straight forward just doesn't really cover all the bases. In class they always try to make you analyze all the nice things about the words away, until you are left with some cold, lonely words, and I don't understand why they are always asking me to rip it apart. Most the time it just makes sense the way it is. I don't mind discussing it, but I hate picking at it.

I am never quite sure if I have a point, but I am not convinced that that is a bad thing.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

UNINSPIRED

My last night at home, and my mom and I just chatted about not much of anything, but it was nice. Lately I have been having surprisingly honest conversations with everyone I know, and it makes me feel so much more comfortable in my own skin, and so close to everyone I know. This is not to say that our old conversations used to be superficial, but simply that they weren't quite as revealing as they are now. I feel as though maybe this is a part of growing up. I feel like I have been waiting to have conversations like this with people for years. I love talking. Perhaps a little too much.

I have been listening to lots of my 90's favorites (i.e. nirvana and the offspring [mostly just smash]) and also lots of folk music. They are lyrically satisfying right now. The 90's grunge simple, but perfect (and witty) and the folk music is so slow but spot on, and the lyrics are simple but pretty and carefully planned and placed. Then, on the other end of the spectrum lots of WHY? which is so full of lyrics, all different, but all perfect too.

This poor blog is spiraling into Savannah talks about nothing. I haven't been feeling particularly inspired in the last week, hopefully I will get back into the WRITING writing, as opposed to the babbling sort of writing. But for now I just feel like being human, rather than trying to turn my thoughts into something calculated, because I am realizing that everyone is more human than I thought, and that they will (if they happen to read this, or run into me) not like me any less because I failed to pull out the perfect witticism or the proper spin on my words. Or maybe they will temporarily, but they'll get over it.

I am feeling so socialable, for the last week all i have wanted is to be friends with everyone, because, suddenly, being strangers or mere acquaintances just seems silly when i could be their friend. i feel like my cuz-a-muffins and i are being stretched thin, we are making our own niches, and kind of losing track, and I am worried, but not worried because we are connected by blood and then some. I just want to go and visit everyone in THEIR places, because maybe THEIR places should be my places too. And I want them to come see me, because I want my place to be THEIRS. I just want to share everything with everyone really.

I am scared, because i always am, but the only way I can think of is to distract myself from the fear, by making new friends, and doing my best to stretch myself around the world so stay in touch with old ones, I am so full of love, but it isn't stuck inside of me, and it isn't making me want to explode, and it isn't making me cry, it isn't really making me feel much of anything but the desire to stop worrying about my social skills and stop worrying about whether or not people like me and just assume that they do, in fact, like me alright and just talk to them like they are people, and stop trying to say the right things, therefore saying nothing at all. I am so tired of missing things and missing feelings, that I am just going to create them for myself, or seek them out. Maybe I will found new ones.

Chrismix is finally completed, and this year it is more about telling my cousins something about myself than trying to create a sense of cool.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Me, Myself, and I

I've been tip-toeing around my center all winter. I've been tempting and taunting my confidence by walking around in my underwear. My best friend has went to Spain, she has fallen in love, which is something she does often, and I am just trying to entertain myself until she needs me again. Myself and Me have been in cahoots trying to turn I into our ideal Us. Myself is always saying that I needs a little more charisma and Me is always pushing for a more post-modern act and then Myself always tells Me "you don't even know what that means" to which Me replies "well of course not, but it will make all of the right boys fall in love with Us."


THIS BLOG IS CALLED GARBAGE FOR A REASON.

MAKES THE SOUNDS OF VIOLINS

I have a cold that is making my head feel 10 pounds heavier than it really is, and the Netti Pot is not working it's usual miracles because the snot is so fucking compact and hidden in sinuses I didn't even know existed. But I feel pretty good. On Sunday I listened to Only Skin, which is not significant really, except for that the song is an epic length, with the prettiest lyrics, the saddest story, and holds an association with a sadder time in my head. I am not there, but I am getting there. I was never expecting it to take a year, and even now, after I think I am all better, reflecting upon it is like being punched in the guts, then in the heart, then in the eyes. The other day I was going to the post office thinking "two years ago around this time I was sending a care package, attempting to light a fire." I was stuck on hibernation, which I found for a while, a disillusioned sleep, I missed a lot of things, a lot of things I would rather not have. I've been having dreams about being in love with strangers and it is a relief. I didn't know I was capable of such epic self-disasters, I swear I was clawing my heart out with my finely decorated fingernails all summer long. So, i was listening to only skin, dancing, marveling at that squeaky voiced genius/tearing up at all the parts I pretend describe my situation at one time perfectly.
I watched 500 days of Summer, and it just made me angry, because despite not believing in marriage, and not even really believing in people loving each other for always, I want it to be that way and I want "true love" or something along those lines to exist, because it would make my life a lot easier. I am terrified of physical affection, and I am a "relationship" person in all aspects of life, I don't like to half-ass things, even though that is what is best sometimes. I am not good at being 19. or 20. or 21. or 22. maybe 23. Speaking of half-assing, i am going to half-ass this conversation, and go make some tea, find some food, and nurse my cold, mostly because I have already said too much about myself, and I am not in the mood to articulate, or make it poetic, so it is just becoming embarrassing. I want love love love no hurtsies, always. It seems silly to love things, and hurt them and be hurt by them. It doesn't make any logical sense to me, but it seems to be inevitable anyways, so I am struggling to decide whether or not I'd rather stay here, where I am, or maybe someday try again. If i could take everything a little more lightly, I would be a much saner person.

I wish I could say the things I mean without sounding melo-dramatic, though I have a feeling that the fact I sound melo-dramatic when I write is hinting that I may, in fact, just be melo-dramatic. Frightening.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

THE THINGS I MISS WHEN THEY'RE NOT AROUND

there are few things that i take for granted. like the salt that sticks to the bottom of my shoes on snowy days, and the threads that hang off of my underwear. like the things that are hiding under my couch cushions and the warmth of anything that is alive.

we fell in love in our dreams, and we stayed there. like his mistress i led him to bed, time after time, our bodies clashing through clothes, and i got lots of knots in my stomach which i should have taken as a sign, but my guts are always are always tying themselves up like carnival balloons. now he walks around like a ghost, and talks about things that make me sick, and believes in nothing at all. my shrink tells me some things just make you sad forever. he's not very good.

yesterday i woke up, and i thought i was dead, and i asked the dots in front of my eyes if you could still sleep after you died, and they responded by dancing around and changing colors so i still don't know the answer because in this world you only learn to speak with words. my body wants something from me, always, as though i don't treat it right, like i throw it around into unhealthy emotional situations, as though it just wants to stay in the same place forever, or else be cut in pieces, and spread around.



(i have to stop, even though i'm not ready, thats the trouble with making plans, and always knowing what time it is)