Wednesday, November 23, 2011

alright sweet life, let's begin

Friday, October 21, 2011

found my heart, thanks to a certain dearest darling while we drank tea and talked about how selfish we've been feeling. I feel a little worse and it feels so much better.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

doing my best
not to count
backwards
and yet

Monday, August 29, 2011

i'm too sleepy to write properly, but as I was walking home all I could think was: it's a new year and my body/heart is being lurched through the change, the change that it has been trying to process process process all summer, but now that fall is settling in, and I can say again "a year ago around this time" etc etc, my body and heart are starting to grasp the reality.

it hurts, my darlings, but it will be O.K., I think. The older you get the more memories you have to haunt you. Sometimes this is good, sometimes it is not.

Sweet dreams, sweet days, good things.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

last year lauren told me she thought it was my year.

as fall approaches, I am thinking about that.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

I sat next to a woman on the bus praying, and could hear the call to prayer ringing in my ears. Cars decked out with huge speakers driving around Mombasa blaring prayers.

I have never been so happy to be sad. I have a lot of lovely people surrounding me. I love them, and it breaks my heart that a huge handful of them are leaving. But thanks for reminding me how much I love things. You guys are the best.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Dreams

They keep coming to me today, though perhaps they are not all dreams I had last night.

#1 Harry Potter, but terrifying. I don't remember the details.

#2 At our office job Lyndsay and I are responsible for finding the office mouse a new home. The mouse is the size of a piece of bubble yum. It inflates when it is scared. Whenever I hold it, I have to squeeze it so it can't escape. I feel like I'm killing it. Somehow, it gets lost in the shuffle after all and no one is upset, but I can't shake my guilt.

#3 Boys. I don't know who they are, but there are three of them and I am leading all of them on, though I like one of them more than the others. I know it is wrong, and yet I do it anyways.

#4 Dream where I forget to order two different flavors of chocolate shoppe so they give me a pre-packaged pint, which is just no where near as good as freshly scooped.

#5 Vaguely remember a dream where I speak Swahili. It is boring, but I suppose it is nice that I have been finding little bits of swahili in dream world.

Things are so strange. the strangest they have ever been. I am having a hard time. I know it will pass.

Monday, August 1, 2011

I take a long time to heal from things and I should know that and embrace it. I have been trying to change things, because I've been told I make things too hard for myself. In the last 6 months my self-importance has been shattered. It is humbling, which was shocking because I assumed I was already too humble to begin with. I am not.

Everyone wants to hear they are the exception. It was a blow to my self-worth to realize, for at least this once, I was the rule. That it doesn't matter how much heart you have, it may not always be enough. I would hope my reaction to this would be to continue to try to make everyone as important as I can. I don't want anyone in my life to ever feel as though they are just one of many. Logically, my reaction is that. I write everyone letters. I tell them my secrets. Emotionally, I feel closed off. I've lost my desire to hold on to things, because people are always telling you to let go let go let go and I did, but it's not my way. I hold on to things, even if it kills me. But I miss wanting to stuff everyone in my pockets. I miss my desperation, as sickening as everyone else found it. I did the things everyone always tells me I should, the things they think will make me better, stronger, happier. I just feel emptier. I'm letting the sadness back in, so I can let the happiness back in too.

Sunday, July 31, 2011

embrace your condition and never feel as though you ought to feel differently than you do.

Summer, I try try to love you, but I am thrilled to watch the snow fall and pile up from my bedroom windows.

Time keeps feeling suspended. I forget I ever went to Kenya and yet I think I miss it always anyways. When does the loving things so much your nerves feel like they are on fire come back? And sure, it was a little awful, the longing, the desperation, but if I have to be desperate in order to have all my emotions back, I won't say know.

I want to be in love. I want my heart to come back from wherever it's run off to.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

every fucking summer.

summer of love 2011, wisconsin love affair, all summer long. strictly wisco.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Today I talked about Kenya with someone whom I don't know so well, and who maybe does not know me so well. It was the best Kenya conversation I had so far. It felt good to talk about it. I hope this keeps happening.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

CHIN UP HEART UP BABY GIRL

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Grandma recites me poetry
that's ancient but erotic
then mumbles after me
"to fall in love's psychotic"


just needed to jot this down.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

ex-essential crisis

it's just one of those days where the weather coordinates with your hangover and then you sort of feel the world closing in on you. i didn't have these days in kenya, and I recall missing them, but now i'm not so sure.

Under dream song #1 I wrote "betrayal sans malicious intention", which somehow feels significant, though i'm not sure how.

I spent Kenya being honest in letters, but now I'm home and I don't remember how to be honest in person. I don't even think I know what honesty is. I feel strangely terrified of falling apart, but also fairly certain I won't. Fairly certain I don't have a reason to. Trying to teach myself that affairs of the heart can not be my main drive, my main problem, my main concern. And knowing this has nothing to do with anyone but myself, which is sort of scary. Which is completely scary. Quit trying to dissect your sadness, just take it for what it is, let it go, trust people until you can't anymore, then don't trust them. But none of that in between, where you want to trust them, but tiptoe around them because you aren't quite sure you do. Trust yourself to be good enough. Not just trust this, but know this. I have this unfair need to know what I am to people, to know where I fit in, instantly. But mostly people don't know where they are going or how they are getting there or where they fit in and definitely don't know where you fit in. I need to be more like them and less like me, sometimes I think. In Kenya, I didn't have to think about these things.

I have so many things to work on. Days like these tear me down. I need to stop letting myself have days like these. But the idleness of time scares me, terrifies me, and sometimes it feels like simply by letting time pass the way it sometimes does is losing. I feel like things are being lost, like I should be rushing to save them for myself. But sometimes dear, you just have to let things happen the way they will happen and be patient and not anxious and love the things for the way they are, not the way they might be. People too. The terror of summer is creeping up on me, I have never known what to do with my free time. Or known what to do, but now how to enjoy it, knowing I could be doing so many other things.

I just want to be full of love, and not have this coordinate with being full of sadness, and I don't know why sometimes this is hard and sometimes this is easy, but am convinced that it is all up to me, and that I will learn happiness a new way this summer, and learn how to love myself, and learn how to keep myself together.

Monday, April 25, 2011

I'm sleepy and Kenya is almost over and summer of love is almost here and I really don't know what to expect at all but I sort of want it to be like this:

Blue Arrangements: Silver Jews

From the Carbon Dioxide Riding Academy
to the children's crusade marching through the downtown.
Well I think I'd die see, if you just said hi to me.
When something breaks it makes a beautiful sound.

Sometimes I feel like I'm watching the world
and the world isn't watching me back.
But when I see you, I know I'm in it too.
The waves come in and the waves go back.
The kids in the corner all covered in dirt.
Caught trespassing under the moon.
My father came in from wherever he'd been
and kicked my shit all over the room.

The room is dark and heavy with what I want to say.
I see murals in the radio static and on your blue jeans.
What would you say if I asked you to run away?
It's been done so many times I hardly know what it means.


or like anything else that is sort of desperate and hopeful. summer of love is literally just that, so i fantasize about days filled with love, whatever kind of love, belly full of stars, all the time, as I digest Kenya, but not with impatience and frustration, but with careful, delicate love. I'm too tired and have too much work to do to articulate, and I don't want to articulate, so tired of words, so tired of trying to convince people with words, just want to convince them with hugs and smiles or not convince them at all.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Dad says, "I feel like a fish out of water." More like a fish in water, leaking a small stream of blood, trying to hide from the sharks. Maybe even trying to pretend to be a shark. My heart is an ocean, why can't you swim? My heart is... I'm always the fish.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Tomorrow is my birthday but I might pretend it is not, so I can pretend it IS later. It is terrible to say, but this place, this home, keeps me rattled and insecure, and I am ready to go back to Nairobi. And I certainly don't want to be here for my birthday. And I know, by now I should know birthdays are dang near useless but I really believe in them, OK? Not just like it is a day that is yours, but just think about it. I think about my mom a lot on my Birthday. It's the day with which you were given life, it is a good day to think about who you are, in a positive way. Self-reflection is an all time thing, but maybe self love is a little harder. Birthdays are they days in which you allow yourself to think about the good affects you've had on people's lives, allow yourself to dream that you are important, and maybe allow it to be true. Birthdays are important for people like us who think that in order to remain humble you have to be a little self-loathing. So tomorrow, even though I am half pretending it is not my birthday, I am going to love myself, because, to be honest, I am in a place where I need all the love I can get.

Monday, April 11, 2011

I should be doing my homework. But instead I'm trying to figure out why we love things more when they're sleeping. I've always wanted to be a big sister. I have a headache so instead of doing what I should I am going to go under my mosquito net and read until I fall asleep. I'll get shit done SOMEDAY.

I'm braggin. I'm always in love. [I'm worried.]

Sunday, April 10, 2011

This blog is just sort of a lost little thing floating in cyber space. This blog is maybe the biggest testament to my weaknesses and my dramatic flair, but a great testament to my writing, which is not to brag but to say I miss writing. (Upon further reflection, this is the blog of Savannah growing up)

Things are changing. They would be regardless of is I was there or not, and they aren't bad changes, just changes, and I'm getting so used to changes that it's almost doesn't hurt at all. Today, while half asleep, I dreamt of what it will be like to be on state street, in a sea of white people wearing hip clothes, none of them with plaited hair. And I felt a soft panic rise up. Because even though I love that and want to go back to that, it scares me a little bit. And that it scares me scares me even more. And I am already bracing myself to surround myself with people who are ready to listen and to understand, and contemplating shedding people who will just make this hard. And I am scared to say that all the things I wrote about change, all the months of pre-departure panic are becoming realized, and I think that is why I was panicking, because I KNEW it would do this to me, because I had to mourn the loss before I left because I simply will not have the emotional energy to mourn it when I get back. I am hoping people will surprise me. But trying to only keep hopes in some place farther back in my mind, as to avoid waiting. I feel like I could go to Portland, and more than that, I feel like I will. And not to fulfill some sort of destiny, not to finally stick to my guns like I did with this trip.

Maybe this is all just what i need to get a heart strong enough to let go of things. And that, is scary, defying stubborn promises I made to myself simply to justify my wallowing. And I knew that is what they were when I made them. And you know, maybe this should be a letter, but I got sick of writing letters, just a little, because I felt like sometimes I was doing it for the wrong reasons, like to force a closeness with someone when really I should let things happen more naturally. I am always trying to manipulate situations, to keep them within my grasp, but then they are always a little bit false, and a little bit disappointing. I am tired of putting up with disappointment. And though it is not quite true yet, it is on the tip of my heart, I am tired of blaming other people for my sadness and disappointments. Even if they do play some sort of role (see, not quite ready for this one). Blaming other people gives me a way to still feel close to them, and I am not ready to let people go.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Here's Your Shirt Back, Jonathan

Someday, Jonathan,
you will say the nicest things about me.
It is then I will cut my lips
on the chipped coffee mug
I stole from your kitchen sink to remember you.
I will throw it away, relieved.

We ate lunch in the grass,
like other people who eat lunch
in the grass, and I sat with my humor spread out
like a blanket but you only laughed twice,
which is not really enough to say "I love you"
or even, "You might be alright".

As for me, I love you with the power
of a hundred dead horses, covered in flies
which is to say, I am never quite sure
if I love you at all, but lord knows, I try.

One day, Jonathan, I will be gone
and it will mean as much to you
as a penny missing from your pocket,
which is not at all.

Some other day, you will realize
they don't make pennies with real copper anymore.
You will turn your pockets inside-out with regret.
We both know this isn't true

because you lost your heart in the wash
and though we spent months looking for it
under your clothes we only managed
to pick out pieces from the lint in your pockets.

I don't mean all of this as a threat Jonathan.
Perhaps if you unfold it carefully
you will find an apology
hiding in the creases
and your heart rolled up
in the sleeve.

Phantasm

Today I stayed in bed
forever, trying to dream up
trying to dream, up
and woke up to my body
splayed against the carpet.

I dreamt I woke up
to the comforting contours
of your shoulder blades
but when I actually awoke
you were sleeping
in another city,
shoulder blades pressed against the wall.

I added this to my list of disappointments
written on my bed sheets
which I count every night
to help me fall asleep
or to help keep me
from falling asleep,
it's hard to say which.

Last night I dreamt
my brother had died
and I woke up,
my pillow wet
with self-pity.
I don't think
this is what they mean
when they say
"wet dreams"
but this
is what I know.

This all feels so beneath me
like my bed.
Always under my wiry frame
and no matter
how many times I try
kicking off the blankets
and skulking towards the door
I always find myself here
trying to dream myself
out of bed.

------

"sweet mother I cannot work the loom
I am broken with longing for a boy by slender Aphrodite"
-Sappho


my skin,
smooth as
a worry stone
is not
enough

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

This is probably as good as a diary at this point, since I've been writing in my tumblr. I wrote letters. Lots of them. To everyone. They were too honest. But I'm here and they aren't and there is nothing I can do but be here. (I only wish that was really my attitude).

How many times have I talked about rabble rousing and my overwhelming desire to be a part of something big and important, how many documentaries have I watched on Vietnam protests in mad-city, asked "uncle" Paul and Phil about their rabble rousing days. I know, I know, Kenya is cool and important bla bla bla. I am too tired and discouraged. I am too nervous about leaving for my internship. I used to be good at writing about things.

Maybe later.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Packing packing packing, which accidentally caused me to simultaneously pack up my feelings, which caused me to be a brat for the last week, and which is causing me a little bit of much needed grief today. I hear that people in Kenya are honest, or at least lack the same sort of "tact" we have in America. Tact is such bullshit. It's like throwing someone off a building and providing a car pillow to catch the fall. I mean, if we're going to give a dramatic metaphor, that is what it is like.

I think that people really do want to believe what they are saying or really want it to be true. But that doesn't make it better. It mostly makes it worst. It's becoming increasingly apparent that people's words don't match their actions, and in general, it is testing my patience and making me frustrated. I am exhausted from weeding through what everyone says, trying to figure out which bits were true and which things were said to just make them feel a little less guilty. "You, like your mother, put undo burden on people who talk too much to remember what they've said." I guess I put too much weight on everything people say to me, which is just not how we do things around here. I spend too much time worrying about being sure I articulate everything appropriately, I am always so fucking worried about meaning what I say that half the time I don't say anything at all. And I always make the mistake of thinking that everyone thinks the same way I do, and then I get angry at them for not doing so. I feel so desperately the need to call everyone on their bullshit, or to get out of here and since I lack the nerve and because it is considered generally impolite and because half of the things I want to call people on are long since passed and I would likely be accused of "dwelling". So instead, I'm getting the fuck out of here for a while. Which is, of course, not to say that I won't miss it, as I am sure you all know by now due to the thousands of times I have panicked/written about panicking about missing everything. But sayonara dudes, I've got to get out of here, I'm losing my grip.

I'll write you letters, they will probably be too honest, but I'll be too far away to be properly worried about your reactions, which will probably not be as dramatic as I picture them in my head.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

WELCOME TO EARTH, ASSHOLES. IT'S SPOOKY AND FUN.


I refuse to be scared of my own feelings, and I definitely refuse to sacrifice the many possibilities for the sake of self-preservation.
It's just life, baby, it ain't THAT scary.

Monday, January 3, 2011

true lyfe terror, I wish someone could just pack everything I needed for me, I wish I was already there. Too freaked out to think about how freaked out I am, so I am just going to go eat some snacks and go to bed and try to do some more packing tomorrow.

HOLY SHIT