then

The past was brilliant. The future, bright.

"Tonight was a great night.
Politics is fun.
When I am sitting in the middle of a dinner party
positioned right next to a demolition derby and eating
chicken with a state house candidate and a Justice on
Michigan's Supreme Court, I think about you and I
think about how all light blue candles smell like you,
and these thoughts make me smile. Your are a real
jungle beauty Lindsey. You can never see you, but
once in a while you appear out of nowhere and eat the
farmer's chicken before returning to wherever you
come from. You better be achieving something down
there. I don't care what it is, but it better be
something.
Love you in all the right ways.
--- Lindsey wrote:

> When she got to the door, she could still hear his
> car running at the curb. She wanted to look back,
> but she knew that in a certain sense, it would mean
> she had lost. She took her time finding her key-
> she was always losing her keys in the bottom of her
> purse. She thought that, of all the people that she
> really knew with any degree of depth, that he would
> have understood the ache. In fact, she was almost
> sure that he did. A few days would pass before she
> would come to the conclusion that his denial of the
> "reality" of it all was just a projection of his own
> sadness.. his own loneliness. But for now, she was
> exhausted. Tired from talking only to find herself
> unheard. She had loved him. She knew he knew that
> much. She found the keys and was so lost in thought
> that she hadn't noticed that the car was still
> running on the road. It wasn't until she was near
> sleep that she realized that she had never really
> heard him leave. She considered the fact that he
> might still be by the
> street... waiting... and she let the thought take
> her to sleep.
>
> Justin wrote:When I told her that
> it wasnt real the last time she
> looked at me as though she wanted to be hurt but
> didn't know how. She left the car and walked away as
> I yelled her name and then "oh...come on". She was
> tired of discussing her relationship with him with
> me
> and wanted to be angry but she didn't know how. All
> she could feel was sad, sad for her family, sad for
> her friends, sad for the love that she didn't have.
> I
> had been a break from the sadness from time to time
> but was now part of her cycle. I felt guilty
> watching
> her leave but I didn't follow her.
>
>
>
>
> --- Lindsey
> wrote:
> > sometimes you have a little glass family inside of
> > you and i love that. i love who you are and that
> > you are my friend. sorry about the drunk part,
> > better luck next time. carl and i have been
> > emailing off and on. supposedly he's in Oregon.
> > Have you heard from him? if not, tell me and i'll
> > forward some of his emails on. they're refreshing
> > and beatiful
> >
> > my legs hurt like jello nails. i ran 4 miles
> today.
> > the worst part is- that's only a quarter of the
> way
> > to the goal. ughh.
> >
> > i am angry at you. you never told me to love Doug
> > Blocksma. you even saw him. you even knew that he
> > liked comic books. and you didn't tell me to hold
> > on to him. i blame you for it all. i would have
> > listened to you , you know. now, for all i know,
> > it's too late. thanks for ruining my life.
> >
> >
> > when you're not with me, i'm blue.
> > blue's clues. en espanol. please bear with me.
> > it's all i can do and this has been a helluva.
> i'll
> > be home in august and i hope i show up on your
> door
> > someday and maybe you'll be there. except you'll
> > have to do the buzzer thing first before i can
> > really come to your door. and... tell sean kemp
> > hello and that he's got beautiful eyes. tell
> > yourself that you're beautiful all over.
> >
> > Love, Linds
> >
> > Justin wrote:
> > Uhm, I didn't understand a word of what you just
> > said,
> > could you repeat that pleasE? My brother saw you
> in
> > ohio but he was singing and there was a rapture
> and
> > then blood shed so he didn't have time to say
> hello.
> >
> > I miss you like I would miss my left arm. It still
> > feels like I can use you but your not here and all
> I
> > have is memories of you and It feels like your
> here
> > all the time but your not. Ha. Me and sean just
> got
> > really drunk and I am drunk right now. I will
> spend
> > the next hour trying to channel you in my mind.
> Tell
> > me if anything happens. If you need a new car I
> have
> > one you can have. Wait no I don't I lie alot. Miss
> > you when your not here. Or when I think about you.
>
> > Thats more accurate. Hope life is happy and bye.
--- Lindsey
wrote:
> > ohio means good morning in japanese. currently, i
> >just tried to play raquetball in flip flops
> >unsuccessfully. i do homework. go to class. work.
> > i cut people's hair and eat food and fall in love.
> >i walk to and from school through the ghetto and i
> >love the stray cats and the street fights. i write
> >music and round up bongo players. next month i'm
> >recording. this month it rains a lot. i was down
> >in the valley for a few weeks. a really hard few
> >weeks. i'm coming out of it. lessons learned.
> >time to slow down and enjoy life"

_____________________________________________________________________
the present shimmers in its own real way.

this is part of that

And you knew this would happen.
This is part of that.
Suffer the hours.
See the ugly-
the unapologetic-
and wrap it in your solitude until it does not shriek.
Only forward
by small
shrouded steps
and
unknown is all it will ever be.
Death. Departure.
(when nothing turned something turns nothing again)
We approach cautious or casually.

and when we
know,
it will be too late to retrace
or to catch our breath

A heart kept is a heart in decay.
A heart given is buried alive
but beating.
Beating still.

More Than Myself

"Not that it was beautiful,
but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind,
in the commonplaces of the asylum
where the cracked mirror
or my own selfish death
outstared me...
I tapped my own head;
it was glass, an inverted bowl.
It's a small thing
to rage inside your own bowl.
At first it was private.
Then it was more than myself."

matters

so, we only get one life, right? and one body to experience it in. and all along we´re loathing or trying to adjust or learning to appreciate this body that´s really just bent toward decay and changing fast anyway. humans are such babies as a species. i feel like we don´t even come close to placing value on what really matters. or...giving it the attention it deserves. but...i have no idea what matters. i have no idea what is important and what is disposable.

self image? community? survival? patriotism? faith? financial security? expression? words? memories? family? animals? space exploration? the moment? goals? laughing? thinking? babies? beauty? solitude? avoiding pain? embracing pain? preparedness? spontaneity?

what am i supposed to crave when the demands of the day are met?

what the fuck matters?

Spoken.Written.

When I was loading my entire life into my car to move west, she made a big huff about not making room for a $15 toaster she had bought me on a visit to Philly. I made it fit; I judged her for her petty shortsightedness. Four years later, I have no idea what happened to that toaster, but I wish I had it now. I've been craving toast.

"A merely clever man is partial to self, despising other, vaunting ego; the man of understanding takes the larger view: nothing exists to take exception to. Nothing is real."

Despite all his thinking and believing, R. Kelly has yet to fly.

At some point a few weeks ago, I made the decision to be less active on facebook. I have been better for it. Now I look at people more. Welcome silence. A sense of decluttering of the mind. I do not feel any negative impact from not being up to speed on other people's minute to minute statuses. I have been trying to live deliberately, even if it's through lulls in conversation or waiting in lines.

I highly doubt that at the end of my life I will wish that I had spent more time keeping up with people on the internet. I'm trying to live here. now. not in some quasiauthentic virtual space.

Not never, just less.
Choosing deliberately instead of just default habit.
Being aware of how I am spending my thoughts and my time.
It has made a difference. Really.

"Well, God said in the Bible you're supposed to honor the Sabbath, so you need to go."

Invincible.
Intense/Placid.
Indifferent/Interested.
All of the Above.

expectation

"Choosing not to become the person your family expected is painful. You have to leave their world completely just to make sense of your own life. And then fate lures you back whenever it can to give you a chance to measure the distance between yours and theirs... and to see if it's just as far as you remembered."
-This American Life, NPR love

alien

Thought:

Dehumanizing crazy downtown/urban dwellers is easy to do because they so effectively dehumanize themselves.

At what point in the divorce from reason does humanity go, too? Never? Even when they can't string together a comprehensible sentence? Even when they see their own lives through a smudged pane? Even when they urinate freely in public? Even when (whether due to their own choices or sheer shitty luck of unfortunate birth circumstance leading to susceptibility to make poor choices where others might not) they've certifiably and irrevocably lost their minds?

What makes any of us human?

Many worlds in this one, alien and ignorant. Not all are as conducive to sustaining life.