for me

violin strings move the moment to catharsis
every time.

goodbye wave

how many people washed away with that wave?
how much money and time and carefully arranged furniture and files filed
in
alpha
beti
cal

order?

how many
wave
goodbye
without
an
answer
for
why?

i feel it all

someday, when i am being interviewed by Michael Silverblatt,
i wonder if i will look back on this day when, driving home from work,
it seemed so real i could taste it.
i will try to ignore the annoying nasal of his voice, because he really does ask good questions.

a sense of urgency and a sense of taking my time
both.

i feel it all. i feel it all.

turning and turning

Yeats believed that history worked in cone shaped, widening spirals. A major, world changing event would take place that would change everything. Intensity. Passion. Conviction. All of humanity responding intensely to the new way of seeing the world (i.e. Christ's life and it's effect). But over time, the focus would get lost somehow. Intensity would wane. There would be a forgetting and a loss of focus. A restlessness

until at some point the focus would get so far removed from the source, that history would be ripe for some new epiphany to take its place. Some revelation. Something different, or the same under the guise of new. To bring about order again. To bring about a sense of purpose and focus.

Don't hearts work that way, too? After awhile, we lack focus. After awhile, we don't remember quite what it was we were centering around. After awhile, it takes some great event to deliver a sense of purpose. Passion. Conviction.

To return us to some source.

(don't they?)

these are some things

i get to learn:
sometimes my job feels like a fantastic book club. we learn from each other. this week, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Insightful Student A: "But why did Janie wait 20 years to say how she felt? That bothers me. Doesn't that make it her fault in a way?"

and a few days, few chapters (few lifetimes) later...

Insightful Student B: "This is the first time Janie is actually listening to her gut and trusting herself. And standing up for herself. She's stronger than before because now, when she feels like something isn't right with Tea Cake, she says something and she doesn't feel bad about how she feels."
Insightful Student C: "And that's why Tea Cake is different from Logan or Jody. Even though they fight, they're learning how to communicate. With Jody, she was never brave enough to stand up for her feelings, and he never valued her feelings anyway."

i get to teach:
walked by Ignorant Student A's desk and noticed that she had taken another girl's quiz from the turn-in box (to copy from). I took the other girl's work off her desk. Gave ISA a death stare, and continued my rounds.

A few minutes later, I watch from across the room as ISA goes back to the inbox, fumbles around noticeably, trying to act as if she has understandable and acceptable intentions, and grabs another quiz from the box and takes it back to her seat.

I walk over. Grab paper.
Me: "No. No, no, no. I don't know what you think you're doing, but it's not cool." Walk away.

ISA: "But, uhhh... Ms. I... isn't this w;kjdajiebelivkemalie (nonsensicle babbling, trying to make it sound like there is a justifiable reason for what she was doing)

Me: "Stop it. Stop. Don't try to cover it up. Just do better. Do better."

I realized upon waking

Perhaps it's not quite time for sober dreams.

(but there have been these moments... These moments of transcendence in all this where I can view it all from a great distance. Such calm. Clarity. Grace, not from some outside place, but encoded in my core. Where even the confusion seems simple enough. Where I can hear my own song so clearly. Where just knowing that I am singing at all becomes this precious, important thing. Louder and louder and breaking through some block that was but is no more. Listen and you'll hear it. Try to understand.)

write it

Youtube: One Art in Cairo

freeze/burn

Penguin lost my song in the breeze.
Lost to some other melodies.

what i hate the most

is the falling asleep.
what i hate the second most is the waking up.

shut up/shut down

but if that's the worst, it's not so bad.
i can make molehills out of mountains
and i can write like judy blume.

sit tight

choices will lead to choices that you cannot anticipate
so sit tight
sit calm
strangle your sight
with the light of a dim,
distant star.
sit tight.
sit calm.
there's no way to anticipate where any of it goes.

stick wants stuck

Is it spring yet and is there life growing somewhere? Is all that buried potential brave enough to reach. up. out. winter brings lazy and a certain ennui. hibernation, and i suppose that is part of a cycle.

but my eyes are strained from big picture attempts. focus is lacking. perspective is limited to this little moment

where restless sleep and spiking emotions make me tired of the reaching. tired of exploration. i pull my empty hand back to myself. what i touch doesn't follow me back. what i reach for doesn't seem to see a home in me. achy for something known and constant to curl up around.

nothing is, though. nothing is.
stuck wants stick
and vice versa.

blah

even when there are weeks and weeks
of nothing new
and winter brings blue,
i am in the habit of living
and so i do.

libations to america

"It is only in isolate flecks that
something is given off

No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car."
-WCW "Spring and All" XVIII

tangental gripe and a dream

i might be tired of people.
and just... living.
balance is lost to the fact
that there is never balance, really.
if there is balance for a minute, it is such an exception
so rare
that it becomes unusual, and not a balance at all.

owe so much on a student loan for experience that i've had to, for the most part, unlearn.
managers at starbucks make more money than me.
money is stupid.

can't really remember how life used to be before.
no idea how i would like it to be or how to know.
i would like to curl up (too).

(in the dream we were curled up in that room. we were preparing for a storm. (there is a storm, there is really a storm out there.) even in the dream i could tell that his skin was not yours. (loosehardlyanypressurecaughtoffguard,but still i knew) even in the dream i knew).

i would take a day off, but i have no idea what i'd do with myself all day.

curse.
america better hurry the curse up
and it'd better be recognizable.
it'd better be worth something.
even if it's just america for you
as long as it's worth something,
i'll glean direction vicariously.

here we are

So here we are, trying to make meaning out of particles.
But what else is there to do?

all

i don't know if i've arrived
or departed
from something.
the sound from the heels of my boots are proof
of a move.

i think the tragedy of Julius Caesar is not that friends might deceive us,
(et tu?)
or that people are not always what they seem to be-
but that just as often
we do not even know ourselves so well.
he thought he was constant as a northern star,
but julius wavered with the rest of them.

all stars
dancing or dying
we waver
edges not so defined.

MMM

MMM
"When a life is over,
the one you were living for,
where do you go?

I'll work nights.
I'll dance in the city.
I'll wear red for a burning.
I'll look at the Charles very carefully,
wearing its long legs of neon.
And the cars will go by.
The cars will go by.
And there'll be no scream
from the lady in the red dress
dancing on her own Ellis Island,
who turns in circles,
dancing alone
as the cars go by."

L
"How do you divorce ennui
When you have no motivation to fight?

Get nostalgic
Make lists about anything
Anything
Take classes in the name of a career you could give a shit less about by the time you get the degree.
Art. Disappear into projects that demand and consume.
Stop asking questions.
Treat everything like a giant fucking joke.
Fall in love
But do not ask questions.
"Run mad as often as you choose,
But do not faint."
Where am I going.
Where am I going.
I have a lot of friends.
I have so many friends
But I miss you in a special way.
Love
And
An
Open
Invitation."

Death by Maybelline

Via text from the mother

Another death in the family... Maybelline stopped selling my lipstick shade. The nerve!

Death by conversation in 13 minutes

Via text

11:10 me.
Save new?
Me?

11:11 she.
Save new? Huh? What?

11:18 me.
Anime. Savemwcome Dyyyying

11:23 me.
Dead. I am dead.

(anime kids will be the death of me. Mark it.)

Lackadaisical

I just kind of want to lie around and stare at the ceiling for about three days. Then (maybe) I will rise again.

What if Jesus was just really tired? Kind of bored, maybe. Maybe he just spent those three days kind of staring at the ceiling of the cave. Maybe on the third day he just decided he didn't want to be bothered with humanity and went into hiding for the rest of his life.

State of the Union: Lackadaisical.
Also: It is only Tuesday.

To that woman in the restaurant, so frail a word might blow her over. And smiling. Smiling.

Do you wake up every day with a question on your mind?

say his name

"but you don't believe in meant to be, linds."
"well, i don't believe in god, but I say his name sometimes."

make it

Sometimes when I am posing for a picture, I consciously think to myself right before the flash goes off, "This is the happiest moment of my life." As though that can make my face believe it. As though the Sears Family Portrait Studio could actually be the setting of the happiest moment of my life.

Sometimes I pretend I am in a movie during a particularly poignant moment, when you either feel bad for the girl or care for her deeply- you are falling in love with her at that very moment- just to make moments seem a little more interesting and my face to look a little less tired of it all.

Or tired in a beautiful way.

As though watching an airplane move slowly across the night sky could be the fucking door to an epiphany.
Or something.

sometimes usually, everything actually begins to take on some important glow when i cast myself into a role for long enough. and not like after-school-special glow... like, real. like, Good Will Hunting when Robin Williams and Matt Damon are talking on that bench.

BE PASSIONATE! BE PASSIONATE, WHATEVER YOU DO.
passionate in motion, passionate in calm.
take nothing seriously
except beauty
and finding it in
this moment right now.
now.
now.
now.


now.

now.
now.


now.

pendulum

You can't rush
this art.
It is a four
letter word
like
time
to come home
is wasted
on waiting and better spent on
gluing pieces
together
like heart strings
to a pendulum
until
everything is just a means to creation
and feels about the same as anything.