massive attack

It’s like I’m drowning. My fingers are aching with the strain of grabbing for things that aren’t there, things that never really were.

I ruined your relationship. I made a reputation for myself. I got what I wanted and got what I deserved. Did I know about her? How could I not? And for you to leave something that passionate and drop dead gorgeous for this.. Well, that’s never quite left my mind, I can’t wrap my feeble mind around it and it leaves me gasping in the middle of the night, sometimes. And now, on days like this, you come knocking back at my door, reminding me you love something you never had, and it makes me quake with the sheer force of our lack of knowledge.

You and I are the same. We are anxious and addictive, deeper than first appearance and dangerously cunning. Knowledge of how to get under each others skin, how to peel and prod at each other until we are raw, is an understatement. We are the king and queen of this logic deception, this awry love that caused me to delve into myself, my drugs and ultimately, accept who I am for WHO I TRULY AM. I think I’m getting to be alright with it.

You were the only thing I ever wanted in school.
i got my graduation present. (andseveralmoreafterthat)
What to do about you has played and replayed in my mind until it has burned on the inside of my tissues and worked into my spine. I am not a perfect person, and once upon a great while ago I did things I wasn’t entirely proud of, but I got what I wanted.

Including you. I didn’t quite have you the way I would have liked, but I saved that for someone I found more loyal.

Turns out you were the most loyal.

God, if I had anyone to talk at the watercooler about, it’d be you. It’d be how, the smoke still curling around us, our senses transforming, we were amazingly one person, not two..Call me a hypocrite, but something that beautiful is never far from your mind. He never is.

How far from your heart, though? Love is proximity, baby, we’re all set for life without a thought of retirement. And it seems to the common mind to stay with what is easiest, comfortable, safe. What happens when your comfortable becomes an ocean apart, you can hardly hear each other over the waves and touching each other is an impossibility? You stay, according to the common.

Maybe I won’t. I make no promises, no threats, I only let what happens, happen. Passiveness is not in my nature, think not that I am idly relaxing and letting life wash me further from your kiss. It will never be the case.

i will always fight the tide.

don’t meet celebrities

I’m not going to type out at entire post on an iPhone, though I would be impressed with myself.

Don’t ever meet a celebrity that you love. I don’t care if it’s your favorite actor, musician, etc. Because when they’re not as nice as you hope they would be, you kind of get let down. Break of Noon was a wonderful show, great acting and writing, and I can’t believe I got to meet one of my favorite actors, but.. He could have been a little nicer. There weren’t a hundred people waiting to see him, it wasn’t raining and cold, hell.. It wasn’t even late and Ben and I got the most reaction out of Mr. Duchovny out of anyone there. That was a ‘Thank you’.

The X-Files and Californication aren’t ruined for me, but for as much as a celebrity says that they don’t want to be treated like one (which Ben and I only shook his hand, thanked him for his performance, and moved on and we didn’t get a smile or anything..) when they get genuinely thanked for a great job with no asking for a picture or autograph they’re kind of jerks. Oh well. I should be thankful I can cross something off my bucket list, that I got to meet my favorite actor and the gentleman I had a crush on for so many years growing up.. But a smile wouldn’t have killed you.

It doesn’t kill anyone.

oh, i miss you so

It breaks my heart
just to know you in part
and not to be with you,
where you are

it’d be of her i dream

‘I have been astonished that men could die
Martyrs for religion
I have shudder’d at it.
I shudder no more.
I could be martyr’d for my religion
LOVE IS MY RELIGION
I could die for that

I could die for you.’ – John Keats

This is the most powerful influence on my life. Ever. I am an avid follower of Saul Williams, I really enjoy reading mind opening things (perhaps I’ll even try Huxley one day). Even music gets my heart and mind spinning. But this one quote, from one letter written to Frances Brawne, has been my everything for several years. I think it is the boldest statement that you could tell someone, the most translatable and easy-to-understand sentiment of affection.

The amusing part is that I don’t just feel this for one person. I feel that love is my religion, I could die for that, I could die for you.. And you.. and You. I truly love so many people, so many friends that have done everything for me they can, and I feel this way for life. Though my life is centered around stress, and work, and school, I feel that I am still able to reach outside myself and take in the beauty around me. I feel like this is a difficult task, one that many people either aren’t receptive to, and don’t make a noble effort to try to do, or one that is just overlooked, that people just live. I feel the sorriest for them, those who are forever wrapped in their woes and usually succumb to them in the very end. It is difficult for me, but seeing the joy in things and taking myself out of a difficult situation to see the better in it is something that I am getting ever so much better at.

And it’s keeping me alive.

Though I am so focused on how who I used to be makes me who I am, I am working hard on making sure that who I am now is creating a pathway for who I want to be. There’s a dear friend of mine who is terribly worried that no one remembers who he used to be, no one remembers how he struggled, how the old guard used to be in all of that greatness before the stress and life took over. I remember, just as I remember who I used to be. I was a lap dog of the grandest kind, I followed and dreamed on every word that he had to say. And in all of my following, my desperate attempts to be wanted and made beautiful, I realized in the end that I was so beautiful all along, that even though I conformed myself to all these little things, they ended up making me great. I am a lover of beauty, I am a lover of the world, and most importantly, god-damnit, I am beautiful. I can never thank him enough, I can never thank the people around me enough for helping me recognize that I am greatness all in myself. I will always remember who I was, and in that, will always remember who you were.

I digress, for a moment. I remember how your voice boomed, mine paled in comparison. I had to use the microphone and only after a reading or two could I gather the courage to try it without technological help. Your passion had people leaning back in their chairs, wide-eyed and surprised. Nothing that honest had come out of that town in a long time. Maybe ever. And we were so underground, this gathering of art galleries and coffee and words that sometimes only made sense to ourselves, words that troubled our mothers most of all. It was something many of us have said ‘We could write a whole book on that shit’. And it’s true, it really is. You were like a messiah to that lost group of souls, and ultimately they stoned you and tossed you out for it, considering you too great. It’s that, those moments, that you are worried that no one will remember. Just know that someone out there always will. And we think it’s great enough to write a book about.

Don’t play yourself small, don’t think that you’re no good, and nothing to the world. You are, I am. It’s with that knowledge that you are the most dangerous, the most good to whatever you are engaged in.

It’s moments like these that I want to remember forever, to tattoo on my heart, and when I begin to forget I am so thankful that I wrote this to come back to. Most of all, I’m thankful for all of you.

love is my religion

It’s one of those times that my fingers can’t fly fast enough, that I’m so inspired that it’s exciting. It’s a rarity, one that I enjoy whole-heartedly. I should be getting my book here soon. I purchased a copy published in 1902 of every scrap of John Keats works, including his postmortem findings, his letters to Fanny Brawne.. Anything that Keats has written is in this book. It’s so beautiful, and already worn (!!), solid black. I can’t wait to hold it in my hands, to drink in the rich pages scent, to scan over and over again until it’s all memorized..

I wrote a bit, Keats inspired (of course). Just some musings of a character much like Keats himself. It felt good to write fiction, actually. Great, in fact.

—–

The young man couldn’t help but cause noise where he went, the infection in his lungs was a precursor to his arrival anywhere. It started deep in his lungs, rattling his rib bones like demons against cages and crushing his bronchioles, rising rapidly to rush through his trachea and force its way out in a potentially debilitating expression. Sometimes he’d have to stop for a moment or two to catch his breath, and begin again in whatever direction he was heading, weary and beaten-down. At this moment, he found himself mid thought, eyes unfocused up to the sky, and the wheezing began. He braced himself for the main event, steadying his legs against the giving earth, fingers gripping into the too-cold soil as if it would ease the blow. He shook his head violently as he coughed, gasping for air for just a moment before all was well. To the eye, with his thinness and his cough, he quite appeared to have the plague. He was healthy otherwise, he just lived the life of a poet, a philanthropist, and never quite exerted himself as much as you’d expect what seemed like a strapping young lad to.

Keats did not turn away conversation, but he also did not seek it out. His own thoughts, however disjointed and infected they may be sometimes, kept him company most often. It was unusual for him to be approached by anyone at this late of an hour, in what he thought a more private setting, and it unfortunately caught our hero off guard a little more than he would have liked. He had a tendency to write an emotion all over his face, and was fortunate that his sheepish embarrassment did not appear. He was rather stoic, in fact, as he turned to the gentleman that thought it coy to sneak up behind him.

His voice boomed like a loudspeaker though he was more tender-hearted than most let on, it was a..precautionary statement, so to say. “Perhaps the world is rather on my shoulders at this hour. Is yours?” John countered his question with another. He was not one to so easily give his name away, as to him, a name was a valuable thing. It seemed a lost art. He was not entirely chivalrous to the point of seeming queer, but his self-inflicted tumbling down the rabbit hole kept him thinking more often what he thought was right, rather than thinking in the present.  Another cough loomed in the background of the conversation, his illness quite making him tired this evening, and he felt no need to fuss. It was his nature, he was afraid, to be quizzical and rather vague in his words, it took him a whole conversation to round-about say what he was really thinking. Not to play games, of course, but just to be. In this darkness here he appeared rather fragile and waif-like, delicate next to the wandering soul that had to forcefully sought him out in the night.

“Perhaps the world rather is on your shoulders, after all.” His musing was quiet, and in the still of the night, the crispness of the wind could lend it an air of triteness. With the silence of his companion after such a blunt answer John could not blame him for refusing to answer what seemed like such a pig-headed reply. It was then, a rarity in this moment, that he flashed a smile of teeth, the moonlight making them look bared. It was gone as swift as it came with another cough, the reoccurring theme of a metallic taste bubbling up to say hello again. John excused himself and weakly stood, stumbling his way into the night, away from the stranger, his world hunching his shoulders and kicking him squarely as he retreated.

Perhaps the world was on his shoulders, that night, and the weight was too much to bear.

 

If I could sleep forever..

I wish desperately that I was interesting. That I had fun hobbies, that I had interesting subjects in school, most of the time I just wish that I was interesting enough to keep you. I mean.. I like to rock climb, I like to read. I like making coffee and I like being a hair and makeup artist.. I enjoy spending time outside, I like to see the beauty in things. I love learning, expanding my mind. I love wine and I love food, and I don’t so much like working out to burn that off, but I like it enough. I am trying my hardest to go overseas to volunteer, to travel the world for a little while.

I suppose by looking at that, I seem a well rounded person, but it seems to me that something is Just. Plain. Lacking. And not being able to put my thumb on it really gets me going, it’s the same kind of frustration that I get from playing with a Rubik’s cube. I can set that down and walk away, though. This nags me, it follows me and crawls into bed with me, gently tapping me all the while. It whispers to me when I’m driving, ‘Why can’t you become something more?’.

Does it mean I’m not happy with myself? I believe I’ve come a long ways from who I was even just a few years ago. I am happy with who I am as a person, my moral integrity, and my view of the world. Can you truly be happy with yourself when you feel something lacking? Do I go in search of everything that I want and see if it fills it? Do I learn to live with the vacancy until it passes, or it is filled? Passiveness is not in my nature, I’m afraid.

Anyone that knows me could tell you that.

I am not sure I am lacking in spirituality. There have been so many contributing factors to my lack of faith. I suppose the biggest one of all is..well, my lack of faith. Are you lacking if you want to believe, but no peace, no rest, comes from it? I’m so full of questions that no one can answer but myself, and if I don’t have the answers, I’m not sure where to turn. I ask these questions so often, I do not remember that I ask them, and I do not remember that I answer them.

So much of my teenage years shaped me, and I do not remember them at all. It’s a curious question, to wonder if I have the same brain degeneration as my father, we have the same memory lapses and forgetfulness, the same migraines, the same blank spaces in time that just seem to be gone. Perhaps, someday like he, my synapses will quit firing and I’ll quit living. It’s a dark subject and unfortunately it’s one I think about often, when I go to recall a conversation that used to mean so much to me, and I find myself grasping at strings and finding the ends before I can make sense of them and unravel the words. Medications and cat scans and diagnosis are not what I want, I’ll live in ignorance (though it might not be blissful) until I die, and we’ll see how it ends.

Because I don’t want to know.

Like always, I’m in one of those moods now. Contemplative, rather disheartened because I delved deep into those questions that I have no answer for. The questions I have never had an answer for. Maybe that’s what will finally make me feel like I’m whole. Maybe I’d just like to remember..