forth

I remember the way winter tasted like clarity on my tongue
How, despite the thick grey painted over the pines and woods,
The rose always found its way to my cheek.
I wanted to remember your warmth in the caverns of my neck.

I was on a bike ride yesterday and I noticed a cluster of birds pecking at seeds in the street. The one closest to me jumped up in fear and flew away. One by one, the birds followed suit, and I thought to myself that maybe such is the nature of humans. Sometimes our fear is brought on not by something to be feared but actually by the reactions of others frightened by the reaction of others…etc. 

When you’re afraid of something, ask yourself if it is really worth fearing or if maybe you’re just fearing the fear itself.

when it comes to your life, no one has a better answer than you.

my soul is quaking with sadness and nostalgia and love and despair all at the same time and it’s such a strange combination and it really means that i should just sleep but i just want to go up and shake strangers by their shoulders and blurt out all the ways i’ve loved people in my life and how many times i’ve felt like my heart has too many electric outlets and it’s going to explode any second now, why can’t the strangers just see that?!

i wish i could pick out memories from the past to relive once more like watching a favorite film again. i already know which ones i’d choose

i wonder if not being able to do this saves us from slipping into the past even more than we already do by looking through photo albums and listening to that one song that reminds us…

i want to grab you by the shoulders and shake you; i don’t see why you don’t see what i see; life is so short - what are we doing???

What am I?

I am a woman. I am the pair of wandering eyes at the back of the bus. I am peach ice cream and vanilla skin and sometimes my eyes are blue M&M’s. I am my sister, unafraid and grinning. I am my mother, whose neck will always smell like home. I am my father’s laugh, crushed velvet. I am half-finished notebooks and stacks of half-read books. I am the strand of hair that refuses to be tucked behind your ear. I am gold party hats and playing cards. I am instrumental jazz and red wine on a rainy afternoon. I am trips to the zoo and I am the freckles you didn’t know you had. I am 3 A.M. watercolor paintings and poems about ice cubes written on the backs of old receipts. I am the one who got away, and I am the one who could not stay. I am allspice and cinnamon and nutmeg and all the spices Grandma told me not to tell anyone belonged in her pumpkin pie. I am slow-burning sandalwood incense and early morning talks about movies we will never get to make. I am the fog that exists in the best forests and I am the dew that stains your shoes each morning you walk to the office.

I am free.

i have always thought that hands were the key to love

people say that flirting is all in the eyes, a glance can freeze someone in their tracks

i prefer to look to the hands, the movement of the fingers, how they can be so fluid yet precise, how they can beckon, or simply lay across your cheek, your jawbone, as if to say: lover, i am here for you and with you, come and rest in my philtrum and make it your home…

i think hands are beautiful

the feeling i got when i watched pierrot le fou for the first time by myself, eating a nice sandwich and still smelling like my favorite video store

thinking to myself, i need to create something like this, not like this, but like this in the way that it moves me. i want to move people. i want people to see with my eyes and feel with my heart and love the things that i find special

i will show you the way the simple fluttering of a leaf against the pavement can make a heart melt

I had this sudden realization tonight during the film screening I went to

People always say oh life is so short, enjoy it. In one ear, out the other kind of thing to me. But then it hit me, I could die tomorrow. Anything could happen. Things are so unpredictable. So I thought to myself, why am I holding back? Why am I letting petty things bother me when I should be showing gratitude for all the good there is? I have spent too much time complaining, worrying, lying, being ungrateful, spreading negative ideas…too much time wasted. I need to stop holding back. And I don’t mean I need to go out and try and kiss every boy I’ve ever liked or go jump out of an aeroplane. I just need to really love everyone that I do, everyday. I am thankful for your presence in my life and I cherish the time we can spend together. You improve my life and I hope I can improve yours because that’s all there is right now. I skipped class today to go enjoy the sunshine and an ice cream cone with a friend. I won’t do this everyday and make a habit out of it, but it is nice to take time and do the things that the wind pushes you to do.

I just hope I can remember this.

I can still remember my dream from last night vividly. I was in the living room with my sister and my mother and it was in the evening, very dim in the room. We were talking about ghosts, people who had died in our house. I wanted to stop because I was getting scared, but then suddenly several lights flashed in various lamps around the room, one at a time. A figure in front of us appeared, first white and fuzzy, and then clearly a man maybe a few years older than me. I ran to my mother’s arms and she told me not to be afraid as I cried a little. Then he spoke and told us his name and how he was born in 1782 and had been killed in this house (no idea where that year came from). He continued to speak and explained his life, when another man behind him appeared—tall and thin, bald, a bit sadder looking than the first man. This second man explained that he had cancer and the procedure didn’t take so he too died. The next thing I remember is hugging the first man, first scared but then warming up to him. He and I talked for a very long time. I couldn’t get over how handsome he was. Then it was time for bed (hours had passed that I don’t remember the transition in the dream) and so I went up to my room. He appeared there too and…okay this gets weird, but he laid down with me and cuddled me, and I fell asleep just like that in his arms. Over the next few days or so we went places together like the amusement park. No one could see him but me. On one rollercoaster I was in the first car alone. For some reason the track was suddenly just ending so the “conductor” guy or whatever slammed the brakes. As I approached the very end, I thought there was no way I was going to make it. My car, just mine, started to fall over the edge down towards a really far away ground. I jumped out and clung to some pole nearby? I waited there for a man to come along with one of those lifts they use to cut really tall trees… then I woke up.

I tried really hard to fall back asleep because I wanted to see the ghost man again. It was so strange. I actually missed him, and I didn’t want to lose him. All day I’ve been thinking about him, and this is really odd to me…

My architecture class was so inspiring. It was a class of about 300, mostly freshmen, all looking very bored. But to me, he was silver and exciting. Light grey linen suit, crisp white shirt, grey leather shoes, off-white reading glasses, snowy silver hair, pale wrinkled skin…icy blue eyes that pierce and discover true beauty everywhere. Oh, you tried to be humorous with contemporary jokes, but I best loved when you were calm and spoke softly to say: To be a connoisseur of something, to have passion… that is to enjoy life truly. I will never marry someone who doesn’t make me want to write.

We were raised to be nostalgic.

I haven’t posted in a long time, so here is a list I typed up on my typewriter a few months ago because I was feeling sad and I wanted a clean shower and to type with the punching key sounds along with it of things that I like and things that make me happy to be living.

-long showers, wet hair, and clean pyjamas

-hydrangeas in basins

-pizza parlors

-video stores with spiral staircases

-films that make me feel comfortable and then cry

-India

-ice cream and espresso

-baristas with beards

-saunas

-handsome old men

-focusing on hand movements

-visible breath during the winter

-pronounced collarbones

-chiffon and cotton

-tangerines

-trains and autos

-bumblebees

-lingering

-mountains with log cabins

-freckles

-Topo Chico with lime

-old bathtubs with perfumed salts

-typewriters

-film photography

-farmers’ markets

-fresh basil and mozarella

-Steve McQueen

-listening to the Beach Boys at the beach

-sand sculptures

-ice cream mobiles

-Chinese takeout

-delicates

-the ticking of a clock

-my grandmother

-discovery

-pretending to speak a foreign language on the metro

-imported cookies

-the secure feeling of sunrays hitting my skin

-glass bottles

-dancing like a maniac

-singing loudly to soft songs while driving at night

-afternoon drives with the windows down

-lakes

-men named Jack

-lemon rosemary cake

-lying on cold linoleum

-laughing

-watching others think

-Glenn Miller and the Army Air Force Band

-open endings

There she goes. She is free, more so than ever before. She runs, and she does not stop. She does not want to stop. She has never stopped running. “Running is good,” she thinks as she sucks in the frigid night air. The thought alone is a reminder in her head, a needle in her sunken back.
There she goes. She flies past her house, wishing it were her home. Blurred images of wilted plants, silly stop signs, and concrete become things of the past, her past. She pushes on.
Her legs are stiff from fear and security, but she continues. Her arms swing about with sharp, violent blasts of terror. She does not stop; she does not want to stop. Her eyes are frozen from the wind, occasionally being comforted by her fluttering eyelashes. She runs farther.
And then, a tree. An ordinary, green tree.
And her legs collapse, like gelatin underneath a tow truck. Her arms grow limp beside her hips. She does not see; she does not want to see. She has never seen.

Today I went to the coffee shop to continue reading Miranda July. A man around my age came in to the shop and sat with his back towards me in the next booth. I continued to read and became inspired and wrote a page in my journal, saying how necessary it is to notice everything in the world in order to know how to love. After I filled the page, I tore it out, gathered my things, and slipped the paper onto his table in front of him. He looked up at me, and I said, I wrote this for you, and he shook my hand and thanked me and I left before he could read it.

Then I danced my way to the bus stop, shaking my shoulders up and down, one at a time, and a man waiting at the corner smiled at me.

Good day.