Everyone wants to say what I am
bolts and screws holding together
bits of flesh and glue
stretched over squirming things
and veins and lungs
my own little park living in my chest
and growing and creeping
past my bounds, where my skin hugs it in
so persistent it starts to poke
through my eyes and through my nose
pores leaking bits of blood and hope
until I'm a bloated mess of things and thoughts
the pieces people have thrown away
and couldn't get enough of.
Now, I'm outside in
and inside out
here with my insides
ugly and purple and wet
perfect and content
existing in wholeness
with the pieces you've never seen
and the parts my heart can't help but beat.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Paint by numbers.
Sometimes, I become so utterly devoted to an idea that I frame my whole consciousness around it. Not purposely, of course. It's like when you read a really good book. While you're reading it you just can't help but see the rest of the "real world" through that vane. The shade of the narrative voice echos in your own, it casts a new kind of light on the things you see around you.
Of course, you eventually finish the book. Maybe the coloration lingers for a little while, but you eventually forget. The world reverts back to its old ways and the only voice you hear is your own (unless, you know, you're crazy). It's kind of like that with ideas, too. When I say that I am an idealist, I don't mean that I have this overly optimistic view of the world, because i don't. I am an idealist in that when an idea pops into my head I become attached to it. it colors my world just like a really good book does. The only difference is, that the loss of this new form of sight isn't mutual.
The idea of a book might turn away from you, but you also turn away from it. You close the book, put it on the shelf, and leave it for someone else to read. With ideas, it's never that simple, and I'm starting to feel some ideas I've held onto for the past couple of months pull away from me. They are siphoning their color from my world before I've remembered how to see in my own shades. And even if this reality is forcing my to kill the ideal of the idea, I just can't bring myself to kill the sentimentality associated with it. And I can't stand the idea that someday someone might pick it up and read it for themselves.
Of course, you eventually finish the book. Maybe the coloration lingers for a little while, but you eventually forget. The world reverts back to its old ways and the only voice you hear is your own (unless, you know, you're crazy). It's kind of like that with ideas, too. When I say that I am an idealist, I don't mean that I have this overly optimistic view of the world, because i don't. I am an idealist in that when an idea pops into my head I become attached to it. it colors my world just like a really good book does. The only difference is, that the loss of this new form of sight isn't mutual.
The idea of a book might turn away from you, but you also turn away from it. You close the book, put it on the shelf, and leave it for someone else to read. With ideas, it's never that simple, and I'm starting to feel some ideas I've held onto for the past couple of months pull away from me. They are siphoning their color from my world before I've remembered how to see in my own shades. And even if this reality is forcing my to kill the ideal of the idea, I just can't bring myself to kill the sentimentality associated with it. And I can't stand the idea that someday someone might pick it up and read it for themselves.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Dealing With It
Sometimes, when I am feeling a little off, I just sort of let myself wallow in the sheer unfavorable-ness of what ever is bothering me (I say unfavorable and not bad because, if I'm being frank, I find bad to be kind of a useless term. It's lost it's punch. It makes everything sound like an exaggeration. With unfavorable, there's no pretension. No expectation that what you are going through is fundamentally worse than everyone else.).
It should be obvious, of course, that wallowing doesn't actually accomplish much, unless you consider the frantic introspective ravings of a 20 something who is way too self-reflective for her own good and the tragic loss of a half dozen cookies or so to be "much". But, somehow I've got it in my head and in my heart that wallowing is something I need, nay, deserve to do every now and then. I guess that makes sense in a weird twisted way. For someone who is consitently know as being icy, tightly woud, and uncomunicative, submitting totally to self-sorrow kind of helps me remember that I'm life. It's almost as if hating my life reminds me that I have a life - at least a life beyond a single dimension of "somewhat satisfied can't complain" - ness.
But the biggest problem I have with wallowing (despite the fact that I find it to be a very vain practice. Think about it, what could be more selfish than preoccupying your consciousness with how bad your life is.) is the fact that it only breeds more wallowing. Once you allow it passage through your mind, it is almost impossible to stop. trust me, I know.
I've only managed to find one other way of dealing with myself when things go bad. It doesn't solve any problems, it accomplishes even less than the first, but some how i always find it the most satisfying of the two. In short, I trivialize my problems. I make them the requisit tragic scene of some woefully hopeful movie that I apparently have been starring in my whole life. I turn them into laundry. I turn them into marathons of painfully bad tv shows. I turn them into the necessary "dark period" of my life, the suffering that all the greats go through, and will likewise spurn my rise to stardom as the next great American novelist. And today, I turned them into Otis Redding and Solomon Burke.
Because if they can sound so happy singing about heart break, why can't I?
It should be obvious, of course, that wallowing doesn't actually accomplish much, unless you consider the frantic introspective ravings of a 20 something who is way too self-reflective for her own good and the tragic loss of a half dozen cookies or so to be "much". But, somehow I've got it in my head and in my heart that wallowing is something I need, nay, deserve to do every now and then. I guess that makes sense in a weird twisted way. For someone who is consitently know as being icy, tightly woud, and uncomunicative, submitting totally to self-sorrow kind of helps me remember that I'm life. It's almost as if hating my life reminds me that I have a life - at least a life beyond a single dimension of "somewhat satisfied can't complain" - ness.
But the biggest problem I have with wallowing (despite the fact that I find it to be a very vain practice. Think about it, what could be more selfish than preoccupying your consciousness with how bad your life is.) is the fact that it only breeds more wallowing. Once you allow it passage through your mind, it is almost impossible to stop. trust me, I know.
I've only managed to find one other way of dealing with myself when things go bad. It doesn't solve any problems, it accomplishes even less than the first, but some how i always find it the most satisfying of the two. In short, I trivialize my problems. I make them the requisit tragic scene of some woefully hopeful movie that I apparently have been starring in my whole life. I turn them into laundry. I turn them into marathons of painfully bad tv shows. I turn them into the necessary "dark period" of my life, the suffering that all the greats go through, and will likewise spurn my rise to stardom as the next great American novelist. And today, I turned them into Otis Redding and Solomon Burke.
Because if they can sound so happy singing about heart break, why can't I?
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Things lately
haven't been the greatest. The self doubt, self criticism that I left behind me at the end of last quarter have bubbled back up to the surface of my day to day remarkably fast. My life has so much potential to be so good - and most of the time it is - but the see-saw of it all is unnerving, exhausting, and I fear worst of all, unavoidable.
It seems like these past few days have been calling me to come to terms with , or at least recognize a few of the things that I have done my best to forget about. Bringing them back out hurts, but I can only hope that this period of pain and frustration can be followed with one of comfort, joy, and - dare I say it - constancy.
I need to get back to this, to getting it all out.
It seems like these past few days have been calling me to come to terms with , or at least recognize a few of the things that I have done my best to forget about. Bringing them back out hurts, but I can only hope that this period of pain and frustration can be followed with one of comfort, joy, and - dare I say it - constancy.
I need to get back to this, to getting it all out.
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