It’s all “so we went out to dinner and then I met his friends…”
And
“Oh my god, you wouldn’t believe how that movie ends!”

Mouths are full of gossipy has-beens and chalky what-ifs
I don’t even know what that means, because my brain can’t comprehend what to think of all this
All the chatter, catching up with old friends and
Talking
Loudly
I can’t
Fucking think
Of what
I should be
Writing

Friday evening is
No time for a writer
And her coffee

I definitely have not been kind to my scribbling spirit lately. My head is either deep in a book or drawn across the internet…it’s easier to avoid your own battles that way. It seems that no matter how many blessings I can count, there will always be a troubling underneath the gleam of my smile. 

Why?

Because that’s the way a writer lives…or maybe that’s how we become writers-I haven’t quite figured that out yet. And maybe there is no line to distinguish between what a writer makes and what makes a writer…because tangible realities are mere fantasies to a poet, an author, a pencil pusher…

We (the sixteen writers in me; i cannot speak for others) see several shapes and brilliant, sparkling shades in a single facet. Seeing too much, knowing too much, and feeling too much can be overwhelming. For in the simple joy of a sailor’s sky, we know there is more sadness and grief in such an astonishing sight. We know that amongst those tangerine and grapefruit clouds is a depth that is too complex for our feeble minds to fathom how and when this ends. We realize that as mortals, we will only grasp a handful of such dawns and dusks until our bodies waste away. So while one may smile and sing of the painted skies pink, we will weep of it’s enormity. We will weep for never understanding why diseases and murderers exist to prematurely strip a human from enjoying just one more sunset.

Sometimes…

and I’ll whisper this…

sometimes us writers wish that instead of analyzing every how and why, we could just simply live.

I touched the clouds that day. They sank down deep and weaved themselves within me. In, around and throughout my arms, circling my neck and cradling my head, and for a second, I could have sworn that I was floating. Securely wrapped in a blanket of dreariness, I closed my eyes and felt the pain seep out of my pores and into the thick fog that encompassed my body. I knew the clouds would leave me soon - weightless and vulnerable to a world ungracious, but I was fine. Because as soon as they lifted back up into the sky, they’d leak, like one hundred faucets, all of the grief that I had lent them. 

And so they did. As I raised my hands back up to meet them, they wept all of the tears that my heart had buried inside. In fact, it poured for weeks as I stood there and all around me, the buds on the trees bloomed fervently. My eyes grew wide as the weeds that we sowed sprouted into Titan Arums, giant in size. 

Then I remembered, as I stared in wonder at the beauty that surrounded my blundering feet, the simple phrase that the clouds gently whispered to me that day they came down to meet my face:

“She who embraces sadness and pain will someday appreciate the healing of spring rain.”

And that’s usually how it goes…
one broken toe ruins the run for the
rest of the pigs.
It’s not enough to pick at the seams anymore;
these days, the work isn’t finished until
you find the strength to dig.
Dig until your nails bleed bright crimson.
The color that burns deeper-
sinks a heavy boulder-
rips through your ears
and plummets far into your fear.
It tears at your soul to steal
every.
ounce.
of hope.
inside.
of you.
The night, she, treks that foreboding road
to slash at your heart, seep into your bones
until you’ve broken every promise
mumbled to yourself.
Until you’ve retracted all the love that you had
once confessed to those that you held dearly close.

But that’s just how it usually goes.

between the pages that my pen sketches upon.

I know that I’ve dropped words somewhere…did they fall into the cracks of my story? Fall into the depths of line after line after line after line of fickle, meaningless scribbles? They have to be here, somewhere.

My head doesn’t do the comprehending; I let my hands think for me. With each swoop and dotted i, I try to turn off my stream of conscience and reach for words that float out in the open. I have no idea what each sentence means. I can construct page long paragraphs and not understand a single line. So I search for a meaning to figure out what my heart is telling me.

I think that my heart just means to say that we are all in this together. It could be the coffee talking (oh, I wish the coffee would just speak to me), but I’m certain that I can feel not just my heart beat, but the sound of the pattering sentiment all around me. My chest may contain just one vascular organ, but my fingertips relish in the energy surrounding. 

We swell. 

My words swell and become fragments of love and life thrown into the wishing well.

I wish you well.

“as i drove by a colorful, inviting car dealership today on my way home from school,

i saw one of the balloons that had been attached to a vehicle simply detach itself.

i watched as the bright yellow balloon floated fast away from the one object that held it down.

i could not turn my eyes away, noticing that it was the only balloon to spring away from the rest, in such a fashion that would catch the attention of an entire highway.


in that moment, i wished nothing more than to be that balloon.


…because no matter how pretty a site it was to see the many colorful balloons attached to brand new, shiny cars, and no matter how perfectly fit that balloon seemed to be, that balloon was intelligent enough, quick enough, and strong enough to break free when it desperatley needed to.







i need to pull through.”

After four years, it still is just a substitute for my Livejournal. 

I love that Tumblr is here and I love that I can search tags easily. But I hate reblogging. I despise the way that it’s become a mere distraction for what I really want to say.

Reading back through my old livejournal entries, I was a complete open book to anyone who cared to read. Much of it is difficult to get through now because some of it is overwhelmingly honest and earnest, but I was young and green. Still very self-aware, however, and it’s so interesting to return to the archives and read not only my very blatant honesty about every experience and emotion I was undergoing, but also the support group that I found in my friend’s comments. 

We don’t receive that here. We drown out our most sincere posts with countless ridiculous memes and staged or edited photos of nude bodies. Tumblr mimics the real world in a public social setting…we mask our insecurities with bullshit upon bullshit so we can avoid heaviness or deep personal connection. There is nothing substantial, endearing or rewarding in that. 

I miss the connection that we had. Through my keyboard, I would reach with digital arms for any sort of notification that there was a keyboard on the other end, lit up by another person’s electric fingertips. 

I don’t feel that here, but certainly, the times move forward. And it’s very possible that I always tried to make this website something that it is not. 

“I suppose today was better…minus the [lack of] production. I missed class this morning because I was exhausted and my eyes were the size of golf balls. I went out today to turn in applications but all I wound up with was an orange soda and a ‘sorry, we’re not hiring right now.’ I didn’t study. I didn’t call my cousin. I didn’t do loan shit that I need to do on the internet and I didn’t meet anyone new.

I did, however, fall in love with the Tegan & Sara album and tear up over the livejournal comment that my sister posted on my entry.

I called home in tears last night. The first time I have ever called my mom to cry to. My heart was in so many pieces, I felt that only my parents could help mend me. I needed home. I needed something to keep at least a small fraction of me in tact. So I sobbed for hours last night…never has my world felt so broken. So shattered. I feel as though I have no direction and the only thing I really have to grasp on to is two hours away from me.

What am I doing here?

Is this really what I wanted so badly? To be lonely and miserable in a new town with even less of a drive for school than I had before? I thought things would be so different. My delusions have driven me straight to the ground. I really wanted to believe that this life was for me. I did believe that I belonged in a large university, living on my own. But in reality, I’m meant to work with art and music. That’s what I’ve always dreamt of. Why couldn’t I have just done that?

I could ask these questions all day, but the fact of the matter is, I’m here now. I need to finish it and learn from my mistakes. This is growing up whether I like it or not and that’s life…

…right?

I just need someone here. Someone to get close to. I’m so tired of being alone. Me and my social disorders.

9:19…wishing my phone would ring just once.

I guess I just wait now. Wait for someone to find me. Who knows if they’ll live up to the impression that he left in my mind, but I’ll never have a choice.

Sometimes I wish my journal would write a story inside of itself so I had something to read. Something else to feel. 

And of course, I over analyze every word spoken and every move made. It happens every time, when you heal my wounds and kiss my cheek after my mouth cries in pain. What you don’t know is that you’re mending flesh that you, yourself, have ripped apart. And I’ll stay in vein, in hopes that there could be more. But you jump in bed during my deepest sleep in order to avoid personal keeping. Because you know that I want you. You know that I fell for you…and you’re not falling for anything.

Please forgive me when I try to deny your existence. For now, I’ll have to find another way to stitch myself up.”

We’ve been fishing a well that has no longer any water
One that’s been empty for years with no sign of
Replenishment; just resentment
Filling it’s bucket
With words we use to break hearts and re-open scars
We only attempt to refill with intentions ill

I once fished you from that well
That’s when we fell in love

We dance around it every night
Searching for a way to relieve the sting
Waiting for our love to swell
But our bucket only pulls up lies and
Broken compromise from the bottom of that well-
We used to swim in the same water that we drank
We used to love hard no matter the pain

I once baited you from that well
That’s when I fell into your arms
But now look what we’ve done-
We’ve dried up the pool and never
Replaced the love that we stole
Now our hearts are just as empty as
That fishing vessel

I’ve been misplacing my anger. Instead of taking it out on my notebook, I’ve been battling in other ways. Instead of letting my boiling blood fuel my pen, I’ve been taking it out on everything else or trying to hold it in.

I can’t do that. I have to embrace my anger and utilize it. 

I don’t believe in “this too shall pass” because the only way to get through something is to push yourself. Perhaps if I believed in God, I would let the outside world guide me - but that’s a false sense of security. Because the world will only guide you to where you will end up naturally - six feet underground. I can’t just let the world lead me to death because as long as I’m breathing, I’m going to reach for something. Complacency and faith are one in the same and I refuse to live lifeless in my body before the earth claims me permanently. 

The only thing we can do is fight. Fight for justice, for freedom, for liberty, equality and for the fucking choice to fight.

I’m tired of sitting still while the wrong people fight the right battles. Or worse, the right people fight the wrong battles. My hands are going to eventually freeze up and all I will have left is my voice. When that is gone, I will be dead. Until then, I have to use every chance that I’ve got to fight the good fight.

…to the girl who could write stanzas and clauses for days and still have something left to say when the pen hit the ground?

What happened to the girl with a head weighted enough, it would actually sink into the pages throughout and at the end of every inanimate day?

The clouds may have been lifeless and resting heavy on her eyelids with regret, but the drama ran vehement on paper. With every loop and dot, her hand made love to the journal pages and she could literally feel her chest stretch as her heart grew fonder of the love she chased after.

I used to be that girl, and perhaps I still am, but I have found that the shifting of the tectonic plates have created crevices for my insanity to escape. Or maybe I am not actually more stable emotionally than I used to be and it’s a great possibility that the conveyor belt beneath our feet has little to do with my inconsistencies, but I can say, with confidence, that I’ve never seen more scribbles and mistakes made on a page of my own.

Nothing seems to fit. Words don’t have a place and puncuation creates only frustration when I can’t find. Just the right…way; to say [how]?? What!

My mind is fucked.

Or not fucked up enough.

I need to dive into this paper. Open up a porthole into this notebook, peel off my ten layers of clothing and apprehension, place my hands above my head and shoot myself off this common plain. 

What would a world of written word look like? Would it only display raw emotion through literal text or would our wordplay manifest into linguistic sex? Would we wrap eachother in chocolate covered euphemisms to sweeten our transgressions? Or maybe we’d create a new progression; a vocabulary vessel with verses vernacular just to show how verbose our verbatim has vecome. Perhaps we would just create our own language. Make up our own words. Use the most uncommon letters in the English articulation zust vor xee vun of vit.

My written world might resemble a little bit of what we call Hell. Where there are seventy-two versions of me and no one else. I could argue with my past while mapping out my future; stitching up new seams just to tear old sutures. All seventy-two of me would climb aboard playground structures - but instead of slides and swings, they’d be late night offerings of confessions and pleas to a God that thirty-three of me doesn’t believe. Another twenty-four would be interchanging doublespeak, rhyming to a rhythm that could never speak eloquently.   Fourteen might be heavily sedated on wine or even whiskey, singing heavy-hearted lyrics and reading politically-loaded poetry in the middle of deserted Wall Street.

But one of me would be still be seated with thirty cups of coffee…writing tales of love and heartbreak to an elevated heartbeat. 

So tell me, what would happen in your written world reality?

So what do people write about at 9am? Do they jot down notes about the morning paper or do they make up shopping lists to work off of later? Do they reflect on late night dreaming or early sunrise glistening? Do they write down prayers to get them through the day or plan out what they’ll say when they are asked to pray at dinner?

Do they start their autobiography or map out a timeline to figure out when their death will be?

Maybe bucket lists of hopes and dreams and wishes for endless possibilities. Perhaps a different kind of list-one that reeks of sadness and grief; reads of regrets and speaks volumes of past mistakes and dreadful pain.

Maybe 9am is different for some. Instead of a new dawn, a new way; it’s the end of a graveyard shifter’s work day. I then wonder, if that’s the case, does dusk and dawn get switched around for the midnight slaves? Does the sunlight bring retrospect while the moonlight breathes life against the night owl’s neck? Does daylight bring a sense of sadness as the night often does for the sunlight goddess?

If so, what do they write about in the dead of the morning? Would they moarn the dark skies that left them high and dry? And if they can’t fall asleep in the sun’s warming reach, what becomes of their mental stability? If Mother Nature created humans to work around the sun’s time rotation, what happens to the deviants who follow the moon’s whispered vibration? Can we adapt to a future of darkness if we’re not nocturnal in essence?

Or does the Mother of mothers put her foot down in our attempt to defy her rules on ground?

Would the night owls one day wake up and realize that the stems of their brains have become confused in their pursuit to fool their need for the radiance of the almighty sun’s heat?

I know that at 9am, in the coldness and bleakness of the winter’s prowess, there is nothing that my skin begs for more than the fervor of summer’s bliss. My toes turn inward, my muscles stiffen, my teeth clench and my circulation slows in preparation for hibernation. 

But we’re not bears, we have work that needs to be done, so it would just be nice if Mother Nature would have equipped us with thicker blood.

…all of my questions at 9am. My mind running rampant before properly caffeinated.

Isn’t it true? What we lack in courage, we make up for in judgement.

Refuse to be a critic. As I grow more confident as a creator, I find more strength in my connection to other artists. As I become more comfortable in my own skin, I see beauty in other’s. We all have something to offer.

I call myself a creator because I can’t quite call myself a musician, nor a writer. I am not just one, I am both. I also create other things, but the most important creation to me is my voice. Not the sounds that come from the vibration of my vocal folds, but the voice as a collaboration of my written thoughts paired with music, used as a tool to reach. My voice and a collective voice.

It’s not totally understood why I place so much emphasis on this voice. Maybe because my entire life I have found it easier to put my pen to paper instead of opening my mouth. It’s been difficult to wear my heart on my sleeve and connect with other’s. Always a communication barrier; a wall of brick and mortar. Although with age, it seems to get easier but it’s still an uphill battle. So for me, it’s pertinent to overcome these obstacles for others and hope that I can overcome them myself.

There is no doubt that I focus my energy on my music and writing even when most probably think that I should be devoting my time to building my business in the salon. But hair is just that: a minuscule form of art that only incorporates a fraction of creativity that my mind and heart can give. It’s my trade. Music is, and always will be, my heart. Writing is my work. Performing is my passion. Connecting to people is my driving force. My work is fueled by the chance to overcome all language barriers to unite souls like puzzle pieces. 

So I am called to share this. I am called to reach out and spread my compassion to other’s. If I can inspire one person to be a better human, to love themselves, respect their peers, love and cherish animals and their relationships and dive deep into their passions no matter what, my work has been rewarded. But the job is never finished - I will work until my hands collapse and my voice box bleeds.

Momentum. Such a great word. Something we must keep. But it must be a controlled motion; a slow, steady burn of a candle, not a holiday sparkler. Those sparklers only come once a year and will dazzle your eyes for a mere 45 seconds until we move onto the next. But that candle? We leave it out year round, adopt it as a daily routine and a regular fixture in our homes. That’s what I want to be. I hope for longevity, not to be remembered as a quick fling. I want to reside in the subconscious of my receivers.

Good work takes time. Hard work is a lifestyle.  Only support from here on out.