Filter

I am seeing and I am believing and for once the two are harmonious.

I wish there was more I could do to help.

Every fiber of me aches with indignation. Know that although our interactions are periodic, I sit here and make every wish at 1:37 a wish for you and your beautiful spirit.

Lament

Today I called Yale with a college admissions question because I wanted an honest answer that didn't come from a school I'm applying to. For some reason, hearing the answer I absolutely dread from a college I entirely adore would be far worse than getting the same response from one that I'm indifferent to. So I called Yale. And I was halfway through my question when the secretary of the Admissions Office said, "Okay so I'm just going to connect you to an officer..." So I sucked in my breath and waited until I heard a new voice and then I let it out for a second time, and after a good fifteen seconds of silence I heard,

"Welllllll I wouldn't consider two B+s a huge deal if you've never gotten them before...of course we will take it into consideration that your grades dropped...and there's really no excuse."

Of course there's not.
Perfection is a given, not a distinguishing attribute.
And that, my friends, is why I didn't apply to Yale.

I thanked her and hung up the phone, content at the very least with the fact that I now have one less invisible application to stress over.

Ahead flows more of you and nothing more.

I drive around and I see this road and I recognize it and I think, "Down that path lies everything from August" and I keep driving by but the thought sticks in my mind.

In a Boy's Dream

Cody played "Crash Into Me" for me on Saturday night. As he was strumming his guitar, as he was breathing and living each and every word, I rediscovered the song and the youthfulness hidden within. Even the most musically-fanatical of us are guilty of hearing, but not listening, to words now and then. Saturday I listened to this song and it lit my soul on fire and the excited sparks flew up my throat and filled my mouth until I could not resist a smile any longer. By the last "crash" I was grinning so widely that the top creases of my cheeks had started to envelop my eyes.

I hope everyone rediscovers something beautiful today.

Jigsaw

The grace and strength with which you brave each new day leaves me in complete awe of your soul. If I could effect one dream it would be to crawl inside your mind and whisper to your ears how beautiful you are. For now, let me embrace your hands in my own.

They fit perfectly and I've been looking for the missing piece of me.

My contacts hurt.

I wish I knew how to say "no" to people.

Maybe For a Day

I'd like to be the one stationary object and watch the world fly around and around and around.

1.12.10

It's actually okay.
I say this because I know you don't want it to be.

Blueferns

"Often they are mistook for insects – but they are seeds in which the whole generation sleeps confident of a future. And for a moment it is easy to believe each one has one – will become all of what is contained in the spore: will live out its days as planned. This moment of certainty lasts no longer than that; longer, perhaps, than the spore itself."

-Beloved

Honesty

All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there.

you shall above all things be glad and young

you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you’re young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever’s living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man’s
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation’s dead undoom.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

-e.e. cummings

Others See It Too

"I was talking about time. It's so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place--the picture of it--stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened."

-Beloved

 Photographs fade. These albums we leave behind us won't.

Gratification

“No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simply joy could shake you. How loose the silk. How fine and loose and free.”

-Beloved

Everything We'll Ever Know

An uncomfortable thought hit me today as I sat in the cafeteria, one-eighth of a round formica slab, fiddling with my plastic white spoon and fulfilling my childhood need to rebel as I played with the apple sauce in its container.

Who actually hears what we say?

This past hour alone I have carried out dozens of conversations with friends and acquaintances alike. Always, there is eye contact, and a pleasant exchange of smiles, and sometimes even the echoes of a giggle reach my straining ears. There are all the signs of human interaction, and I see them and I hear them. But I have no way of knowing which parts are real and which are simply customary responses to vocal communication.

Sitting at the table, I admit my frustrations regarding my more than slightly incompetent physics teacher, and I watch as you nod, and sympathize, and agree. In the moment it feels so real, not at all fabricated but genuine. You know what I feel because you feel it too.

And now, not an hour later, I am sitting in the library, one-third of a new chain of seats, staring (mindlessly, no doubt, to anyone who throws a passing glance) at this computer screen, wondering if the connection I built with you minutes ago even happened. Of course it occurred, because I talked and you talked and we both reacted. But did you listen to me? Did you hear me deep in the pit of your stomach, or knocking against the outer walls of your head, or jumping up and down on your shoulders? Or did you simply hear me, the way you hear a response to How was your day? or the way you hear your friend tell you the story about her first kiss for the eightieth time?

Maybe our conversation was a placebo. I emerged believing in this new brick of our foundation, but you exited unconsciously snickering at the artificiality of it all.

Everyone possesses a window within themselves. The outer side, closest to the dirty and contagious atmosphere in which we live, is cramped with false connections. They push and bump against each other, trying to squeeze their way through the tiny wire squares of this screen barrier. And on the other side, so near to our privatest selves, float the few stragglers who somehow wandered off the so-beaten path and underwent this beautiful transformation. Small in number, they appear inferior to their crowded counterparts.

They are infinitesimal in size, but they travel closest to our hearts.

Empty Pages

I feel like I have nothing to say lately. My poetry has stalled and I have no idea why. Life has not stopped, so why has my ability to communicate it come to a crashing halt? I am afraid that everything that happens to me, and the way I perceive everything happening to others, is no longer good enough to share.

Why is writing such a struggle with self-satisfaction?

Demise

"And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible."

-Heart of Darkness