i am not ruling the world.

i'm offended.
every day and every hour i hear something that crawls under my skin like black tar with legs and it settles within me, sucking my blood.
i hear these things and i see these things and i am helpless to stop them - i am so uncomfortably not numb, so passionately pricked by words of hate and demise, yet if i open my mouth or raise my voice, letting the levies break and the river of justice pour out of me, you will find me the enemy.
i'm hurt.
i am so broken in the mind from absorbing the thick and slimy smog looming over me from work to home and atop my bed...
my community is a sickly jaundiced aura to my well being and it reminds me constantly that i am not as welcome as you are; i have not overcome the same things you have and therefore I have less value; my ancestors projected a stereotype for me, of undeserved wealth and fortune that in this gray and dismal reality i have to purposely reach short of my goals to earn your respect.
synonym: pessimistic.
i'm silenced.
there are so many thoughts and opinions and ideas sprouting in my unearthed and over watered brain that the roots are growing out my ears and nose and filling my throat so i cannot explain.
there is this unbearable feeling, this emotion that tells me things are not right. you are not getting me. you are not understanding your equal part in why our environment has gotten so poisoned and out of control, and your eyes gaze over me, your attention to me fades as I soak in the toxin of our neighbors hatefulness and sly backhanded racism.
i am a white woman.
not a black woman or a gay woman or an underprivileged, at-risk and over grown youth.
you say, "until you stop ruling the world, maybe i'll have some sympathy for you."
But I am not ruling the world....
I am your neighbor, your colleague, your right arm and two feet for whenever the moment should beckon, and I am fighting with you and for you and for your cousins and siblings and children and for all of humanity.
I'm not advocating for everyone else just like me
I advocate for me. Just as I advocate for you.
This is not a race of skins
This is the human race and I am a member
Acknowledge me, help me, hear me out, because believe what you will from stories past down through my fathers, I know what it means to fall victim; and i feel - from the core of my marrow - what it's like to suffer with internal protest.
I am you in more ways than one, so love me duly, for
I am not ruling the world.

under water

Ever feel like you're in a fishbowl, being stared at by everyone around you? Like you can't go anywhere or do anything, can't run or jump or scream, just float... just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, even if it is in circles within a small glass tank filled with your own piss? Ever feel like when you try to push back against your binds and forced limits, instead of getting shattered glass and exasperated relief, all you get is your reflection delivering a head-butt?

My answer: all the time.

Ever feel like you're in a snow globe? In some mini utopia that, at random, shudders uncontrollably, and when life starts to settle back into perfection, an unknown god who might reasonably be played by child with ADHD clutches your world into his sticky fingers and shakes you up again?

My answer: all the time.

Do you ever, ever feel like you've got a song to sing and you're trying to let it out long and loud for all the world to hear if they're willing? Have you ever suddenly felt like the sweet air you're releasing is the pressure from the walls closing in and crushing you, like you're the center piece of an accordion and the notes are playing nicely until two hands are squeezing you so tight you can no longer breathe? Like you're an amazing instrument meant to play a part in an incredible orchestra, and just when you think you're starting your piece, you're exhausted.

: all the time.

It wasn't long ago that I felt I had a purpose, which was to inspire others to find their confidence, their dreams, their best abilities. I had energy and could dance and sing and breath life into others who felt hopeless and out of reach. My life in and of itself was a song. Of course it had it's repetitive choruses and mistakes, it's high notes and unexpected low notes, but it was beautiful and intentional and directed by something outside of myself.

Now I'm out of wind and, still at the hand of someone or something else, I am crushed. And I fear that if this thing lets me go I will collapse into an even weaker nothingness.

I am only 24 and I feel like my song is over all thanks to the zealoused way I've lived, the reckless way I've fought for myself and for others. I was stretching and dancing and floating on instinct and good intention, and now I'm frozen stiff. What an astonishing and tragic way to go.

Every time I feel like things are getting better and the clutch is slowly loosening to give me back my passion and song, someone switches the anology and shakes me up causing yet another example of worst case scenarios. My world is constantly being turned upside down. The snow and random bits and tears cascade from top to bottom, and cover my could-be utopia, so I'm striving in the most fragile of environments.

AND I'm being watched by outsiders. I'm being judged and critiqued and expected to accomplish something profound, I think. My boss, my parents, my brothers, my employees, my youth, my friends, my roommate, strangers, plants, rocks, my own little fish... every move is being witnessed. Every stride is evaluated, calculated, and appraised at lowest value.

I AM ONLY 24!

I AM JUST A LONELY FISH who's mantra is "just keep swimming..."

But I have no direction. I have no dream of being able to leave. I can't escape the magnifying glass without confronting my own internal deamons anyway.

I replenish only when you feed me. I stir only when you frighen me. I'm bathing in my own shit, you know, and I fear, and I cry constantly, which is something you ironically do not see at all.

I really am only 24. Survey says I'm not even a fully matured person. Yet the life has been squeezed out of me from all the topsy-turvy life altering up but mostly downing I've endured while isolated and under pressure.

I need to breathe.

I need this shit to settle.

I really need an escape plan.

Child of a Revolution

I'm putting this off, clearly.
I'm playing games of Hearts on my computer, back to back to back, completely without mind.
I'm finishing my second glass of cheap wine. No, it's not boxed.
I'm drowning myself in music by Pinback. I'm not tired of it even though I saw their concert last night.
I'm putting this off, this whole writing thing, for every good reason in the world.
But I know the -tick-tick-tick- is important for my fingers and my head.

...

Though I'm lubricated with merlot and adult stretch marks are growing all over and in me, I'm growing back into a child.
It's like falling backwards blindly without knowing what or who is there to catch me.
And I'm pretty sure there's nothing.
But it's worth it.
Every free falling and freaking out second is worth it.
And I don't care if it hurts when my head hits down -
There's no way it can hurt more than it does when I'm up, trying to stand tall, trying to stand firm and confident and full of answers.
"The strong and caring adult," my supervisor says.
Who's that? I wonder.
If there was such a person in my form, it may only be present as a ghost, because that "me" is no longer here.
I am down there.
Falling, falling, falling.

I say it's a revolution. It has to be. There is no other way.
It's the anniversary of my grandparents death, and my carbon monoxide detector has been going off.
It's the anniversary of my mentor's death.
It's the anniversary of my friend's suicide.
And last week, my dad lost his job, two of my students lost close family members, and my 16 year old coworker was shot and killed.
Another light bulb burnt out in my kitchen.
That me - that me that you were expecting here?
That me is dead too.

"Every time i die
i AM
born again..."

I am falling, falling, falling.
I do not care how hard I hit.
I am weak from standing against gravity and I am exhausted from my depressed existence.
Not exhausted. Fed up.
Fucking pissed that so much shit has either happened to me or around me or to the people I care so much about.
I am giving up this life. I give up on this striving, trying, make the best of the worst vicious cycle I am caught in...
So when you see me, when you see my form, you'll be seeing a shadow.
You'll be seeing what you want or expect to see, or what I've been, or what you know of me.
You should know it's just an image my past is reflecting, for i am

falling

falling

falling

into a new idea.
into a new seed.
into a better part of me.
into a better part of you and this community and this fucked up, empty, god fearing, mindless, hateful world.
and that seed will shatter into a trillion smaller pieces that will sliver into your consciousness and break your ego down until you understand.
Until you understand what I know and what I don't know and what it takes to turn shit into gold.

A new reality is necessary.
It's on the horizon.
Only as I fall. I die. I start over.

Dear Dad

I'm on the phone, stomping through the park, bluegrass music is trailing behind me, and I'm thinking, "We've been down this road before."

Mom's trying to mediate the whole thing and keep us calm, but I feel like I'm calm plenty and taking the punches like always. Dad's exasperated and tired of my pessimistic, ever-failing attitude - so he says. "GIVE UP! QUIT! THROW YOUR LIFE AWAY!" But then I asked for examples of when I've ever given anything up in my entire 24 years of being, so he hung up the phone.

Still I'm somber and cold and trudging through the empty sidewalks by the DeYoung and new Academy of Science Museum as if the cement was quick sand and I'm trying hard not to tense and get sucked in deeper by the darkness. Mom's jabbering on with excuses for everyone's mistakes and reminding me to chill out before she realizes I haven't said anything in 5 minutes. "Are you still there?"

This is what it always boils down to, honestly. I think by nature and an untamed dose of nurture, I've become a gal livin the path of adversity. What was that famous quote? Robert Frost? "Two roads diverged in the wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." Something like that. Though I doubt anyone knows what I mean. It's 2 brothers carving the success route but leaving me 4 years behind trying to prove myself and my uniqueness... so at 22 I took the wheel and jarred it to the left and pressed my right foot to the floor of my car. I started carving my own path, and I've thrashed at the wild bats and poisonous vines as I've pressed forward.

What happened when I was demoted? I got an email from ya, Dad, it said "Hang in there" and blah blah blah; and even my supervisor was telling me to quit the corrupt and toxic mess I was in, but I held out til the funding ran dry and I had no other choices.

I feel like I'm being told to look backwards and never forwards for what is best for me. I feel like I'm supposed to deal with what I've got, and bake something sweet when all I have is expired mayonnaise and a jar of pickles. I feel like you, like Palin, is telling me to stop looking into the past without promising a future... none of this advice is making any sense.

What happened when my landlord wouldn't give me my security deposit back, and harassed me and said I would go to hell? I took action and sued her! But you said, "Are you sure you want to do that?"

What happened when a mound of compost blew up in a mushroom cloud on my deck with where I used to live? You said, "All you can do is tell your roommates how you feel." Correct, but they cussed me out and made me believe there's an emotional price to pay for being clean. You told me I was over reacting. You told me I would never be happy in San Francisco.

What happened when my boyfriend abused me? No I never told you about that, Dad, because you would have said "Why don't you just come home to Michigan?" The subtle cue to quit, woven into a wet blanket "Hang in there" - damn I'm feelin good.

I am alone here. I am striving here. I am doing my god damn best to prove the world to who ever will listen here. And it gets hard here. I panic and hide and push others as I fall into the whirlpool of my own diseased mind. Your excuse, Dad, is "Well I'm on steroids for poison ivy, and on meds for high blood pressure, and I just drove 4 hours..." but you never can admit that you passed on this genetic malfunction and my unhappiness is justified and sanctioned.

"You seem to be having a rough time the last few years... there are no magic words to make everything better."

Funny. I could have said the same to you, Dad. But I admit my issues. Publicly. I'm not going to give up, ever, nor will I hang up the phone. This quick sand way is the way things are, and since I chose this path less traveled by, and since it's gonna suck in any direction, I'll show you an effective end to a letter:

I'm sorry.

coasting with (or without) condiments

On a Wednesday I found myself staring at a Heinz Ketchup bottle next to an isolated glass pepper-shaker.

Where's the salt?

San Francisco was built over a roller coaster, sort of the way a roller coaster was built over Woody Allen's childhood home, and as time's gone on, there's been a natural desire to expand the coaster - make it bigger, higher, more dangerous and threatening. In nearly a blink, the coaster's developed new arms and legs, with more cars and more people riding it for all it's worth. The unstoppable progression has stretched the city out like a prostitute in Amsterdam's Red Light District. It's pushed and pulled while the structure in missionary has tried to contort, and without knowing it, while sitting pretty in my apartment, my apartment has bent and twisted and ebbed to accommodate the coaster's new, updated and fashionable position. I'm riding on God's big progressive amusement mobile.

And today I'm up on the high end of the track.

WEEEEEEEEE!

Then I realize I'm looking at ketchup on a waxed table where people have etched their names with dried out pens and swiss army knives. There's no salt.

Tomorrow will be different. Maybe I'll be on the down swing. If only I had the guts to put my arms in the air and enjoy the rush of the fall!

But it's out of my control. I never asked to live on top of a coaster - yet here I am. Up and down. Riding it out. Minding gravity.

panicked on pink carpet

"Mom!!! Mooooooooooommmm!!!"

She's downstairs in the kitchen. I don't know what she's doing but I know she's ignoring me and giving too much space and freedom to a 3 year old. I'm the youngest child of three, the only girl on top of that, so most of my friends are make-believe.

"MOM! Someone stole my perfume!"

Finally she's coming upstairs, wiping the lathered dish soap off her hands and leaving a bubbly trail on each level as she ascends to my grand zone of discontent; she has learned that within a certain amount of time my pleas turn into desperate cries and demands for immediate action, and in her all her lemon-scented motherliness, she senses my clicking time bomb, thus left the towel by the sink.

She enters my room - all bordered with hearts on wallpaper by the ceiling and stuffed animals strung from hooks around my closet door. I'd do just as well with GI Joe's duct taped vicariously, but I'd never tell her because she designed my room herself. She comes in almost silently as my sight in this moment remains fixed on the open bottle of Tinkerbell Perfume with only drops of green coagulated liquid remaining. Her silence yields:

"What IS it, Meredith?" a little annoyed but motherly and patient underneath.

"Someone stole my perfume! There used to be more of it!!"

The smell lingers everywhere like fragile evidence. It's a little sugar, a pinch of magic and dash of fruit. It's a scent that gives me energy to play and reminds me of my zestful age. But I can hardly see the translucent image of a pixie girl on the dainty glass bottle without the limey liquid brimming behind it.

Maybe a ghost came in through my open window and snatched it!

Maybe my brothers are playing a mean trick on me!

No no, Shandra (my best friend whom Mom says has rebellious tendencies) must have poured it out. She was over here the other day. Ugh. I hate her.

"MoM! Someone has stolen my perfume. Look!"

"Are you sure, how do you know?"

"...well, it's GONE! I left it here and now there's nothing left," I say, disregarding the green pixie girl driblets puddled at the base of the bottle.

"No one's stolen it, Meredith."

I'm not satisfied with her response. Why doesn't anyone believe me when I report such disasters? "How do you know it's no one?!"

My throat is getting tight. Needles are rushing to my face from inside me and they're turning me pink - I'm becoming camouflaged within my little girl jungle of a room - I want to shout and cry my way out of this invisible state and convince the world, "I'M NOT STUPID! There was perfume here last week and now there's not and I LOOOOOOOVE my pixie perfume! It's mine! Someone took it!"

But I don't say anything.

I just look back up at her with squinting eyes, the aroma is still looming and taunting me.

"You left it here?" Mom asks.

"Yeah, I think so."

"Cap off?"

"Yeah..." I whisper, the word trickling off into space with the worry and assumption that a cap off meant something other than letting Tink breathe.

"It evaporated, Dear."

"It WHAT?" I entrust that's another word for stolen.

"That's what happens to liquids when you leave them out with the cap off."

"But... WHAT? Why?!"

"It's just what is."

"It's.... gone? ...forever?"

"'Fraid so."

"Well where's the green, then?" I look around my room for spots and shades and clouds of neon lime and watered down grass colors - I look on the pink sparkled carpet and the pink painted walls, on the ceiling and on the mom-made quilt flat upon my bed. Nothing seems out-colored.

"It evaporated, too," Mom says.

She walks out and back down the stairs. I don't know what is so important she has to get back to and leave me stranded. I feel lied to and tricked. I feel like the world stole something from me, not just from the little vessel my pixie called 'home.'

Confused, frustrated, sad... wait, slash that, EXTREMELY sad- I want my perfume back. How could it be gone forever?

I slam my window shut. Stupid air. And I return the cap to it's bottle hoping that will make the air put some of my sweet liquid back, then I sit on the floor with my knees bent, my back against the bed; I'm small enough that if my mom walks by again, she won't see me crouching, and she'll think I evaporated.

My skirt is revealing my scabbed skin and my purple polka-dotted underwear, but I'm not concerned with that in the least.

I want what was taken from me. Tomorrow I'll look again.

in it for the long hall

My apartment is an oven. It's only 60 something degrees on the west side of San Francisco and most civilians are sporting light jackets or fuzzy sweaters as that classic late September breeze rushes past Ocean Beach and straight through the streets all neatly aligned in alphabetical order. My prayer flags are dancing in the sunny evening air out on my balcony which makes me smile and mutter aloud, "that's cute," but from the other side of a thick sliding glass door, my living room is steaming and incubating a harsh smell - some sort of confused collaboration between life and death - the reality of my roommate's stray hairs rerooting in stained 80's carpet and a fossilizing glass of tea breading new life on the tv table right next to me. The sunflowers I bought two weeks ago emit an odor only to be mistaken by stale sex and over worn insoles, but they still look pretty damn good so I'm trying to overcome, and the best way to breathe through this sweltering and stuffy situation is to slide that moldy framed glass door a little to the left to let a column of freshness press into my brave reality. The vertical blinds, now closed to keep the blazes out, are waving in the little bit of wind streaming through the happy column, and on the other side of my kitchen the shadow of the blinds' movement is strobing on and off, hypnotizing and seducing me into a situation I know not yet. I'm sorta looking forward to what is secretly bound to happen.

Not surprising to my dear, devoted readers, my most recent situations have lacked luster and good cheer. The synapses between my neurons have been gathering too much of my good things and holding them hostage to the rest of me, leaving my fingers to curl back in bitter hostility - deep and dark blog postings, the unfortunate result. (And you think it's uncomfortable for you?)

It's a long hall to go down to get to where one really ought to be. I realized that in the bathroom of The Little Shamrock on 9th Ave and Lincoln. It's a great lil pub, but dang they've got a long john; my tiny and spirited bladder urged me forward, over the slippery, scum tiles, past the boring-forest green painted and surprisingly untagged walls, to the toilet of no return. In the end I was relieved, and on my way back out, after accidentally splattering extra strength dial soap against the wall and managing to lather only a bit of it between my palms, the sincerity and realness of this particular loo dawned on me.

Going to and through shit is a long hall.

No matter how antsy and ready I am to find my destination on this crazy self-defining or defeating journey, I still gotta walk that green mile and deal with the now. I gotta embrace it if not simply laugh at it. I gotta breathe it in to fill every pocket of my lungs as if to hug the only moment I've ever got, no matter how crappy and stale and moldy it's revealed to be. Sometimes the Ultimate Now is a closet to shit in and sometimes it's a stretch of fresh air pressing into a clutter-fucked and over-incubated apartment of depression. Either who, when, where, or way, it's a hall I'm gonna walk down.

Earlier today, before the shadowy light show on my kitchen cabinets, I found myself at a Safeway I don't usually attend. With cart and grocery list in hand, I further found myself shoulder to shoulder with my dumpy, miserable excuse for human life ex-boyfriend's best friend/roommate. We were both deciding on a good cheese, and that kind of thing takes time. So in the unbearable awkwardness of the moment, in a situation we both tried to deny, under a cool, confident smirk, I billowed and beamed. When he finally picked out his American 2% singles and turned towards me to get by, my undirected smirk grew a little wider. I imagine young Charlie going back by bike to his own long hallway of an apartment on 27th Ave, gitty to tell Douche-Bag who he just saw in the dairy aisle, and explaining, "Yeah, she actually looked really good" before continuing his gripe about their equally lame, only stirred by drugs and scratched vinyl lives.

Checking items off my list and strolling down the food lined halls for any loose items, my smirk remained in full tact. I was certainly surprised that cyphering over cheese next to a brief moment in history produced such exponential momentum forward in my search for understanding... I guess it's proof that past pushes into future and you can occasionally use a run in with the enemy to appreciate your own internal allies.

At this point, the sun has completely set; the wind's died down and the smell of steaming death by sunflowers has settled into my realized apartment. It's still warm in here, warm enough for bare shoulders and sockless toes. When this sentence is over, I'll walk down the hall to the bathroom and hope my insights stay put: finding the Now is a long hall to go down, always has been and always will be, but it's unarguably worth the time.

4 things that make me smile

imaginary means

A pack of gum cannot replace the cravings I have. I feel like I've given up my right and left legs respectively to overcome my addictions, and still, they are wielding within me, tearing me up and begging me to go back to the way things were.

When I had two firm legs to stand on.

What addictions?
Dating.
My childhood.
The snuff of the Midwest.
Ink dribbling out my fingertips.

Some of these things I've given up voluntarily, while others seem to have been unexpectedly torn out of my grasp. I've embraced certain addictions to overcome the one's in which I had no control, and I've slept all day, stayed up all night trying to adopt a way to comprehend my careless, ego feeding yet self defeating actions.

Dating is an addition that is gone because it needs to be. Because I've depended on it to assume the role of 'adult' and to get to know this venue of a city. It's gone because I'm only happy when I'm with someone, imagining love and hope and freedom; without the flirtatious emails and dinners and butterflies keeping me company, I am blank. 1st dates have been my prioritized hobby. Now that's a problem.

I used the behavior quite intentionally and simply to catapult myself away from my past and into a dream. I was scared like a run away child when I arrived in San Francisco, so I got into some things that weren't healthy as an escape from reality. I abandoned my home after all, this was my decision and my fate, so I continued to take all the yellow brick roads to no where, not realizing they led me so deep and far away from where I truly longed to be.

In the Pacific Time Zone, I had to quickly learn the steps to independence as if it were an intricate foreign dance everyone else seem to know innately. I've always been the girl in school the teachers deemed "wise beyond her years," but that wisdom failed to support my wobbly legs and dizziness as I two-stepped my way around the new world. So far away from familiar sights and sounds, I took a big bite into adulthood and lost my childhood forever. It's been a mistake.

Realizing what I've done, I've become frozen in my uncertain adult form. When I look in the mirror, I don't recognize the body I carry. I don't recall the things that make me happiest, and I don't have the flexibility in mind or limb to sketch my thoughts on paper in translation of the new reality. I can hardly work with this panic, so I try to spend as much time as possible in one position - staring into the mirror, deep into my irises, trying to see who's in there running the show. Then I'll sit next to the reflection and look at pictures from my past, from my crawling stages through high school prom, and I wonder what happened to get me so lost.

With all this in mind, the recent days have gone by in a blaze, and my greatest accomplishment has been to sit within the wild of the fire without a hope to guard me. It's left me like a burnt marshmallow. My skin is on fire and aching to the point of wanting to scrape it off by whatever means necessary, and inside I'm gooey and soft and completely apathetic to the world. I'm not as much cool on the inside as I am numb, and quite uncomfortably so.

Where are my addictions now to pull me through this harsh, blackened and juxtaposed mess? Where's my mom? God I know that's pathetic, but it's a trip to the woods of Lodi Township, or another reckless round of online dating and showing men my home videos. I've gotta do something to get my pens to work again.

Until I find a way out of this numbness without falling victim to vice, I'll aimlessly walk the streets and avenues avoiding eye contact with everyone who comes merrily in my way. I'll imagine robbing candy stores. I'll imagine shooting up with the crackies in allies. I'll imagine myself ignoring the flashing red hand at the other end of the intersection as my body floats right into traffic. As I said, I'll do anything to scrape off this ache and burn that surrounds me. If my imaginary means are painful and damaging, at least it's a distraction from first dates and childhood memories.

word vomit. mind tramp trash.

The INFJ individual is gifted in ways that other types are not. Life is not necessarily easy for the INFJ, but they are capable of great depth of feeling and personal achievement.

michigan seems like a dream to me now.

it's the sound of a voice that says, 'HERE I AM, AND FUCK YOU IF YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND IT.'

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, made to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...

and DANG do I stand and reach and yearn and bellow! this is a stream, a river of consciousness racing through me and coming out my eyes as i try to see these words forming on my screen, on your screen. i feel a tingling within my body that i don't think i'm producing on my own, it seems to be coming from somewhere else and i am simply a receiver of information, translating the messages into a human language that will still go completely misunderstood. RAH! i'm alone out at sea and my skin and bones act as my vessel. who knows where i departed from, and GOD knows i want to know where i'm going, but at this moment floating on emotion, all i am are these racing vibrant random exploding fluid words lackluster in punctuation

i've walked barefoot across ocean beach and i've stared out across the pacific, i've trailed up the coast while watching white globes of fuzz from the past dandelion blossoms float abound the pebbly path carrying wishes, and now, where i sit, i have golden gate bridge with a perfect white sailboat beneath it but a little to the right, and these waves... the most beautiful, enforcing yet pliable, majestic waves stretching across an infinite blue and gold plain that sometimes slide into the rocky beach like sex in silk sheets, while at other times they crash and drum against the already diluted boulders, making the sky and peace around me jerk up in fear of thunder and lightning on a clear day.

i cry in my sleep because i can't get back to my past, my carefree and open and loving adolescence. i miss it like you'd miss a loved one who was kidnapped and never found, and you're sitting around waiting for a long awaited conclusion to an infinite, pageless book. in the days of humid summer nights and long runs and hoods of our crappy little hand me down cars, my friends and i lived free and wholly in our dreams. treading close the those memories strikes at my heart strings like a harp on C major and all i can do is cry out the vibrations.

i must get back to living in my dreams. i must break and crack open so i can go back to smiling at strangers on the street without fear and a backup plan. i want to hug the air around me, no matter where i am, and feel uninhibited with joy. i want to beam out the lost soul within my skeleton so that others and anyone can see there's still a light on in here ---

---i'm repairing, refurnishing my heart, and i hope to open up completely again one day. soon.

it's just a little depth and burning dreams for your tuesday's deep dark afternoon.

Where have all the flowers gone?

On the tips of my toes, I'm teetering a fine line divided by three - contentment, anxiety, and absolute frustration. Like most things, I'll start from the end and go backwards.

Why is it so cool to be so bad? Is everyone innately bad, or is it just these bloody Californians? And how can people front and mask themsleves as progressive, conscious, aware beings if they have no moral fiber in their spines? I feel like I'm pretty damn open and liberally minded, and on this level I assumed that California would be a fitting state, but somehow openness and the desire for a collective good have become surface layer qualities disguising the collective's corrupted, self-induced evils and destruction, and everywhere I go people are shooting up - proud of their resumes brimming with drug experiences, unprotected public sex, DUIs, nights in jail, and obvious lies. Where have all the flowers gone?

I am so sick, I am so f-ing tired of being surrounded by people who are this vaingloriously tall upon their match-sticks. I mean, COME ON San Francisco! We, the people, are pressed to be the progress for the rest of the nation; if word gets out that all our great ideas come from acid trips and a few rounds with the unbathed homeless, and all our confidence is a product of the most chugs during impetutious popped collar episodes of "never have I ever," I fear I'll be dragged into the tow and become a dangerous part of a double-life society. We'll save the environment and the mentally ill by day, and recklessly party with them by night as we toss our ciggarette butts into the bushes and out of mind.

I know too many yoga instructors who drive drunk, and too many teachers with warrents for their arrest, and too many folks who are out of the closet but keep their anger and addictions and egocentricity locked in a chest.

Where are the pure in heart? Where are the innocent? I want to learn from them. Until I am surrounded by their peace and clear intent to better themselves and all the rest, I cannot rest; I'll continue to cry in my sleep.

This is my frustration, preceded only by my inabilty to catch my breath and my nervous hand guestures when I speak. While so vexed and turned off of my neighbors, I still find myself eager to impress them. At work, I clock in and out as a temporary employee without health insurance, who must go eons beyond the outlined expectations to ensure a little job security; each day I am reminded that I'm under the magnifying glass, being ever-evaluated. The anxiety that's produced from it all follows me through the streets and avenues and tails me like a shadow into my sheets at night. I dream in shallow breaths and burrowed eyebrows. I thirst for calm, but I munch on cheez-itz instead.

When I wake in the morning, Apollo greets and asks of me these questions three: Who are you? What do you live for today? Why are you here?? But as I pound my alarm into silence and stumble to the bathroom, I avoid the answer. I do not know. I am trying to make something of the days and of myself, but since there's no clear aim in mind or way to measure my success, I live in deep fear that I'm just not making it good enough, moist enough, or sweet enough for anyone.

In a bucket of vulnerability, I confess that I'm worried the life I'm baking has already gone cold and hard and stale. My anxieties spill from one topic to the next: I'm not compassionate enough. I'm not quick enough. I'm certainly not pretty enough.

I am nothing enough.

So I'm haunted with worry, and exhausted with frustration, and I'm starving within a lonely shell. The words of the past's great minds echo in here, "Carpe Diem! Suck the marrow out of life!" But I misplaced my straw and seem to be sucking at everything else anyways.

This is exactly where I am when I teeter to the other dimension of my fine line. Contentment is a sneaky bastard, and just as quickly as it appears it'll fade away, so I haven't yet put a load of trust in it. Though, when it's here, it is trascendentally beautiful. I forget all the other muck I mirk in daily and my attention goes completely to it. It's the giant flock of birds twisting and turning together in a spontaneous tango with the wind; it's the sliver of pink that lasers through the fog when the sun sets behind it; it's the smiley face tagged on cement next to a rain puddle...

When my angst and nerves and loath get the best of me, the best of me is at least gotten. It's out of its locked up chest and getting a good shake in fresh air. There's nothing not to smile about with that.

Pretty much I'm just a confused, tipsy-turvy mess of a girl. With days like today, days like I've had, I can't tell you which way is up or what door takes you out. If I had a choice, I'd pick door number 3. Maybe that's the door all the flowers are hiding behind.

Why My Landlord Needs Therapy

Hi! Welcome to Apartment 2. Today we're going to take a close look at my mini-dwelling, from the inside out, to see if we can find all the reasons my landlord needs therapy. Come, peer with me!




Someone got a label maker for Christmas! (was it a re-gift, I wonder?)



how many locks does it take to get into apartment 2? count with us! 1... 2... 3... 4 (don't forget your 'secret code'/phone #!)... 5.. 6...



More helpful reminders! YAY!


Let's not forget the old bathroom wallpaper, the chicken-incubator-styled heat lamp, and the motion sensory hallway lighting that sensors about 50% of motions. Never a dull moment.

Well, that concludes today's episode of Why My Landlord Needs Therapy. Tune in next time, when we'll discover Bruce's fake security camera system and his overwhelming love for orange scented air fresheners. Then we can take a look at why his wife goes by a different last name... See you soon!

oh

Home home home hom hom om om om om om om om om om?

This is a thoroughly thistle filled thirst inducing Thursday. It is Thursday, right? Today I'm losing track and touch and mind, and ironically the fog has lifted over my half of the city, letting a miraculous light into my apartment... where I sit with clouds and confusion pouring out my eyes. I can't see a darned thing in this thick weather!

I've got an uncle with a brain tumor in Minnesota, a friend who just passed away in a car accident in Michigan, and a new job to wrestle in California.

Am I supposed to see something that I'm not? Is there an enlightening vision I've missed the memo on? What the heck? I thought home was supposed to be with me everywhere and everytime. I thought once I was reborn that things would get easier, and I would feel ingrained in my west-coast environment despite long distance parents and siblings and ancient friendships. "Home" is HERE! That's what I thought! That's what I've been preaching with my insides out! But this is a thistling Thursday that's thieved my heart and throbs thrashingly in its place, leaving me to think so thoughtlessly: Oh Thursday, why did you cut my ties to the big picture so I would feel so far away and vulnerable? Disconnected and utterly alone? Cuz, ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm, I'm completely aware of the thousands of miles between my feet and my family, and it sucks. Thanks a lot Thursday. You're nowhere near Home.

But it IS a wake up call. I'm up when I want to be down. And today, this is what life is all about, and all I can preach is, "Oh."

On Darkness

What Kahlil Gibran probably meant to write in "The Prophet"...

And then I added to the masses’ spectacle, “Speak to us of darkness.”

And he answered, saying:

A shadow is but the remainder of true light. It is darkness and gloom only when our attention is just to it. You think, ‘Oh if only someone could remove this shadow from my life! It is surely the cause of all sadness.’

Then look beyond the shade, from a different direction, and you will see an image strong and clear. ‘Ah, it is the image that creates such despair! It’s that other thing that casts out darkness; it thwarts my crops from growing tall; it gives me chills; it blocks the sun.’ For it is all too easy to place blame on the object that stands between you and light.

But remember, it is the same shadow that helps you sleep and prevents your plants from drying out. Our Earth moves round, and so it goes. The light will rise again tomorrow. So too, again the shadow grows. ‘The cycle then, is the cause of woes.’

The earth you walk on is able to change; as it’s turns to see what’s beyond the object that sheds dim light, so too can you. Again, change direction and open your eyes. Alas, cannot your own body’s object emit shadows dark when the sun is at your back?

Look around and you will see. Beyond the body is radiance, more than understanding can hold in. There is clarity at every angle. There is warmth as deep as the universe. The darkness, no doubt, is the shadow cast from one’s own mind, seen only from one’s own eyes. A new perspective can ensure that what’s dark is golden, and what’s light is yours.