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.