I want my life to be an interesting read. I want you the reader, to sit and look at pages, not a screen, but real honest to god pages. The kind made from paper, made from trees. From the earth. I want you to see ink on paper and for that ink to form symbols that you'll recognize as words and I want those symbols to paint images of my life and I want those images to inspire, awe, and to teach you.
But, as of yet, my life could not fill a novel and if it did it would not be an interesting read. Amusing at times, perhaps. But interesting? Inspiring? Awe worthy? Hardly.
And so you, my reader, who may very well be myself at a future date, or someone else who is either procrastinating on something more important, or who in sleep's absence was crawling through cyberspace and ended up here, you read this. These words not of my life, but of my yet to be life. Not on paper, bound neatly between front and back cover, but on the screen of some machine that is cold and unfeeling.
There is something about holding a book that makes me excited and anxious. I don't get that rush from reading something off of a screen. Machines detract from the reading experience in the sense that you lose that contentedness you feel with the author when you are holding their words in your hands.
Think about it.
You are holding their words.
Their thoughts.
Their mind.
In your hands. Something that is an idea, a glimmer in your sleep that you just barely grab hold of before you become too awake and lose it completely, can be turned into something tangible that anyone, anywhere can hold in their hands.
It then has weight. It is actual. It is real.
Because you wrote it.
Am I crazy for getting excited over that? Does anyone else feel that?
I want to give that feeling to someone.
Today, over coffee, my Dad said to me "So what's your plan?"
My plan?... "For the evening? For the week? What do you mean?"
"Well you're going to graduate and then what?"
Did he mean, my plan for my life? I asked him, "You mean like... my plan for the rest of my life?"
He did.
Fuck. I don't know.
"Dad, I have no idea what I want to do. For the first time I'm a day by day kind of person"
Ever since that conversation I've been thinking about it. I didn't expect to find an answer and I still don't have a plan. But I know that I love to write. And I want to do that. Not for a career. That's not the plan.
However, I think it can be in the plan.
I don't need to be noteworthy. I just miss writing. It's such a catharsis for me. So I'm going to write more. And read more. I'm going to hold other people's ideas in my hands and maybe their ideas will spark my ideas and I'll finally figure out The Plan. And that plan will lead me to do amazing things. And those amazing things, I'll write down. And maybe it will be something of worth to someone else.
And they will hold my thoughts in their hands.
And I will spark something in them, just as that same fire was ignited by those before me.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
"I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it?"
“I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it? Time is chasing after all of us.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Last week I was at my parent's house. No one else was home at the time, and I, in my musings, found an old box of photographs in our office/workout room/blue room (My parent's let me pick the color. It doesn't match anything in our house and sticks out like a sore thumb. But I love color). I pulled the box from the book shelf and pulled out a stack of photogrpahs and turned them over one at at time. Memories I'd forgotten I had. Summers at the beach. Dance recitals. My Father's 50th birthday.
As children we think about growing up. What we're going to be, or who we'll marry, where we'll live. Our time is marked by grade levels, sporting practices. Prom. Graduation. Baby teeth to braces. Puberty. First kisses. Hair Cuts. So much spinning and changing around us. Drivers licences at 16. Legal at 18. Drunk and not hiding it at 21. I've always been aware of my own time. I've been labling, counting it down, marking it, waiting with it, and spending it at my own leisure, my whole life.
While flipping through these photos I realized something. It struck me all of a sudden and took over every other emotion I'd been feeling, replacing them with gut wrenching saddness and anxiety. All this time I'd spent grwoing up and getting older I'd failed to realize that so had my parents.
My hands were trembling as they held a picture from Dad's 50th. It was him and Mom, dancing. My mom was smiling, my dad, very obviously counting steps in his head
1,2...3,4 1,2...3,4
He's a terrible dancer, my father. and he's very graciously passed his lack of rhythm onto all of his children, myself included. My mother on the other hand, she lights up when she dances. She can be silly and sexy and entirely free when she dances. She's infectious on the dance floor, everyone watching has a better time when she dances. They catch her bliss. Her liveliness. She's really quite pretty when she dances.
My Dad has never cared for dancing but he took lessons and learned as best he could anyways. Not for my mother who never lacks a willing dance partner, but for himself. He couldn't bare the jealously he felt when he watched Mom dance with anyone else. Adorable, I think.
I remember every Sunday morning Bob and Elsie the dance instructors coming to our house to teach him. I'd wake up to the sounds of Samba, Foxtrot, West Coast and East Coast Swing, Salsa, Two Step...
They danced the whole lot of them.
Which my parents were dancing in the photo, I'm not sure. It didn't matter to me at that moment. What mattered to me was that my dad still had hair on his head in the picture.
Funny, I thought he'd been completely bald for as long as I could remember. I forgot, his hair was brown, same as mine. And his skin, it was so smooth. When had the tired lines I've grown so accustomed to first ripple across his face? Hadn't they always been there? And my mom. She was so skinny. I'd never noticed that she'd...
Well, I'd never noticed any of it.
All this time I'd been so preoccupied with what I thought was MY time, I failed to see that it wasn't just me but ALL of us that were subject to it. My sisters. Our family dog, Shelby, she can't get up and down the stairs or jump up on the couch anymore. We used to run around the block together.
All these years, it all went unnoticed, and then with one photograph it came crashing down all around me. It was so obvious. How did I not see it? I held the evidence of it in my shaking hands. Frozen in time, a couple that looked like my parents but weren't. Not really. My parents didn't dance together anymore. I didn't wake up to music on Sunday mornings anymore.
I was a 20 year old girl, or maybe, woman? young lady? No longer child but some strange child/adult hybrid. And my parents
they were,
Old?
This realization unsettled me to my core. Time, once an unseen, and unobtrusive fact of the matter, a freckle you've always known you had but hardly remembered you had, was suddenly in actuality a looming specter, a ticking bomb, and exposed artery that could burst if you made a sudden movement, sneezed, laughed...
I wanted to cry and I wanted my father to hold me. I wanted to be 5 years old, getting picked up from kindergarten in our beat up van. I wanted to drive past the Jr. High and look to see if I could see my big sisters running the track. I wanted my mom to make dinner again. I wanted to roller blade to my grandma's house, being pulled by Shelby on her leash.
I felt as though I'd been sleeping all this time, and woke up to a strange world where nobody skipped anymore, and didn't have time to watch Boy Meets World in the mornings before school, and everyone thought about money, and boxes were for packing your toys away in to put up in the rafters, instead of playing make-believe inside of. A world where your Dad goes to bed at 9:00 because he's tired. And where your mom doesn't have time to dance anymore because she's too tired. Because I woke up and was older. And they were older. And I was sitting there, hands trembling, trying to think of just when it was that this all happened.
And then I took a deep breath. Looked at the culprit that brought this terror to my attention, and ran my thumb across my father's face. I surprised myself by laughing. I laughed because despite it all, and despite the years, on the occasion that my parent's do find the time to dance together, my dad still needs to keep count in his head.
This comforted me in some strange way. I smiled at them, my parents, and put the picture back in its box. I put the box back on its shelf. And I went to find which of her three napping spots Shelby happened to be occupying.
It's silly to worry about time. It's certainly a poor way of spending it. I've decided to be aware of it though. Use it more wisely, more gratefully. Tell Mom that she's pretty. And tell Dad I love him more. I've decided to make time for skipping on occasion, because who says I'm too old to? Its quicker than walking, and I challenge anyone to skip without smiling. You can't. I'm going to make time to laugh more. Because one day, like my parents, my face will wrinkle and when I catch my own reflection, or stumble across an old photograph, I want to be reminded that what caused those lines, etched so deeply in my face, was not the passing of time, but was a life happily lived.
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Last week I was at my parent's house. No one else was home at the time, and I, in my musings, found an old box of photographs in our office/workout room/blue room (My parent's let me pick the color. It doesn't match anything in our house and sticks out like a sore thumb. But I love color). I pulled the box from the book shelf and pulled out a stack of photogrpahs and turned them over one at at time. Memories I'd forgotten I had. Summers at the beach. Dance recitals. My Father's 50th birthday.
As children we think about growing up. What we're going to be, or who we'll marry, where we'll live. Our time is marked by grade levels, sporting practices. Prom. Graduation. Baby teeth to braces. Puberty. First kisses. Hair Cuts. So much spinning and changing around us. Drivers licences at 16. Legal at 18. Drunk and not hiding it at 21. I've always been aware of my own time. I've been labling, counting it down, marking it, waiting with it, and spending it at my own leisure, my whole life.
While flipping through these photos I realized something. It struck me all of a sudden and took over every other emotion I'd been feeling, replacing them with gut wrenching saddness and anxiety. All this time I'd spent grwoing up and getting older I'd failed to realize that so had my parents.
My hands were trembling as they held a picture from Dad's 50th. It was him and Mom, dancing. My mom was smiling, my dad, very obviously counting steps in his head
1,2...3,4 1,2...3,4
He's a terrible dancer, my father. and he's very graciously passed his lack of rhythm onto all of his children, myself included. My mother on the other hand, she lights up when she dances. She can be silly and sexy and entirely free when she dances. She's infectious on the dance floor, everyone watching has a better time when she dances. They catch her bliss. Her liveliness. She's really quite pretty when she dances.
My Dad has never cared for dancing but he took lessons and learned as best he could anyways. Not for my mother who never lacks a willing dance partner, but for himself. He couldn't bare the jealously he felt when he watched Mom dance with anyone else. Adorable, I think.
I remember every Sunday morning Bob and Elsie the dance instructors coming to our house to teach him. I'd wake up to the sounds of Samba, Foxtrot, West Coast and East Coast Swing, Salsa, Two Step...
They danced the whole lot of them.
Which my parents were dancing in the photo, I'm not sure. It didn't matter to me at that moment. What mattered to me was that my dad still had hair on his head in the picture.
Funny, I thought he'd been completely bald for as long as I could remember. I forgot, his hair was brown, same as mine. And his skin, it was so smooth. When had the tired lines I've grown so accustomed to first ripple across his face? Hadn't they always been there? And my mom. She was so skinny. I'd never noticed that she'd...
Well, I'd never noticed any of it.
All this time I'd been so preoccupied with what I thought was MY time, I failed to see that it wasn't just me but ALL of us that were subject to it. My sisters. Our family dog, Shelby, she can't get up and down the stairs or jump up on the couch anymore. We used to run around the block together.
All these years, it all went unnoticed, and then with one photograph it came crashing down all around me. It was so obvious. How did I not see it? I held the evidence of it in my shaking hands. Frozen in time, a couple that looked like my parents but weren't. Not really. My parents didn't dance together anymore. I didn't wake up to music on Sunday mornings anymore.
I was a 20 year old girl, or maybe, woman? young lady? No longer child but some strange child/adult hybrid. And my parents
they were,
Old?
This realization unsettled me to my core. Time, once an unseen, and unobtrusive fact of the matter, a freckle you've always known you had but hardly remembered you had, was suddenly in actuality a looming specter, a ticking bomb, and exposed artery that could burst if you made a sudden movement, sneezed, laughed...
I wanted to cry and I wanted my father to hold me. I wanted to be 5 years old, getting picked up from kindergarten in our beat up van. I wanted to drive past the Jr. High and look to see if I could see my big sisters running the track. I wanted my mom to make dinner again. I wanted to roller blade to my grandma's house, being pulled by Shelby on her leash.
I felt as though I'd been sleeping all this time, and woke up to a strange world where nobody skipped anymore, and didn't have time to watch Boy Meets World in the mornings before school, and everyone thought about money, and boxes were for packing your toys away in to put up in the rafters, instead of playing make-believe inside of. A world where your Dad goes to bed at 9:00 because he's tired. And where your mom doesn't have time to dance anymore because she's too tired. Because I woke up and was older. And they were older. And I was sitting there, hands trembling, trying to think of just when it was that this all happened.
And then I took a deep breath. Looked at the culprit that brought this terror to my attention, and ran my thumb across my father's face. I surprised myself by laughing. I laughed because despite it all, and despite the years, on the occasion that my parent's do find the time to dance together, my dad still needs to keep count in his head.
This comforted me in some strange way. I smiled at them, my parents, and put the picture back in its box. I put the box back on its shelf. And I went to find which of her three napping spots Shelby happened to be occupying.
It's silly to worry about time. It's certainly a poor way of spending it. I've decided to be aware of it though. Use it more wisely, more gratefully. Tell Mom that she's pretty. And tell Dad I love him more. I've decided to make time for skipping on occasion, because who says I'm too old to? Its quicker than walking, and I challenge anyone to skip without smiling. You can't. I'm going to make time to laugh more. Because one day, like my parents, my face will wrinkle and when I catch my own reflection, or stumble across an old photograph, I want to be reminded that what caused those lines, etched so deeply in my face, was not the passing of time, but was a life happily lived.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
i'm not sure what's gotten into me but i havent be able to write a coherent piece in a long time. i'll start with an idea and then it fizzles out and lead no where imparticular and then i end up going off on a completely random tangent.
everything has been very ... free versy as of late.
i'm not quite sure what it all implies.
but really when am i ever?
___________________________________ A pang. A thought. A glimmer.
here are words for when you find you can not find your own.
for when your tongue is trapped between your teeth, your lips pursed tight.
your breath held.
here is is grace, for when you find yourself faltering.
align your chin with the nearest star, and follow it.
head high.
here is a a song to sing you to sleep on nights when silence stings your ears.
it was the first song you heard.
it began when you did.
it plays for you. its never stopped.
remember this. remember the man that ran from home? so far. he ran until his feet bled, until his muscles cried. he ran across the vastness of it all, the earth and seas and mountains the plains. he stopped only to scatter pieces of himself by the wayside as to lighten his load.
he thought only of the distance.
and how to get as much of it as he could.
and he did.
until.
he found that he'd circled the earth quite entirely
and landed exactly at his own front door.
here, take this, it is my gratitude
for days when you go unnoticed
forever i am thankful
and this, this is humility for when you're pride is shattered
it lays in pieces at your feet but such is life
so brush it away and now without it you have nothing to preserve
now you can laugh again.
here is a sparkle. i saw it in you and i took it for myself
it glimmered in the light, it rested just behind your ear and you didn't see it.
so i took it and kept it and buried it within myself
and i've had it all this time.
but it was never mine to keep.
it doesn't shine for me like i thought it would.
everything has been very ... free versy as of late.
i'm not quite sure what it all implies.
but really when am i ever?
___________________________________ A pang. A thought. A glimmer.
here are words for when you find you can not find your own.
for when your tongue is trapped between your teeth, your lips pursed tight.
your breath held.
here is is grace, for when you find yourself faltering.
align your chin with the nearest star, and follow it.
head high.
here is a a song to sing you to sleep on nights when silence stings your ears.
it was the first song you heard.
it began when you did.
it plays for you. its never stopped.
remember this. remember the man that ran from home? so far. he ran until his feet bled, until his muscles cried. he ran across the vastness of it all, the earth and seas and mountains the plains. he stopped only to scatter pieces of himself by the wayside as to lighten his load.
he thought only of the distance.
and how to get as much of it as he could.
and he did.
until.
he found that he'd circled the earth quite entirely
and landed exactly at his own front door.
here, take this, it is my gratitude
for days when you go unnoticed
forever i am thankful
and this, this is humility for when you're pride is shattered
it lays in pieces at your feet but such is life
so brush it away and now without it you have nothing to preserve
now you can laugh again.
here is a sparkle. i saw it in you and i took it for myself
it glimmered in the light, it rested just behind your ear and you didn't see it.
so i took it and kept it and buried it within myself
and i've had it all this time.
but it was never mine to keep.
it doesn't shine for me like i thought it would.
Friday, January 13, 2012
rambles.
Free Association: My Train of Thought:
I could never keep rythm. I can't clap on beat.
I see my sister struggle to fight time. Cling to what was simple and good. I see her see the world grow old around her. They aren't children anymore.
Houses. Careers. Marriage.
The natural order of things?
I'm not a child anymore.
I see my parents.
They're tiered.
I see them for what they are and not what I thought they were.
I thought they were parents.
And they are. But they are also
Human.
I want to marvel at something. I want to stand in front of a being and be encapsulated and consumed by felicity at their existence. I want
I want to be something someone marvels at.
Marvelous.
Magic.
Wands. And wizards. and Once upon a times.
My favorite stores used to start with once upon a time.
Now my favorite stories end with the protagonist laying face down in a pool of his blood.
Gatsby. The Great Gatsby.
Great.
Greatness.
Great.
I can't say the word without sounding sarcastic.
I love sarcasm but I can't help but to be sadened by it. Why can't we ever just mean what we say and not say the opposite of what we mean.
Mean what you say.
Say what you mean.
Mean. Meaning.
Mean.
Isn't silly how the word we use for what is actual, what is the the truth, i.e. the meaning contains the word Mean instead of Nice as if what is true is never nice. because the world isn't nice and the facts aren't nice because realistically speaking no one is ever as nice as you hope they are going to be.
Because Gatsby gets shot and Daisy rides away with that ole brute Tom and we're left wondering what the devil its all supposed to mean.
I know i'm a bitch but when you call me one its hurts my feelings and so I throw my feelings out and decide that i'm better off without them.
I feel like when I lost them, gave them away, lost them, like my innards had been scooped out like a pumpkin for the carving, and the rest of my body collapsed in on itself because I had no soul.
I used to I think
I could never keep rythm. I can't clap on beat.
I see my sister struggle to fight time. Cling to what was simple and good. I see her see the world grow old around her. They aren't children anymore.
Houses. Careers. Marriage.
The natural order of things?
I'm not a child anymore.
I see my parents.
They're tiered.
I see them for what they are and not what I thought they were.
I thought they were parents.
And they are. But they are also
Human.
I want to marvel at something. I want to stand in front of a being and be encapsulated and consumed by felicity at their existence. I want
I want to be something someone marvels at.
Marvelous.
Magic.
Wands. And wizards. and Once upon a times.
My favorite stores used to start with once upon a time.
Now my favorite stories end with the protagonist laying face down in a pool of his blood.
Gatsby. The Great Gatsby.
Great.
Greatness.
Great.
I can't say the word without sounding sarcastic.
I love sarcasm but I can't help but to be sadened by it. Why can't we ever just mean what we say and not say the opposite of what we mean.
Mean what you say.
Say what you mean.
Mean. Meaning.
Mean.
Isn't silly how the word we use for what is actual, what is the the truth, i.e. the meaning contains the word Mean instead of Nice as if what is true is never nice. because the world isn't nice and the facts aren't nice because realistically speaking no one is ever as nice as you hope they are going to be.
Because Gatsby gets shot and Daisy rides away with that ole brute Tom and we're left wondering what the devil its all supposed to mean.
I know i'm a bitch but when you call me one its hurts my feelings and so I throw my feelings out and decide that i'm better off without them.
I feel like when I lost them, gave them away, lost them, like my innards had been scooped out like a pumpkin for the carving, and the rest of my body collapsed in on itself because I had no soul.
I used to I think
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