chronically claustrophobic

i am, apparently, one of those people who sabotage potentially good things before they even happen.

if you are psychologically setting yourself up to think the things you are thinking then you obviously want to be thinking them. right. maybe the need to experience consistency is so short lived because you are really happy with the constant spontaneity/free will you live by. as soon as you are cornered into potentially consist ant situations we realized, in a claustrophobic state, that at least self sabotage is a form of (personal) control.

or maybe i search for challenges, challenges just happen to come with risk, and if risk is the only thing that keeps you alert enough to be challenged then well . . you've entered a vicious circle and it proves increasingly harder to get out.

so what if i fear that being unchallenged does not equate with stability and comfort but with settling . . i'm to afraid of missing something that could be good for me so i avoid things that could be good for me because i always think there will be something better.

really i am looking for feeling i already have encountered in another face.
and it's pointless and i know this, and yet it does not stop highly caffeinated ramblings before friday night departures into that same spontaneity i have renewed comfort in - at least for now.

really this is just a phase every human being goes through . . i am just over analyzing things.
are we surprised?
no.
god help the over analytical psych. major.


o and,
happy new year.

- - -

turns out maybe my instincts were right on this one.
funny how sometimes we know ourselves more than we are willing to admit.
maybe because we want ourselves to be wrong?

need, anger, despiration

What is flirtation? One might say that it is behavior leading another to believe that sexual intamacy is possible, while preventing that possibility from becoming a certainty.
In other words, flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a garuntee.

- -the unbearable lightness of being
Milan Kundra

Frankenstein

is it wrong to want human closeness - body heat in a matter of speaking?
not heat because you are shivering, just heat because you are numb.
some kind of warped sort of emotional booty call . . .

so what happends if, say, you stock pile it. . . cram as much in a night as you can so that when you look back on it you sort of hate yourself and rebell against wanting to be rid of such numbness.

but in this process arn't you just intiving another sort of novicane into your circulation.
you crave a sense of urgency, risk, sponetineity . . . power. but in that reconstruction of lost feelings, you really assemble some sort of stranger inside yourself to take over when you want to be loved.

and love, we all know is a relative term.

it's craving so much heat that you would die to be cold.

if you reject what you want because you've got to much of it then arn't you back to where you started? and in fulfilling such wants, what if you got more than you bargined for? how do you compinsate for the surplus, that emotional after taste that no matter how you try you can't spit out.

theres you're new numbness.
and that is something you didn't need.

it's those grey areas, and the breaking out from under them thats a bitch.

playing with matches

can you miss someone you (want to)hate? yes, you can. i don't know why your asking when this is obviously how you feel. if you feel it it must be true. right? maybe.


all the things "they say" about pinning and missing are cliche and depressing
and i don't pretened to know what the emotional contract is for the grey area between missing and hating.
(beacause missing isn't loving, and therefore the parallel is squewed, right?)

well what ever it is, it's giving me awful writers block, and a worse headache.

but i decided that i am happier with this piece than i thought i would be when i started it :



hands that sprint
down my spine
like fire
burnt by a flame
i did not light
raw and blisterd
dry regrets
in greasy alabies
your forked tounge
engulfs my ear
(our)battle of sins
circe's game
at which you win
dangerous consistency
i let my hair down for you
behind the walls
i'm the moth
drawn to a candle
that's not hers.

Dangerous Consistency

you know, that feeling when your stomach feels like its folding in on itself as it shoves "i told you so" up your throat?

it's a pattern that you thrive on, but the only thing to starve your nerves, rattle your senses. . .

say this tends to happen frequently, almost like clock work and it's the only thing consistant - really - in your life. the pattern by which you have defined a certin/many emotions.

so right on cue, you run when things start to look like they do around this time, and you find and hide in something complelty void of feeling, not sensation by anymeans, or inspiration for that matter, just in a substantial and intentional lack of valid emotion.

how do you not become jaded?
and if you are determined not to become jaded, how do you not become hollow?

and if, even if now - in increasingly clearer hindsight - you would still go back in all these falimliar peices, to the same, predictable eval, then what are you?
what can you be?

who are you without the one(s) who broke you down, taught you to pretend?

and by pretend i guess i mean "play this game"
and by that i mean,
the one who taught you the right words and the right touch to get into someone's soul just enough to break their heart without ever bearing yours.

who are you without your weakness?

rapunzle

printed prose which
raise scars for your pleasure
i write brail for the deaf
but you want light reading tonight
paper cuts,
frozen open from
reread erotic epistle
melting for familiar friction between us
i am a prisoner
shackled to my own responses
victim of your 34 c/sent posion
reluctant words penned
in fire for your senses
if your bite's on my neck
i'll know you liked what i wrote.

postarity

(w)here home is nothing more than a phrase,
a cheap rhyme with a gold crown.

somewhere inbetween
postarity and guilt

writing just to write
killing ink, wasting trees.

if it's real it's covered in plastic
a camouflagued and hollow shell

all that's overpriced has aftertaste.
eat your words with a smile

they won't hear it if you bleed
nothing to feel when you scream

sweating in a sweater because "you're cold"
body heat is not the (stone.)

it's something between
postarity and guilt.

what do you want me to say?

put your hands on my hips
and i'll dance for you.
pull me in, take a bow
i've got strings on you
feel your lies
grow and splinter
i'll run my fingers
down your hollow spine
we'll, like vines
on these walls,
intertwine
a stone soft face
those hands will taste
your own i fear
upon a stolen stare
from [my] medusa eyes
an old cold fixture
adorns an eden of
second hand thorns
my sincere regrets pinochio.

what she said, not what she meant.

i'm supposed to be somewhere right now, and i am not.
i am supposed to be in the same place every tuesday from 3-9 and i am always without fail.


i sat here, wanting to write something to motivate me to go. i'm not even nessicairily avoiding insperation, or la ack there of. i just sat here, numb, completly void of any valid emotion watching the numbers change on the digital clock at the bottom of the screen.

i have these kinds of days, where i can't face the mirror, where i know that i will see everything i hate if i look.
i'm supposed to utilize the mirror to analize my every flaw for 6 hours today - everyday.
the compulsion to shatter glass is never so strong as when surrounded by ill motivated, ill educated, ill looking toothpicks, while you are none of the above.

the feeling that you are stalling, wasting your time and it's not anything you yourself can do about it sends one to fall deeper into their own mind, which is at times all-consuming.
it shouldn't be wrong to take a break.
but you'll feel awful either way.

i'll say i got "sick" - something i ate.
really i won't have gone because i would have gotten sick had i been traped, claustrophobic, in the mirrors for 6 hours.

it's that dangerously consisten feeling of wanting to run, so fast, out of the room just to get away from yourself, that no one sees, but i know almost everyone experiances - at some pointe, with something, someone. it's there and we all identify with it. but rarely know how to cope,healthily, with it.

what do you do when half of what you thrive upon terrifies you?
when sometimes it opens parts of your mind you don't acknowledge because you know they are harmful.
sometimes, you just can't face it, can't look at whats infront of you and feel like you should, like you used too.
and you hate those around you, and you hate yourself for letting such a superficial detail effect you, but it effects you because you won't adress the real problem, the real fear, and the real actions you need and can take to make things atleast a fraction easier of your mind- ultimatly you blame yourself.

because ultimatly you're your own worst enemy,
and anytime you need to find her, she's in the mirror mocking the foundationg of everything you want.

terrific.
thanks.

die with the season

is it ironic that my favorite season is the one in which everything changes, falls, and decays?
but if you think about it, everything does that - - love, self image, people, circumstance, personal development, relationships, life. - - what doesn't grow, change, fall away and decay?

really?

something - anything - starts growing, metaphoricly, literally, it starts changing, most likely for the better as it's cognitivly pleasing. the change sets in, you feel acustomed to it, maybe you even like it. the minuet you start to anticipate liking what you see, is the moment it starts to fade away, fall out of your sight. and when something falls away and you can't see it, it will rot, wether in your memory, from your memory, or literally, it will decompose into some other - normally usefull but potentially harmful - product.

the decay is the product of the change.
but why does falling have to mean deteriorating?
does wanting change have to mean loosing something in return?

where's the saccharine heat? the bitter cold?
do you even miss them when they are gone?
and what does it mean to transition?

maybe the fall is a time of rebirth, reguvination.
or maybe its a time for death.

forgiving?
disapointing.

half full or empty? - and from where are you looking?

solid gold to
fun house glass
scars (the)carbon hope.
a self inflicted
tragic flaw
compulsive fear
makes dibelievers feel.

turn around and look
strangers eyes
in a stranger face
(w.)after taste of
bite size words
eaten past the date

we will fall away
rot in the mirror
loosing color?
make me bleed
with stale desent

- just the start of a thought

false alarm

we are all being held up to someone elses standards.
and we are all holding other people up to our standards.

it might be human nature, how can you objectivly look at someone when you know have expectations. high or low ones, they are still there , and they still effect your perception - we can't help it.

we all know it's there, and it't not going to change, but what happens when you are not enough? or too much?

what if all's you wanted was to put distance between yourself and someone else - is it selfish to steal against the failure you yourself faced in meeting another someone's deffinition of what they "need" ?

because they weren't what you needed but you wanted them for that exact reason, beacause what you need you don't want - for whatever reason.

it's always the same - the damned same.
and you would have let this one save you.
pity.

momentum

isn't it interesting how wanting something is enough.

enough to feel something, forget something, destroy something, loose something.
and it doesn't matter what you want either, could be you want to forget, distract, hurt, feel, fall, stand up, anything.

but in automatcally thinking about wanting something, isn't part of you hoping for destruction? even if it's on a small scale?
if you know you want something, you are wanting to want something. if you want to want it, do you really want it? or do you just want the justifcation of wanting.

- - did that make sense?
maybe.

it's thinking about something to much, probably because you don't trust yourself to make the right descision. when you look at someone elses problems it is easy to tell which is the right path and which is wrong. but yourself? - no so if you look at it from outside of your body you think you are helping yourself. not so.

your over thinking, if you think like you would and like someone else would, how will anything ever be accomplished.

it's trust
and promises.

what if you dont know you can make them?
trial and error hurts.

it's just one more person who wants to be saved, in a way - yes.
but in more ways, i think he wants to save me.

maybe that's what you want
or maybe it's just what i need.

- - but if you need it,
part of you must want it.

i'd rather chase the wind

upon asking for sanity with the morning
- although it's an extended process-
i guess it is, excuse the pun, dawning on me.

i have so much i want to work out semantically but it only comes out it minor fragments or rhyme scheme, scraps of meter, and awkward but desperately passionate motivation through space.

as frustrating as this is, i guess we'll call it cognitive writers block,
this is the only place i can get to tonight:

it's perfect,
like the weather.
mild predictability
in you
turning me
inside out.

i don't even know what that is supposed to mean.
don't you hate it when you don't even understand what you, yourself, write.
- but then isnt that also the beauty of poetry?

i'll make more sense soon,
if i weren't so superstitious about making promises i can't keep, i'd promise.
and isn't that significant in itself?
- and if you know you can't keep promises but you promise yourself, that knows this, anyway is it really making a promise?

maybe it's just hoping.

painted corners

i want to be everywhere and no where all at the same time.

. . .

isn't it interesting how things. . . events . . . can just exsist around you but - as much as you want to - you can't bring yourself to activate your senses and renter some form of "normal' conciousness.

the past two days have been a haze
as i have been so imersed in recognizing familiarity
and trying to find it a place in the things i am now trying to associate as familiar.

like any change
you don't want what you are learning to live without
to suddenly reappear

not so soon, there needs to be an adjustment period
wanting something for so long
and then flipping a switch and not wanting it
then being expected to flip that switch back
is impossible

it's selfish
human beings don't have switches

i wish i had gotten more than 2 hours of sleep this weekend
i wish i could stop the things revolving around me - i cant feel them
i wish i could feel something

- - interesting how i very rairly write in the first person, and tonight i have, i think that is noteable, though i have not found a good way to express the reason why. - - maybe in the morning.

yeah, morning.

- - i get it - this is first person because it means to much to put distance between this and a narrative voice. it's personal and it the one thing i have never denied to effect me. when i exile the use of the word "i" i can look on in a quazi objective light - this, is anything but objective.

the girl in your next song:

double edged
major/minor lies
leave my neck stained
from you,
a tounge bleeding prose.
in hunger you feed on me
superficial inspiration
hollow it escapes me.
sick on your breath
like smoke rings
through the speakers
fine lines
grey base
tremble the fixtures
in me
you are in me
an acoustic affair
beneath the strum
of 6 strings
tied to me
knoted in
selfish body heat
you wear
velvet gloves
to me
unlocking
and relocking me
lyrical shackles
and 88 keys

hmmm. . . it's not done yet?

just what pulls me in

if i did not dance, i would not breath.
so how can such a passion feed on something so unhealthy (my internal paradox) and feed such a horrifying insecurity i hold within myself?

i guess those emotions, fear, dread, want, are all the basis for passion. love.
and the principle emotions - give or take - can be applied to most situations,
there for making it a theory
right?

but is it healthy for such a dependancy to have the ability to push one towards everything that is dentrimental to a that person?
another person, a fear, a condition.

because sometimes it's completely internal, the enemy is your own mind, and sometimes the enemy is the only familiar face - the one you conect to "love". the throws of passion wear so many masks. who said that passion had a" good "conotation, it should and we all want it to, but is not passion just a fervent conviction?
a motivation through space.

are you running to or away from something?
and where should you be running?
hell, why are you running in the first place?

asking these questions, forces analysis upon the whole principle of passion and it's effect on an induvidual.
my thought process started at conviction . . . went to agression . . . running . . . to/from . . . fear.

but i guess that fear, that subconsious tendancy to run, is what keeps you hanging onto the passion and not falling victim to those darker things.

and fear could be a positive thing...if harnessed productivly.
are you afraid that you are not running away from something that you should be?
frozen in space, when you should be out of sight?
running to the very thing you should be running from?
or running from yourself?

you have to walk the lines, those fine lines, and you have to have fine lines to see both sides, to prioritize. to determin value. . . love.

and i guess that makes sense,
(thought i will revist and elaborate upon this theory when i have more time)
it's just hard to keep sight of all that
esspecially when on days like today
i look in the mirror.

ghosts still keep the bed warm

how is it that just by talking to someone
you can feel them slipping through your fingers?

and you know you have no control over it
you've never had control

paradoxically, with just the right words
they can lull you back into a false sense of security
or at the very least the security of longing.
of missing.

so how's it going to be?
you can't change and stay the same
and if an individual changes the relation ships he maintains
must be revised due simply to the fact that he is not the same person.

maybe underneath, the same, but the aspects being explored and moved into of their personality will be what you are reunited with.
i may or may not have contradicted above statement, but...

you can love who someone was
love what they are going to be

but when you don't know either, and you still love, where do you go?
what do you have to stand on?
when? when you love the person you know is there, but can't see?
yes, when you fall for the raw humanity of a person who supresses that rawness because he views it as vualnerability.

but you know it's there.
always have

a part of a human being that is so raw must still be there,
it's that part of a person that, at it's core, willnever change - just wear many masks.

but if the part you love is burried, can you still love what is exposed?
even it if is completely contradictory of what you love? even if you know it is a lie, show, wall.
how can you not?
but how can you?

so how about this:
you have loved this person that only you see - that is guised through reputation to the rest of the world - when you see this person again, even after a brief hiatus, or a long one,
won't you, regardless of cercumstance, see that person you fell for the first time?

isn't it natural to see what you want to see
even at just at first?

sure, because we are all looking to fullfill ourselves,
we all just want to feel. be inspired.

if you found it in somewhere once
you'll look again
even if it is just insurance, just superstion.
ritual.

maybe i am just looking to hard
afraid to abandon ritual - even harmfull ritual -
or maybe i just don't know what i am talking about.

poisoned, for the feeling

an internal paradox:

what i need to survive feeds only on that which kills me.

so really what i need to do is turn me weakness into a strenght
but i doing that i fear i would make every other aspect of my induvidual weaker.

and it's hard at a distance, memories arnt maliable and neither is the past.
turning around now would be the worst thing for me, but am i really any farther ahead from where i started?
no

sometimes i wonder why i even try
i think it comes from the desire to feel again.
yeah, thats it.

an intervention, a lullaby

circumstances make decsions for you.
other people who create circumstances make decsions for you.

but if every one is in control of someone elses cirumctances,
do you ever truely make your own decsion?
of course you do.

ok, so you make your own personal - all you're choice - decsion,
that effects someone else, you have added a variable to someone elses life/situation, that
- had you made a different/opposing decsion - would not have been there.

does that make sense?
everything effects something.
chaing reaction. cause and effect:

rudimentairy concepts taught in elementary schools
to children to niave to grasp the profundancy of the contept.

so...this decsion is made for you (unbeknownst to your knowledge)
and your reaction is to fight it, natuarl instinct, anything we have not decided for ourselves, personally, attacks our principles of self advocacy that have been shoved down our throats since we can remember.

you cant change the circumstance, and frankly if you had been there, the same conclusion would have been reached.
the only differance is that you would have had the peace of mind that you had a say in your surroundings.
the peace of compromise, and self advocacy, that you have so systimaticly been robbed of.

having analyzed this on a small scale reffering to a shedualing problem, could the concept not be applied to a broader cirumstance, say polotics or even - if you stretch it, physics - although my knowledge of either topic is slim and patheticly lacking conviction.

it was just a thought
and more a lecture to myself on perspective and the like.

crawl right through me

how is it that a person miles and hours away can feel closer
than they did when they were right next to you?

and how can you still be within their grasp
even though you can't see them for miles?

small sentances, expertly placed words,
have more of a significant impact than i would have thought.
- as has been proved by my last two entries -

or maybe i knew it and closed my ears to it before,
because i didn't want to hear it.
now for some reason, they are the only things i hear.

-perception? interesting.

simple words bring things back - blocked memories.
bring things down - walls.

and send you back ten spaces on the game board.
do not pass go.
do not collect two hundred dollars.
draw four.
sorry!

"lady luck."
that bitch.

is it a . . . weakness?
wishfull thinking? am i actually hearing things? just talking to myself?

or is it just a longing for familiarity?


it may be all of the above.
but it would be even worse to ignore the fact that it was there, correct?
even if it hurts?
repeatedly.

priorites and trust.

grey areas and strings.

does this ever get easier?
would you want it to even if it did?

the fortune teller's right

interesting...how with two sentences one person can ruin an entire relationship.
even if the relationship - i guess i should say aquaintance to get the point across- was short
it still matters. everyone you meet should matter.

and if things become a matter of ritual, or dependancy, shouldn't they be significant?
you would think.

i guess it is almost impossible to know how much a person puts into a "relationship".
i use the word lightly, to mean relations between two people, not at all romantic, esspecially not now.
ritual, i thought, should be a good indication that there is repetivite and equal work going into said relation, but i was wrong.
what else is new?

is it not atleast common sense to tred carefully on the topic of the meaning refering to a whole time spent together, as to not do what was just done. shatter it. completly destroy any illusion or memory of a particular person, any significant event.


it's things breaking as they fade away...
or after they are out of sight.

it's not fair to dig it back up and break it appart.
damnit.

esspecially when you can't even imagine what you are doing to the person on the other end of the phone line.

that's why i hung up.
[ a goodbye isn't a promise, and sometimes you don't deserve one. ]

it comes back to "knowing" people, and then finding out otherwise.
it's trusting, and walls and ritual.

guess the walls were higher than i thought
to bad that came to my attention after i tried to scale them

you can't save people,
and i keep trying.

i'll learn eventually,
or maybe you just did.

over my shoulder

i hate to write when i have nothing new to say.
redundancy and all that.

so i'll let steve martin explain the revelation someone to this day has yet to be able to explain to me. and after four years, this is the closest i can get.
i think he'd agree.

"He feels a loss as he watches her walk away. How is it possible, he thinks, to
miss a woman he kept at a distance so that when she was gone he would not miss
her. . ."

buying lines

you tell yourself not to want something.
- - so of course, you want it all the more.

it's cliche: we want what we can't have.

it's this familiar feeling
that the more i tell myself
not to look for/ expect this
the more i will.

i know my hopes are piling
and for that reason
i know they will fall.

because they always do.
because every situation is familiar and stale
(and apparently i was more jaded than i thought?)

i can't even stand to listen to myself...

hello self fulfilling prophecy, how are you?
why i'm fine thanks, glad you've invited me back
but of course, i've missed you. how long was it you were away?
o only a matter of weeks dear.

it's rediculous how much i think.
and then, when i should be thinking, when the moment is primed for premeditated thought, i become spontaneous.
and get myself in these places.

circular and redundant thought,
not to mention cliche
- it almost makes me sick.

you're going through the motions.
but there is still that nostaligic aftertaste in the back of my throat.
- the one that tastes like: "this will all fall apart"
(he'll run just as you start to see him clearly)

because just as soon as you start to want something
is about the time you don't need it anymore
or it doesn't need you anymore

or, is it that about the time you don't need anymore is about the time you realized you did, at one point not so long ago - need it.

but something in me says i still need this,
if nothing more i need insipiration.
if nothing less i need a reprieve from this empty/ numbness.

maybe i should just shut up. [ and stop thinking? ]
maybe.

they say that you're an artist

how is it that someone who extracts
no more than rudimentary emotions from you
can still sufficiently inspire you?

obviously you do not have to be "in love"
to be inspired - that, in many ways, is it's own form of motivation
whether distinctly articulated - this source of inspiration- or whether the quality of inspiration is subtler via " love,"
. . . what?

fear, maybe - moreso a fear of abandonment, or superficiality?
how about hunger or longing?
intuition?

emotions easily capable of inspiring a person

and all of these emotions creditable (although i know not where i get off accounting these particular emotions as "creditable," i just know them as ones with which i am familiar)

if one harbors a fear of being used?
- or better yet, being forgotten -
one will pull out creative resources to express, cope with, or distance themselves from, this fear.

no one likes these feeling rising within themselves,
that uncomfortable feeling of fear and dread (and familiarity/nostalgia)
in the pit of their stomach
and will therefore find someway to release this feeling.
even if only temporarily.

and if feelings are both a motivating factor and a by product of an activity, is one not inspired?

who said that inspiration had to be pure?
honest, and balck and white?
or even understandable...i for one do not try to accuse any one aspect of my life of inspiration until after it has been spent,
until after i re-asses the "final product", after a healthy deal of space from said product, be it poetry, choreography etct, (for clear assesment, and an almost-but-not-quite-objective eye of revision... and such)

is it really important where it comes from?
sure, if you are looking to harness it...draw from it repeaditly or recreate its effect...then yes it is important to recgonize inspiration's source.

i for one am struggling to pinpoint my current reason for this surge in what i fear maybe superficial, catalysitc inspiration.

yes,
moments were shared
yes if i were any less jaded a person
i would be reliving them in my mind
marveling at my luck
and watching my hopes stack to the ceiling,
but as is the case, i am trying to rationalize these events and their consiquental poetic and emotional byproducts.

are we all just looking for a muse?
trying to find inspiration along with ourselves.
just solving internal mysteries and chasing internal ghosts?
crossing lines, and graying areas. . . ?

it's hard to say
and how will we ever know?

your illusion, my distraction

you see a muse,
i feel a siren
selfish, through the motions
touch me here
write a symphony
wrap yourself around me
hear me breaking
hollow, pure craving
whisper these words
eeeri and shallow
blow them through my ears.
hear yourself sing every verse
soft, breathless, greedy
find me when your empty
to kiss this monster i'm creating
fatal and inspiring
i'll set you afire
come closer and breath me in
(a) poisonus, interanal mirror

the fullness of nothing

so i finished The Toa of Pooh,
and i decided that the principles of toaism are refreshing,
as any good book on a such a topic is supposed to make you think.

but as i was reading,
i was thinking (as anyone who is reading for comprehension does)
- i feel like i have a propensity to state the obvious today-
so i was thinking,
if you apply the thought processes of toaism
to things that happened in the past
-specificly to mistakes you have made, or choices you made that you now see as mistakes -
if you really think about it and apply these principles,
you can't help but feel better about these choices,
feel that perhaps they served a purpose.

in deciding on these "mistakes" purposes you are forced to reanylize your past actions,
revisit any form of guilt or anger you felt toward them
look upon them with fresh eyes.

any faith/beliefe that is forcing you to do that,
is serving it's purpose,
if you learn something - which you are bound to do looking at the past, what with hindsight and all - guilt will be relayed, or atleast rationalized, shrunken from the monster it has grown into in your subconsious, maybe they are not so much mistakes as they are paths, experiances, choices and consiquences which you realize now you have grown from.

profound, but it makes sense.
and any faith or life practice that stabalizes the subconsious, is serving a purpose,
it's like relgion by psychology.
interesting, and rationalizing.
one thing leads to another.

i keep marvaling at it profundancy.
but then again, isn't everthing profound at its core.

it just depends on your outlook.
hmmmm.

see you next sunday

upon the enthusiasm of a friend, i picked up a novel concering taoism. (and winnie the pooh)
i'm hold no great convicition to any one religion yet, as i find such beliefs to be ones procesed through living and learning.

i find that i envy those who have
such passionate conviction
in one faith, but i feel to be fair to myself, i have many avenues to explore,
many thoughts to recover and beliefs to process.

the stronger ones conviction in ones self
the more one will believe in whatever he chooses.
atleast that is how i have always loooked at it.

what better place to start than yourself, and
my decision has been to start this tight rope walk of faith
by figuring outmyself first
before i devote myself to a black and white picture, if that is what i find
i have my beliefs and i have my doubts.

this is all irrelevant.
lets back up...
i was reading on taoism, expanding my horizons, and i found this concept to make alot of sense:

maybe people are afraid of emptiness
however,
because it reminds them
of lonliness.

it seemed to fit with my present feelings
the surge of abandonment one falls prey too when
everyone around them disapears.
parts ways.
walks away.

in a fight with inner numbness, longing
it is so easy to feel empty, hollow
and just across the fine line is loneliness.

this reading embarked on a method
that enabled one to feed on the emptiness
"find the fullness of nothing"
an interesting and self absorbing concept.

but nonethe less it is one more road map
to lead you closer to yourself
and i am willing to give it a second look.
atleast re-read the words, take them in.

no harm in that.

i'm still processing this reading
and taking what i can from it
but i found that concept profound, and almost comforting.

like a welcome mat, a broken blender

upon the guidelined ciriculum of a class assignment i've opend The Things They Carried,
i highly recomend it, beautiful war novel compesed by the memories of one Ti m O'Brien,
this is no student scorned entry,
more one of self realization.

it is amazing to me the depth and poetic qualitity of this mans tone,
in his writing, those niave to the burdens and quite hunger of combat are given a glimpse at the rawness of war,
and the emotional casualities soilders suffer upon comming home.

i know that it will be impossible to ever simulate
or feel what they feel
i will never go into battle
i will never lack in convitction or beliefe in something i am forced to fight for,
not on that grand of a scale
i will never kill, see death so detructive, so horrific,
war and all of its deamons will never be something i look upon or feel

and no one can ever do it poetic justice
no outsider, no one who has just been a bystander

yet, it fascinates me.
wars poetic and destructive quality
how it bares upon the human soul

i will never experiance the emotional termoil of war
but i want to understand it,
what triggers it, how to save someone from it.

not even save them - because part of war is the after nightmare.
without it, war would loose it's cognitive signifigance on human beings,
no emotional casualty, no moral bankrupcy?
no second thought at declaring war,
all of this i realize,

but i want to understand these emotions
where they come from
how they can be used productively
how they can be expressed, used,

and if i can not feel them
i want to understand them

i want to be near these broken people
the ones who know more and bare more than they ever should
i want to understand them, not for selfish curiosity
but so i can help them, relieve even the smalles ounce of their pain.

be a crutch to lean on.
"because wether you can see it or not it's a world full of crutches..."

and i believe that this is a large part in my desire to persue a carreer in psychology,
helping people through understanding them
through learning how an induvidual works
discovering their walls, their grey areas, their pain
and helping to relieve it,

that is what i am drawn too
and what i feel i would be good at.

this project started as rudementairy class work
interseting but not all to revieling
a paper or two, the bases of a few thesis,
another superficail language cake walk
(as fomulaic and abstract essays/analysis seem to come easy to me )

as it happens, it will be more
and i for one could not be more pleased,

one should be inspired by their material
making it mailiable to their specific person
and i've found it.
atleast for the 1st semester.

suprise.

it's about dying nine times

we all face goodbye, by virtue we face alot of them,
it seems as though human nature would have you steal away
from goodbye, from a meager form of abandonment, or isolation
whatever the case may be.

with every car that pulls away,
ever back that is turned
one is lulled into a sense of numbness,
a comfort in the inevitable, and an anxiousness at it's arrival.

it is strange how you dread a final meeting
but ache for it at the same instant
because the anticipation is almost worse

and then, this "goodbye" this "burning of the bridge," "closing the book," these cheesy cliches,
once they happen, or are happening,
i find myself realing in how anitclimactic they are

how i am handling this well,
holding myself in with little effort,
no tears, no anger, no raw emotion of any kind,
just a dull sense of going through the motions

i put this off to anticipation, preparedness for the arrival of goodbye
but what if in all the preperation, anticipation, you numbed yourself to reality?
built a little wall, made alittle line that you refused to subconsiously cross.

amazing, the subconsious, how it keeps us safe
because would it not be human nature to steal away from abandonment,
sure it would,
and that, in the modern day and age of friendly and romantic relations, is how it is done.

sure your brain registers that this should be painful,
but how much are you feeling this raw emotion and how much are you just simulating it,
because you know that is how it should be,

and it's not that you don't want to feel it,
or that you don't
you have just closed off that part of you
to save face, to show no voulnerability,
again, human nature?
most likely.

but then it hits you
two days, two years, two months later...it hits you.
all of a sudden your emotions, your tear ducts, your subconsious, catch up with your brain, with reality.

and you can't stop
the involuntairy waves of emotions
the ones you cheated with half smiles, and phone calls,
everything pales in comparison to that utter sense of loss.

it's falling prey to self pity when you let your gaurd down
because it is not worth pretending to yourself that you are strong
not any more.

all of its there, where no one can see it
and i for one was relieved, because for a while i thought
that it wasn't right that i didn't feel
i was numb, the numbness was predictable,
but when it didn't go away,
when the emotions that fell out of me were not picked up, when the hunger briefly subsided, i was confused

"shouldn't you be feeling something more, something real, tangiable."

and i should have
and i do.

it hit me,
a song
your voice
- - or lack there of as it were

it hit me in a rush
emotional whip lash

i had stopped dreading it
knew it had to come
and it did

i'm back where i started
only this time, there is nothing familiar around me

i guess this is what it is all about
sure.
this is moving forward.

what a concept.
what a profound and consiquently abstract concept.

maybe i overthink things
maybe to compincate for what i am afraid to feel
or afraind that i don't feel.

"i'm still an asshole playing with matches,
he's just not around to play
along."

yeah, that's the tune....

little more glue everytime it breaks

forgiveness?

forgiveness is a grey area. walks the line between contempt and pride.
simple words envolped in a complex dance between sincerity and bitterness.

it is easier to forgive when you are guilty, because the sooner you forgive the sooner the forgeting process can start
or is it just that as soon as fogiveness is mutaul and has erased the awkward ness you are free to make more mistakes.

the light turned red upon accusal
and is now green with forgiveness.

are they mistakes if you are not ashamed of them?
maybe even proud of them in a warped way.
like finding salvation in secrets.

because when people think they can see through you
and no matter how hard you object (because they can also see "clear through"
your objection), when surrounded by those people,
you harbor secrets.

they start to define you,
the problem comes when you are defined by the things others can't see.
because if you are not what they are seeing,
what are they seeing?
its a rough skeleton, what you allow people to see, i know i have been here before, i'm just comming from a different angle.

so when eventually one is defined by secrets
they start to feel isolated, they want to let some people in,
so you do, you let in a few, then a few more, a secret society of secrets, how cute.

well when those few you let in slip up
thre are no more secrets,
just rumors, acusations, when all you were doing is trying to find a way to define yourself in a comfortable numbness.
there is a great deal of safety one can mine into the dangerous buisness of secrets.

well the cats out of the bag,
pandora opend the box

and you play the forgiveness game
so when mutal forgiveness has been given
what is to stop you from fallin gback into the habbit of secrets

if for so long that is the lense you saw yourself through
it will be undoubtly hard to walk away from it, them - - secrets.

and what if i admit to being sorry to save face
but arn't?
are you then dishonest?
its another secret and you cant resolve secrets with secrets.

it's a bad cycle.
and i am sure you can see where this is going
but i find it fascinating
that human beings manage to dig these graves for themselves.

we all do it
to some extent
wether on a grander or smaller scale
it's happens

people get hurt,
people descive
people get better

wash.rinse.repeat.

what i want to know is why?
and how do we prevent it.

i hope that made sense.

a film everybody saw

gone.
miles and hours away,
gone.

i'm alittle empty.
like every processable emotion melted out of me
i'm alittle hungrey
because i know nothing will satisfy this restlessness
i'm alittle hollow
punch me and i bet i won't bleed
and i'm obviously alittle overdramatic


it was all i anticipated
and nothing i was ready for.

i wish there had been more sentimentality
but its all about walls
and the fine line between a goodbye and an ending
those grey area's the two of us are so good at finding.

and thats that.
nothing more to it
nothing less than all of this
it happens
it matters
and it's been a long time comming.

here's to picking up the pieces
that's all thats left.

pandora's bottle

clear and desicive
hear touch taste
your goodbye
a made up ending
cliche and stale
hand you my words
invisable ink
salut to the irony
dramatic, staged
documented and reviewed
your mouth
my tounge
the lies in between
raise a glass to us
and all we failed to be
you'll thank me later
with you're breath
staggering away
true to life
or is it hell
when you don't want to remember
leaving me alone?


- - sometimes when things mean to much to me, this much to me, i can't express them poeticly.
and i hate that. emotional writers block - when there is just to much.
above all i despise that [about myself.]

tomorrow?
tomorrow.

decaying beautifully

isn't it funny?
how things fall apart
just as they start to fade away.

it never ends.
never stops
and i'm sick
sick full of it
sick. of . it

invisable ink

turn around
walk away, backwards
you'll see my scars
the tatoo's you left me
i can see the trace
of my secrets
on every inch
of your face
even with the smoke
from this burning bridge
in my eyes.
can't you smell it?
the sweat of you and me
melting in this fire
taken away by
selfish you.
a souvinir
because i could never leave a mark
not even a bruise
though god knows i tried
we cant close this book
there isn't an ending
the last sentance's fragment
a burned bridge
(but) a copy on both sides
pick me up on a rainy day
say you'll miss me
and mean it.
because it's more
than being near you.

who's going to drive you home?

"...you say goodbye when underneith's your one belief."

so i was thinking.
about motivation. inspiration.
in class today, i found my self back in the same place i started from.
like always...

understand:

i dance to help me rationalize things.
deal with things.
remember.
forget.
fly.

to rationalize and to deal with is not to let go.
it's to manipulate emotions into a productive catalyst.
it's motivation to move through space.

the problem is...
when one single person is the source of your inspiration,
you recall the face, the emotions - - be they anger, passion, love, restlessness - -
they are readily and easily pulled to the surface.

they are deliberatly acessible
you put them there.

how do you get over something that is such a prevalent part of your every day.
everyday because i have class almost every day and lets just say my surroundings for the past year have been anything but inspiring.

i depend on my love, and frustration, and even hate for him.
not healthy necessarily, i mean a healthy way to deal with these emotions sure,
but not a healthy way to depend on someone.
not a healthy source of continuouse inpiration.

but you know... i have the whole situation, all of my emotions, most everything, figured out.
its rationalized irrationally in my mind, and i know exactly what it was, would have been, could have been, won't be and will be.
it's refreshing in someways to be so aware.

but this awareness leads me to the undeniable fact
i have to say goodbye to him next week.
he'll be states away.

selfishly enough i am afraid i will lack in inspiration.
and even more, i am afraid i will pull at every last heart string so that i can move with a purpose, and in the process hurt myself. (emotionally of course.)
i won't get over it if i have to keep pulling in to the surface.

all of this delays the "healing" process, but no one else inspires me.
it's to late to stop it now.
it's ritual.
i depend on it.

quite the paradox.

i don't know how to say goodbye to him.
i never have.

the only one who knows that side of me,
the only one that never deserved my trust,
but ironicly the only one i have ever trusted.

independant, and reliable due to content, sources shared with me recentlly that they could admit that it was obviously love.
- - mutual love.

for once an admitance that i didn't fabricate the whole thing
because if you knew the people around me that is what you would think.
finally acknowledgement of the fact that i too love and hurt.

there is a strength that both of us draws from the fear, the niave passion, the tension, between us.
what happens when that travels across borders?

this space is needed.
a long time coming.

i just don't know where to go from here.

the only truth that sticks

the people that i thought i knew,
i really thought i trusted...

changed.

i shouldn't say "the people"
it's just one person.

when you look at this person, one of your best friends, and you ask
"who are you?!?!"

what do you do?
where do you go?

people take for granted that you will always be there.
because i am somewhat laid back...
doesn't mean things don't bother me.

did she ever think that maybe i was alittle mad?
alittle mad not even nessicarily that she did it,
mad because she didn't feel guilty,
didnt deem it important enough, relevant enough, to tell me!!?

it's drama,
i hate it.

but there is a point.
another fine line,
the line between above it and numb to it.
gettting walked on, brushed aside, steped over.

there are certin things that deserve a reaction,
that should and will make you angry.

who says you should not necessairly embrace that anger?
it's a human emotion just like anyother
and it is one that should be confronted, not bottled.

i'm great at bottling.
not causing waves.

but you can only turn your back so many times.
things should, will, need to bother you.

and it does. but what can i do?
it doesn't bother her.

i hate this,
tension.
i hate tension, useless, selfish tension.

i want it to matter.
matter to her that i hurt, that this time it was all her fault.

if there is anger and tension.
it should be usefull, productive.
you should both learn something.

right.
it should matter

and it doesn't.
it's funny, how you think you know people.

and more often than not
the people that you
think you really know
are the most complete
strangers.

why?
isn't that backwards?

or is it par for the course?

we're not in Kansas anymore

i hate this place.
it feels so much like home,
and then it holds out on you.

next year.
- - its not even next year anymore
it's two weeks.

its a battle.
battle is overly dramatic
i digress,
a fight.

i'm done blaming people.
i guess thats progress.

but still...

it's the two of us - - like always
"against the world"
our world atleast.
the only world we've known.

funny - - terrifying
how a change,
a big but simple change,
can throw you off.

it's not the same.
and i've spent the last year looking for the simple mined cosistancy that has escaped me.
or that never really exsisted.
but nonetheless there was something tangable.

ritual. consistancy.


it is/was ritual.
it was dependable.
it was a different kind of love, sure
it was a home. a family. but love all the same.

a place of passions and tensions
thats real
that ties people together

so where'd the passion go?
where are the strings?

thats the thing,
there are no more strings
nothing to tie me there anymore

but it was something, no, the only thing i depended on.
and it was ripped away.

i guess it's unhealthy to depend soley on one thing
but i thought since it was a place
it was different.
supise. i was wrong.


i was unaware that places and situations could break your heart.
i thought i was a human quality.

no.
it's not.

i've spent the last year trying to rebuild,
but i don't have the power or the pieces.

so i just deal with it.
thats life. you deal with things. you know this.

doesnt mean i have to like it.
we've been through this.

i know.
but it still sucks.

here we go. one more year.

offstage lines

i never used to be able to bury my emotions.
- - i used to be crystal clear - -
now i know how to hide them.

turn them off.

and that scares me.
that scares me because that means i am like him,
in more ways than i ever wanted to be.




is being safe worth all of this?
no, it's not.

burried mirrors

i feel like the way people precieve me is completly inacturate.
lindsay was right when she said that "most people just don't understand" me.

i guess i never realized it before.

i think i would like myself alot better if i were not bogged down by precocieved notions.
it's like living inside the lines that the people around you have colored in.
and they all precieve you differently.
the way they want to precieve you.

everyone likes to think they know you.
and everyone likes to think they chose the right colors to fill you in with.

it's like a portrait.
a self portrait will turn out much different
than a portrait painted by a stranger
wich is different than a portrait painted by a friend.

life is made up of painting different portraits
assigning people different colors.

someone told me that they precieved me a "extermely bubbly and exsesivly happy"
i was appauled and amused.
bubbly would be a perfect antonym in my mind.

this person has known me 4+ years and has me all wrong.
makes you wonder how well you know the people around you.
how well you judge people.

someone else described my exact personality to me.
the exact way i thought of myself.
he had only known me 3 weeks.

it's strange
certin people only see a certin side of you.
people will, to a degree, see what they want to see.
make you who they want you to be - - think you should be - - in their own minds.

you may not even know the you they see.
and that may explain the awful adivce they volunteer.
or the critisim they voice.
they will give you every tool to make you who they want you to be.
they want you to live up to their first impression, their ideal impression.

it's almost selfish.
to try to mold a person into your personal perception.
but everyone does it,
it's subcosious.

its natural to want the people around you
to agree with your beliefs.
to see the way you see.

i just can't help but wonder why it is impossible to see - - precieve - - with an objective eye.

i know every experiance we have
every person we meet
changes the way we see and precieve things
- - like changing the perscription on your glasses.
with the risk of throwing a tacky metaphore out here,
it's like chaning the perscription on you life.

but how can we grow without losing that objectivity?
children see through objective eyes,
where do those eyes go?

is it in conjuction with the loss of inocence, niavity?
or is it that the world, that man kind, and culture jade us?

and how do you stop it?

i think it would be refreshing to see with clear eyes.
to really see from outside of myself.

i know it's cliche.
but it is fascinating, don't you agree?

pointless flares

i feel like people just drive me backwards.
back there.

i put, for the first time in a l o n g time, effort into getting over it. around it. through it.
i wanted to be.i really really did.

you know why?
because i met someone who inspired me to be strong, who made me like who i was, and who was generally interested in me and my well being.
that was new to me. both of us needing eachother and equal amount - - that was new. that was nice- -

where'd it go?

wish i knew.
i understand that you need space to cool off
i get that. i do.
over a week with no word after a summer full of once, sometimes twice, daily phonecalls or shared space.

thats not fair. and i dont care if thats selfish. it's true.
people never realize, when they need someone, how much the other person needs them too.
you don't need the fact that the other person needs you. no, people - - like me - - don't thrive on being needed.
i thrive on the wanting to need another person. wanting to hear, see, converse with another human being.
i wanted so much what i had finally found.

now he's droped off the face of the planet...

exactly.
for once i was starting feel again.
really wanting to feel again.
[ i think he was too, but won't admit it ]
he realized the routine we had fallen into was inspiring mutal feelings.
and of course we cant have that.
atleast that's what it seems like.
thats how i precieve it because thats what has happened before.

it's the goddamn baggage. the ghosts. the past.

so where do you go when you take that free fall from almost trusting a feeling again to crashing back down to where you were. - numb. [numb but safe.]

you go back to the only place where you have ever felt anything "real"
or atleast real to you.
part of you hates that you are there.
hates that you want it again.
part of you just wants to stop the numbness.
bury yourself in familiar, allbeit painful, "love."

all of a sudden you find yourself wanting everything you've been stealing away from for the past year.

you came out. you tried. and it's starting to hurt.
better run back to where its "safe"

- - a safe that is anything but - -

i just want to stop running.
i'm tired.

...just send me a sign. a flare. a smoke signal. something?
please.

can't say it better

" Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect to someday suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equiped with a sturdy hand rail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us that tempts us. It is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."

- - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundra

call me when you get this

i remember why i don't get my hopes up.
because it hurts like hell when you start to lose it
- -lose hope i mean - -

you start out numb and looking for sustinance

you find something that breaks the hard exterior...strikes a match in you again.

you start to hope. you start to feel.

you hang on to this hope so hard your nuckles turn white.

maybe it's a strangle hold on hope. maybe the situation becomes complicated. maybe you have to have faith in someone again. it tests your boundries, your readiness to move forward.

your waiting for him to want to move forward as well.
hell - - you're just waiting for him to call.

you become numb to waiting.

so are you really any farther ahead of where you started?

i'm so restless - fighting with myself not to give up.
not to see with the same jade eyes i always hide behind.

i don't want to give up faith in this but i need alittle help.
i need a smoke signal. a flare. something.

because really...
when you become numb to hope what else is there?
exactly.

why does this have to be so hard?
maybe it's hard because its worth it.
or maybe that's just what you want to think.

one private room

how is it that we compartmentalize:
love from lust?
idealism from rational thought?
spontineity from subconsious planning?
ritual from love?

you know a person incredibly well.
- - have known for 4 1/2 years.
and they have known you for equally as long
your there for eachother through the toughest parts of growing up

[ a factor that some psychologists say is the very thing that makes first love so hard to walk away from ]

but he is not your first love
not any "love" as far as your concerned.

however, when every time you see him, you share intimit moments
- -and they undoubtbly have a driving/passionate force behind them - -
is it lust?
no

its searching. its an atempt to renue your faith in the beliefe that you can trust someone again,
that somewhere out there there is someone you will feel comfortable with, who will know you so well that these things are natural.

we are catalysits to eachother.
we renue faith the we all to often lose in other people.
we help eachother realize what we want.what we've lost. what we still need to find.

to know that you can be that close to someone emotionaly and physically and not get hurt because you both need eachother, because its been happening for almost two years, and you know it's something dependable and won't end until you are both ready for it to.

- - its a skeleton of love i guess.
yes, thats what it is...its a prayer that we can find something to fulfill us.
and all the feeling is there...but there is a key missing. the key that gets you to "love."
you remind eachother what you deserve. what you are looking for.
catalists.

that is one emotional compartment.
its seperate from everything because there is nothing else in your life like it.

so how can this first person co-exsist with one that you know you are "in love" with?
you never said the one you were in love with was any of the things you wanted.
love is a feeling you can't shake, not even if it goes against every priniciple you've harbored your whole exsistance.
doesn't mean its a healthy, or rational.
but part of you wants it more than anything. the other part is disgusted by your weakness toward this other person.

its another compartment: "i love him but he wont change and i need more than he is brave enough to give me"
its not even falling out of love - - though for a long time i tried to believe it was - - its just a fact. love is something you have to accept before you can fit it into your life, your way of thinking.
just because you "love" does not mean you have to throw yourself into one person, no matter how degrading, because you are "following your heart."
love - - i have found - - does not have to shackel you to a person.
you have to know yourself.

you have to realize that when you compartmentalize like this...walls will go up to form these metephorical compartments
- -love is love. its there, you want it, its ripped away from you and evntually you accept it.

just because you accept it does not mean it goes away.
- - it took me a long time to grasp that too.

love is an ideal thought, to protect ourselves we have to seperate it from rational thinking. if you try to rationalize these things it will rip you apart... give you a headache.

its walls. its compartments. its seperations.

the one i still struggle with is seperating ritual from forming love.
i've said this before and i'll state it again because i still can't quite wrap my mind around it:

if love is, at its core, the longing for routine, for ritual,
(for your heart to be lulled into a save haven of unbroken patterns)
then why is not ritual a longing for love?

its a fine line. ritual lulls you into false security.
perfect example?
contact with another human being every day for an extended period of time, say since the day you met, you learn to depend on that phone call (or visit), you learn the anticipate it. soon it helps you through the day. eventually you want it. then you need it. then you realize -- maybe i love it? or better yet want to love it?

you open up. you trust. you laugh. you share. you become close. its a natural progression.
and maybe its just that people don't realize how dangerous ritual is.

i don't know how to seperate those yet, ritual from love. maybe it comes with time.
...but should it?

should things have to be seperated in order to keep yourself safe?

i don't think so. i don't want to think so.


-˜-to defuse any indiscrepancy you think i may have made- - what with going on about ritual just now and in the begining describing a pattern that is everything but love...it may apear that i contradict myself.
i think that the begining situation is an evolution of closeness. its a subconious hope and yearning that grabs ahold of two people. the thing is it's not a ritual because it is never planned. sure it happens most everytime but that is not the intent. there are long talks and tears and screaming and then comforting. its not planned because, due to proximity and time, it does not happen alot but when it does it stands out in ones mind.

does that makes sense?
its not expected. not depended on. so it's not necessarily a ritual.
if it were to become expected and looked forward to and depended on - - then it would be a routine. a ritual. a pattern.

its all fine lines and walls.
it comes back to crossing lines and breaking down walls.


how cliche.