just stay the night

i feel as though i have a problem distinguishing between making my self happy and 'saving' others.

i use the word 'saving' sparingly because i, as anyone, realize that one cannot save another; the only person you can save is yourself. regardless, i tend to lose sight of this fact when in the thick of everything. this too i guess is partly my fault. - look at the feild i have choosen.

still . . when it comes to the sure thing or the instability of the wild card, i place my bets niavely. what mechanism in my head does not connect securtiy with happiness? in what way have i been happy watching people walk away from me?

but part of me has been happy, because i know each one of these people has heard me. heard what i am saying outside of any clinical boundry. the raw truth and attention to character in an intimate relationship draws you into a different part of a person. unfortunatly that is the part of a person that is skiddish. thats the part that runs. i'm personally aquatinted with a blur. (20,000 blurs and all i'm looking for is alittle clarity.)

so why do i feel like i am failing myself if i take a step towards simple, unabriged, black and white happiness? to easy? i have to work for it? or is it that i don't trust black and white - gray is safer because gray is familiar. it gives you leway, and time to think, time to run if you choose.

but searching for the part of someone to save is also familiar. i'm taking risks but i'm cowering at the same time. if i keep you so close to me, emotionally, you'll never stay. you are miles away on a different plain. delve into someones character, figure them out and know them like no one has tried and you'll be lucky if they stay around a month.

but i know this, and because i know this i am the coward. i keep people so close that i can;t touch them. so when i see someone who presents himself to me, time and time again, as selfsuficiant and uncomplicated. (he needs to be saved from nothing) why can't i take a step?

why can't i advocate a different familiar? a happiness perhaps. a satble routine to build an escape around. i could disapear from the 'resuce me' fucks and late night java hut sob stories and just be happy. maybe have a life outside of my personality?

it's not me. i can't leave a part of my person at "work". and i know this, that is the whole reason i know i am on the right carreer path.

really? is it so much to ask for just someone to step infront of me and say let me take the control for a bit. don't worry, i'll 'save' you.

yes it is. because i'm the only one to get me out of this rut. and if someone just steped in then obviously i would learn nothing about self.

fascinating, truely.

what have we learned jo?
"be an advocate for your own happiness. . step outside the box"

good.

'73 pinto

goodbye to the person i thought you could be:

i never knew what you were running from, though i had a multitude of theories, i still don't know. but i see it catching up with you, and that should scare you. or the little piece of you i can almost see. ( i know i'm scared for you) but i owe you an apology, because i fell in love with saving you, and i held on to what i thought you could be.

regardless, this is me walking away. maybe now you can see yourself as you truely are, or maybe you'll deni it. but it's no longer me in the way of you getting the help you need.

i can't save you, i never could.

not quiet love,
most of me.

i discovered, last night while fending off a piss drunk ex, that maybe i have always felt that i was never enough to one person because that one person was to much for himself. i so wanted to save him, so much that his problem became mine. . and it took me seeing him weak and pathetic, begging me to keep loving him, to realize that not only do i not love him any longer, but that i was so consumed with saving him from himself that i prevented him from gettig the real help he needed. i thought that if i turned my back on him that i would be kicking the chair out from under him, after i had already suffered through watching him tie the noose. but i realized, and heaven only knows why it took me 5 years, that my constatnly picking him back up, listening and advising, giving and giving, that i was preventing him from seeking the help he truly needs. whats more, my being there to reessemble his pieces ment no one saw him as he was when he was broken. no one see's his problem because he saves it all for me.

well, no longer.

how is he different from any of the other AA clients i've worked with? why is he suspect to treatment that is strictly unprofessional? is it because i "loved" him? (or loved his disaster)

or better yet . . because i loved who i thought he could be. i saw his potental, i saw the him he didn't want to know. and that is what i could have loved. and last night i looked at him and for the first time, and couldn't see that person. and i knew i had lost.

lost? it was a fight i could never win. it was never even a fight i was able engage in. it was always between him and himself. i just didnt want to see it.

now i see it. clearly. and i am no longer scared for me or my emtions. but i am scared for him, and what comes next. because one thing is certain: i will not be there to pick up his pieces.

dans la gare

fresh off AirFrance from 9 days in london/paris . .



removed
your replacement
spans of language
beg "enough?"

we spoke in movements
damp, together tones.
sane infringment
of consious action

strong and subtle clutch;
a poetic nomade
i carve, escaped,
a mental spotlight

for you, your own.

while you were gone.

it is no secret that perception . . and interpritation . .varies from person to person. i guess that would be part of that whole induviduality thing, of course.

but where is the line drawn from personal perception to the perception of other peoples interpretation? where inlies the beauty in art if one cannot get past the differance from induvidual to induvidual? perhaps this is where art is lost.

i hate to say that this thought came to me while talking to my mother, yes the touchy subject that is parent/child relations, the tense loathing that inhibits too long a stay at home. i had my last performance this weekend: there seemed to be a lack of empathy towards the fact that this was potentially my last show, the atmosphere also happened to be devoid of all artistic apreciation. appreciation towards one of my featured pieces depicting the "origonal sin" (you know that over synthasised 80's chant from the cinematic thriller "shadow")

my, not so bornagain, interpretation was of a corruption, a death in the purity of love, possibly the evolution of deception. still a fairly controversial piece. my mother and her fellow on lookers saw a 5.28 minute dance about a snake, a couple, and horrible brown spandex. why?

why can some people see that and others be moved to tears by what i saw. how can such literal art be lost on people. it comes back to perception; whether its literal, metaphorical or religious. it should evoke emotion. that is why i'm an artist, because as a dancer my job is to evoke an emotion. truth be told, i have yet to comprehend whether or not i just walked away from that job.

so maybe that is why i see the heaviness . .maybe because i see the coruption of my art in the evolution of deception. andhow could anyone else see that, i can't expect others to feel that. yet alone comprehend it. besides, to people like my parents, the only reason they experiance art is because for some mirical i have a proclivity for it.

and i forget too that appreiation is personal, and to share it is one thing but to expect it is another.

to expect it to owe you something is another. ones passion does not owe them anything but fullfilment, so when you are no longer fulfilled, is that a personal growth, or loss, or is it just a phase: to hate your passion.
"they" say love and hate are close emotions, so i can only assume that it is natural to hate what fulfills you. but what if you feel that inorder to maitain apreciation you should quit? stop while you're ahead.

then there must be something wrong? i never want to dispise what i think is beautiful because i feel like it gave up on me. but how do you not feel that way?

dancing owes me nothing, just like my performance owes nothing to the audience or their perception of my art. but then why do i feel like the only answers i value are from something that owes me nothing.

and therefore it won't give me any answers. is passion generous, or are we the genrous ones to it?

i'm supposed to be able to come up with these answers by now. but i'm just too close, to0 emersed, to even see it. if it's even there.

nothing to one

with poison pen

your addendum inked

an epitaph carved in rhyme

sweat black down the page

my fatal sent

choked by veils

shear, revealing

a Mata Hari and her monster.

a long fairwell to the hunger strike.

i'm a prisoner,
cuffed to familiar
with an almost belief
not a enough for religion.
you're the quicksand
of expectation
suffocating under skeletons,
the weight of wasted time.
i almost meant
what i didn't say
to save this place;
rescue possibility.
what we were in the mirror,
neither adequate nor compatible,
clowns among traitors.
we were always dancing alone.

keep me without chains

some one asked me what the difference between being alone - lonely - and isolated was and how could one escape it. i couldn't give an immediate nor decisive answer.

is isolation a byproduct of loneliness or just being alone? and then, is alone something you choose or a circumstance?

it seems to me that isolation is a choice. people don't choose to be lonely, or the feelings that go along with it ( ie. desperation, self pity, etc.). where as i would view isolation as intentional.

on the other hand, some may say they are forced to choose isolation because they force themselves to be alone (this i observed from one of 'my clients'). when one is so (self)absorbed with invisible "demons" how can one maintain a healthy connection with those on the outside. and how can those on the outside be expected to understand?

the conclusion i came to, when answering the above inquirer, is something i learned from one of my mentors when i was interning. ' when people hurt enough, they will change their own circumstance.'

that concept struck me profoundly: when people hurt enough. profound because "enough" is a measure of personal discretion.

enough is a finality, hard for the human conscience to accept. a point that many avoid. because realizing that something that has sustained you is also hurting you - and there for the pain you are feeling is self-inflicted - is debilitating.

but if you can get someone past a certain period of self loathing, or guilt then you can get them to the point of self healing. and is that not the ultimate goal? whether it's addiction, abuse, or simply desperately self inflicted lust or loveless love.

it always strikes me how all encompassing human complexity is.

"stay sugar, stay"

think of how little thought we put into everyday confrontation. when they're broken down interpersonal relationships are relatively complicated.

this, i realize, is basic psych. 101 stuff but it's one of those common sense subjects that we overlook because it's a natural part of our everyday. why dwell on what we think we already understand.

just because we understand something does not mean we can express the concept to other people, this dawned on me while at work doing exactly that: teaching people how to rebuild interpersonal relationships.

we had the group members break apart the objective, relationship, and self consequence of each interaction, analyze them and prioritize them. what was interesting was that these people, who have been inside their own heads selfishly immersed in addiction., still chose to preserve the relationship with the other involved than to get what they wanted or preserve their own self satisfaction.

this made me think that we are ingrained to need other people, that whether we know it or not we protect relationships on an instinctual level. to survive. this, it is apparent applies even relations of an unhealthy nature - especially ones of an unhealthy nature, simply because the emotional exchange is not as seamless/ more intricate and less subtle.

we need interpersonal connection to survive, not matter how much effort ones puts into denial and independence, and that is why even if we hurt we stay. because we need something to hold on too. we, as living, feeling, beings, need an exchange of emotions and an external expression of thought and feeling.

trust is there for survival? how else can we justify turning the same old painful situations over and over, granting trust to those who disappoint time and time again. maybe this is part of the reason. i'm willing to believe it.

for atmosphere:

how much of our emotions are simply situational?

par example,
you are at a funeral for a family member who might as well have been a familiar stranger yet you are overcome with grief, and you cry and show appropriate - ingrained - emotion at the service.

do you show emotion out of guilt? or compensation? or just because you know you should?

still more common place, what about ambition?
you've wanted something for the greater part of your life, and are ravishly encouraged to go after it, but when you begin to take action those supportive people start putting up the emotional caution tape. "we believed in you until we actually thought you'd try it"
if you all of a sudden doubt yourself were you simply feeding off the enthusiasm of those around you? or did you really love what you were doing?

ie. did i dance because people told me i was good at it or because i loved it. do i need it or just want to need it? and if i need it like i have always believed i do, then why does what anyone else says matter?

am i discouraged and all of a sudden doubting the practicality of my dreams because people and producers are telling me too? do i have conscious control as to what i feel when the atmosphere says to give up? and if that is what the atmosphere says; then is the emotional direction i choose to go - either fight harder or give up - reflective of my character?

what about relationships?
an old and unsuccessful flame all of a sudden looks more than appealing because everyone around you is in a successful and comfortable relationship. should circumstance alone make me feel lonely? and if so, is it possible that this selfconscious loneliness is projected onto circumstances that don't include "happy" couples?

how do you know if that's what you really want. is feeling alone and horny cause enough to re-enter a stable but already proven unsuccessful relationship?
better yet, if these doubts are supported by those around you and these tentative ideas of a reprise are embraced whats to stop you from not wanting it.

so really i just want to know how in control of my emotions i am. and if one is predisposed to uncertainty before confronting a situation how do you make an emotionally sound decision one way or the other?

cards stacked against us? or are we stacked against ourselves?

black cat philosophy

i did alot of travling last month which was, as it turns out, a waste my time.
ironically, i am right back where i started - maybe even a little farther behind than that:


does it humble me
when i drop for you
like storms of glass
in jagged collections
you save for me

your eyes soaked caffine black
i beam with hesitation
a mirror image
our persons pressed to parallel

in us there's a joker
both masters of the trade
clear judgement in the water
the actor and abuser
lusting objective and estranged.

sword and sheild

" the devil you know is safer than the chance you take with something new."

. . of course we are drawn to familiar things, but i think that we can also be drawn to things, people, even situations that we otherwise steal ourselves away from until they are right in front of us.

you say to your self that you will stay away, you won't go back, you don't want "this." but then you run right back to it anyway.

but you know, its safe territory, its ritual. etc. etc.

still, i think it's more than that.
maybe we fall into patterns - not even patterns we like or want - but patterns that are subconscious.

you keep people at bay with physical affection because it is easier than going through the whole emotional connection cycle.
you'd rather be alone and wanting. because if you are wanting something at least you are inspired. when you have what you want you fall into the ritual of comfort and therefor you loose yourself to this thing - this want - and you are unimpassioned.

because having what you want is a much less pleasing a thing than wanting.

and because it is human nature to want and to be impassioned. and one finds purpose in wanting and achieving . . therefor never being satisfied with acquiring what they want.

but then does this not make fidelity a moot point?
and if fidelity is a moot point then what else is? the foundation of human principles of familiarity and satisfaction are negated by our general inclination to constantly want.

so does that make us selfish? or does that make us human?

and if it makes us human . . whats that. really?

oh, hush hush . . voices carry

how is it that in attempting to solve a problem i have become the forbearing force behind it?

i am an "approachable person"
people "trust my judgement and advice"

- i have chosen the correct field of study, this i realize -

but what happens when, because these are your friends, you get too close. when it goes from "i have a perfect relationship but want to say this . . " to "i want out" and " i have realized i have stronger emotions else where"

and you know. you know exactly how good it would be if things were different.
but how do you remain an objective confidant when there is that under current? that tension.

this does not happen in clinical psychology because you patients start out as strangers - at least that is what would make sense to me. . snd the minuet i get out into the real practice i am sure that is inccorect but in a perfect world that would seem reasonable.

but this is different, and your lonely, and you're a little lost right now, and you're consumed by wanting fulfilment. so your natural inclination is to give in to these feelings you have started unearthing and finding reciprocated.

. . but can't and won't act on.

so then there is the flip side:

how do you forgive the inclination to turn back to something you had, because you know you are wanted. but you didn't really want this something, per say, the first time . . it just filled some space. so now you are not only looking to fill space but to keep yourself fenced in. and that's not "fair". but reasonably tempting. if you can restore some sense of order, and prevent emotional catastrophe then maybe you could lull yourself into something old for sanity's sake. no?

maybe too, you just want to prove that the reason it fell apart the first time wasn't your fault. or that you can fix your emotions to conform to simplicity for the next 5 months. or is it that you want to go back and take fault for things you can justify. to prevent further fault on your part in a new situation. familiar guilt is better than uncharted guilt right?

but whether it's familiar or desired or spontaneous it's always the what-ifs that keep you turning around.

or keep you tied down.

mock me with praise

i haunt a smoke screen game
ember red hands,
trail black ash lies
a succubus to posses your lust
poisoned porcelain bite
fire in my eyes to burn you
melt like wax for me
I'll shape you into
who ever you want to be
dance in the darkness
don't hold out here
you stole me
wrapped my attention
and purged me
from a Novocaine state
arrested to this
dried heat
this disorienting fog
embarrassingly kidnapped
to the hope
you'll teach me to feel.