the city, it sings

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 17:00:45 GMT

I'm removing everyone from this journal in a few days because I'm never coming back here. If anyone wants to be kept on here (if you can't stand not to be able to read a particular entry (ugh. I hate myself for this. I know how it sounds)) drop a comment to this post (all comments are screened because I feel like enough of a self-aggrandising wanker as it is).

For the last time, I'm at bonemuseum but I don't think there's anyone I expected to add me there who hasn't already.

Don't make me beg

Sun, 11 Jun 2006 22:22:53 GMT

bonemuseum bonemuseum bonemuseum bonemuseum

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 08:45:20 GMT

I was going to wait until the end of the month, but I couldn't sleep last night and decided to spend my valuable time making my new journal a habitable place.

bonemuseum

add me there, or don't.
There are a few people who I'm sorry, really have no say in the matter. You're coming and there's nothing you can do about it.

I'm not going to be updating this one again, so you can unfriend it or do whatever it is you do. And yeah, Crista, I'll unfriend you from this one and add you to the new one ;)

I'm not the same person I was when I started this journal and the big changes in my life deserve a new place where they can be complained about. I have had a lot of journals over the years, but that's the beauty of this site: you can just pick up and move when you need to.

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:01:23 GMT

saying that the heart is like _______ is the greatest compliment of all, because a heart separated from the things it loves (even the shapeless, every day looking things, hearts like boiled beans, can be hopeful and uncompromising in how beautiful, how beatific, how everything) is not a heart,

the heart like a tambourine
the heart like a flat tire
the heart like rain in your shoes
the heart like an escaped balloon
the heart like a crime scene
the heart like a broken chord
the heart like a cage of lions
the heart like a hymn
the heart like a broken bottle to the back of the neck
the heart like a tense fist
the heart like the heart like the heart like the heart
the heart like turned out feet
the heart like pages sticking together
the heart like a hotel with pale pink walls
the heart like graffitti half washed away
the heart like the smell of spent matches and the memory of a small heat that couldn't even stick around long enough to burn your fingers
the heart like a run on sentence where the meaning gets lost by the need to have finally said all the words that pool under your skin after days of silence
the heart like a girl from utah who has a BIG SUN inside of her
the heart like a long pull on a cold beer
the heart like the long pull of a boat lost at sea and still tied to the shore
the heart like a hand folded over the other like lovers
the heart like loud music from small speakers
the heart like a prayer to the Lord God of please just be kind to me
the heart like symbals and symbols

*
the heart like an orange traffic light
the heart like the arch of a back
the heart like the silence in the two second time delay over international phone lines I miss you one mississippi, two mississippi yeah, I miss you too and the heart is the space in between, in that silence while the sentiment travels

*
like an artichoke! or a sunflower or a daisy or a caper or something.
or like old, red mahogany; a scoop of vanilla icecream.

Tue, 30 May 2006 13:19:00 GMT

Last night when I was deleting some old school work and useless files from my computer I somehow slipped up and deleted the folder with all of my writing in it. ALL of my writing. I didn't even notice until just a few minutes ago when I was looking for the word document with all the quotes I had found over the years and I realised that my desktop looked unusually empty. I can't even tell you how horrible I feel, though I'm sure a number of you can imagine. I've lost pictures and book lists and writing from old journals, as well as private writing and more short stories than I can stand to think about.

I think the worst part is that right now I feel like the words that might have been there have gone too. I drum my fingers on the keys for hours and nothing comes out - it's just the big white space and me, a vacancy that doesn't belong and a sense of loss that I can't measure because I haven't got means to describe it.

So I take my hands away from the keyboard and spend hours sitting with my hands under me, breaking out to tell myself that the words could be good, great even, but that I don't know how to treat them anymore:

something about pulling the cork out of a bottle and thinking about how long it's been since I was kissed, about hips and waists and sand and glass, about permission and persimmons.

I am very much the sinking ship, the rising water, and the rocks I crashed against.
I am very little else.

I suppose the only thing to do is start again.
Please please please, leave me your favourite quotes. Words from poets and musicians and writers and people on livejournal and yourselves and me. Just write. I don't think I can be without words anymore.

my sweetheart, the drunk

Mon, 29 May 2006 20:25:17 GMT

mama, you've been on my mind

all flowers in time

I want someone badly

last goodbye

forget her

I shall be released

opened once

for crista: lover, you should've come over (live at sin-e)

17th November, 1966 - 29th May, 1997

Mon, 15 May 2006 21:32:01 GMT

the memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

- - from Rhapsody on a Windy Night - - T. S. Eliot

Saturday mornings still smell like chlorine, and I run pre-coffee fingers through my hair expecting it to be bunched and damp, waiting for it to cling honestly to my face when I move my head too quickly to look at the bleating clock. My whole body in retrograde: skin feeling the ghost of clinging fabric and bones remembering the warm ache of too many eager lengths, of trying always to beat my brother or the stopwatch or the fierce kick of my own legs. I remember learning to dive, but I have been teaching myself and re-learning ever since then, with the same ball of fear beneath my solar plexus and the burning of toes that curled over the rough concrete lip even though I knew better.

(I bent today, knelt by the five thin plants in my burnt red back room. Pouring water from the glass jar I took down from the top shelf (tiptoeing and unsteady, suddenly five or eight again, suddenly my mother’s daughter) into my cupped hands, parting them like a prayer to settle the hungry soil, and I felt better. Smaller. Summer makes me vicious, curls my shoulders and spikes my tongue, so I slowly gave the thing that saves, slowly did what my father had asked in his big tone, slowly mended what the sun had done and would keep doing despite my best efforts.)

(A few months ago I told the boy (with the slow, sleep voice and miles of oceans pulled around him)(who doesn’t say anything anymore) that I remember things too solidly, too completely: If I don’t have a whole day to bang alone the bone fence of my ribcage then nothing comes at all.)

(Muscle memory like your hello at the end of a phone line when I swear to god I was calling in sick somewhere else; my hands shamed, ticking, capricious. Muscle memory like running my finger along the swell of your bottom lip, forgetting the words it just helped to form. Muscle memory like my name, a flourish in blue pen at the top of the page, unhooking me from anonymity, from subtlety. Muscle memory like leaving.)

My hands still remember the proper way to grip a tennis racquet; my fingers can be coaxed to spread through broken chords; my knees haven’t forgotten the gentleness of a demi-plié and my whole body knows where the weight should be when the speed of the horse changes under me. If my parents gifted me anything it has been proprioception, always knowing my way through because of the way I found myself standing: hip, shoulder, elbow.

I learned my body from the inside out.

Tue, 02 May 2006 16:31:03 GMT

so maybe it seems like I'm following Kelli out. That's because I am. I have too much work to do that never gets done as well as it should, too many notes to make and remake and learn, too many people to say goodbye to (too soon) and too many Important Decisions.

Add that to the fact that I feel not-quite-right about the things I have been saying lately, and I guess what I'm saying is:

hiatus

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 02:47:03 GMT

The way a shaft of light could be anything, and it is only in reaching out to touch the surface it is caught on that you find out. The way I know the sound of footsteps on our thirteen stairs and who each sound belongs to. The way I can hear my little brother’s soft sleep breathing anywhere in the house, and the way it comforts me. The way my mother used to have to cover his head with a blanket before he would sleep, and the way he always woke up pink cheeked, warm and giggling. The way a pulsing, dark, noisy room makes every sentence a secret, and holding their arm and leaning in makes a mystery of “Can I get you a drink?” or “Have you seen him?” or “I love your dress”. The way A. fills my glass. The way it feels to wake up and realise my window is still open and the flowers and perfume bottles on my window sill are peppered with early morning rain. The way “calm autumn days” is a privilege to hear and a thing to live up to. The way N. lined my eyes and the way it smudged on my pillow. The way F. tells his jokes and how surprised I am each time I find myself laughing. The ways I have been forgiven and the things I have forgiven myself for. The way I can not sleep before three in the morning, but three in the morning is so wretched and romantic that I don’t mind the red eyes too much. The way my car key is slightly bent and the way my radio sounds in the morning. The way I said ‘I love you’ and meant it, but don’t worry don’t worry. The way my room is never tidy and my nails are never shaped and my favourite pink shoes cost me five pounds and refuse to die. The way my father buys me expensive wine. The way I can wiggle my nose and my ears and curl my tongue into a clover shape, and how much that amuses certain people when I perform on cue. The way he was so close. The way I intend to be kind.

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 22:52:19 GMT

Here is my hand, my heart,
my throat, my wrist. Here are the illuminated
cities at the center of me, and here is the center
of me, which is a lake, which is a well that we
can drink from, but I can't go through with it.
I just don't want to die anymore.

- - from 'Saying your names' - - Richard Siken

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:13:15 GMT

How much of table is in the word 'table'?
How much would you miss it if it was gone?
The vase ('vase': vessel, urn, jug) wouldn't crash through onto the floor, ruining the carpet and ideas of sentiment, if the world was without the word 'table'. Four legs or two, wood or marble or plastic or metal. Words for the things they are or words for the idea of the thing.

How much of the body is in the word 'body'? If the arm bends, if the cheeks flush, if the eyes close, if the lungs expand, where is the word 'body' inside the notion of it? The separation of body and body, knowing mine through experiencing yours, or: forgetting that I have bones and blood and muscles and water until I wrap my hand ('hand': palm, fingers, fist) around your warm wrist or press a kiss against your hair. Left alone, how can we be sure that we are what we say we are? "Left alone, unattended, how is a person to remember that they exist?" Living inside, the hands are no better than the blind men with the elephant, grazing and gracing limbs and acres of skin that are not equal to the whole; fractions of a thing that can only ever fool and never reveal. Say 'body' and it does not appear.

Putting the semantics back into romance
(a rose by any other name)

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 13:56:28 GMT

(eyes refusing to focus, blood pumping independently to purpose)
the body in decline vs. the body in denial

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 14:50:10 GMT

my parents should be home within the hour, and I feel suddenly small and childish, feel like curling my fingers in the hem of my shirt and scowling at the kitchen tiles. Yesterday for the first time in my life I went to buy groceries on my own (but I took my little brother along)(but I used my parents' money)(but I forgot to write a list) and came home with bread, apples, limes and a four pack of corona.

This house makes too much noise and my head makes too little these days.
I don't mean anything by that.

- - - - -

emptying out my overnight bag - dumping it, actually, onto my bedroom floor already piled ankle high with papers - and I feel the safest I have in months. There I am in my toothbrush, my favourite shirt, my rosewater and cinnamon spray. Here I am in my hairbrush, my dirty socks, my journey home bus ticket. I am found in the things I can stuff into a thistle-coloured bag with a metal clasp, a handful of things that might as well go in wrinkled 'cause that's sure as hell the way they're coming out. I am found there not because I have nothing but what I have, but because I need so little to be exactly who I am. I wake up on the bedroom floor and wrap the hairband through, up and over my mess of curls, my knot of thick hair, my last night's ideas, I brush my teeth and spit in your sink, throw everything back into the bag, leave the way I came but not the person I came as. There I go, my toothbrush, my favourite shirt, my rosewater and cinnamon spray, my hairbrush, my dirty socks, my journey home bus ticket, the same clothes I was wearing yesterday, a red hand-print on my cheek and the softness of sleep around my mouth and my eyes.

There I go.

- - - - -

what if I don't know how to ask?

- - - - -

yesterday I read an assignment J. had written (a movie review, but that doesn't matter) and I swallowed by big-sister jealousy and told him how good it was, offered suggestions, said, "You have an amazing way of phrasing things" and he blushed little-brother pink and said, "I can't believe you said it was amazing!" It's so simple to say the quiet, vital things to people. It's so hard to do the same thing.

In this spirit, I'd like everyone who responds to this post (though now no one will, and I'll content myself thinking it's because of this last part) to pick someone (or several 'someones') from my friends list they know and say something beautiful about them. If you don't know anyone, say something about someone from your own friends list, or about yourself, and I will comment about those lovely creatures who don't share any mutual friends.

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 18:49:24 GMT

Yes.
Start there. Start with ‘yes’, the quick affirmation, the answer to a question that hasn’t been asked yet, or is asked without pause. Start with ‘yes’, I dare you. I really don’t care if you lower your eyes or you lift your chin to catch the light, if the word hurts or it heals or it just is. Just start there.

Yes, everything is beautiful. Yes, everything hurts. Somehow we’re on to ‘Yes, everything…’ as though sweeping generalisations ever do anything but hurt. Yes, I realise what I just said. I have nowhere to go after ‘everything’, nowhere I want to write myself to, but at least we started with ‘yes’.

Yes, I washed my hair after a day and a night without sleep; yes, I wiped down the kitchen counters and the shelves in the refrigerator. Yes, I put the empty milk bottles next to the front porch and yes, I walked my dog around the block with my lungs unhappy for want of smoke to fill them.

Yes, I have a secret for you. Sometimes when I get drunk I will crawl home from the pub or the party or the hot stare just so that I can be in my own bed, not for solitude or sympathy, but because my body starts shaking the way it does when you aren’t expecting it, the way it does when you think it will pass in twenty seconds or so. I shudder. It’s a cold I can never be warmed from, the last of the heat, the last of the comfort; in bed, alone, recognising the part of me that will never be warmed.

Yes, I believe that I am too brittle, too brash, too much bluster and not enough holding steady. Yes, I have forgotten what I look like. I closed my eyes for far too long, found out I was too good at it (pretending things don’t exist as a party trick: watch me watch you disappear), and now and now and now I can not remember if I am tall or not, how my hair looks when I pin it back, how big my eyes are or what colour.

It doesn’t matter how you say it anymore. A yes is a yes is a yes is a short step away from myself, a positive reaction and a lung working separately from the rest of the body. Yes is what I’ve been waiting for, ears and teeth and knees. Yes is exactly opposite to what I really need, but I take what I’m given in both hands and love it firmly, if not a little irresponsibly.

Yes.
Like a stone thrown at cars heaving away from me and broken glass in the hair of those I loved; casualties and causality. It’s a slow burn panic.

Now, there, you’ve got it. Yes.
‘Yes, I remember…’ is subtle and terrible. Magnificent and magnifying. Yes, I remember pirate-ship picnic tables, wood set to fall on the two of us, old heavy wooden broom crow’s nest, splinters and dirty faces. Yes, I remember you looking up with the question in your eyes before it dared to reach your lips. Yes, I remember Father Christmas soap powder footprints. Yes, I remember hate under my skin and burning through. Yes, I remember a mouthful of ocean water, salt in the cracks of my skin, motion in my bones. Yes, I remember how good it feels, how honest to god good it feels to feel yourself taken into arms, into laughter. I remember how important it is to be able to answer, with eyes warmed smiling, with laughing in your teeth, the question “Do you remember?” with a round, smooth “Yes.”

‘Yes’ like it could save your life
because yes, it could.

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 16:24:33 GMT

I loved you first.

The Rememeberer - - Aimee Bender

My lover is experiencing reverse evolution. I tell no one. I don't know how it happened, only that one day he was my lover and the next he was some kind of ape. It's been a month and now he's a sea turtle.

I keep him on the counter, in a glass baking pan filled with salt water.

"Ben," I say to his small protruding head, "can you understand me?" and he stares with eyes like little droplets of tar and I drip tears into the pan, a sea of me.

He is shedding a million years a day. I am no scientist, but this is roughly what I figured out. I went to the old biology teacher at the community college and asked him for an approximate time line of our evolution. He was irritated at first--he wanted money. I told him I'd be happy to pay and then he cheered up quite a bit. I can hardly read his time line--he should've typed it--and it turns out to be wrong. According to him, the whole process should take about a year, but from the way things are going, I think we have less than a month left.

At first, people called on the phone and asked me where was Ben. Why wasn't he at work? Why did he miss his lunch date with those clients? His out-of-print special-ordered book on civilization had arrived at the bookstore, would he please pick it up? I told them he was sick, a strange sickness, and to please stop calling. The stranger thing was, they did. They stopped calling. After a week, the phone was silent and Ben, the baboon, sat in a corner by the window, wrapped up in drapery, chattering to himself.

Last day I saw him human, he was sad about the world.

This was not unusual. He was always sad about the world. It was a large reason why I loved him. We'd sit together and be sad and think about being sad and sometimes discuss sadness.

On his last human day, he said, "Annie, don't you see? We're all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting bigger and bigger, and the world dries up and dies when there's too much thought and not enough heart."

He looked at me pointedly, blue eyes unwavering. "Like us, Annie," he said. "We think far too much."

I sat down. I remembered how the first time we had sex, I left the lights on, kept my eyes wide open, and concentrated really hard on letting go; then I noticed that his eyes were open too and in the middle of everything we sat down on the floor and had an hour-long conversation about poetry. It was all very peculiar. It was all very familiar.

Another time he woke me up in the middle of the night, lifted me off the pale blue sheets, led me outside to the stars and whispered: Look, Annie, look--there is no space for anything but dreaming. I listened, sleepily, wandered back to bed and found myself wide awake, staring at the ceiling, unable to dream at all. Ben fell asleep right away, but I crept back outside. I tried to dream up to the stars, but I didn't know how to do that. I tried to find a star no one in all of history had ever wished on before, and wondered what would happen if I did.

On his last human day, he put his head in his hands and sighed and I stood up and kissed the entire back of his neck, covered that flesh, made wishes there because I knew no woman had ever been so thorough, had ever kissed his every inch of skin. I coated him. What did I wish for? I wished for good. That's all. Just good. My wishes became generalized long ago, in childhood; I learned quick the consequence of wishing specific.

I took him in my arms and made love to him, my sad man. "See, we're not thinking," I whispered into his ear while he kissed my neck, "we're not thinking at all" and he pressed his head into my shoulder and held me tighter. Afterward, we went outside again; there was no moon and the night was dark. He said he hated talking and just wanted to look into my eyes and tell me things that way. I let him and it made my skin lift, the things in his look. Then he told me he wanted to sleep outside for some reason and in the morning when I woke up in bed, I looked out to the patio and there was an ape sprawled on the cement, great furry arms covering his head to block out the glare of the sun.

Even before I saw the eyes, I knew it was him. And once we were face to face, he gave me his same sad look and I hugged those enormous shoulders. I didn't even really care, then, not at first, I didn't panic and call 911. I sat with him outside and smoothed the fur on the back of his hand. When he reached for me, I said No, loudly, and he seemed to understand and pulled back. I have limits here.

We sat on the lawn together and ripped up the grass. I didn't miss human Ben right away; I wanted to meet the ape too, to take care of my lover like a son, a pet; I wanted to know him every possible way but I didn't realize he wasn't coming back.

Now I come home from work and look for his regular-size shape walking and worrying and realize, over and over, that he's gone. I pace the halls. I chew whole packs of gum in mere minutes. I review my memories and make sure they're still intact because if he's not here, then it is my job to remember. I think of the way he wrapped his arms around my back and held me so tight it made me nervous and the way his breath felt in my ear: right.

When I go to the kitchen, I peer in the glass and see he's some kind of salamander now. He's small.

"Ben," I whisper, "do you remember me? Do you remember?"

His eyes roll up in his head and I dribble honey into the water. He used to love honey. He licks at it and then swims to the other end of the pan.

This is the limit of my limits: here it is. You don't ever know for sure where it is and then you bump against it and bam, you're there. Because I cannot bear to look down into the water and not be able to find him at all, to search the tiny clear waves with a microscope lens and to locate my lover, the one-celled wonder, bloated and bordered, brainless, benign, heading clear and small like an eye-floater into nothingness.

I put him in the passenger seat of the car, and drive him to the beach. Walking down the sand, I nod at people on towels, laying their bodies out to the sun and wishing. At the water's edge, I stoop down and place the whole pan on the tip of a baby wave. It floats well, a cooking boat, for someone to find washed up on shore and to make cookies in, a lucky catch for a poor soul with all the ingredients but no container.

Ben the salamander swims out. I wave to the water with both arms, big enough for him to see if he looks back.

I turn around and walk back to the car.

Sometimes I think he'll wash up on shore. A naked man with a startled look. Who has been to history and back. I keep my eyes on the newspaper. I make sure my phone number is listed. I walk around the block at night in case he doesn't quite remember which house it is. I feed the birds outside and sometimes before I put my one self to bed, I place my hands around my skull to see if it's growing, and wonder what, of any use, would fill it if it did.

crayon hearts

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 17:26:29 GMT

no one comes around here anymore,
but I keep peeling back the wallpaper and staining the window frames
(fresh flowers in the kitchen, fresh coat of paint on the front door):

good housekeeping for ghosts

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 18:42:26 GMT

"The most audacious thing I could possibly state in this day and age is that life is worth living. It's worth being bashed against. It's worth getting scarred by. It's worth pouring yourself over every one of it's hot coals."

- - J.B.

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 13:30:23 GMT

big and blustery:
my bedroom window is open to the hail storm because it looks like snow and hits like stones, and I'd rather welcome the storm inside than sit around under my own heavy rain clouds all day.

I just keep looking up translations of 'My Story' until I realise that I only want the ones that say "The world is ice. That's my story" because it breaks me just a little in all the right places.

Lindsay! where is that quote from (the one you wrote on my postcard)?

tell me something big. anonymous commenting is on and blah blah blah

of this is your heart, this is mine

Sat, 01 Apr 2006 14:32:35 GMT

When something's too beautiful to simply
Let go of,
You have to throw it away.

- - from ‘Alcohol’ - - Joe Bolton

Half a page of handwritten notes about leaving and being left. An image, badly placed and unsettled inside its own absurdity, about missing the moments because you spread your fingers under the running water and began to die of an unhappy thirst for lack of a glass, ignoring the cup of your own hands. Half of your breath on the back of my neck, sleeping four to a floor and waking up in the young morning to put her mother, praying drunk and a birthday cake smile, into bed after pouring her out of her four inch heels and pinning her hair behind her ears in the cool bathroom. I am trying so hard. A. sleeps with her elbows thrown out like a fight against closeness she loses when we lean over and kiss her pink ear, her red cheek, her fire hair, and we let her have the couch again and pick the songs again and tell the stories again and pour the drinks and the love again, because that is how everything works when everything works. I moan, soft scared animal, before I get too deep into the sleep I taste in my lighter moments, and T. laughs and shuffles lower under the covers, gripping S. like letting go could never be an option. N. perches and waits for the ceiling creaking to slow, subside, cease, before her fitful half-night of open mouth and hands under her back. Funny how this started with ruminations on the loss of loneliness, on the way distance and movement sing through my bones their terrible siren song where sharp rocks are nothing and new places are everything.

Today is a beautiful day. There is a man in my parents’ bedroom with loud noises, fixing something to something else, and I am alone in my house with these stranger sounds and a light that flickers and a heart that hums.

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 20:03:42 GMT

I know I'm a creep, but you love me, so I'm asking: could anyone (anyone at all?) send me 'Say Yes' by Elliott Smith? Feels like my chest might collapse if I can't hear it soon, you know?

Sat, 25 Mar 2006 15:29:20 GMT

I'd like to think that reading is organic, that books are to be absorbed and accepted into a person's mind, that you grow inside a good book and it grows around you, that the words are the most important thing and that it doesn't matter if I can't remember which book I read something in...but really I just have a crap memory. Here is a basic list of things I love, for you to love or laugh at or add to or say "hey, me too!" etc.

books - -
the book of disquiet - - fernando pessoa

if nobody speaks of remarkable things - - jon mcgregor

the god of small things - - arundhati roy

everything is illuminated - - jonathan safran foer

the wind-up bird chronicle - - haruki murakami

skinny legs and all - - tom robbins

I, lucifer - - glen duncan

ham on rye - - charles bukowski

children of the albatross - - anais nin

one flew over the cuckoo's nest - - ken kesey

the subterraneans - - jack kerouac

timequake - - kurt vonnegut

fear and loathing in las vegas - - hunter s. thompson

north and south - - elizabeth gaskell

junky - - william s. burroughs

blindness - - jose saramago

the time traveler's wife - - audrey niffenegger

a confederacy of dunces - - john kennedy toole

regeneration - - pat barker

the life of pi - - yann martel

it - - stephen king

post office - - charles bukowski

still life with woodpecker - - tom robbins

high fidelity - - nick hornby

the wasp factory - - iain banks

I know why the caged bird sings - - maya angelou

the virgin suicides - - jeffrey eugenides

a spy in the house of love - - anais nin

factotum - - charles bukowski

norweigan wood - - haruki murakami

the picture of dorian gray - - oscar wilde

of mice and men - - john steinbeck

breakfast of champions - - kurt vonnegut

authors - -
haruki murakami

tom robbins

charles bukowski

kurt vonnegut

collections - -
the portable dorothy parker - - dorothy parker

welcome to the monkey house - - kurt vonnegut

tales of ordinary madness - - charles bukowski

the elephant vanishes - - haruki murakami

south of no north - - charles bukowski

plays - -
rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead - - tom stoppard

a streetcar named desire - - tennessee williams

a view from the bridge - - arthur miller

death of a salesman - - arthur miller

the misanthrope - - moliere

waiting for godot - - samuel beckett

othello - - william shakespeare

macbeth - - william shakespeare

hamlet - - william shakespeare

the taming of the shrew - - william shakespeare

poetry - -
the splinter factory - - jeffrey mcdaniel

diving into the wreck - - adrienne rich

she - - saul williams

collected poems - - philip larkin

selected poems: 1947-1995 - - allen ginsberg

you get so alone... - - charles bukowski

what matters most... - - charles bukowski

alibi school - - jeffrey mcdaniel

dangling in the tournefortia - - charles bukowski

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 16:54:41 GMT

I love you, softly spoken and rhyming with nothing but the tap- tap-trapping sound of rain on the roof (where I go walking, skipping air under my skin to blow up and away). Picked up a brush and painted you fresh earth colours, rich purple and sudden orange (paint in my hair and on my tongue until you tasted the right shade), picked the grass out of your hair and said, "I saved you a seat in the back of my mind, but the theatre's yours if you want it." Said, "you don't need to drive, you can catch my breath instead" and swallowed distances like asprin to thin the pressure of meeting your look.

I have opened my window, and love comes in clattering and big wings flapping, lifting the dust.

Said, "two birds who fly with the same wings through different skies"

or: one hand and the other, separate and then connected in applause for the small, beautiful things.

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 19:53:45 GMT

So, you think that you’ve known stillness?
I could be talking to anyone, but I’m not. It’s you again. Back here, motion circling the drain and the pull of you is all I’m worth. I’m settling my limbs, heart rattling inside the metal cup of my chest, but I’m a bad luck kind of girl, a quit while you’re ahead kind of girl, a “THIS is my poker face” under streamers of the last place I left myself kind of girl.

So, you think that you’ve known stillness?
Tell me about it.

- - - - -

I have at least 70 people on my list (not including my horrendous string of journals) but I only really seem to talk to about 15 of you. I am the worst person for commenting, but I do always read, and I'm sure some people are the same. If you actually read my journal, would you mind commenting on this post? I'm not suggesting that we all become best friends and hang off each other's every word, but I'd rather have a list full of people I know are reading but don't comment rather than a list full of people who couldn't care less. Of course, you could always comment here and tell me how sick you are of me before deleting me from your own friends list in a fit of internet-ey drama, 'cause that's always a heap of fun, right? RIGHT!

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:48:47 GMT

Someone explained once how the pieces of what we are
fall downwards at the same rate
as the Universe
The atoms of us, falling towards the centre

of whatever everything is. And we don't see it.
we only sense their slight drag in the lifting hand.
That's what weight is, that communal process of falling.
Furthermore, these atoms carry hooks, like burrs,

hooks catching like hooks, like clinging to like,
that's what keeps us from becoming something else,
and why in early love, we sometimes
feel the tug of the heart snagging on another's heart.

Only the atoms of the soul are perfect spheres
with no means of holding on to the world
or perhaps no need for holding on,
and so they fall through our lives catching

against nothing, like perfect rain,
and in the end, he wrote, mix in that common well of light
at the centre of whatever the suspected
centre is, or might have been.

- - Concerning the Atoms of the Soul - - John Glenday

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 15:29:47 GMT

"We generally give to our ideas about the unknown the color of our notions about what we do know: If we call death a sleep it's because it has the appearance of sleep; if we call death a new life, it's because it seems different from life. We build our beliefs and hopes out of these small misunderstandings with reality and live off husks of bread we call cakes, the way poor children play at being happy.

But that's how all life is; at least that's how the particular way of life generally known as civilization is. Civilization consists in giving an inappropriate name to something and then dreaming what results from that. And in fact the false name and the true dream do create a new reality. The object really does become other, because we have made it so. We manufacture realities. We use the raw materials we always used but the form lent it by art effectively prevents it from remaining the same. A table made out of pinewood is a pinetree but it is also a table. We sit down at the table not at the pinetree."

- - from The Book of Disquiet - - Fernando Pessoa