Weeks One Hundred and Two – One Hundred and Eight: The Final One

This is the final post for this blog, which covered my first two years living in Brooklyn, New York.

I’m living in China now – for 15 months – to teach English, and I’m trying a more focused approach to blogging. Check out my travel blog, where I will be posting bi-weekly poems, stories, songs, etc. about my experiences in specific places. 

This blog, which is truly just excerpts from my journal, has served it’s unorganized, raw, sometimes cringeworthily vulnerable life and I will keep it as an angsty souvenir of my early twenties when I lived in my favorite city on earth.

Why blog?

Sometimes I say it is because I want to be able to claim “writer” on my taxes one day. I want to be read. I want to be paid. I want to have the freedom to write all day without worrying about making it to some other job I’m doing “just to get by”. The travel blog? Wouldn’t it be neat to get paid to travel and write about it??? I think.

If this was actually why I blogged though, I wouldn’t do it. Or at least I wouldn’t enjoy it as much. Also, I probably wouldn’t write as many poems that may interest no one other than me (which are usually the poems I most need to write).

Ultimately, I write because it makes me feel whole.

I take writing seriously because it is the only way for me to live that makes sense in my gut.

Here I am, an unknown writer going on about why she writes – who knows who reads this dear, obscure blog of mine??? Yet, I am somehow motivated to do the strange work of being vulnerable here – even though it’s just to the anonymous eyes of the internet.

In my other blog, I aim to be honest and focused.

For this last all-around entry here, I’ll just post whatever shreds I scribbled my last weeks in the USA that can be shared/are worth sharing.

If anyone is reading or has read, thank you. Thank you for knowing me here. I pray that, wherever you are, you may find something that reunites you with yourself and you may pursue it – as I do everytime I pick up a pen.

 

8/11/18

Tarot Mantra

The more you love yourself, trust yourself, nourish yourself, the more powerful you will become to nourish the world around you.

I am the Empress.

 

8/26/18

Post-Ghosted

For someone with anxiety (many thoughts), this is a shattering – the feeling of –

it could have been it could have been –

you just have to remain present in the not-knowing –

Need to Find Peace In the Ache

 

9/5/18

Lol, Gross (Writer’s Block) 

I started the timer [to write] but stopped to dig the dirt – the all-familiar dirt – and period blood and sweat and dandruff and cum and Earwax – out of my ears [my nails]

Writer’s Block (cont.) and I Want. 

NagPullSquish / I need to love more / Have more sex / Stay up later / Get more sleep / Walk / Bike / Dance / Yoga / Sell a screenplay / Have babies / Hire babysitters / Clean Houses / Perfect Husbands / Make Movies / I want wild productive mornings where I make before people disturb me/ I want structure & friends / I want freedom & solitude / I want to stop writing because my hand already hurts

I want to surf the internet and read about writers I could be, residencies I could go too, grad schools & apartments in Williamsburg [I am about to move to China], I want to hold my nephew, I want to make people cry with my plays, I want to be drunk, I want to be in love, I want the same person I’m in love with to be in love with me, I want to watch a cat, I want to be smart and inspring, I want to be fluent in Russian, I want a doctorate in French, I want a French Husband, I want to make love with an American Woman, I want to have a flatter stomach, I want my mother to think I am astonishing exactly as I am, I want to have somebody I can bring home and introduce to my family, I want to become a part of the sky, I want to unlock some great artistic partner so they can be my everything partner, I want to publish this list so that I can be known and I don’t have to hide, I want everyone I know to care about me and give me attention, I want to laugh with everybody like I do with my best friends, I want everybody to be happy, I want to be married with a clean big home and a thriving career, I want to stay single and never move a day above twenty-five, I want to be a child so my mother can hold me, I want to stay in New York, I want to live in my parents’ home in the mountains, I want a ski bum boyfriend with wild blue eyes, and a filmmaker boyfriend with long shaggy hair, and an actor-turned-lawyer boyfriend who can admire the arts AND pay for dinner, I want to stop writing and be lazy in the cocoon of my mind, I want to not be tired, I want my period to stop but I don’t want a baby, I want to hold a baby but I don’t want to take care of a baby, I want to be brilliant but I don’t want to work, I want to have a day hiking, a day spent asleep, a day writing, a day on set, a day drinking and dancing and fucking and smoking, I want I want I want. The great nag. Propeller.

^^And with that, we say goodbye writinzzzzz blog!^^

^^if you didn’t think you knew me, well, now ya pretty much do!^^

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Weeks Ninety One – One Hundred and One: Cold, Confused, Alight

“In the end, the only things worth doing are the things that might possibly break your heart.” – Colum McCann, Letters to a Young Writer

This blog is ending soon because I’m going to focus it and write a travel blog instead -where travel writing meets poetry – something like that – with my own photos.! It will be announced here. Because I’m moving to China in September! I am going to write about the new places I see as well as the old places I’ve been.

I will be back in NYC as soon as it’s over. Because I’ve never felt more at home in a place than here. I will continue this blog until the travel blog is launched (next month). This is a document of my first two years in New York. It’s a document of the years twenty-three to twenty-five. Right now I can’t sleep and I feel cold and confused. But looking over the journey I’ve taken this past two years grows a light inside me. I’m proud of how far I’ve come and I look forward to how far I have yet to go. I have tools. I take breaths. I still attach to that which I love (and therefore that which causes me misery), but I allow myself the space to do so. I allow myself the pain, the vulnerability, the risk. I allow the sadness from lost, as I allow the celebration from the gain.

6/1/2018

Summertime Sadness

And everything pulses over and the

The pulse under everything is

Touch and

Potential and

Who was he becomes

Him and

Who was named becomes

He

One endless night, I

[my only experience of desire is furious]

7/21/2018

I keep repeating this throughout

It’s sad that we are in life together and then time happens and all the sudden we are not.

The longer you live, the more their faces pile up inside your chest, the longer you live, the further you get – they’ll just be dust puffs in the air (what once was flesh) – but the possibility to see one another still exists, and so we tolerate each others distance.

Dying is sad because the possibility is gone forever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weeks Eighty Six – Ninety One: Twenty-Five, Feelin’ Alive

“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anyone but oneself.” – Virginia Woolf

My twenty-sixth year has just begun and I resolve to ask for what I want, go after it and believe I can have it.

And I also resolve to allow everyone; man, woman, young, old, friend, enemy, and everything in between – I resolve to allow them entirety in my mind, to believe them capable of light and capable of darkness, to assume nothing, to breath compassion and listening all over all the people.

Not much of interest to report from my journal. 5/28/19 is today’s date. Maybe there will something worth typing here next time.

^^ I went to Joshua Tree at the end of April, with one of my best friend soulmates.

The stillness was intoxicating. Today I wish I could live in the desert.

Weeks Seventy Three to Eighty Five: The Right Path

“Failure is good. Failure admits ambition. Failure admits bravery. Failure admits daring// Reach beyond yourself.“ – Letters to a Young Writer, Colum McCann

If anyone is reading this thing, I salute you.

I’m growing. I’m messing up, but I’m getting more trusting in myself.

Here is where I write down the legible bits from my journal, documenting the journey.

^^ It me.

 

1/26/18

To all the People Pleasers

Every woman, everywhere, listen up:

Be selfish

Say no

Be irresponsible

Give no fucks

The person experiencing your life is you and you have the right to make it joyful for yourself.

Why don’t women get respect unless they demand it?

Unless they go against the grain and shout and rally despite the training inside them telling them that they will not be as loved?

In the meantime

I’m terrified of everything, most of all of being unloved.

1/30/18

One-Night Stands

I don’t think one-night stands are any less true than relationships or at least – they have the same capability to throb with the hot, delirious disease of being lost to another person like relationships do.

Disease, disease

And maybe I imagine that the incessant lust, craving for love, for rest in love – for that sweet oblivion into the nectar of life – maybe I imagine that this will go away if I have a partner – but maybe not – maybe the perseverance of this mild sickness is what compels me to lose myself in the beauty of a film, of a story.

2/2/18

Brooklyn = Moscow = Paris

Today Williamsburg breathes like Moscow, it breathes more like Paris – Paris! That mythical city I feel cheesy for loving, but suddenly the giant dome of Williamsburg bank rises behind the elevated train (a dirty silver) – I hear the rumble – I feel it in my pores – the Grandness the absolute Magnificence of this city, like planets, rings in my sternum, sings wine into my breast – but you know the Dome also brought me back to Sunset in the Latin Quarter – were the buildings Salmon or were they creamy beige – or were they Gold?

….

Actually, places are lovers for me, wandering in locations where I have no history but humanity has plenty, breathing in different colors of air

Idealization (Lover)

Not just a friend, whom, despite delightful company, it can grow tiresome to compromise with and listen to but

A Lover

For whom you are eager to surrender to – in them, under them, their body shadowing behind you on the train, their hand forming a shell over yours –

a Lover, a Waterfall;

The landmarks come second, what is important is you take in their sparkling air that they inhale too, what is important is their presence & their mystery – a lover who speaks in diamonds & sculptures & sunbeams that you never grow tired of drinking

2/4/18

Spring Splash (Nearing 25)

Happiness is born happiness is born in warming up in running pens across the page in grinning butterflies all over everyone you meet / All I want in the morning is an entire day spent discussing someone else with that someone else, swimming around in the morass of their mind, inviting them to mine but ultimately deciding it’s easier to stick in theirs / I will convince all these men to fall in love with me for one night – in the morning, they’ll protect their pride and we will all have to go to work / To be a human is most beautiful because we are all throbbing clitorses and sunflowers, roses heavy and swollen with rainfall and sunlight / This weekend was good because all I had – all I have – for everyone – is goodness, is goodness, is goodness, I say yesterday to suffering, I say tomorrow to anew, open hips, celebrating bodies / It’s unfortuante when I feel obliged to partake in acts I’m not thrilled about, it’s unfortunate blow jobs taste too salty but fat on others’ bodies is good for me to cuddle into, but that’s it really, and it’s okay, because while we are all sexual beings, we are also just beings, flawed & nubby & tired & cuming too fast or not at all.

…

I don’t know how to flirt without saying jeopardizing statements

…

… And I no longer fear twenty-five or claim it as “so old”, because law la la! I am an adult and I own all my limbs – I own all my limbs, all by myself I! Own all my limbs!

2/12/18

Practice a little self-lying

When you live the uncertain, expensive, daring life of an artist.

It’s important to remember.

It’s important to at least just tell yourself.

That it’s all going to be okay.

…

In the end, I have myself to hold and reassure myself & the person there to hold & reassure me is myself

3/13/18

Failing at Presence (Potential is a Drug) 

I am overwhelmed with the largest ideas and no time, and no time, I take up the time with daydreaming, flailing around, flapping from wall to wall, thinking obsessively about the future because the present is too full and too empty at once, and my head is a cluster of erratic stars catapulting at lightning speed / the only things that force me into the present are making & fucking & dancing when the music’s good & headstands

…

I want to be a universe

…

Everyone is always asking me what my dream is for my life – I guess it’s because I’m young and don’t they all love potential

…

The largest thing I want is

Love

I’ve said that in these pages, Seven Hundred Thousand times

The second largest thing I want is

Adventure

But love, the love I think of, is Adventure is love is life is newness is daring is failing is trying & smiling & laughing & laughing & gazing & listening & dancing & squeezing & holding & blazing.

3/31/18

My work, My shining star (Post-Artistic-Rejection) 

… All sorts of ego punches continue to await me – but my work is larger than any man or woman in a cushy office chair deciding it’s not worth it

My work is my beacon and I have the control to always return to it & nurture it & suck roots up to branches & maybe one day there will be more money but for now, there is Me

…

My confidence is in the fact that I try & no one can stop me

…

Are you alive?

Then you are valuable.

Do you have a purpose, a sanctuary, something to drive forward to even if you never reach the destination?

Then may your mornings be all the more filled with liberty, may you (may I) never give up and judge no one and persevere in love

Weeks Sixty – Seventy Three: Raw Hi

I have a lot of projects – well, I have one big project, High, which I need to return to – but I keep piling up journals and I need to go through them! For this blog! What compels me to prioritize this blog, I know not, but I know I feel like a failure – I feel like all of everything is lost – if I abandon it! I suppose that film, story, play and poetry pieces come and go – but this blog is evidence of my work on myself as a person and writer – and that is a project that will endure all of my life.

^^ I was in Montreal and Quebec City this past January. The bitter cold! A zillion electric bee stings cutting through your three layers of pants! I loved it 😀 

Another issue is the editing. Because I have trouble knowing if I want to cut something out because it is too dull and cringeworthy (for you) or if because it is too raw and humilating (for me). The agonizing over what to omit takes hours.

Being that I am horribly behind and overwhelmed with material for this blog post, I’m just going to post one complete, unedited entry from October that I thought was similar in content to many other entries from these past few months, but more original in its execution. And one funny sentence from November. Nothing from December (I wrote more than thirty poems that month – for others though, not this blog for myself). A little messy tidbit from January.

Godspeed to me. Godspeed to you. Unedited, unfiltered, complete. I put xxx’s to replace people’s names. Not that I think anyone will ever read this, but JUST in case.

10/31/18 – An Oath to Dedicate Myself to Vulnerability

“You don’t speak for people but with people” – Letters to a Young Writer by Colum McCann

I am a box of bananas

Peel is a shocking yellow

It doesn’t take more than eye contact to make me all aglow and fluttery

Horrid is judging it

It’s not horrid

Stop labeling my desperation and eagerness as horrid

Stop labeling my bubbling tongue, my quick to throb to heat heart, my quick to tingle limbs, my yawning cooch – STOP labeling it as horrid because it just is what it is & on another note beggars can’t be choosers – this is to mean – if I like someone I’ll just pursue it. I’ll just pursue it. I’ll give myself watery eyes & scratches all over the wrists but I’m tired of waiting for earthquakes and gut swallowing & gulping down desire or

at least

Hi, here I am

I am a box of bananas

I am a bowl of grapes

I am fantastic, and I know it too

I’m going to treat everyone else like they’re fantastic and hopefully someday something good comes from everything.

I’m going to buy peppermint tea & vegan cookies, I’m going to tip every time, I’m going to open a salsa dancing club even though I’ve never salsa danced in my life, I’m going to peel off my fingernails & leave them on my lovers’ pillows, I’m going to treat every man who I believe is worthy of awe & smoke & leather jackets & dancing vaginas like they are fantastic because I am at a loss otherwise. Because I am at a weary, disappointed, all twisted up suffering otherwise.

When someone puts work in front of me, I focus, I can’t stand to speak, I hide behind it and bite back my strange too slow jokes & all my qualms and all my palm all my hands, in every situation

I’ve got to be

I will be

Frank

Frank. I will have a daughter and name her Frank. And she will express interest when interested and she won’t when she is not.

I’m going to teach her how to pursue happiness with no loss of enthusiasm, but first I will learn how to do this myself.

I will go to graduate school and bemoan how I had any ingratitude during these years of freedom. I will stop wishing things were a certain way and I will just act to make them that way as I can and then I will forget it, eat chocolate, write fast, do yoga, smoke weed, drink wine, dance dance dance.

One day, maybe I’ll meet a guy who is willing to compromise for me whom I’m also willing to compromise for.

Until then, I am a bag of bananas – compromising all over the place & vulnerable like a fisherman’s sack of wet noodles – through the crocheted holes I’m losing chunks of myself that are getting stomped into the ground by smelly boots and that’s okay and that’s okay because they are just 3 cent pieces/chunks of pust and I’ve got an endless caboodle to grow & nourish my whole life.

(xxx, xxx) think I’ve never had a boyfriend because I don’t make myself vulnerable.

I challenge this notion

I am as vulnerable as a wet bag of noodles and I’ll just keep on getting slimier. If nobody chooses to bite or let their insides get goopy with mine, it’s their bad, not mine.

True agony is believing this is all my fault.

That it is not due to my lack of beauty or my too many hearts or the maturity & wounds & cages of those dudes.

So, I just won’t believe it.

Hello here I am Ow

GIRL

Hello here I am, ow.

I like you, I’ll accept reject, ow

I’m touching my hair, ow

I’m putting on a dress, ow

I’m moisturizing, ow

I’m calling you, ow

 

Everybody is hurting & nobody should blame each other. The noble are those who let themselves be hurt in the pursuit of what they want & continue forward none the less.

I refuse to be slammed down.

I deserve to fight for what I want – for love anyways.

It’s a shame I always have to try, it’s a shame how much it costs me, but stop labeling it a shame & just let it be what it is.

A not shame.

A me living.

A me not backing down.

I’m already crying imagining the hot pain & greasy humiliation I know is imminent.

But the fuck, I can’t just sit around waiting & being safe, what the fuck is the point of a life in a choice like that?

11/3/18

I don’t remember age 10 except the only thing more delightful than attention from others was television.

1/8/18

In the end there is only love, or at least, there is only risking for love, getting your need sucked up into red spots & your head dizzy & sporadic, getting your cheese on your pizza – the taste of love is tomato sauce, red, fruity, vitamin C – the taste of youth is a smile as wide as the sky – don’t stop trying & flying & coughing & soaring, because the only thing worse than failing is not trying & letting your memories & velvet emotions getting all caught up and coiled on the inside of your chest.

Attempt to describe the Sunlight sparkling on the ocean

Fireflies spazzing out on the water.

Weeks 46 through 59 – And here I am, and I am here

A mad few months y’all. Took the GRE. Wrote the feature for and crowdfunded for my second film, High (we will be making a short after all). Applied to Grad School. Worked, taught, went home to Colorado, moved apartments here in NYC. And hence, it’s been several weeks since I updated this blog. For anyone just visiting: I use this blog to log the gold remnants from my journaling exercises. You know, most of it is rambly not-much, or it’s just so angsty and biting, I could never let anyone see it, OR it is chunks from bigger projects already in progress – but the morsels that I might want to revisit later or share right now – I put these here.

I started this blog when I first moved to New York, and now it’s been two and a half months past my first year here. I’ve learned to keep moving forward, because what else can you do? I take big risks and try my best at everything I want to do. This is all I have to offer.

^^ Just keep on.

 

7/26/17

One Person Bicycle

Today my skin is cool

And firm I

Am wrapped around my own bones

No one else is sharing

Am wrapped around my own bones

Gliding elevated

One person can ride a single seat bicycle

Two seat bicycles are difficult to lug around and maneuver

 

7/28/17

Summer Sweat

How is it already the end of July?

I smell humid & salty & I am proud

 

8/2/17

Feel Like a Writer

I don’t feel like a writer because I’m

Always coming across words I don’t know,

Always meeting people who speak better than I and

Have more followers on their poetic Instagrams,

Always reading e-mails that say, “Thank you, but”

 

I do feel like a writer

Because I am alive for it

 

8/23/17

For Beloved Lemonade

When cicadas whine

Hee-hawing

In the heat

When

The sun sets and

Your calves are bug bit when

Southern Porches, White & Calm & Swollen

 

I sip a glass of lemonade

 

Yellow juice the color of

Kitchens

Clean with

Shiny Plastic

The sugar dries my throat

 

9/20/17

Burnt Orange

The trees, the Aspens, range from the light, aching green of a unripened banana to the burnt orange of maturity.

There is less of the burnt orange: it is early.

I desire to see more of the burnt orange.

To eat it, shove it up inside me, melt it into my chest;

bathe & roll & bathe & roll & bathe & roll.

The burnt orange recognizes the sharp edges

 

9/28/17

Trees & Concrete

The rustle

Trees rustle

Trees shake their ballgowns

They’re out there saying

“It didn’t all used to be here like this”

 

Weeks Forty One through Forty Six: Remove

Suspended

Body walks, Eyes see, Ears hear.

Summer actualizes in a dull roar:

Waves smash, Heat sweats, Jack hammers.

The air conditioning is on, and on, and               on.

Fan batters too.

Shut them off / one inhale and exhale on marble / just one – // THEN // swell up a swamp in between ears –

She makes your feet throb.

^ They say we find green trees beautiful because green trees mean survival

“Anything you do deeply is very lonely” – Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind

I’ve gotten the hang of sitting back and watching life. Watching myself live life. Watching others live life. Watching others express love; fast talking, interminable smiles, a mixed code of sharp jabs and forest kisses (I don’t see the forest kisses, but I imagine they’re in there. When everything is hushed but two).

And so. Bits and sneaks of journal entries from the past five weeks:

7/16/17

Coney Is Land

The reality of summer is that it

Is constant and

You are happy even when you think you’re not

Enough of the ingredients are slathered on top of your skin.

The sun oil has gold dust in it

You’re glittering

Hello again, myself

Hello, hello, hello

My shins are the color of the air when the air smells like coconuts and salt

They could star on a magazine cover

Except for the stubble on my knee except for

The scabby mosquito bite I colored in with marker.

 

6/8/17

Why Rewriting is Scary

My pen moves, I’m reluctant; opening up that old draft; revisiting my uncomfortable heart, pushing my brain up into the space where there are no systems and things don’t click together so easily with the same satisfaction of a zit pop or a buckled seatbelt.

The Smell of Sharpie

Like a secret sneaker heaven, where your eyes are refreshingly burnt open; teeth clean; lower body raw.

The Husband Tone

A guy saying “Honey” with that husband tone of “I know you, you are the warm shadow on my chest, the constant muted light in my everyday. I know your farts and smell them almost like they are my own – you in my old t-shirt is thrilling in the most beautifully regular sort of ways.”

 

6/19/17

When a heart is shared

All the time in the world can go by and

still I’ll think of you and

still I’ll think of you thinking of me too

Instagram, Memory of Them 

In this strange time when a like on an instagram post can act as a connection when

I can see your user name in tiny text glowing on my phone and feel your presence on the other end

Humans used to send letters and then we’d feel the presence of our loved one as they had been three weeks earlier

On my phone are notifications:

“b_winger liked your post”

“amishalish liked your post”

I always forget who amishalish is but

At least I know I’m seen over and over again by some person

 

All the faces that mutate warm in my mind

Sometimes I am present with the people here, sometimes I’m present with myself, sometimes I’m rummaging through the goop of a fictional character, sometimes (what seems like most times), I’m living in the dark warm closet of my memory

 

(memory that is gilded with dreamtime and imagination)

 

rotating faces

rotating voices

rotating arms locked in mine

 

6/20/17

What is wrong with loneliness?

Solitude means peace means

Not having to answer to anyone except yourself

 

Loneliness means Wanting

 

 

6/21/17

i didn’t say hi

STARK HEART:

A condition where in you look out on the world and everything has a sharp black outline.

A condition where you give up on reaching out or showing/telling others you care.

A condition where you sink into the STARK dry desert of your mind because it’s easier than that other thing

Than that smiling energetically other thing

We all have smashed spines

 

Wrung out

Sapped out stale raisin hearts

(And everything is growing drier)

— I see my earlier self and she was so overwhelmed with spastic energy that upon seeing someone she knew, she would have dropped the cold beverage she was holding and the ice cubes would have made her feet cold —

 

6/30/17

On Glamour (and not eating much) 

I rebel against the concept that I must hide the reality of myself to be desirable and yet.

(Whether or not I’m believing in Jesus that day, I do believe happiness is better sought in reality than in idealism.)

I would rather feel my real skin in the sun, and make believe my ocean tossed hair is flattering.

As for my stomach. . .

 

It sucks to be lightheaded but

It rocks to feel dainty

It’s gritty to feel strong but

It’s glamorous to feel delirious

 

7/6/18

After Reading Dharma Bums

BEING ALONE IS RAD

BEING A FLAME IN A SEA OF MUD IS RAD

READING KEROUAC REMINDS YOU TO BE REVERENT TOWARDS EVERY DETAIL OF LIFE AND TO WRITE IT ALL DOWN

BUT IT CAN SUCK ON YOUR WOMANHOOD AND YOUR RESPONSIBILITY

Kerouac abandoned every woman he ever loved, his children too

Proper sexual attraction translates to: [when i wrap my legs around you and bear the pain of you inside me, it is because i could imagine a lifetime coiled next to you with a life product of both our bodies whimpering between us]

And being a woman, I won’t be able to write like Kerouac – my stuff will bleed more, like my body does, with the moon, once a month, because I can carry life inside me, and my hardwiring pulses around that.

Weeks Thirty Eight, Thirty Nine, and Forty: Cannot Share

 

“Fassbinder said once, “I detest the idea that love between two persons can lead to salvation. All my life I have fought against this oppressive type of relationship. Instead, I believe in searching for a kind of love that somehow involves all of humanity.” – Chris Kraus, I Love Dick

“Concentration does not mean squeezing your brain tight, but rather relaxing it and bypassing the editor” –Goldberg, Wild Mind

I wrote a lot these past three weeks, but a lot of it will have to wait until I’m dead or 30 years old before I can share it with the public. I know I keep this blog most of all for myself, to keep track of what might be gold among the mass of nearly illegible journal pages, but oh! Somethings are best kept illegible (for a time).

^^ My favorite uncomfortable serenity is when I forget my phone, and therefore forget time – and therefore remember my spirit, remember my body, and remember the spirits/bodies around me

5/16

DA TRUTH COMEZ OUT

I look at my phone and it is loaded with texts from first dates I’ll never respond to but leave unread in their green orbs because (I tell myself) one day it’s good to have the option – also I figure if they see I haven’t read the message then it’s no harm, no foul; I’m just busy (true) and spacey (sort of true) and bad at my phone (it depends on who’s trying to reach me).

Anxiety about Writing to Share with Others

Apprehensive that my pen will betray the wickedness of my humiliated heart, and there I will be, reading it out loud, turning red in the face – but isn’t that the point?

 

5/17

Houston

Stinky, magnificent Houston in November, everything large like aliens, the sky – the Texas sky – swarming with her herds of blackbirds.

Write on

May I just say

I get a horrible intoxicating flurry of butterflies in my stomach whenever I’m writing and it’s going well.

Nature

If we all stopped trimming our weeds

Driving our car wheels over the grass

Cracking robins eggs with our fat, loud asses

She would swallow and

It would only take a month or less and

The air would inflate

 

Immensity

 

Would be the new normal

We’d all feel lost we’d all feel taken care of. and afraid.

6/6/17

Messsage

I will never be someone who falls in love online. I’m too corporeal. Or shallow. Obsessed with the feeling of bodies.

Weeks Thirty Six and Thirty Seven ; Culmination

“This is what Zen is about [everything ending]. To have an intimate connection with the world and on top of it to know about its passing. Of course there is sadness. But how sweet. And at the heart of it, what bravery. We know about impermanence, but it does not drive us into a hole. We dare in the face of it to stand up and become intimate and not just with human beings, which is hard enough, but also with the sky, water, chair, butter, cow, and sidewalk. Is this not also the way of the writer?” – Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind

^^ Another year, another year.

I’m turning Twenty-Four in Nine days (on the Twenty Fourth!) Recently finished the first complete (rough) draft of my first feature length ((?) (or mid-length) (currently @ 50 pages)) screenplay! Current working title is “Innards”. It is to be filmed at night, at dawn, and at the part of mid-morning where the sun is taking up everything – in summer – in New York City and by a wild ocean.

5/6/17

Sprang

Already 2017. Already May. What I really want to say is

The smell

The look

of grass (springtime)

wet & glowing like my pregnant sister in June

take all my skin please

 

 

5/8/17

24 Things I’ve Learned in My 24th Year (as pertains to my life) (I impose no lessons on others) 

24. How to take apart a bathroom sink, clean it, and put it back together.

23. America is built on evil, and we need to own up to that before anything can truly be repaired.

22. You can fall in love with anyone if you’ve drank enough wine.

21. It’s all pointless unless you do the thing you’re built for.

20. Dead mice are just that. Dead mice. Cockroaches too. I hold my breath and sweep up the remains.

19. The only people who will really care for you are your blood and your friends that are like blood. Hold tight to these people.

18. Go to church even if you don’t believe in God that day, because it’s important to be with familiar faces.

17. Everything brilliant happens in the mornings.

16. You do not have an extra dollar to spare. Just say no.

15. Money is won by doing monotonous things that hurt your soul.

14.  ^^Everybody does these things.

13. ^^^Everybody except trust fund babies. You will never be a trust fund baby. Forget that dream.

12. I can never work full-time unless it’s writing/directing. My brain/body won’t do it. Oh well. Time is well worth the poverty. (side note: I know, I know, I probably could if I had to.)

11. Love happens and then fades, people come in and then go – and that’s okay.

10. ^ You are, in the end, all you will always have – and that’s okay.

9. Bike if you live in Brooklyn. There is no other way.

8. Parents don’t last forever. They were your first everything and you were their more than everything. It’s okay to call them everyday. It makes everyone feel better.

7. Coffee will get rid of that sad feeling you have the day after drinking.

6. Alcohol costs the most.

5. Home-cooking meals – really investing in learning how to cook meals is spiritually healthy – your soul craves the tangibility of it.

4. No matter if it never brings me money or never gets read; may I never stop making writing a priority. It is the thing I want to do when I am not doing it.

3. I can be wrong about everything. That’s okay.

2. It’s nice to paint your nails.

1. Keep your expectations low, but work as if they were high.

(extra) 1. Being cool means nothing. Being kind, earnest, and hardworking means something.

 

_ _ _ _

sending all of you love and peace

Weeks Thirty-Four and Thirty Five: Lights in the Water

“Poetry trains us to look past the advertised reality, or better, to see surface commotion as a manifestation of inner turbulence.” – Dan Chiasson

“If you want to write, you have to be willing to be disturbed” – Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind

^^ The sun is out, the light is shining, I find cool refuge watching it slink and glisten in the water

Pardon any incoherence. I’m practicing.

4/19

Not that I hate all white men

If I see one more rich white guy with a shock of white hair molesting me with his presence of leadership, I will throw a TV against a wall and watch as the colors and shards combust flames.

4/24

Come on white people

I know you can get tired.

I get tired.

But you don’t even try. You don’t even try to pick up the book and think about how we and our forefathers have caused other people immeasureable suffering.

SWALLOW, nod, shut up

The guilt is palpable – the only thing to do is face up to it and let it pound in your chest.

4/25

Seasons in the Mountains

Iced trees or

Skies the color of wine or

A round of nickel sized aspen leaves applauding the wind.

Sisterhood Power

Beacon Beacon Smile Flesh, the goodness of girl friends tucked up in my ear

You know?

When you meet another woman and there’s this shared understanding?

A refuge in one another’s beauty that is otherwise pounded up by men – but with one another, we are

Gentle.

Admiring of one another’s accomplishments and Loving of one another’s faults.

We create a tossed mega salad of laughter when we are all gathered up and men are on Nobody’s minds

(it’s sacred, when women don’t compete with one another and choose one another over the boyfriend or crush of the week)

Sisterhood oozes Rose in our shared smiles

….

I’d rather

Sit in the hot mug tea of female friendship

It is a violent, loud, man’s world. Men hurt too, don’t get me wrong.

But we are all on the floor rocking back & forth, nursing our wounds our feelings of

powerlessness

our Date Rapes, Molestations, Incest;

the quiver in our bellies when at school or work, we can feel our bodies being ogled, hear the comments – spoken and unspoken – that rob us of our minds, of our insides, of the meat that makes us substantial enough to stay standing.

4/27

Poem to my clogged sink

The anxiety surrounding snacks purchased on the subway, cars paid to take me home near dawn, the smell of gas in my apartment, the dead cockroach embedded into our staircase

On one hand

I am rich

Safe

And the water pools up and sits there

sits there

He shoves black goop

sits there

sits there

Fossil trash in the corner that could never be

sits there

sits there

Cleaned up

dead flies

mouse poop

Mouse poop

How am I not

I am

MADE of my own

pieces up

Vomit

made of Bleh

shake

The head weighs and hurls.

The only thing that makes

New York Poverty and

Being away

and cockroach cockroach. glassy glassy cockroach.

just a little bit

Worth it. is.

Writing. is making my own projects.

and being in a place that Squeezes the Greatness out of me.

Jerking me all over the hard, loud streets

Hosing me down with other people’s brilliance

with other people’s Noise.

4/29

Randomness that might begin something Later

The wine, after you drink more of it, stops making your tongue pucker. —

I can never love enough or be close enough

I can never share enough or have enough of someone else in my heart —

We all drink because

A terror is upon us —

Body Pressure

Women have it worse

The flaming oil tears that wracked my body into convulsions over

a belly

a mustache

a lack of boobs

a bumpy nose

Do men get like that much?

Because, men’s approval is at stake for me –

without men’s approval I am the fat outcast

growing moldy & sad & alone –

men don’t have to be hot to get women’s OR men’s approval

women have to be hot, at least on a

keeping up to par with

personal grooming or at least,

if not that,

being young

sort of level

We can’t get in frumpled, wrinkly, and un-made-up like men can

4/30

Sandwich, Insomnia

I remember the tremendous effort it took for me to hear my mouth open

The sandwich

The good sandwich with avocado & egg that couldn’t fit in my stomach

(I ate it late at night later, from the fridge)

(2am)

(Waking up because all of my hungry, shaking body is rolling a million silver worms through the sides of your breath that get heavy after wine or have seizures after coffee)

5/4

What disturbs me

Lonely ugliness.

The person with the skin tag the size of a foot bubbling out the back of their neck. The older woman who smells like cat urine and speaks with a bewildered wisp when she emerges from the basement.

And right alongside this are the pretty young 30-something couples with their smooth, clear, clean skin, and apartments equally clear, clean, smooth, and spacious! Open, renovated walls with new windows spilling in white sunshine even in winter. And their able-bodied children have no deficiencies of the mind, and everyone’s clothes are new and everyone’s christmases are wholesome, food cooked organically, paper towels and dish soap bought with the environment in mind for the extra 5 dollars each, and you ask yourself if they have ever known that one and wretched pain that befalls the ugly, loathsome, and alone.

When your own skin wreaks of urine, masturbating, shit laced Tears when

The night gets louder & louder but you are the only one to hear it and

A millennia of disease, heartache, war, fire – or epiphany, chocolate, and stars ! – can happen in your mind but no one will understand it or help you eke it out. You’ll just lay tossing as the radiator roars.

A friend

I can’t stop floating.

This is painful sometimes only when I can’t find others floating also.

Keep me with the Floaters who See, Admire, and Absorb

A friend who will climb into the abyss with me and come out on the other side

Giddy, our cheap beers in hand.