Tag: writing

eudaimonia and daydreaming and premonitions

Not unlike the toaster, I control darkness.

Christopher Moore

Well well well if it isn’t me waking up at 5:30 a.m. again to start another day with my positive life affirmations and instead of getting a cold brew trying to breathe fire (like in yoga, not so much like a pyro – it is simply too early for flames). I inhaleexhaleinhaleexhaleinhaleexhale so fast trying to wake up, and it actually does work.

Well well well if it isn’t me sitting at my desk at 7:30 a.m. trying to stop falling into hypochondriac thoughts and thinking my knees are broken, my wrists have succumbed to carpal tunnel, and my eyes will never stop rejecting the contacts I force them to hold onto for dear sight. I have watery eyes and crackling wrists but I survived a car crash last week that totaled my car so if this is all that I have as a side effect of a head-on collision I think it’s okay.

Someone brought butterscotch toffee flavored coffee grinds to work but no one knew how much to add to the coffee maker to make those 2.2-liter dispensers. I did. I made it and listened while people were excited that the coffee tasted so much better today and how good it smells, and it made me happy that I was the secret benevolent coffee brewer.

WeLL well WELL if it isn’t me taking a walk in the park next to work at 10 a.m. because it is a very beautiful day, after all. My earbuds are on their last leg and there is a hole in my shirt in the armpit and nobody knows either of these things and nobody should know nor should they care about my hole-y armpit and how I keep trying to listen to but keep disconnecting from my podcast about the lives of bees and how I secretly plan their downfall because I am allergic.

Well. It’s 1 p.m. and I have decided to get myself an iced coffee and the Greek salad/tomato soup combo from Panera. The dressing on this salad has a very intense kickback not unlike breathing in a salt and vinegar chip, and choking to death on spiced air at my desk is not how I wanted this day to end not how I wanted my life to end!!!!!

The thing about working for nine hours a day is you get bored at sitting in the same place for so long, but you have to. The mind wanders and you stop thinking about you and the tasks you have and you think about your favorite things to think about.

There is a window I look out of and there are construction workers doing something to a house and it makes me a little sad that I will be here for five months without you. It is comforting knowing you are a 15 minute drive away and that after work I could see you any day. This city has become more than just where I work but where I have spent the most time with you and watching movies, cooking together, laughing, playing games, misunderstanding and understanding each other more than I could with anyone else. I love you and the thought that you are near me, even if I will not see you until Friday.

I have seen you two or three times a week for a year, spent many nights on your awful bed and wondered how even though you are virtually scentless I love the way you smell. Soon I will see you for four days a month over one week but I will try to see you more. Whatever flights I can get I will take. I will miss you so much for those five months we spend apart and then I will see you every day for as long as you’ll let me.

It is 5 p.m. and I am going home to work out and watch Grimm and probably make a salmon and rice bowl for dinner and I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.

a monstrous and comic miming

It was as though the scene through which I had just lived had been a monstrous and comic miming for ends I could not conceive and for an audience I could not see but which I knew was leering from the shadow.

Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men

How do you reintroduce yourself to yourself after losing her for some time? This is what I have been wondering nonstop for the past three days. I am using everything I have to get back to her. I will push and I will defy whatever stupid bad cognitive habits I have fallen into until I am done with this monstrous and comic miming of this girl who is unhappy, bitter, and mean.

This moment is my worst fear, I am this awful imposter who cannot possibly deserve happiness with the love of my life because I am a ruiner. I am a saboteur. I can’t feel my heartbeat any more and I think my lungs have dived into my colon. I deserve it, because I have wrecked it. I didn’t mean to. I don’t know how this happened. My throat is constricting in on itself like a boa, like a big fat snake, like me.

I have almost everything I could want, and I am on the path to attainment. I did not work this hard just to inflict misery on myself and others. I will not do it any longer. I regret every single time I was offended, offensive, obtuse. But I can’t go back, and I never will be able to.

I have made myself into a big fat crybaby, and now I am putting her on a diet and chucking her into the sun to hang up and dry. The amount of disgust I feel is immeasurable. But when we make a mess, we clean it up.

All I can do is be better today, and be better tomorrow, and put myself fully in this moment. I will not make problems for myself any longer. I am capable of deciding and choosing to be happy, and to make others happy, and to create a sunbeam where there was once a mold.

Why does it seem so easy to become a useless, cynical being? If the opposite is to be helpful and loving, then should it not take the same amount of effort to swing from one pendulum to the other? I have decided to make it easy. It is more natural to smile than to frown, it takes the same amount of effort to make yourself awful than to be magnificent. If I put all this wasted effort into only good, I know I can turn this ship around and set myself back on the path.

I felt the currents move. The grains of sand whispered against each other. His wings were lifting. The darkness around us shimmered with clouds of his gilded blood. Beneath my feet were the bones of a thousand years. I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer.

Then, child, make another.

Madeline Miller, Circe

Exit Music (For A Film)

I am so many things, always inspired by a song or a book or a movie or the way someone said something or the way they didn’t or the things I want to do or the things I do not. I follow the beauty in life and look for symbols everywhere and find myself in them. I like that there are words that describe things in other languages that we do not have in English, so I learn them. I love the way people with different accents place their lips and tongues in foreign places to speak, and that it sounds differently from how I say the same words, and I find myself absently and not-so-absently memorizing those placements to recreate their sounds. I don’t like candles or perfumes that smell like flowers, but I could inhale a gallon of vanilla extract, and I would drink every drop if it didn’t taste like poison. I do like sunflowers, and feel the need to point them out if I see them. I like cold weather and blankets and fireplaces and trying to get my cat to talk to me. And you know what, he does most of the time. Not anything discernible but there are definitely inflections to his meows and mmmphs. I like to fill up shopping carts online and then exit out, but I do not like walking around the mall or going through rack after rack after rack of clothes at the store. I like to listen to one song on repeat sometimes when it really speaks to me, and I love lyrics maybe more than I love melodies, but sometimes I listen to music in different languages and so then I guess that doesn’t really apply. Today I woke up and listened to opera for two hours, and yes it made me cry. Today even though I really just wanted to lay in bed all day, and I could have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for my rotten fear of wasting my day, I still did an hour on my stationary bike and I tried not to feel bad about not eating as well as I should have yesterday. I have a disposition to look forward or back, and not entirely be in the moment so when I remember to stop and be HERE and NOW, I feel better. When I reign myself in from looking at what I have to do this week, this month, this quarter, and instead just focus on taking on today, I am happier. I am not the best at reminding myself, but lately I have been putting in much more effort to ground myself in the now now now. If I think about working out five times this week it seems daunting, but if I think about how I have 7 to 8:15 p.m. tonight to hop on the bike while I watch Arrested Development, I can do it. I am working on it. When I do not overwhelm myself, I think I am good to know. I am at my best when I am more careless instead of so fixated on perfecting things that are not entirely in my control. I want to find more moments of myself in that state of mind, and be able to rely on my responsible and serious self when I need to. I should show my love more.

I guess really barring some out-of-the-blue event, what’s going to happen and what is happening will do so whether I find ways to enjoy it or not, so why on earth would I not want to make the best of it all?

the form of love, or swans and black coffee

Look upon men and things with the inner eye, with its form and desire, never forgetting that the shadow they throw as they pass by, upon hillock or wall, is but the fleeting image of a mightier shadow, which, like the wing of an imperishable swan, floats over every soul that draws near to their soul. Do not believe that thoughts such as these can be mere ornaments, and without influence upon the lives of those who admit them. It is far more important that one’s life should be perceived than that it should be transformed; for no sooner has it been perceived, than it transforms itself of its own accord.

Maurice Maeterlinck

Swans. In theory, as in, in paintings, I think are beautiful. In real life, as in, at the park, I am terrified of.

They’re loud, and make a hjonk hjonk noise that is startling. I read somewhere that they can break a person’s arm with their wings. Imagine getting backhand slapped by a swan’s wing, and being like wow. they are such beautiful creatures. the creature of love.

I don’t like that the Hjonk Hjonk Arm Breaker 3600 is allegedly the symbol for love when there are much better things.

What’s better: the sound of the piano from far away or through a recording, or sitting next to someone playing the piano and hearing their fingers press the keys and their feet tap the pedals?

If it were to be turned into a questionable symbol, my love would not be a swan. I think it would be something like black coffee. An acquired taste.

If you are used to light, agreeable, creamy, sugary, often barista-made coffee, you might not have a taste for what I have to offer. My coffee is dark and opaque, slightly acidic, strong, and often comes in a big can with a seal that’s tough to open. It’s the kind of thing you probably don’t like initially because it doesn’t taste great right away, but at some point you might decide to wean yourself off of the cream and sugar.

I don’t think anyone ever starts off liking just black coffee, but many people create a habit out of drinking black coffee until they develop a palette for the base notes. Then it doesn’t just taste like an ash tray. It tastes smoky and rich, and maybe even a little nutty.

In presentation, it’s just ground up dark sand, but the real kicker is the smell. The smell of coffee grounds is referred to as “the bouquet.” I think that is fitting.

I wish sometimes my love was easy and graceful like the swan looks in pictures and is described in poems. It is not. It is complex and hard to describe unless you know what to look for, which takes time. Which is acquired through time.

In spite of that, I think it is worth it. I don’t mind not being a swan if it means that someone sees past the face value and the on paper and in paintings. If it means someone has gotten past the seal that preserves the coffee and uncovered the richness inside.

I think it is happening, or maybe has happened already. Does the coffee ever know when the seal is broken? Can it sense itself being known? I want to. I think that I am.

At the end of the day, it is what it is. A swan is just a mean bird, and coffee is just a spicy hot water. I am, too, just me, and trying my best to be that.

the act of unraveling

So much of my time is spent photographing others, writing on behalf of others, and using a different voice to portray a certain message. I have found it hard to really know myself because I focus so much on everyone else.

It is easy for me to pick someone apart by listening carefully and paying attention to their responses and the things they say and do not say. I am an expert understander.

It is not easy for me to put into words how I feel about things, maybe because I am not often asked. I am the asker.

Lately I’ve been asking myself how I can open up more and trying to mirror the vulnerability of others. I write so much, and sometimes feel so in tune with myself, but I don’t know if I have ever truly shared that with someone else. I don’t think I’ve ever voiced my deepest darkest thoughts and hopes and dreams and fears, and I don’t remember ever wanting in such a precise way before.

I have kept me close to me, worn my emotions and complexities like a tight second skin. I wrap myself around myself around myself around myself like a snake coiling and ready to strike in case someone tries to get too close.

But what am I protecting myself from? Where did I learn this behavior?

How do I put the fangs away and unravel myself, now that I want to let someone really know me?

This is what I’ve been trying to do, I am currently in the pursuit of being known by someone that I want so badly to know me. To like me for me, and isn’t that all that anybody has ever asked for?

passionately, not reasonably

Do you really love me? Much?

Passionately, not reasonably?

Virginia Woolf, letter to Vita Sackville-West
December 29, 1928

I have been working so hard to better myself this year, in just about every way. I am working toward things I don’t want to jinx by writing out.

I’m trying to stay in the present as much as possible and not focus too much on outcomes. I want to enjoy the things that are good now, and not be impatient. I am happy, now.

I am not yet where I want to be, and I believe by the end of July I will be. I think in 6 weeks I will be much better than I am now. In 9 weeks I will be even better.

By the time I’m 24 I think my life will be a lot different, with more to balance. But more is good, it means my life is fuller.

I know it because I’m working so hard towards it all. It’s inevitable, unless something that I can’t plan against happens. If you put in the work you will get the reward, and I refuse to listen to people who say otherwise.

It is both passionate and reasonable to chase after everything I want and earn it all and love the moments in between the beginning and the goal.

sonata no.14 in c-sharp minor by beethoven type of post

A person can be defined by their experiences. Their understandings of those experiences, their reactions to those experiences, the conclusions they draw from them, what they learn from them. Their thought process, the kind of relationships they maintain with others, their character, the way they speak.

I’m the melting sea caps pouring into the ocean.

Probably more closely is that I’m defrosting like a frozen chicken.

I feel really good things are on the way, are here already. I am living with high stakes and high payouts.

more good things

Another list of really good things:

  • Sharpie fine point marker pens that let you write small and precisely and remind you of getting shitty Circle K coffee with your friend Chicago because it’s what we deserved
  • Putting plans into your calendar at the beginning of the month and knowing you have something to look forward to at the end of the month
  • Listening to someone talk and coming up with the perfect response that makes them feel heard and understood
  • Ultra-precisioned writing that leaves no doubts or questions
  • Hearing your mom talk about her day and knowing that she is smiling because it was good
  • Taking things one day at a time and doing your best each day, so at the end of the day you feel truly satisfied
  • Getting one minute of full uncertainty and pouring all of your hope into those 60 seconds and then getting what you hoped for
  • FMSP (Fat Man Starfish Position) – when you eat too much so you Just sprawl out like a starfish on a flat surface and let the tides of your tummy take you where you need to go
  • Knowing someone misses you as much as you miss them, and knowing you will see eachother again
  • Being proud of your friends for achieving their goals and reaching new stages in life
  • Picking out little baby clothes for your first pregnant friend even though you can’t believe she is cultivating a human being in her body, that you will be amazed by when it enters the world
  • Eating ice cold watermelon like you are four years old and not giving a single care about being sticky

fix me or conflict me

Have you ever been very cold and someone gives you a hot drink? You know, the sensation of warming up from the inside. It feels like it starts like a lit firework in your chest, sharp and hot and burning as the liquid makes its way down. While it travels it doesn’t hurt nearly as much or feel nearly as warm.

I can’t even take a deep breath when I think about it, I am treading shallow air and my fingertips cannot get warm no matter how many times I sit on my hands or tuck them between my thighs. I have purple fingertips, when I think about it.

I thought I was supposed to feel like the monarch girl in that story I wrote over a year ago. There are no wings in this story though, are there?

I have baked this lovely cake to only discover that, yet again, it is composed entirely of crunchy cockroaches. And I didn’t even look properly before I bit in so now I’m just left with this taste in my mouth. And I’m humiliated that I thought I could bake in the first place. The worst part is the bits and bobs in my teeth.

old man sickness voice

I have a love/hate relationship with my voice in the morning. I can’t tell if it’s a very hot and sexy phone sex haver voice or if it’s an old man with a chronic illness voice. Probably somewhere in between.

For the first hour after I wake up I am either a raspy goddess or an old man who isn’t exactly surprised he woke up to another day on the earth but not happy about it either.

I very seldom speak for that first hour to make sure no one tells me I am the latter. It’s my secret chameleon voice that only lasts 60 minutes before it disappears.