Sarai's Suppositions

2011-09-09T23:55:00.000-07:00

I tried to write a poem about you on my Ipod Touch while sitting on mybest friend’s couch today

A poem about what it felt like to say your name and talk about you tomutual acquaintances

All casual and noncommittal

Like my organs weren’t rearranging themselves and my heart wasn’tcrawling somewhere near my tearducts

And my lungs migrating towards my abdomen

And like my fingertips weren’t itching to brush against or near yourskin

And I wanted to say how your name tastes kind of sweet and perfect

And how you make me round my lips and hold my vowels and tap my tonguenear the roof of my mouth

Just so

And how your name is more a sigh and a confession than a word

And how my best friend rolls his eyes when I say it

Because maybe, Sarai, he feels the same way

Maybe even probably he’s into you, too

But you need to get on that

You need to tell him

Because at what point do you stop being a sexual prospect?

At what point are you just a digital friend?

And I wanted to write about how I haven’t wanted to write about you

That I’ve been letting Walmart composition books collect dust

Because this feels familiar but in the bad way

Because when my roommate asked me if I had a boyfriend, I answered thatno

But that I basically did

In that I wouldn’t accept romantic offers from anyone else

And it kinda reminded me of telling my maybe-into-me French housematethat I didn’t have a boyfriend a year ago

Only I basically did

Because that other boy was all up in my mind and making my heart flutter

Even though there were no definites

Even though it was all confusing and lonely and unfulfilling

I thought it was best to continue in my monogamous obsessions

And I wanted to say that it really wasn’t fair that I had mirrorsituations

As if God or the universe or some impersonal force was trying to teachme a lesson about the world

And how I interact with it

And how I repeated actions—even unconsciously

In deciding that I liked your skin and your smiles and your brain andthe peeks of your soul

And I wanted to write all of this

And maybe even put it online

And maybe even acknowledge that I fall in the same way for all of theboys

And I listen to all of the same songs by all of the same artists to makesense of the way my heart races

And I tried to while sitting on my best friend’s couch and glancingbriefly at the Netflix documentary we were watching

Because I drown in my feelings sometimes

And I need to desahogarme

To vent, to relieve the pressure that suffocates me

Because I’m overflowing beneath the surface with all of these things Iwant to say and do and feel

With you

And I’m tired of sparse digital communications and maybe flirting andemoticons and casual jokes

And I wanted to say something along the lines of I want you

But my fingers were too clumsy and slow

And I stumbled through a few lines

Because it’s like maybe and almost and not quite blend in this potentiallybeautiful and terrifying way

It’s hard to breath, I told you

It’s hard to exist, I meant

You’re way to perfect, you know

All grins and oversized eyes and philosophical inclinations and meaningsbehind inked flesh

And I’m just trying to make this all seem real

Yeah that’s all I can muster

Yeah this isn’t quite a poem

This Doesn't Feel Organic

2011-08-23T21:57:00.002-07:00

And synthetic means it's for profit

It's getting awfully repetitive, I feel. I keep writing about it.

Cause and effect. A catalyst has reasserted its chemical properties. And the words are merely residual. This is ineffable, I will continue to assert.

But it still sounds the same. And the feeling has been there all along. This is just geography. This is just physicality. This is just reality. And I've already made you into an ideal.

And I can't blame you for everything. Just some things. Just most things.

But I'm only ruminating over events that transpired and those that could have.

And this was meant to be a short introduction.

My grandfather turned 79 this weekend, and I was invited to his birthday party. As I sat on the couch of my tio's house, I wrote this on my phone. I'm not a social butterfly; I emerged from my cocoon too soon for that.

I think I am in love with you
It's tragic, really
But that's the truth
Naked
Like my blemished body on your bed
Sometimes in my dreams
More times than I would like to admit

Making love
It's euphemistic, you know
We're just quenching lust
And I'm just clawing at your skin for affection at this point

And it's even worse that you're a mantra
Written on paper
Hearts they shred
And the blood's a given at this point, love

I could be your love
If you just let me fall into your arms
As I stumble into consciousness and reality and bad decisions
With little clothing
And even less inhibitions

Becaus I've been told love hurts
Like this
It burns
Like this
It kills
Like this

And I'm just a little bit suicidal
Doctors say
I display classic signs
Doctors say
I need fixing
And you're here
Or close enough
A drug relapse even

Because I love to paint your eyes on my skin
I tattoo your name here, too
So trace me with your fingertips
Create galaxies on my eyelids
And whisper that you see the stars dancing over our heads
We are of the same matter, you've said
We possess divine attributes
But all I care for are you cellular characteristics
The vulgarity of you
That's really all I want
You're really all I want

I wrote this in November. Man, fuck you for inspiring this.

There's someone else. Truly. Or almost. And I think it's getting better.

And as I Continue to Document Our Not-Relationship

2011-08-23T16:46:00.001-07:00

My dreams about you are different than what I expect

They’re not physical

Just delicately romantic

Not melodramatic

Just stable

It’s always that sweet before. Before sex, before akiss, before a relationship. Before you even have to say aloud that you wantsomething.

It’s looking at you and knowing that we feel the same.Holding your hand. Or meeting your eyes. Or having that little drop in my tummyas you say something that hints at infatuation. Or sitting so close to you myskin tingles.

Because I think that’s where you exist for me. In thebefore. In the almost. In the Dear God, just please.

Last night’s dream was no exception.

You messaged me and then when I failed to respond, soughtme out. All shy grins and shirt sleeve fidgets.

I-I’m that one that sent you those, um, flirty messages that you, you know, didn't respond to.

And that’s where it ends.

That’s where they end.

I don’t know if this is a step forward or backward,but I think that’s what I want from you.

Certainty, stability, an affirmation. I like you. I wantyou. And I want you to know these things.

In a way it’s like you’re too sweet for a sex dream.Or a fight dream. Or, a “you broke my heart in such a way it’s like you shot me”dream. It’s like you’re wholly different from the other guy, and so there canbe no overlap.

It’s like my infatuation is different with you.Because I want your love. I want your attention. I want a relationship. Andthat’s the part of you that my heart wishes for. That’s why it ends as soon asthat part is fulfilled. Because it’s what I want most from you.

Dream me and you, we just interact in such a way as tohint to one another our true feelings. And for dream me, that’s enough. Forreal me, that might be enough, too.

I Don't Know What This Means

2011-05-13T23:11:00.000-07:00

You've been complicating my breathing long enough for me to wonder if I'm the only one with empty lungs at this point
Because every beautiful, dead star in our polluted sky knows your name
And the clocks tell me they've tired of my hopeless wishes
And my heart has this habit of wanting you more than oxygenated blood or misguided palpatations
And I guess I just want to let you know that this is real for me
As real as the way you say my name, as real as God weaving our DNA, as real as the gravity crashing your skin parallel to mine
Just brush against me or toward me or near me
Just answer the wishes of my desperate nerve-endings
Maybe you should love me back
Please just love me back

I Think I'm Getting Lonely

2011-04-01T02:16:00.000-07:00

And I've been piecing your face out of other men's features
And sighing your name into the emotionless air
And to an unresponsive God
Somewhere near the clouds you brought me to
The nights I spent defiling my virtue in your dirty bed
With limbs that entangled in your sheets
And clung too tightly, you groaned against my neck
As you extricated yourself piece by piece from my love
And shattered bit by bit my broken, gilded heart
But the stars were so bright those nights
And I could feel something close to love in the thickening air around us
I'm making you stronger, you whispered
Molding my skin with piano fingers and calloused palms and ink-stained nails
That spoke of distant lands where we could scar trees for our love
And guide stars in our favor
And say things like I need you and have them reciprocated
And not just in sweaty skin and peeled layers
And not just in false pretenses and broken promises
And not just in your skin scraping against mine
And I've been hoping that you'll come by once more, my love
To tear my wings and bloody my flesh and wound my heart
And I've been hoping that you'll come by once more, my love
To say I'm yours to keep

Oh the shame that sent me off from the God that I once loved

2011-03-05T13:01:00.002-07:00

Was the same that sent me into your arms

I swear I kissed the stars that night
And not your chapped lips
As your warm breath blew white across my cheekbones
And you told me that my eyes were too dark to be so sad
And I ripped at the black cloth binding together our planets
And our molecules and this drowning you call 'love'
It burned my fingertips and dazzled my eyes and pounded in my eardrums
Because these senses can only take so much
And you remind me of the sun and of exploding planets and of too-bright stars
And I swear I disintegrated
Somewhere near the slush around your dirty sneakers
As you warmed me with alcohol and winter coats and promises of eventual love
And I swear, I swear, you made me feel alive

This song came on my iPod as I was walking back from a Cardinal Key interview. And I broke out in goosebumps and almost started crying. Because it just felt so perfect. With the Flagstaff wind blowing through the Ponderosa pines and my shivering bones. And the moon peeking out behind telephone wires and bricked buildings and glittering over snow. And false memories clawing out of my subconscious.

And I've been listening to this CD on repeat for the last couple of days. Because, it feels like a necessity at this point. At least as far as my sanity is concerned.

In Which Blood Drips From All the Right Places

2011-02-14T14:11:00.002-07:00

And baby, honestly, it's harder breathing next to you. I shake. I brought a gun and as the preacher tried to stop me, hold my heart it's beating for you anyway.

So what if I can't forget you? I'll burn your name into my throat. I'll be the fire that will catch you.

I'm bitter and lonely enough to declare this my Valentine's Day song. And I'm strange enough to compose this.

Trent Reznor says he hurts to feel
And I guess this is what I'm doing, darling
I'm proving that I'm real
I'm showing there is temporal reality to my complicated breathing
Whenever I catch glimpses of your eyes
They're like the ocean, you know
And I want to suffocate with you
Because you're sweeter than oxygen
You're sweeter than God
You're sweeter than every fucked up attempt at love
You make me feel alive
Even if it hurts and bleeds and burns and festers and dies
My bones are white beneath this extraneous tissue, I've been told
And my skin is spotted with electric burns
In all the places you've brushed your fingertips
My heart is red and broken and choking without your oxygenated smile
And I promised myself I'd hand it to you
If you should ever ask for it again
So, kiss me until my skin tears
And my bones deflate
And I need you as much as I once did
Because I love you in nothing but pure fire
Make me burn, love
Consume me
Please, baby
Make me bleed

Pierce the Veil. "Caraphernelia." Selfish Machines. Equal Vision, 2010. CD

I Want To Know You (Biblically)

2011-02-01T23:18:00.001-07:00

And I screamed at the sky when you took your light away

"I doubt that the sun can love me back

I know that you at least did not"

Because there are so many nonresponsive deities and satellites in the sky

There are too many hesitant lovers and passive objects of obsession with gravitational pulls

You make me lose gravity

You make me stumble into oblivion

I'm chasing after planetary rotations

And hoping that skin will peel off of bone

Or that love will dissolve from my soul

Or that your memory will melt from my subconscious

Because we always devolve into our baser selves

When confronted with our deepest desires

Freud called it the id

Said that the slips I make in reference to your existence are bound

To how I sometimes dream of your body pressing against mine

To how I sometimes imagine your breath tainting mine

And if life's meaning really is sex as he asserted

Smoking cigars and divorcing himself from Moses

Then love, I wouldn't mind fulfilling my life's purpose with your skin

Then love, I wouldn’t mind brushing your corruptible flesh

School has started. As have occupations and resume boosters. And I’m reading the Hebrew Bible and Justin Martyr and Frazer and trying to sound brilliant. Cramming in as many classes as I can with my school’s resident Western Religions professor. And trying to sort out what it is that I want. And how I hope to achieve it.

And I’m not thinking of you or it. I haven’t for a while actually. It snowed yesterday, and hard. But there are greater tragedies than remembering what wasn’t, right?

In History Notes

2011-01-29T19:54:00.001-07:00

You’ve got excess static electricity near your lymphnodes

So I leave bread crumbs to my bed

And as you stumble toward my teary eyes

You topple and tear my paper heart

Beautiful

2011-01-16T14:06:00.000-07:00

It's been seven months since a stranger called me beautiful
No, beautiful, you're on the wrong side; the subway is downstairs
Spoken in lisped Spanish by a tall security guard
The word guapa falling casually from his lips
Less a compliment, more a statement
You're objective and aesthetic

But they have foreign standards of beauty
And I have vaguely Arabic features
And symmetrical facial structures
That gurgling babies grasp at
It's cultural, they say
And I was born wrong
In the wrong time, the wrong place, with the wrong soul

When I was younger my father and I used to play a word game
Employing the double meaning of the word 'bien' in Spanish
Good and very
How are you, little one?
Good
Very what?
Very beautiful
And his eyes would crinkle as he agreed
Rubbing my cheeks with his calloused hands and kissing my forehead with his chapped lips

I did it again at my grandfather's 79 birthday
Only my father wasn't there
Just drunk relatives, wrapping their arms and cold beer around me
Saying I'd grown into my face
That I looked different--in a good way-- honey
And laughing at my jokes
They called me beautiful, too
In Spanish, in English, in adjectives that grasp at the truth
Or subjective reality

It's not enough, you know
To be complimented by relatives
And Spanish men
And stare at my face as I smear liner on my top and bottom eyelashes
As I whisper your name over and over and over again

Because I press up my breast sometimes--generous, I've been told
And suck in my tummy and purse my lips and widen my eyes
And, and, and attempt improvements at lonely temples
Because I wonder if you'll find me beautiful one day
It's a convention
It's a social contract
But I want to conform

And the roads are covered in snow
And I remember that for no particularly reason, you remind me of the snow
Every time I see it
Every time it presses against my undefined cheekbones
And whispers over my shivering limbs

And love, this is the kind of town
Where it's impossible to forget the lovers that never were
And love, this is the kind of town
To pretend that I feel beautiful in

(I found this on my laptop. I wrote it in December, during Finals Weeks. I've been called beautiful since then. By a man on the Greyhound. Two men, actually. If 'pretty' counts. It's still not enough.)

On the Greyhound Vegas-Bound

2011-01-02T23:51:00.002-07:00

I’m writing a poem for you
Or at least trying
As I sit on this Greyhound bus and watch an elderly woman read Watchtower
And an aged hippy scribble into a composition book
He’s writing in blue, and I keep catching his green eyes as I shift in my seat

And I’m thinking this is poetry
Or at least some a series of vignettes to dissect and then piece together later on

Girls taking pictures with their pink phones
Overweight, tattooed men snoring rhythmically
And dreadlocked hippies jotting down words on inked paper
As desert landscapes—tumbleweeds and cacti and seas of sand to drown in—skate past

For a $60 car ride, I can know life
For a $60 car ride, I can catch glimpses of truth

They say good writers know characters when they see them
And I start to wonder what dirt cakes his shoes
And whether he writes of some deep truth
Of the lonely souls he stumbles upon in his Birkenstocks
Or if he simply sketches New Age philosophy

The Earth breathes our existence, they say
And the truth we seek dances beyond the stars
Beyond the Holy Scriptures scraped into stone

The dreadlocks hint at rebellion
But I wouldn’t be strong enough to join him
Because I have the heart of an idealist, but not the anger or indignation

I want us to be kindred
I want him to a be a writer
I want him to complete—maybe
Or shock---maybe
Or tell me that there is something more to life than cactus needles that choke the life out of me
That I deserve a new death in order to embrace our new life

I want so many things, they say
I want love that forgets conditions
Agape, Saint Paul named it; the only valid kind
I want a lover that brushes the hair out of my eyes
Whispering poetry to me in hushed tones
I want governments founded on love
Tolstoy manifest and the Sermon on the Mount
And I want memories tainted with promise
Sweet and bitter and maybe ours
And I want you
So very much

And I want to be a poet
With my scuffed converse sneakers
And my piano fingers
And my lined eyes
Telling you words that you’ll treasure
Telling you words you’ll remember

But I am not a poet
And this isn’t really poetry
And you will never love me
No, you will never love me

I’ve been questioning my own theory about what environments produce poetry. Vegas is dry and barren and suffocates creativity. My veins feel as if they’ve been bled, my senses assaulted with blinking lights and cultural insomnia. Vegas is hyperbolic. Vegas is residual. Vegas is unappetizing. Because my skin feels uncomfortable there, and not in the good way. Because my father is the only reason I go.
But I wrote this while there. Or while en route.
I wrote something else, too. But it’s still a baby. A fetus, even.

Also, I’m in love with this song. Really quite infatuated.

God knows our lonely souls.

Unkle. “Lonely Souls.” Psyence Fiction. Mo’Wax, 1998. CD.

I Don't Have the Heart of a Preacher; I Have the Love of a Student

2010-12-23T21:04:00.001-07:00

My mother imagines me doing great things for the Lord. Preaching to the fallen masses and saving God's bruised sheep. Because I'm eloquent, if not intelligent. And I can beautify and simplify theological concepts.

I ooze God's love, sometimes. And I shift through religious texts, most days. And I explain to her in unsteady Spanglish Yom Kippur and salat and indulgences. I'm her Apostle Paul, she tells me. I teach her. And maybe someday, I'll teach others. Apostates and heretics and lonely, broken souls.

Because God bequeaths upon us gifts. God has a plan. And I am beautiful. Regardless of what others have made me feel. I am worthy. Every single one of us has value beyond our imagination. Because blood was shed in our name. Angels bow before our redeemed souls. Because God loves us in a way that doesn't fit inside our heads.

And I told her last night, as I sipped on champurrado, that God is love. That this I believed. And that the traveling preacher, denouncing Muslims as cockroaches and Obama as a terrorist, did not speak of God's love or God's truth. Love is empathy. Love is compassion. And there is none in declaring religious leaders perverts and messengers of Satan. Because something ugly happens when men fancy themselves judges, when men dress themselves as God. There is hubris, Mom, in that man. There is hatred in his message. And had I been there, instead of hearing an account, theological debates might have started. Hateful rhetoric might have halted. Because he didn't speak of God, only the clay idol that he constructed and called Divine. Because he doesn't speak for God.

But then, neither can I.

And I don't know how to tell her that this is not what I want. I don't know how to tell her that faith isn't effortless. That it's proactive and illogical. That our convictions fight not against the flesh or the Devil but against reason, against the loneliness of that comes with loving a God that speaks in a still small voice.

Because I don't have the heart of a preacher. I have the love of a student. And I don't write sermons. I write academic papers and melodramatic poetry. And the closest I've ever come to a genuine religious experience was watching Dance Gavin Dance in concert (My skin melted, I swear. Those other, sweaty bodies were my own). And any--even casual--perusal of my blog entries demonstrates doubt. Human, weak doubt. Of the brand that believers like to avoid.

Because I don't have the heart of a preacher. I don't have the mind or ambitions or disposition. I have the love of a student. The doubt of a Christian. The soul of my poet.

At my best, I can compose melancholy poems and tell you that I hear God when I listen to Cody Bonnette or Ryan Hunter or Jonny Craig. But that sometimes it's hard to know whether it's God guiding our steps or simply gravity compelling us forward. And whether God is answering our prayers or it's just our own voices bouncing back to us. But I know there's something more. I feel there's something more.

And at my worst, at my worst, I'm no good, love. I'm too mean, love.

Granada, tierra soñado por mí

2010-12-13T20:22:00.000-07:00

(Granada, land that I dream about)

(It's a love song about Granada)

It’s been 6 months since I got back from Spain. And I felt I should write something about it. Something deep and meaningful. Something demonstrating personal growth. This is why you should study abroad. Do you see how my soul has gotten better? Do you see the experiences I’ve had?

And that’s a part of it, too. A big part of it. Because I still speak of Spain. Of rain and lisped c’s and cathedrals that scrape at skies and cobblestoned streets. Accounting for myself as part of larger, American framework. Recognizing myself as an American, as I spoke to Spaniards in el seseo and asked them not to judge me for being fascinated by their squished little shops and strange clothing and colorful bills.

I’m remembering walking in la Capilla Real and staring at that marbled mausoleum and thinking that Catholics have the best way of demonstrating their fascination with the Divine. I’m remembering tucking my hands into the pockets of my Target hoody as I looked at graffiti. I’m remembering sitting in a cramped bar with my French housemate after he’d had too many beers, sipping my sparkling cider and choking on cigarette smoke. I’m remembering eating fish stew in the hostel with Chris from Massachusetts, who looked like Squints from The Sandlot and told me about living in a cottage with an Italian family.

And I’m remembering that other people haven’t had these experiences. That other people might not ever have these experiences.

I’m missing Spain a little bit right now. Missing UHT milk that never goes back. And grocery-store flan. And products with labels written in Spanish, French, and Portuguese. And Spaniards with nonsensical English T-shirts (‘Hicktown’ ‘Pick One Love Juicy’ ‘Kiss my Heart’). And Buildings older than the United States. And professors that ask you to turn in assignments whenever. And Spanish. And kebabs and kebab pizza. And Arab shops—these the most, probably.

And I recognize that this is nostalgia. Because I remember, as well, laying in my bed and crying because I felt lonely and misunderstood and frustrated with the cultural difference. I’m remembering racism. And the siesta. And the expense of living in the country. And having to be representative of an entire nation. And clinging to the American exchange students in my classes, who understood my need to speak in English and talk about politics and my desire for corn tortillas. I’m rembering the confrontation that came with acknowledging that I was less Mexican than I had hoped.

But it’s been six months. That’s long enough for me to want to go back. To feel restless when I look over old photographs and read over old blog posts and recall the happenings of this year as the end of December approaches.

It really is an amazing country. Truly. And I believe one that everyone should go to.

And study abroad is an amazing opportunity. For language learning. For independence (no one’s there to help you fill out your student information or find your way if you get lost). For cultural interaction. For self-discovery. For growth.

And I am glad to be the United States. But I think I fell a little bit in love with Spain, and I think I’ll always have the memory of existence within this other nation to contrast with my experience here.

And it might be annoying. I suspect, often, that it is. But Spain is still so vivid. Enough for me to recall it whenever a point of comparison presents itself. Whenever a professor brings it up. Whenever a music video mentions it. Whenever people speak of Europe.

But ultimately, I think, that’s probably one of the final stages of this whole ‘study abroad’ experience. And, if that’s the case, hooray. If not, well no one ever accused me of being normal.

Matt Costa and Eyeball Headaches

2010-12-12T17:49:00.001-07:00

Everyone can read your thoughts on the internet.

It's all about self-censorship.

Because I want to be honest. Because I want to say what I feel.

But I'm scared you'll read. Or that you will. Or that maybe even you. And, you know, maybe I need to turn off a little bit.

I'm sitting in a room with Christmas lights and paper poinsettias and listening to Matt Costa. Because for some reason, I'm feeling like Adam Trask right now. Steinbeck defines my life somethings. Though mostly when things are bad, and my existence is flooded with responsibility and stupid heart palpitations.

You're right there. Persistent.

My sister and I once spoke of eyeball headaches (migraines). It's throbbing, I told her. Clenching and unclenching my fist. And it gets so that maybe I forget. Then the fucker comes back. And it almost hurts more because I forgot. It almost hurts more because I had hope.

You are a pain. You are an eyeball headache.

And I want to write about it.

But darling, you have to promise not to read. Or, at least, you have to promise not to judge.

But this is anticlimatic. Because I haven't written anything in a long time. Because things feel synthetic or trite or melodramatic. And I want to tease at all the excess fluff until I truly understand. But I'm heaping pretty words on paper and blindly believing that this leads to growth.

It doesn't, does it?

And I had my ego stroked or violated last Wednesday. When some freshmen boy couldn't seem to tear his brown eyes from my chest. Just staring. Just following with his oversized eyes.

And I'm remembering when my French housemate told me I had generous breasts.

And I'm thinking about how we attribute so much to physical beauty. We want to feel attractive. We want to ensnare those that occupy our attentions.

We're arguably deeper than our skin. We're arguably more valuable tan our cheek bones and skin color and fat distribution.

Shouldn't love be worth more than the way we look in the morning? Me, with my hair knotted and my skin pale and my eyes unlined.

I've been called smart before. Quite a bit, actually. But for some reason, it's not worth as much as one 'beautiful.' And for some reason, that's worth still less than knowing that you might have wanted me.

This has no organization. What argument am I even making? What am I trying to communicated?

And does it matter?

No.

I just ant to be able to say your name once. On the internet. Or aloud. To you. And have that honesty define my existence.

And I want to be done with this semester and papers on Muhammad and the Minoans and Abraham.

Mostly, I'm restless, love. And I think it's because of you. And I think it's because of uncertain futures. And I think it's because 'what if's' hang heavy on my lips when I pray to the stars at night.

I can't divorce myself from memories. They're tearing at my subconscious. When I dream of you and of peeling my skin and of knowing what love truly is.

This is enough for now. I need this to be enough for now.

Aren't musicians beautiful people?

Sadly, this one is married.

Philosophy

2010-12-01T00:01:00.009-07:00

You've got disillusionment seeping out of the cracks in your pores
Because hope floats and doubt sinks
Like marbles to the bottom of Polycarp's¹ fishbowl
You like to tell jokes no one understands
And weave plays with the words in our universe

Your philosophy professor called you an ontologist
Stacking dusty hardcovers on imitation wood
And reciting to you the thoughts of men that died before you were born
And unwove rainbows² and threw arrows at God and sank like stones in dark rivers
Because they couldn't handle floating above fathoms of briny sea³

And you tell him that you carve the words of poets into your spotted flesh
And that sometimes you believe that God's breath touches the back of your neck
And that Pythagoras⁴ was wrong, because love stitches together dark matter
And mass and atoms and gravitational pulls
That attract you to broken men with half-formed smiles and half-empty hearts

But the grounded resent the soaring and cast stones of uncertainty, of objective truth
So now blood and disappointment and sadness empty from your skin
They killed you in the end, you know
It kills you in the end

(Today I read parts of the Quran, Wisdom of Solomon, and Clement of Alexandria. And I thought about truth, about reality, about the meaning underlying this stark visible world. Too many thoughts rattle in my brain, I think)

Allusions:

1. One of he Ante-Nicene Fathers;also carp=type of fish
2. Poet John Keats to Isaac Newton for his light experiments that undermined, he felt, the beauty of our universe
3. Kierkegaard, on faith, as floating above 70,000 fathoms of sea and still being content
4. Ancient Greek philosopher, believed that math underlay the foundations of our world

Addendum: I heard this song again this morning. And all of these uncertainties came rushing back. But the opposite of faith isn't doubt. It's certainty. And God, music is powerful enough to make my heart feel tiny and my mind even more so.

These musicians are spectacular. And they have all their music online for free. I believe everyone should download them. Everyone.

Sometimes I Write in Spanish

2010-11-23T02:12:00.001-07:00

Se siente un poco diferente pensar en ti en este idioma
Se siente un poco mejor
Y estas palabras te regalo
Aunque no las busques
Es mala educación, mi amor
Despreciar las ofrendas de las malaventuradas
Si buscan de tu existencia algún sentimiento
Parecido al amor
Aunque sea de mentiras

Porque tu presencia me recuerda a la nieve
Y aunque no entiendas
Pienso en ti cuando el frío acaricia mi cara
Pienso en ti cuando la naturaleza me atrapa
Y cuando los pájaros ya paran de cantar
Porque hay belleza en cada destrucción

Y necesito estudiar las imperfecciones de tu piel
Necesito ahogarme en los colores de tus ojos
Y necesito analizar la belleza de tus huesos
De tus células
De tu alma

Porque no es suficiente
El verte cubierto con todas estas mentiras
Porque no es suficiente
Pelar tu indumentaria de inseguridad
Porque no es suficiente
Verte un sueño ajeno

Porque te amo, mi musa
Nunca te vayas
Porque te amo, mi vida
Nunca te vayas

Y ha pasado mucho tiempo desde que he escrito en el idioma de mis antepasados
Cuya sangre aún alimenta este corazón obsesionado
Con tu recuerdo, con tu nombre, con la promesa de lo que pudo haber sido
Y se siente un poco más real
Confieso con la respiración interrumpida
Por las emociones que tú inspiras, mi cielo
Esto sí sabe a la realidad
Esto sí se siente realidad

Porque el amor no se cuenta en la fuerza de tu llanto
Pero aún lloro por ti
Sigo llorando por ti

Porque los amantes suelen quebrar tus corazones
Y yo nunca fui la excepción

English:

It feels a little different to think of you in this language
It feels a little better
And these words are my gift to you
Though you never sought them
It's bad manners, my love
Disparaging the offerings of the ill-fated
For they seek from your existence some feeling
Something akin to love
Though it be fake

Because your presence reminds me of the snow
And though you may not understand
I think o you when the cold caresses my face
I think of when when nature traps me
And when the birds stop singing
Because there in beauty in every destruction

And I need to study the imperfections in your skin
I need to drown in the color of your eyes
And I need to analyze the beauty of your bones
Of your cells
Of your soul

Because it's not enough
To see your covered in all these lies
Because it's not enough
To peel your attire of insecurity
Because it's not enough
To see you as some distant dream

Because I love you, my muse
Don't leave me
Because I love you, my life
Don't leave

And it's been so long since I've written in the language of my ancestors
Whose blood still nourishes this heart haunted
With your memory, with your name, with the promise of what could have been

And it feels a little more real
I confess with breathing interrupted
By the emotions you inspire, my darling
This does taste like reality
This does feel like reality

Because love is not counted in the force of your tears
But I am still crying
Yes, I am still crying

Because lovers often break hearts
And I was never the exception

(It's true,though. The snow reminds me of you. Something about the heady mix of beauty and destruction. And last night swept by with so many mementos.)

Cielos Que Lloran

2010-11-17T02:09:00.000-07:00

(Crying skies)

Te vi volar sobre cielos que te lloran siempre
Te vi caer, no te enseñaron que el sol destruye alas
Y al soñar te vi en un cuento tan distinto a otros

(I saw you fly across perpetually crying skies. I saw you fall. They never told you that the sun destroys wings. And when I dreamt, I saw you in a unique tale)

Mi vida deja de llorar
Descansa aquí tranquila, duerme
No sé si pueda despejar
El cielo que te llora ya

(My love, stop crying. Rest here quietly; sleep. I'm not sure I'll be able to clear the sky that cries for you)

Abrázame, es tan difícil que el cielo quiera volverte a ver
Ven siéntate, te explicaré como será tu vida aquí

(Hug me. I know it's hard for the sky to want you once more. Come and sit. I'll tell you what your life will be like here)

Vuelvo a soñar que fuiste un cuento tan distinto a otros

(I keep dreaming that you were a unique tale)

Mi vida deja de llorar
Descansa aquí tranquila, duerme
No sé si pueda despejar
El cielo que te llora ya

(My love, stop crying. Rest here quietly; sleep. I'm not sure I'll be able to clear the sky that cries for you)

Mi vida deja de llorar
La historia hoy terminará
No supe por donde empezar
Pero al final te vi volar

(My love, stop crying. The story ends today. I didn't know where to start. But in the end, I saw you fly)

Original Thoughts:

Tell me what the oranges taste like where you're from
And what skin feels like when it scrapes against someone you love
And tell me, darling, if love is the same
And if it hurts even when returned
In outstretched fingertips and lips that brush against each other

Do you bleed when you die?
Or when your soul does as it collides with another?
Because I've dreamt of painting the atmosphere with the light that seems to shine from your eyes
And I've read of moths kissing flames and shadows embracing the sun
And I can't distinguish between my existence and your own sometimes

Because I told you once that the sun did shine before you appeared
Only not as bright
Because I told you that you make polluted air taste sweeter
And soften the edges of desolation in my heart sometimes

And I must know of the world you inhabited once
The air that fed your cells and the hope that filled your lungs and the hormonal interactions that flooded your soul

Before you let me see the flecks of color in your eyes
Or fall more desperately in love
Or examine the moles that dot your skin
Uneven
Like my breath when you run your fingers through my hair

You've traveled distant galaxies, I know
Fallen through layers and dimensions of silent nothingness
Circumnavigating astral divinities to come here
In this moment
With your exhalations permeating my eardrums
And my veins pumping a rhythm that sounds like your name

Tell me, darling
Of these solar systems traversed
And if eternity felt like this

Tell me, darling
What it felt like to burn your wings
And if I was worth it?

Todo Se Derrumbó Dentro de Mí, Dentro de Mí

2010-11-10T00:50:00.005-07:00

For some reason, I started (trying) to sing this song last night, but it was kind of hard because I don't really remember all the lyrics.

And I can't hit all the notes, you know. I want to sing to the world all the words that you inspire. Inexplicably. Tortuously. Damningly. But I'm limited in my resources.

Yo era feliz contigo, vida mía
Tú eras principio y fin de mi alegría
Yo te creía fiel como la luna
Que acude a protegernos cada día.

(I was happy with you, my love
You were the beginning and end of my happiness.
I thought your love faithful, like the moon
That arrives to protect us every night)

Yo era feliz contigo, vida mía
Tú eras mi perro fiel, yo era tu guía
Hasta que desperté de mi locura
Y pude comprender que me mentías.

(I was happy with you, my love.
You were my faithful dog, and I was your guide
Until I awoke from my lunacy
And could see that these were lies)

Todo se derrumbó dentro de mí, dentro de mí
Hasta mi aliento ya me sabe a hiel, me sabe a hiel
Mira mi cuerpo como se quiebra
Mira mis lágrimas como no cesan por ti.

(Everything collapsed within me, within me
Even my breath tastes of bile; it tastes of bile
Look at my body and how it's breaking
Look at my tears and how they pour ceaselessly for you)

Todo se derrumbó dentro de mí, dentro de mí
De humo fue tu amor y de papel, y de papel.
Mira mis sueños como se queman
Mira mis lágrimas como no cesan por ti.

(Everything collapsed within, within me
Your love was made of smoke and of paper, and of paper
Look at my dreams and how they're burning
Look at my tears and how they pour ceaselessly for you)

Original thoughts:

Sometimes I feel like my blood is thicker than others. That my DNA was arranged differently. Because I feel this in my bones. Dancing near my lymph nodes and telling me that there is more to this. Whispering that the universe manifests itself only in small doses from your eyes. All the more reason to never forget that they looked upon me once.

If you opened my veins right now, I'd bleed only this and spout adjectives pertaining to your existence. If you told me you loved me, my soul would implode, and I promise there would be shining stars to guide you home at night. My heart's a supernova, afterall, darling. And I know I need you more than I need this oxygen polluting my lungs. Pollute my lungs. Please.

Ryan Hunter started a new band. I got the Religious Studies TA job. I've been sleeping more. I started NaNoWriMo. But sometimes, successes must be tempered with the acknowledgment of failure. And I'm tired of reiterating it's existence.

Or counting this as a loss. Growing up means letting go, but I cleave stubbornly still.

I'll let you know when things get better.

What I Wrote At 3 AM As Firealarms Shrieked in the Distance and Nightime Wind Rattled Window Panes

2010-11-09T22:00:00.012-07:00

I've thought about telling you
That your eyes remind me of codependence
And that I miss my father sometimes
But you don't care for the words I've sown underneath my flesh
Or the wounds I've cauterized with promises of tomorrow

Dissect my scars because
I really am as deep as my skin
I really am as valuable as the men who fall into my bed

You want me like this, you say
You want the truth
Sans makeup and pretty words and push-up bras and appeals to dualistic worth

Because this is reality
And I'm dying soon enough to pronounce this love
In foreign tongues
As I stumble into consciousness
And rattle my hollow bones

Because they've been seducing us with subliminal messages
Of the depth of our spirits
And the expanse of the stars beyond our galaxies
And the ineffability of the matter that dances in our organic universe

But we are identified by the covers we clothe ourselves in
We are our scars
We are our skin
We are our mistakes
And you want to define me

To leave a mark, you have to slice deeper
That cut's too shallow to bleed out at your feet

This isn't romantic
It's all biological; it's all a chemical reaction
Like drugs, like alcohol, like erupting volcanoes

But my body is adequate
And yours is, too
We were created for basic functions
Actualize your potential
In my arms, though
Only in my arms

That's the best we have
That's all we really have
Love, darling, acquaintance, instigator, liar, damnation

Sailing Alone Around the Room Never Seemed Best

2010-11-05T22:38:00.010-07:00

And pretend that what is known does not exist
And you will find a light that shined so long ago
I've been shadowed
They hold silhouettes over my head
Pretend that what is known does not exist

I wrote this in California, with no song in mind, but then after going through some 25 Creative Commons photos on Flickr--I search for captive childhood memories and to romanticize my own nostalgia--I came upon this photo that reminded me of this song.

Rise has disabled embedding. But it's amazing. Check it. Seriously, his voice incredible. And yes, they broke up. And yes, it's "screamy music" but the lyrics are sick. Would you notice if these eyes were closed? 'Cause from every direction comes someone's objection. This is wearing thin. And in the end, you can't discriminate when it comes to good music.

Also, I thank you for this wonderful picture.

I want to remember what words taste like
Whispered in dusty bedrooms
With checkered bedsheets and matching curtains
And glow-in-the-dark constellations

We could spell our names, you promised
Because these stars did not impose themselves upon our
destiny, lust, love

And in the summer dark
With the lights from pick-up trucks shining on your dirty carpet
And casting isolating shadows in the spaces between the two of us
And your hands much too close to my own

They weigh so much more in you presence
Like pennies in glass pigs
And secrets in eardrums
And popsicle sticks and macaroni on construction paper
Or maybe just grass on our knees
And sunshine on our skin

Before or maybe after it caused cancer
Before or maybe after we realized there is a finitude to our breaths
We're dying slowly, you told me
So I should love you as much as I can
Right now, right now

And as hard as I try, I can't remember what they felt like
On my tongue
Or in my mind
Or on your fingertips
Skating over goose-bumped flesh

Those pretty, fragile, stolen words
That you once fed me
On your green carpet
While leaning much too close and complicating my breathing

You wove such beautiful phrases
Now help me remember
You'll learn to love me, you told me
Now help me forget

Of Machines. "Things Too Visible to See." As If Everything Were Held in Place. Rise, 2009. CD

In: Aviate and Old Poetry

2010-10-29T11:26:00.000-07:00

I felt you breathe from across the room
Intoxicated by the way you moved
Let's disappear
Baby, together we can disappear

Sit back, relax, and watch the blues collide
The same desire inside a new design

All my life I've never felt so alive
I've got so much on my mind nothing I would try to put to tune
Or keep in time
Where the ocean meets the sky dressed in lights
But I can barely see your eyes in the moonlight

Sit back, relax, and put the car in drive
We'll use the headlights as our guides
We'll sleep under the stars tonight
Sit back relax and watch them shine

Backs break with the waves

(I miss In:Aviate. Like, a lot. )

Broken Promises:

I said I wouldn't write another poem about love
Because you were much too vivid for that

And I couldn't possibly comprehend or grasp at something so elusive, so ineffable, so meta-real
Something debated by philosophers and theologians and poets and drunk men serenading beautiful women
With acrid smoke and stale beer and lilting half-rhyme
In the bad parts of town, where you'll find me mixing tears with alcohol
And telling strangers such personal things

Because love's not like sex or biology or math or physics or the other sciences my soul shied away from
I was made for the arts; I was born for insecurity
And there are no concrete absolutes

Did we create them, too, pronounce them into existence?
Have we been naming and romanticizing biological processes?
Labeling lust and dressing up hormonal interactions
Imagining worth in increased blood pressure

It's in my heart, so it must have been legitimate
Nothing feels as real as my adoration when I stare into your eyes
It's pumping through my veins
And they seem to be saying your name

Can we quantify our star-crossed affection?
Can we qualify our existence with brushes of cold fingers and whispers of something deeper?

There isn't more to this, is there?
We've been asserting realities that do not exist outside of our too-small heads
Metaphysics that press against our uncomfortable bones
Our skin's not too tight and our dreams scrape the sky
But I'm not even sure I
loved/knew/wanted
you

I'm not even sure there's more to this

In Aviate. "Eulalia" 1985. Rise Records, 2008. CD

Spanish Things/Things I Wrote in Spain and Saved as Drafts

2010-10-27T17:44:00.001-07:00

1.
I dreamt that I was your Shahrazad
And you my Shahryar
And that sullied blood screamed for some redemption
While your own veins thirsted for sex and vengeance and something to numb the pain

And I tried to comfort you, my darling,
With tales of men turned to stone and talking mules and dark sorceresses
Weaving golden stories as I stroked your dark face and begged you to love me, too
But you said I was stained like the powdered hands that once stroked a genie's chained muse
Like the one you loved who gave herself to men in trees
And like those souls you betrayed preemptively
Because no one could hurt you again

And that these threads I wove were for a noose, you accused
And that these lips that rounded with words for your ears lusted for another's
Like she whose life you took, like she who belonged to another, like those I shall be joining soon
And I said, my love, that I hoped my blood would at least feel rich in your hands
Because things never end like in the fairy tales

(I get that Christian are always all "my favorite book is the Bible because it's the literal Word of God and that nothing can compare to it's awesomeness," but I doubt these kids have read 1001 Nights. Because it's seriously one of the best books ever written. And it's Muslim. And it's largely Arabic. And it's spectacular)

2.
Green eyes, curly brown hair, thick-rimmed glasses, and a Spanish accent

See, love, he looks nothing like you. This isn't transference.

But he was weirdly attractive to me. In a way that I kept glancing at him and wondering about the complexity of human pheromones and why he looked so much like characters I'd written.

Only he was real. Behind the counter at Burger King. Repeating to me that my order came with a drink, even if I bought a milkshake.

If I believed in love at first sight...but I don't.

This Needs Lyrics

2010-10-21T17:58:00.002-07:00

I'm writing you a poem right now
Standing in a poorly lit section of town
Where the drunks and the lonely and the prostitutes laugh in the moonlight
And trip over concrete as they stumble into each other's bodies
And love, I wonder how different I am from all the others you string across the darkening sky

Because shame and loneliness smell just like alcohol
And lust sounds just like those pounding basslines
And they told me that location determines worth
And darling, I doubt that my value is high or that you even want me anymore
But I need you just a little bit right now

And I've been pressing my breasts together and giggling at strangers jokes
And I've been imbibing their liquid demoralization and slurring forced declarations of love
Because I can't justify my existence if you're not a defining feature

I need fixing, love
And you promised that you'd tape me back together
The first time I exploded in your arms, the first time I bled out on your carpet
Because I'm drowning poor souls in the oceans
And abandoning others in hospitals
And dancing in the bad parts of town

But there's a reason for ever goodbye, you say
And we're both fake underneath our clothes
You would know; you've traced my lying flesh
You would know; you've dissected my fabrications

But I'm writing you a poem
Tracing it on the dirty countertops of places of ill-repute
Sketching it on the skin of strange men
And repeating it as I lurch towards those I break

Please save me

Herodotus beckons me, like a selfish lover. And he tells me I'm worth it.

And I know that there are responsibilities in this life. But...I've been feeling strange the past coupe of days. And I'm thinking that maybe I need some time for self-reflection.

It's not like before. Work, you're doing an awfully bad job at distracting me. Life, you're not at all conducive to concentration on ancient socities and wrecked temples. You're making it hard to be in college.

And I'm listening to my iPod on shuffle and wondering how it would feel to be better.

Tal Vez Así Es Mejor; Ódiame

2010-10-20T15:27:00.002-07:00

(Maybe it's for the best. Hate me)

Tal vez así es mejor.
Recuerdas que fácil es

(Maybe it's for the best. You remember how easy it is).

Sí existe un modo
Para que tú me puedas hacer muy feliz
(Quiero ser feliz)
Lo único que tú tienes que hacer
Amor mío, es morir

(Yes, there is a way that you can make me happy. [And I want to be happy.] The only thing that you have to do, my love, is die)

Y lloraré por ti
Pues ésta es la forma más sencilla
Para no pensar en ti
Poder ahorrar
Mis lagrimas se terminan

(And I will cry for you. But this is the simplest way to no longer think of you. A way to save--be thrifty. My tears finally end)

Ya no quería darte la razón
Pero quería cambiar tu opinión
(no me agrada hablarte así, desprecio
me haces tú sentir, multiplícalo por mil,
eso mereces tú de mí)

(I didn't want to admit you were right, but I wanted to change your mind. [I hate to speak to you this way. You make me feel hate. Multiply it by a thousand. That's all you deserve from me])

I've been listening to these guys a bit in the past couple of days. Their music is so raw and angry and vulnerable and painfully honest.

I was fifteen when I first heard them. And, as cheesy as it sounds, I felt something. I connected(Do you see how utterly cheesy this sounds?). And I still feel that same something.

Pepe Madero's deliciously grainy voice. And Ricardo Trevino's suprisingly present bass. And Arturo Arredonde's whiny guitar licks. And Kross, who films videos and bangs at drums and has crazy hair.

I feel something. And I'm resurrecting that in a way by listening to Para Ti Con Desprecio. To you with hate. With burned, crossed out, demonized pictures of a pretty girl. She's stabbing him in the back. She's a liar. She promised forever. She's torn out his heart. And yet he still wants to tattoo he name on his skin.

In short, he wrote from a place of hurt.And I haven't experienced your brand, but all this love scars just the same. And I love you for understanding, darling.

And I'm still dancing to your words, and I still yearn for your music.

I need Panda. I need them to keeping making sounds that make sense of the insecurities in my soul. That perfectly capture how you can hate and love and need someone at the same time. Like when he told me it was best just to hate him. Like when he told me that he was rationing his tears.

I wrote this earlier while sitting in my school's theatre building, waiting for the wonderfully talented Luis Valdez to come and speak.

And it seems more than oddly applicable in this moment. So I'm stopping here and asking others to fill in the blanks. You're smart; you can figure it out.

Panda's always relevant, though.

No one can deny it.

She Pushed Into Me, Wearing Nothing But Our Bones

2010-10-19T18:40:00.001-07:00

She says "You're hurting me"
I can't feel a thing

I'll fall in love with you or anyone
'Cause I can't feel a thing

It's no secret that I'm hopelessly, incorrigibly attracted to Ryan Hunter. He's got this gorgeous voice and dreadlocked hair and tattooed arms and is so awkwardly and musically hot. Because there's a vulnerability to the way he pronounces his words.

And "Numb" is one of his sexier songs. And I found this in my California notebook. And I need a teensy break from the Parthenon and the Hellenistic Era, okay?

I stumble into your bed the way I stumble into bars
Smelling of shame and cheap alcohol and lust
Tugging at my hemline and hoping someone will say that I'm worth at least a whispered lie

Because good girls don't wear so much makeup and such little clothing
Because I told you I was cheap
Easy, even
You just have to say that you love me
And I'll peel off my inhibitions
Like you peel at my intrusive cloth and my extraneous emotions and my inebriated morals

This is enough, because I've fancied you my soulmate
This is enough, because you call me beautiful
As I collapse upon your bedframe
Loosening limbs in tangled sheets
And chanting over and over that I love the way you smile
And that this isn't a normal occurrence

Because you said that you could disarm me
And I've come upon you vulnerable
Wearing nothing but my innocent skin
And I'm here to test your assertions
And I'm here to break my own heart
And I'm here to love you again

Because we shame ourselves for those we purport to love
Because we shame ourselves to feel connected

Because hearts aren't pretty beneath all that blood
And lovers leave scars
And I want to pretend for a little while longer
As I lay on your bed and shed all that I've known just to be noticed
Just to be used

It means nothing to you
But I'll continue to chant your name and taste your false words and love you

I agonized over which video to put up. Audio quality or Ryan's sexiness. It's a hard decision, you know.

My knees go weak at 1:30 seconds.

2010-10-17T13:29:00.000-07:00

I think I need to fade into obscurity in order to appreciate the static noise you left in my memories
Along with old matchbooks from bars that you corrupted your lungs, your youth, your heart in
And ripped movie stubs from films we never understood
And shoeboxes of candid photographs stuffed under dirty mattress frames
You never smiled
And dear Lord, I want to remember your smile

You must have been more than your name pressed onto composition books
You must have been more than stalked Facebook profiles and treasured texts and convoluted, incoherent blog entries

You were real, I believe
You were real, I know

Everyone dies, you told me once
And the point of life is to be remembered
But I'm forgetting, love
I am forgetting
And I need you

(I wrote so much in the three weeks I spent in California. I'm thinking I might need to spend even more time there if I still cleave to hopes of actually being a writer some day....)

With You

2010-10-12T16:57:00.000-07:00

With you, I feel like I'm peeling back my bones.
With you, I feel like I'm falling out of my veins
This isn't canon, you say
But you remind me of what summer smells like
And you taste so much better than sleeping alone
Love is palpable, darling
Touch me
Souls fit together sometimes
Love me

My philosophy professor, William Nietmann, said "We can't run around in metaphysical bones and know God or truth or rationality."

And the phrase has been bouncing around my brain for some time.

I want to find someone who makes me peel back my corrupted skin and know the truth that moves planets and orients lifecycles and compels our blood cells forward. It might not fit in my brain, but let it leak from my mouth. I want to stumble through complex cosmologies. Know that my body is too tight to contain the emotions you inspire. With you.

I expect too much of the people I meet, I guess.

I Thank God for Your Breaths

2010-10-11T00:24:00.003-07:00

Tonight was legitimately scary for me.

One of the musicians that I deeply admire hinted, rather flippantly, at ending his own life.

He said that the only thing that mattered had left him. He said he didn't want to live. He said that music was too much for him. And then he stopped speaking all together.

And I sat on the edge of my seat for a painful two hours, as the world was put on hold. I cried for a little bit. I prayed quite a bit. I felt impotent and angry and desperate. As if I was losing one of my friends. Someone I loved.

Because "my musician" means you belong to me. My musician means you can't take yourself away.

He didn't. And I thank God for his breaths.

Because he's too young. And pain is part of the human condition. We're all human. And sometimes our roles are too hard and our shoes too big and our hearts too fragile.

But all we need is love. And God doles it out.

All we need is love. And I love you.

So very much.

Ryan Hunter posted something a while ago on his Tumblr (which was subsequently delted)about how we all like to think of our musicians as convenient song factories.

As if they turn themselves off. As if they don't bleed or cry or sweat or hurt or are. Outside of venues and jeweled CD cases and ocassional tweets.

We want them to turn off. We want them to be machines for our entertainment.

But they're real.

So real.

Kurt Travis is real. And he hurt today. And I hurt for his hurt. And I knew that he got to point where it felt like he was drowning.

But I love him for being real. I want him to continue to be real.

And I'm glad he's still alive.

He is the bearded fella (the lead singer, child). And word on the street is "He's going to make some awesome music"

Tupac

2010-10-07T23:12:00.000-07:00

They killed Tupac
They said so he wouldn’t kill himself or implode
Like David Ruffin, who sang of crying in the rain and begging at my doorstep
Like my musician who died alone in some seedy house
With his beautiful voice drowned out by powdered lies

We have such harmful pleasures
We have such destructive desires

Needles don’t equal love
Nameless, numbing copulations don’t equal love
Imbibed poison and scribbled ramblings don’t equal love

And the hate would have killed him
So we couldn’t keep him alive
We couldn’t bear to see him flicker slowly into nothingness
And maybe murder is better than suicide

They killed Tupac
Because he spoke truth and made us question our assumptions
With tattoos and oversized jeans and songs about anger and hate and love and hope and growth
With eyes that never looked happy and a voice that never sounded complete

It was probably for the best
An act of mercy, social Darwinists proclaim
Because we can dress ourselves in Divine bones and pronounce our own unholy names
And if he’s dying, it might as well be us
And if he’s dying, anonymous broken boys are easier to blame

And this is my way of saying that I wish I hadn’t fallen for subliminal messages
And this is my way of saying that they were martyrs for our art
And that we don’t deserve chemical conversions or polluted air or purified water

Only the good die young
So we’ll live forever, darling
Only the good die young
So we can stew in our own inadequacy

He was ours. You had no right to take him. He was ours. Please give him back.

Philosophy Vomit

2010-10-06T00:08:00.001-07:00

I thought about you today
While scrubbing at the day's grime with my chipped, black fingernails and scented body wash
I smell like love, inhale me
I smell like flowers, press me between dusty pages
And love me, love me, love me

And I wish more than anything that you could see the words I’ve collected on my imperfect skin
And in spiral notebooks and in patronizing HTML and in muttered exhalations
For you, I’m screaming. Be a part of me, I’m shrieking
I’d press you deeper if I could
Scrape at my bones, grind at my cell membranes, grate at my existence

I am your canvas, paint me
I want to be you lover, taint me

And I swallow memories of you and regurgitate them when I'm feeling bored
Or lonely or happy or confused or alive
Add bows and adjectives and romance and subordinating clauses
Kind of like how I compose essays

Oh child, we love your diction
Oh young one, we adore your lies

I'm a fraud, you told me
I create nothing; I destroy all
It isn’t art if you’re stealing
It isn’t art if you’re heart’s not in it

And I’m hiding my face behind a mask of eyeliner and false ambition and straightened hair
But I am still dirty, and I still smell of shame
And begging you not to judge too harshly my pilfered, incompetent, fake, unoriginal, useless, broken soul—heart--poetry

Yes, please.

It's funny the things we find heartbreakingly attractive. Because this kid looks nothing like you ;)

And I Could Be Your Powder Keg, If You Could Be My Fuse

2010-10-03T16:04:00.001-07:00

I've got a wick to burn my skin

So I bottled it up and kept the words to myself
and let the anger collect for a better day.
When the words are aged,
The war is waged,
And you'll watch me blow

(Don't worry. I'm not about to blow up. At least I don't think so)

I'm neglecting class for this, you know.

I checked out six books for a Philosophy of Religion paper: Liberal vs. Conservative Christianity. Emailed a professor I never met for the deets. Bought some 19 books from HAR. Spoke to my Academic Advisor about getting a job with the Religious Studies department (Please, please, please. I've only begged harder for boys that didn't deserve my affection). Submitted a 15-page paper about Clement of Alexandria to a conference in Missouri (You've never even been there). Spent time with my family when they visited. Listened to Envy on the Coast's self-title EP on repeat. Watched videos of them on youtube to remind myself that I never got to see them live. Turned in an assignment late. Realized I need to get a 4.0 in order to maintain my current GPA. Felt guilty for being unworthy of God's love. Got rejected by a literary magazine.

Also, I wrote this.

I don't want to have you, because then I might lose you.

And darling, I don't think I could survive that kind of blow.

My heart was made of glass, you know. Elephants and neglected girls die of sadness, too.

And the darkness would be harsher. The stars in the sky. The wind on my cheeks. The sun on my skin. The smile on your face.

Your voice, your voice, your voice.

It's still echoing. From when you said my name. From when you stumbled over too-pure syllables and unrequited, tainted affection.

And if you said you loved me. And if you said you loved me and then stopped.

Don't play with those you torture. Don't starve poor girls or tug at their bleeding heart strings. They feel it more intensely when your fingers rearrange protein sequences. When words that drip from your lips are fancied Scripture.

I'm melting into your consciousness; you're flooding mine.

And I don't want to ever lose you, even if it means never, ever holding you. Or deciphering your dreams. Or touching your skin.

It's better not to know what the colors look like knowing you'll never see them again.

Isn't it beautiful? Aren't you compelled to love me forever and ever?

I really should be reading about fundamentalists and about the Social Gospel and about Jim Wallis (FTW).

But more than anything, I want to lay in the grass and stare at the rain clouds and forget that there is more to life than living. Alone. With only a handful of stock words to describe how I feel when I think of you. Sometimes.

(I love the duality of their music. And hate that I never got to experience it)

Envy on the Coast. "Temper, Temper." Envy on the Coast EP. Photo Finish Records, 2006. CD.

They Say that Love is Forever; Your Forever is All that I Need

2010-10-01T17:57:00.001-07:00

Please stay as long as you need
Can't promise that things won't be broken
But I swear that I will never leave
Please stay
Forever with me

I give my heart too easily
And I got extra yous stuffed in my pocket
Along with tubes of chapstick and denim lint and foreign currencies to impress
Foreign boys with foreign standards of beauty

Am I beautiful now?
Would you like to reassure me that I am worth more than the broken affection I offer?
Would you like to intercept my doe-eyed advances?

And I’m looking good right now, they say
As if tragedy and obsession are becoming
Better than that eyeliner I smear, better than that lipstick I stain, better than the shoulders I bare
You could have sworn I’ve lost weight and not just my hope

Give it back
Oh, please just give me back

The problem with drowning is that you die
The problem with loving is that you die

I also wrote this in Spain. While sitting on my bed in Hostal Welcome.

So, I'm going to listen to Sleeping with Sirens on repeat for a while. And pretend that he's singing the words to me. It's only wrong if I'm pretending it's you, right? It's growth if it's another boy, right?

Beautiful is Not Only a Feminine Trait

2010-09-24T23:05:00.001-07:00

I romanticize romance
Paint it shades of red and pink and affectionate
And I whisper "love" and "forever" so much and to so many broken people that they've lost their sting

Are you listening, my dear?
Because it's your name tonight
An incantation whispered over and over again
As I lay on this checkered bed sheet and imagine your face

But, honey, feminine whims have expiration dates
Yes, histrionic devotions burn brightest before they burn out

I'm burning out. I'm melting away.

And I want to line the moles on your marred skin
Because they cover your beautiful bones
They hide your perfect soul
You must be perfect
I couldn't love you otherwise

Because beautiful boy, I want to count the cells in your body
And unravel the chromosomes in your DNA
And paint the colors in your eyes
And drown in them
And drip them on my skin
A little piece of you
A cursory glance into your unprobed soul

And I want to swallow all those words you scribble on our stained canvases
Spell your, my, our destiny in discarded pizza boxes
And choose our favorite dead stars within our galaxies

Let me see your brain
I long to touch your thoughts
Let me see your brain
I long to know your truth

Beautiful boy, pull me closer
Beautiful boy, help me throw away those memories
Of darkness
Of pain

But if I'm changing my mind, then it must not be in my heart
My beautiful boy with the tired eyes
Beautiful boy with the lazy smile

I wrote this for you
But my eyes search the skies
I wrote this for you
But your name tastes wrong

Be my beautiful boy, please

I Want Your Touch; Such a Shame That I'm Numb, Honey

2010-09-22T14:54:00.001-07:00

Lover, lover, lover, you'll never know
You'll never know because
Lover, lover breathing down my neck
Incendiary breath, and still my lover is a burden
Tell me something: Could you smell my fear
As I lay there cringing on your bed?

I'm dying to feel what you feel now.
You've already been such a sweetheart.
And I know we all get scared.
We all get scared.

I have an addictive personality, I believe.

I've been listening to Closure in Moscow and reveling in their Australian-ness as I contemplate whether or not I'm imposing romantic devotion in an attempt to forget that I feel lonely sometimes. When I stare at the blinking cursor and listen to awkwardly honest love songs and avoid life's true responsibilities. Only for a little longer as I wonder whether there is a point to all of this. Whether I want there to be a point to all of this. Do I want free will or do I want the comfort of Fate? I long to protest, but the tides carry me away sometimes. And maybe I'd rather be led away by stronger forces than exert myself against this endless sea.

It's the human condition, isn't it?

It's life, isn't it?

I wrote this on my phone, after having a somewhat awkward conversation about what love is, what can provoke it, and whether it's like houses, where shaky foundations mean eventual ruin. That's what Jesus asserted. Build your house upon a rock, for if you build it out of sand, great shall be its fall. When the rains come. And the rains always comes. (Matthew 7:24-27)

Is the same true of love?

This is nonsensical because I lack sleep. This is nonsensical because I am pretending that I do not have to worry about Humanities or German or Islam or Philosophy or History.

Are eyes a good reason to love someone?
Because I want to drown in yours
And taste the salt of your uncried tears
And feel the color of your dreams

Dream of me, darling, in flickering shadows
So that I can exist in the darkness of your sleep
So that I can roam in your subconscious
Hang on your lips and haunt your memories

It's your soul, right?
It's perfection, right?
Because I have found someone with ocean eyes
And have dreamt of suffocating in the rocky sea

(Sometimes I reinforce standards of beauty. Sometimes I agree with convention)

They don't let me embed this video

Closure in Moscow. "Sweet#hart." First Temple. Equal Vision, 2009. CD.

Cinema Music, Art: They're All Lies.

2010-09-20T17:41:00.003-07:00

You label the storms in your blood, and you fancy yourself in love. But you're wrong, my darling. It's not supposed to hurt. Not this much

I Still See Your Face; You're Safe in My Sleep Again

2010-09-19T23:15:00.005-07:00

Dearest Dulcinea, when your heart's already full, where does that leave all the love I have?

I'm starving for you, but you'll never know

I haven't been able to write in the last couple of days (read: 8). If I could trace it to one definitive event, ‘twas after watching Scent of a Woman and deciding that Al Pacino was spectacular. If I’m being truly honest, though, ‘twas after writing my latest(not last?) non-heliocentric poem. Magnum opus? Yeah right. I’m not good enough to have already peaked, right? Right?

And it’s been eight days. I know that's not a lot. But, well, it's a lot for me.

What if they're completely gone? I can’t coax them out. I tried. Listened to enough Closure in Moscow to vomit out their beautifully not-American lyrics.

This is as far as I got:

I can feel your whisper on my jaw
Brushing against delicate nerves like the wind on cold nights
When I’m walking alone and composing broken melodies and remembering your words
And I tell you. So softly that I’m not sure I want you to hear.
That I’m not sure this is real. That you taste just like a dream.
Please line my eyelids with promises of forever. Please be worth it.

Because the sky doesn't look so blue from this angle
Is skin supposed to be this golden? Are lovers supposed to be so warm?
Your eyes remind me of the sun, sometimes
I can't stare too long without losing whatever breath you’ve left me with
Your eyes remind me of the sun, sometimes
Planets revolved around them, I believe

And you’re tainting me, you know
You're breaking me, you know
I'm dying for you, you know

I’m not particularly proud of it, but to be honest, I’m kind of ashamed of most of my work. And this doesn’t feel complete.

So, I’ve set the stage, darling, and you, as always, can play the indifferent party. It's what you're good at it. You deserve a fucking medal. I'm not bitter, I promise. I'm quite happy, I swear. I'm just a little conflicted, okay?

I dreamt last night of falling in love with somebody named Zach. And I told him as he kissed me against a brick wall that I hoped the reason that you hadn’t loved me was because of my appearance. And I cried against his stubbled jawline when he told me that I was beautiful. Because it meant that you hadn’t loved me because of me, that it wasn’t superficial, but deep. There are more things wrong with me than a rounded belly and too big hips. There are more things wrong with me than my fertility-goddess body.

I have no idea what to make of that dream, darling.

^That's what I call a melodic panty-dropper

And Now You Sit And Talk To God. Did He Ever Respond?

2010-09-15T15:18:00.000-07:00

I've added a second major. History to supplement the Religious Studies. Because NAU says I've spent too much time here and taken too many credits. It's the only way, they say, if I don't want to pay extra. Exert yourself more or just leave, darling. It's all we really ask.

So, exertion is called for.

Next semester shall be especially intense. But I need the distraction, I think. I need to stop thinking about what I think about.

Maybe if I don't have time to breathe, I won't exhale your name. Maybe if I don't have time to sleep, I won't cradle myself in your arms at night. Maybe if I don't have time to think....see how everything is about you? Not even the you it was before, if we're being perfectly honest. Nope, that you was supplanted long ago. Now, it's just, Oh God, please let me get married. Please let me be loved by another.

Do boys worry about this, too?

Do other girls, even?

Because sometimes, I think that I'm objectively not normal and not okay.

I've been listening to 'Solipsism' by Motions and Miles on repeat and reading T. S. Eliot and watching Al Pacino films, writing down his monologues because I feel that his gravelly voice communicates truth. I'm in a Motions and Mile-T.S Eliot-Al Pacino-kind of mood, which I would mostly describe as apathetic and turned off. My brain gets fuzzy sometimes. My soul gets lonely sometimes. I forget how to breathe sometimes. I barter my self esteem sometimes. For cheap words and cursory, side-long glances, and increased blood pressure.

And doubt. Heavy, heavy doubt. That colors the way the sun shines and the way the birds sing and the way that water tastes.

Doubt in everything. In everyone.

I can't even write. Why did I ever think I could?

Nihil Sine Deo

I'm going to get that tattooed on myself, I think. Because I need reminding sometimes, you know.

Motions and Miles. "Solipsism." Grace EP. 2010. CD.

Ego And Eros

2010-09-11T14:10:00.003-07:00

Soon she'll become my new sun.
Soon she'll become dim-reflected love,
To light my way,
After I trade loving you for loving to obey

(As Cities Burn)

&

You've set on me, but you are not the sun. You are not the sun

(Brand New)

Tell me when you're ready to love
And I'll tell you when you're ready to die
To self

Love is ego-less, a pastor once preached
Broken in our broken bodies
Because we don't know what it means to give
And not get
And not want
Because the fact that unrequited love
Yours, the most vividly, darling
Stings
Is further proof of our own deprivation

We're going to burn
I'm going to burn

Maybe this is the Original Sin
Conceived not of guilt from sex
Or want or need or lack of faith
But desire to have this magnificence returned
In equal doses
Of exhaled declarations and dancing fingertips and brushing lips

Even against my forehead
Just kiss my forehead
Once
And I promise I will let this go
Once and for all
Because I hunger for it
More than for salvation and Divine Love and air and water and hope

This is why I'm damned
This is why this isn't healthy
The man behind that dark screen declares to me
Before he tells me I need to pray away your face
And repel the Devil with God's name
But not yours
Never yours

You might be an incantation
To muster up sweaty palms and blanks stares and jumbled words
And apparently unhealthy emotions
And apparently unrequited devotions
And apparently non-heliocentric revolutions
A name too horrible to pronounce
Like God's
Only inverse
Like the stars folding up
In our broken, polluted sky

A temptation
A demon
A test
He muses
He believes

As if they could speak the way you did
As if they would care for my blemished soul
As if you rested like some word on my tongue
Or some raindrop precariously clinging to the sky
Or a brief, flashing caress of the sun
Across my skin
It touches my soul, you know
It's not enough, you know

And I clink together beads I don't really believe in
And sit in marbled walls I don't really believe in
And mutter words I don't really believe in
And wonder why I always think of you when I read about God
I read Rumi the other night and substituted Allah with your name
And I knew this was wrong
Universally, eternally so

And I wonder why religious leaders agree on few fundamental principles
Save for these
It's funny that you're one of them

(I've been saving these songs for a special occasion. I guess this qualifies, then.)

As Cities Burn. "New Sun." Come Now Sleep. Solid State/Tooth & Nail Records, 2007. CD.

Brand New. "Not The Sun." The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me. Tiny Evil/Interscope Records, 2006. CD.

Sunday

2010-09-08T15:05:00.002-07:00

You left me on a Sunday
At 12:17
While some preacher screamed at seizing bodies about God's love
And he shrieked in his $400 suit that God would love me, too
Like you didn't
Like you whispered you couldn't any longer
If only I gave Him money
If only I pledged my soul by calling some 1-800-number
And speaking to someone named Linda or Sally or Mary who would tell me I was complete
Without you
Without the way it felt when you laughed against my skin

And as some lady screamed that she felt compelled by the power of Christ
You leaned against the doorjamb
Pressing a stubbled jawline to eggshell white
Not quite looking into my eyes
But beyond to our pet goldfish
Tolstoy and Neruda
Their namesakes collecting dust on our shared bookshelf
Only we weren't one anymore
Only we'd have to divide our assets

And in that too-perfect voice, you asked me if I could look at you
At your flawed perfection and dusty boxes and misplaced memories and death of love
If I could acknowledge what you were saying
Or whispering or sobbing or screaming or asserting
Over the static of a cheap television and the tightening of my fists against pajama bottoms and the tears I promised myself I wouldn't, couldn't cry

And with my nails digging into our--my--the coach
Cheap and torn and empty without you
While the man with the perfect teeth asserted that I was saved
I met your eyes
And didn't tell you not to go
And didn't say that I needed you
And your words
And you love
And your elbows
And your soul
And the way you whispered my name

I called that 1-800-number
Her name was Peggy

True story: this is what results from sleep-deprivation and History of Ancient Greece lectures.

True story: I should probably be reading for Philosophy of Religion or History of Ancient Greece or Humanities of the Western World or Islam. And not listening to Regina Spektor as I type the things I scribbled in my History notebook.

I Wrote This In Madrid

2010-09-04T17:49:00.001-07:00

I'll line my eyes with too much black and wear too much hairspray and not enough clothing
To distract from the fact that I don't feel
Beautiful
Or really that in love to trust when you smile at my smile

And you can bring that T-shirt that I love on you
Because it brings out the color in your eyes and
The lack of it in your skin

So we can touch forearms and marvel at the differences in melanin levels and dotted moles
And maybe brush hands
Or denim kneecaps
And imagine that there is more to life than kissing someone who doesn't care enough to tell you
To stop
Or touch your cheek
With fingertips
That instead wrap around elbows
Scarred from that time I fell on my face in 1st grade
Before I knew that I wasn't beautiful
Or that I could hide it with too much eyeliner and big hair and an exposed collarbone

And you can say that love is someone knowing your name
Along with every thought in your illogical head
And still caring enough to cradle your head during nightmares

And I can tell you about how I once watched a moth move towards the flame
And thought that I would like to move towards you drunkenly and be annihilated
So that I could be you
In that skin I long to trace with obsessed fingertips

And you could reach for my hands and tell me I've had too much to drink
And that you didn't care enough to make me stop mumbling your name
Along with senseless admissions of unrequited affection

By The Time I Get Mine, I'll Be Long Gone

2010-09-04T12:05:00.002-07:00

Past the restraints and comfort of circumstance,
Past mistaking insecurities for arrogance.

So, any one that knows me knows that I am super, hardcore socially awkward. Like it's really, really bad.

I have trouble meeting people's eyes and making small talk and sometimes say things that I shouldn't. My humor is awkward. Sometimes people laugh; most times they stare. Blankly. And I die inside.

And warming up takes too long, I've been told. You waste so much time becoming loud.

But I'm majoring in something that, if excessive studying and fingers crossed prevail, will require me to meet people's eyes and make small talk and say things un-awkwardly.

Truth be told, I wish I could be a student forever. But I wouldn't mind declaring how amazing are these things I've learned.

As opposed to living in a box. Or with my Momma. Or leeching off my eventual significant other (I will get married, right? Someone will want to marry me, right? Please, God, I want to be loved).

And if you are unawares, my major is Religious Studies. It's interdisciplinary. It's super intense. And it's totally awesome.

And I would love, love, love to go to grad school for it. And in such a way that I wouldn’t have to give my first born child for it. I want to name him Malachi. Or Hezekiah. Or Nehemiah. Or Yehoshua.

And I attended the CCS--Comparitive Cultural Studies (newly dubbed thus, because our governor sucks at life and cut 40% of our university's budget) banquet and mingled. Spoke. And without doing that thing I do. Whcih is basically staring at the person's chest and reminding myself that it's rude not to meet someone's eyes, rude not to stare into their lighter irises.

And the banquet was pretty awesome. Religion is sexy. Intelligence is sexy. I'll blame my attraction on that. You used large words.

I want to be a Teacher's Assistance with the Religious Studies department. And mingle. And impress. And network. And be so ridiculously amazing that professors, people with PhD's will declare my intelligence. Will speak of my successes. Because I am enamored with University of Chicago and Notre Dame and Indiana University. And with the idea of what could exist between people like you and I.

I am the anti-feminist, in that I define myself in terms of my romantic failures. As opposed to my academic achievements. I'm letting my ovaries wither away. My biological clock is thinking. And I would like to marry and bear your children and give them biblical names. They'd be destined for greatness, I promise. We'd be happy together, I swear.

But this blog post isn't about you.

It's about my major. It's about Religious Studies. It's about the faculty at Northern Arizona University. And the fact that as long as I love the subject, I can speak to people. And I love, love, love this major. If only for the professors. If only for the fascination of believers. If only for the fact that I'm decent at it.

In Aviate. "And The World Will Know." 1985. Rise Records, 2008. CD

I'll Be a Martyr For Your Indifference

2010-08-28T22:49:00.001-07:00

if you promise to line my tomb with trinkets
There won't be a resonating cry
just an awkward formal dialogue
between my ghost and those I've denied
We want guarantees, not hunger pains
but starvation just won't subside

Somewhere between the penance & the patience
You drift with every word they say
Somewhere between the penance & the patience
I think we've lost our way

You told me what you stand for
The sleepless crusade
The bitter campaign

In every room that we walk in
the walls are skin and they're writhing
oh they're writhing

Somewhere between the penance & the patience
You drift with every word they say
Somewhere between the penance & the patience
I think we've lost our way

You'd be unwise to sate the urge
but go ahead you wouldn't be the first

In every room that we walk in
the walls are skin and they're writhing
oh they're writhing

Somewhere between the penance & the patience
You drift with every word they say
Somewhere between the penance & the patience
I think we've lost our way

(Buffering is almost always necessary, but this is so very worth it)

^ I would kill to write something this good. You. Me. The world.

Artists sell their souls for this. But I doubt mine is worth much. I've tainted it, after all. And it's always the quiet ones that sin the hardest.

And I want to know that I have potential. That these words are any good. And I'm contemplating intense literary magazine submission. I've done two. Just to see, just to hope.That they'll think me brilliant. These emotions that I bled and decorated and invented.

And I've moved into my new apartment. And loved it intensely. For the washer and dryer and the pretty carpet and the bathroom and the kitchen and the living room. Because other dorm rooms aren't as amazing. And I hit the goldmine.

But I'm feeling awfully lonely (My buddy is gone. And I want him to come back, because I miss him lots). And not in the way that makes me want to write. In the way that makes me listen to Closure in Moscow until my ears bleed. It claims I've listened to "We Want Guarantees, Not Hunger Pains" 50 times in the past two days. And it doesn't lie. But it's not quite enough.

It's almost like I'm subjecting myself to it to hurt, to pain, to shame. (Kinda like when I think of you. Sometimes).

It's been a long time since I've felt overwhelmed. And the paradox is in the fact that when I'm inundated with work, I can avoid thinking about drowning...in life.

Things like grad school and love and God and what I'm meant to do with my life.

But mostly just the writing. I keep returning to the writing.

And that's where beautiful Australians with beautiful lyrics creep in. And assure me that there is still talent. And of the brand which I can never attain. Maybe. Probably. Absolutely.

Closure in Moscow. "We Want Guarantees, Not Hunger Pains." The Penance And the Patience. Taperjean/Shock Records, 2008. CD

Oh, These Forms

2010-08-26T23:50:00.000-07:00

Maybe we're just imperfect vessels for perfect emotion

We crack love with our canonized bones and suffocate it with our drunk veins

But it's still enough, right?

It's all we have

Hands As Anesthesia or Phygrian Kings

2010-08-23T13:33:00.003-07:00

I can't cry, because I don't feel a thing
It must have been your hands
Your hands and your fingertips
That you imbued with life and electricity and promises of eternity

It doesn't last forever
Nothing lasts forever

Save for squished aluminum cans and the universe's crushed matter and the words you spill on the internet
Did it hurt to bleed in measures of HTML?
Do you proudly wear your ribboned scars?

My sweet surrogate, I seek to inhale and touch and be vicariously
My vessel, my channel, my body, my life

They've seen our bones
They've known our nakedness
And our elastic flesh
And our ripped limbs
And our scarred tear ducts
And our dripping organs
And our broken promises
And our false souls

Would you rather have been blind from birth
Or have known the light beyond the darkness?
For dazzling flashes of certainty
Do you miss the color of the sky
Or the brush of lips on foreheads or the swollen heartbeats of love?
You whispered in rooms with glass doors and transparent walls and scattered stones

Because I was made of wax
You watched me melt
I was made of wax
You let me disappear

I'm so numb, darling
Your hands, I say
Your hands
Slaughtering nerve endings as you set them on fire
Set me on fire
Promising to turn me to gold

And you said it was for the art
Always for the art

( I must admit I am indebted to my wonderfully smart and creative eight-year-old cousin for the idea of this poem. He spouts poetry whenever he speaks. He is just too young to know the beauty of his words or the ways they touch my soul.

2010-08-22T15:35:00.002-07:00

Love, I bleed recollections of your brown, scraped skies

And my DNA is bound not with hydrogen or life but carnicerias & blinking liquor signs & dusty shoes swinging from telephone wires

They say you feed on false ambitions & plastic entertainment & anger & lust

They say you expel trust & talent & love

& love, I breathe in your polluted beaches, your dirty concrete, & your squished, ribboned streets

& exhale your painfully honest murals, your cursing, disillusioned drivers & your boys etched with brands of false unity

They've branded themselves with your name & with your promises

They're true, even though they're whispered to invisible stars

Love, my scars are tattooed on my skin like the graffiti that stains your building

You're beautiful beneath your cicatrices

You're beautiful beneath your pompous declarations

Because love, I love you

Love, I can't be with anyone but you

*carnicerias: meat shops

Thank you, though you know not of how your pictures make me miss home

Addendum to future plans: I'm going to apply for UCLA's History Program. Because Notre Dame, though unbelievably sexy (their Masters of Divinity makes me swoon), is in Indiana. Indiana is not you, my love.

Or maybe, I'll just marry young and bear children in your concrete cradle.

California, Love

2010-08-16T17:02:00.004-07:00

I feel like I write so much better whenever I am here. And here, in your warm arms, love, I could bleed out my worries, my thoughts, my soul, and know that I am understood.

Your atmosphere invites poetry, darling. Your swollen streets and hazy skies beg for understanding.

It's never enough when I come to you. A whole lifetime is scarcely enough.

I want to live in Los Angeles. For the rest of my life. Arizona can soak in its own heat and lament its rugged beauty. But it's never been what I want, what I need, where I want to live.

Where there are earthquakes and blackouts and timid stars and plastic lovers and wide-eyed dreamers.

It's where I was inculcated, where my soul learned to inhale.

I'm researching grad school admissions policies, lamenting the fact I don't speak Koine Greek or Latin or French or German, and wondering whether I can survive so far away from you.

It is because of you that I have scribbled so many compositions. Can I without you? Or will the words die?

Hyperlinks aren't working, but this is his creation, nonetheless. http://www.flickr.com/photos/shredded77/

^Thank you for capturing this beauty. The internet says I must admit that you know nothing of my work, but that I was inspired by it nonetheless.

Scab

2010-08-03T23:45:00.001-07:00

Has it been long enough, you asked me once.
Smiling but not really
Because you said that I wasn't really a permanent feature in your life
Less a mole and more a scab
You'd peel me off or else let me cling until I disappeared

But I would leave, you assured
This wasn’t forever
Nothing is
Save the stars that don’t cross our love or grant our wishes

Because there could be no other fate for me
Disposable skin
Maybe even diseased
Maybe even dead
Because this is hardly living, leeching your oxygen
Inventing, implanting memories

Parasites love their hosts
But it's unrequited
Parasites love their hosts
But they kill them in the end

And I couldn't answer
Stumbling, stuttering, clipping my consonants and rolling my rs
Like I roll my shoulders when I try to remind you that I have things that you want
If only temporarily
If only in stolen instances where you'll lie
And pretend that you care enough to stroke the skin on my jaw
Or not push me away when I stumble towards you
Drunkenly

Because love is inebriation
And because sobriety is loss of those memories you've traced on my eyelids
I'm addicted to you in so many ways
I'm addicted to you, and I need my fix

I was a scab, my darling
I didn't even leave a scar

When I Listen To Emarosa...

2010-07-28T14:49:00.000-07:00

Your limbs are too pretty to not be fused with mine
So blur the harsh lines between you and I
You never said you wanted love
But I do, I do
You never said you wanted annihilation
But I do, I do
So let's complicate each other's breathing
Because you do, you do
So let's make our pulses flutter
Because you do, you do
And my heart is too fragile to not exist in yours

This is an invitation, darling. I have sullied myself to deliver it to you.

Never Forget and Never Again

2010-07-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

I can't live somewhere they've broken my wings
Or ripped my name off my skin
Or injected my DNA with ugly words

Insults stain
Words are tattoos
No matter how hard I scrub or bleed
Even to layers of flesh laced with lazy veins

The soul elects where it resides
And I would rather burn in your nightmares
Than exist in your ideologies

I'm the other, you screamed
The cause and effect and example and object
You've written on me

And my broken wings
And my stolen name
And my swollen DNA
And my scraped skin
CANNOT forgive you

Maybe the Ancients Were Right

2010-07-22T14:31:00.001-07:00

It's so deep under your skin, it scrapes against your antibodies
Depression is bile
And it's expanding your throat
Caressing your vocal cords and tainting the words you whisper to those who will listen

It's bleeding your veins, dear
Licking at your arteries and slurping at your bones
Swelling your skin and slaughtering all of those inhibitions

Your body is black
You need to be bled
Your body is earth
It needs to be bled

It breaks smiles, love
It breaks necks,love
It breaks hearts, love
It breaks love, love

The heart isn't the locus
It's lower and darker and uglier
But these limbs are extraneous
All that matters is your soul
Black underneath your superfluous words and residual
lovers

Open your veins
Just open your veins

For whatever reason, I love the theory of the four humors.

Tell The Music To Stop Dying

2010-07-15T01:16:00.003-07:00

"Why Do Fools Fall In Love?" came on the other day while I shopped at Walgreens for headbands to press against my frizzy hair
And red lipstick to pretend I was born in some different era
Before I could vote or maybe own a house or just think independently
But where I could wear polka dotted dresses
The good old days of rock and roll
The times of your grandparents or maybe great-uncles
Though they wouldn't accept you at family reunions
Because the lyrics have stayed the same but you shout much too much

I saw a movie once where they said that idols don't bleed
Or cry, Or hurt
Something about the very nature of mortality
Or uncertainty about the afterlife
And I wonder, darling, if you're real underneath all those posters bearing your face
Or zines replete with your words or skin tattooed with your message
You wrote it in such a way that I believed you understood my soul
If you understood, you wouldn't do this to me

Because music is life, someone said
And that seems to be enough
To make the world spin or hearts heal or people live forever
And heartbreak always sells, always will
It's the oldest profession, though prostitutes protest
And you're in the market, darling
Or you were for those brief, beautiful moments you crawled into my skin
Oh how I've bought your thoughts
Because you promised you understood mine

Because the sounds they sell us now are nothing more than white noise
Static on my grandmother's old television set
Because she didn't care for digital cable or buy the converter
And she was around for that era where I would line my eyes
And dream of equality while dancing in a malt shop
And listening to Jerry Lee Lewis or Elvis Presley
We idolize, I have heard

Because it's been dying for so long
They have stolen rhythms, pilfered lyrics
Recycled, not in the way that's good for our planet
But in a way that bastardizes, dilutes the creativity
Siring lies, abominations, emptiness
This hasn't been art for so long, my darling
I heard art in your works
And now you've left, too

But to have heard those delicate compositions
Stolen instances with measures of genius
I dreamt of beauty in time signatures
Signed on my heart with your name
Or your lyrics, or your soul
I felt it when you sang to me, felt it when you spoke to me

I cried for and because of you
Why do fools fall in love, they asked
Because it's merely gravity
And I loved that you screamed and that you sang of heartache, too

Envy on the Coast broke up.

I almost cried.

And, Ryan Hunter is a genius:
http://rhunterny.tumblr.com/post/813106197/poetry

Probably The Last One, Excepting Rehashes

2010-07-13T22:06:00.000-07:00

I'm staying in a hostel sans internet, which means that I'm typing this while laying on a very comfy green bed in a room that I'm supposed to share with 2 other girls, but I don't think they've booked any one for this room yet. So I'm all alone. Though that's definitely okay.

Anywho, I'm laying on this bed. And I don't have internet. Which means I'm listening to Isles & Glaciers and playing spider solitaire and anxiously awaiting my return to the States. So freakin' excited.

But it also means that this won't get posted until after I get back.

But whatever.

I'm in Madrid right now. And I kind of don't like it. Because 1) it looks like the love child of Van Buren and Glendale Arizona (not attractive); 2) it's a whole lot bigger than Granada and much easier to get lost in; 3) the place I Iive in is (Hostal Welcome: Casas de Miravete 28b, Madrid, Spain. Holla--free plug) kind of indie, so it doesn't show up on maps of Madrid; 4) I want internet and a kebab and am unable to access either.

I tried to go exploring earlier, but I don't much like taking that risk when I don't have a map. I mean, I manage to get lost with one in hand, so imagine with no real clue as to where I'm going or what I'm returning to. I'd probably be all sobbing and come up to some stranger begging him/her to show me my way back--with black eyeliner tears

I haven't eaten much today either. I had a donut before I left for Madrid (real healthy, I know) and then ate here. It was 7,50 Euros (See how I wrote it like a Spaniard with a comma and not a period separating euro from cents?), but it was a ton of food. Like, food that I wouldn't normally eat because I'm kind of a picky eater. But did because I have no idea how to get anywhere from here and was also super hungry. Fish stew and calamari and yogurt and watermelon and rice and bread. And I ate all of it even though I loathe seafood and melon. Because my belly was saying "feed me," and it was already getting dark, and I live by the industrial zone, and I also can't walk more than 50 yards with feeling that I'm going to get lost and not know how to return.

So here I am. Because even though I have an essay that I still need to turn in for my Biblical World and another from my Jews in the Modern Era class, I don't feel like it. Also, I got my grades back from my other two classes (after I dropped Spanish because he wouldn't let me take the exam early). Sobresalientes. Outstandings. Also known as A's. And I'm not really expecting that from my other two classes, but it's nice to pretend a little bit.

And I finally left Granada, which I guess one can infer from my mention of Madrid. But I feel that it's necessary to note. I had issues with the people I was staying with. And this made me uncomfortable. And it also made Granada less fun. But I'm gone now. And staying in a hostel that is still pretty awesome even though it serves fish stew and doesn't have wifi that works (the kid behind reception said it stopped working like 2 days ago).

So I called the momma via telefonica. And I told her about how overwhelmed I felt. Because that's what I do. I turn to my momma whenever the world is too heavy. And she reassured me that I'm a decent person and that it's okay that sometimes I feel like too many things are going on my life. In short, she made me feel that it was okay to be me. And that's my momma, so very awesome. I can't wait to hug the woman. Sunday at 5:10 PM Phoenix time. After going through Customs and Border Enforcement, of course. Which I hear is supposed to be super intense. And make you feel bad for stealing that stick of gum when you were 5 or for accidentally forgetting to pay for that battery pack when coming home from Target. Or some other nonsense. I also heard that they can search your harddrive. Maybe the kiddos will read this and be all "Hey, she's talking about me. I'm the one currently invading her privacy by searching through her documents." And that person shall feel special because they'll be on the internet. And I'll be sad inside because if they read this, they'll probably read all of the awkward love letters I've written to him. And they'll be all, "Wow this girl doesn't take rejection too well, does she? I swear she's so obsessed with this guy. Completely not healthy." And I'll be all "Hey aren't you supposed to make sure I don't have any bombs or like plans to kill Obama. Even though I wouldn't plan either because 1) Bombs are hard to make and probably heavy and probably wouldn't fit in my already stuffed luggage 2) Obama is the man." And they'll be all "Hey, let us do our job. Sheesh. Ha, did you see how she talked about how love is annihilation of self. How emo, I swear!"

But I digress.

It's avoidance. I've forgotten what it's like to exist without the internet. I don't like remembering.

But, I'm going to go try and see La Plaza Mayor tomorrow. I'll bring my walking shoes. And it should be fun times seeing it because it's supposed to be all famous and shizz. And beautiful, too. And maybe I'll find a map that has this tiny little street on it. Because that would seriously be awesome. A tiny little map around which to orient myself.

And I'm going to shower soon, which is always fun times. Because when isn't it to get all clean and smell all nice and stuff. The answer is never. Even though sometimes it's a little less awesome because you have to walk down this huge tunnel to get there and the floors are coed even though the bathrooms aren't. And thank goodness because that was an awkward aspect of Makuto Guesthouse. Because people didn't seem to care. And boys and girl walked around in their undies or with just towels. And I was supposed to be cool with the knowledge that I was naked in a shower stall across from and next to a naked boy. Everyone knows I'm a prude. I'm still pretty uncomfortable with public showers in the first place. I like to not have to wear shower shoes or change in the stall or not sing because people might hear your voice cracking all special.

And then I shall waste time mindlessly. But I don't even have movies or anything. I just have my laptop with some 4000 songs and games and word documents and essays that I should be writing. Probably. Definitely. I don't want to. Responsibility is for squares and adults. But right now I don't want to be either.

So I'm listening to music. I've been listening to Envy on the Coast's Lowcountry recently. It's amazing and all twangy and sexy and Ryan Hunter writes song lyrics that are way too brilliant for someone that's 23 years old. And he reads a bunch and has literary tattoos and this great voice. And then the music has pianos. And who doesn't love pianos on a rock record? (People that suck at life?) And I love him and Sal and Jeremy and Brian and the beautiful band that they make. But this is what always happens. I obsess over one CD or one song over and over and over again. I once listened to Dance Gavin Dance's Buffalo 25 times in a row. On repeat. And that's why my bank account is all low and shizz. I keep buying CDs.

My favorite song: Spinal Cords.

"More than friends but less than lovers. Smile for photos and f*ck for the covers. Shameful woman, you bare your flower. Keep me humble, keep my mouth shut, abuse and devour."

That and this one: Death March on Two, Ready?

Mainly for this line "Smile, generals, make the cross federal, but my God doesn't believe in America."

Even though, I'm pretty sure it's about the South because it mentions taking the chains off but keeping the rebels. And I'm not a fan of the Confederate/Rebel flag. Because of what it represents. Not states' rights, as some heartily assert. But the belief that you could own another human being. Slavery is not okay. But they're from Long Island. So I have no idea what the song is trying to say, except that maybe they can make anything sound amazing.

But I digress. Always. Because I have a low attention span. And this is reflected in my writing style, you know.

The point of this future blog post, which shall be posted after I return to the States because I lack an internet connection is to explain my stay thus far in Madrid.

And to say that hostels are fun. Being international is fun. But usually more so when you meet people. Right now that isn't happening. Because, you know, I'm in a room all by my lonesome and I'm not even sure how to approach people and tell them to be my friend.

The end.

Not really.

And another one/the next day. The 11 of June, 2 days before I get back to P-hoe-nix

The awesome thing about sharing a hallway with very loud French early birds is that you wake up on time. But not of your own volition. The dudes were loud. So now I'm sitting on this bed, all ready--which means straight hair and eyeliner and chapsticked. I said I'd walk to La Plaza Mayor, but that shizz is like an hour walk away. A freakin' hour. So I'll take the iPod and ask for very detailed directions. Then I shall copy said directions all crappily into my notebook. So that i can get a semi-good feel of Madrid before I leave it. Back home. To Phoenix, Arizona, an amazing city that I've been taking for granted too long. So, I gotta go. Eat some food. Ask some questions. Do some walking. Listen to some tunes. And continue on my way.

Except that's actually a lie. Because instead, I took the subway (my first time, yo!). Because the receptionist, a different dude this time, gave me this little hand-drawn map of our zone and told me that I didn't have to walk 5 miles or anything. Just take the Linea 1. And I couldn't go wrong. And I took his word and walked to the Station and then took the subway for the first time. And it was pretty awesome and only cost 1 Euro and took me straight to the Plaza del Sol. And there I bought a nifty little tourist map and ate at Burger King and walked around, looking at all the pretty sights in the city. Like La Plaza Mayor and Nuestra Señora de la Almudena and Plaza de Oriente and Palacio Real and Jardines Cabo Noval. Because central Madrid is actually very beautiful. Not like the outskirts. And I got some generally awesome pictures. And a lot of walking to make up for all the food I ate at Burger King.

And I got called pretty like 3 times. Because for some reason, Spaniards are more straightforward. The random flattery is something that I still haven't completely adjusted to it. But it's cool. Because that shizz doesn't go down in the United States. So it's not like I'll experience much in the future.

On the way back, though, I got off on the wrong stop. Okay, so I was supposed to get off on Sierra Guadalupe, which comes right before Villa de Vallecas. But when I heard Puente de Vallecas, I got confused and thought I'd missed my stop. But I hadn't because it was still like 3 stops away. And then I got lost. And started panicking and had to ask a lady for directions, which she gladly gave. Then I got back. And here's where I be.

On my green bed, listening to my iPod and narrating my day.

I tried to call my Momma but she didn't answer and I think it's because she was busy and stuff. I called twice, though. Spaced 13 minutes apart in case she was in the bathroom or otherwise occupied. But no answer. And the little phone took my money. So, the kid that has the phone next will have ,21 Euros of balance for free. You're welcome, child. I know I'm awesome.

And I met an American and talked to him. He's been backpacking through Europe for the past month. Something I probably would be unable to do because backpacks are heavy and I like having a place to stay and also showering on a daily basis and having a sense of permanence. My wanderlust is kind of weak and super pragmatic. Kiddo was of Greek descent, but from Massachusetts. He sat down next to me. Seemed surprised that I was American and also that I didn’t have an accent. He kind of looked like Squints from the Sandlot, only like 10 years older.

And also had internet access for a brief, wonderful period. But copying and pasting is lame. So, yeah this probably will be posted after I get back. Except read probably as likely. Then you've got your mind in the right place.

The final day

Oh noes

Yup it is. So, uh huh. I took the subway again. And this time didn't get all lost and scared. And this time it also rained--a lot. So my feet got all wet and my pants, too. 'Twas quite uncomfortable, and I got a couple of blisters. But Madrid was still very pretty. And I had some more time to take nice pictures and marvel at pretty sites in this huge city.

Today, I looked at some of the Arab parks and the Plaza de los Cispedes and el Banco de Espana and el Basilica de Fernando el Grande and el Instituto Cervantes. And that's what I did. And took many, many pictures. Like enough to fill up my beautiful little camera with wonderful memories and shizz.

Also, I met a kiddo from Camaroon, who asked me if he could meet me sometime. It was a weird exchange, because under certain circumstances, it could seem that this kid was trying to hit on me. And I don't doubt entirely that that's the case. But it was just weird how lonely he looked. As he told me that he didn't have a job and that he didn't know many people and that he missed home. And so when he gave me his phone number and email address, I made a conscious effort not to brush him off. I think part of the reason that I feel so much for the immigrant experience is because I've never had it. And that fact alone makes me feel privileged and entitled to help those who have and do and will. Because here's this kid with slightly broken Spanish who saw in Spain an opportunity that Camaroon didn't provide. And now he's helping cars parallel park and living off of the tips he gets as a result. And me, I've only had to work for 4 months as a Courtesy Clerk at Safeway. For $6.75 and hour. We take our opportunities for granted. And I can't even begin to understand the hardships.

But that's vaguely political. And immigration is always a touchy subject. That it's best to avoid.

So then after meeting this guy, I walked around some more and got all wet and cold and grumpy. And then I took the metro. My last one in Spain. For presumably forever. And I complained on my walk back about how much pain I was in. Because my feet hurt so badly. I got back to my room and pretty much just peeled off my socks, listened to music and let my shoes dry. Then I ate dinner. Then I watched a soccer game with my American buddy. Then I went to my room. And I had a roommate. A Mexican. Like I sometimes pretend to hardcore be. I'm only softcore. Slightly watered down. Mexican-American.

And I'm all packed and shizz. And I have my clothes ready. And I'm going to call a cab. Then I'm going to go on a plane. Then I'm going to go London. Then the United States. Then to visit church. Then to visit my house. Then to be so awesome. And tell everyone how much my life has changed...after going to the United States.

June 26
And I’m back. I have been for a while. But you know how it goes when you’re lame.

I don’t remember much of the details. I wore a dress when I came back. A pretty black one that I bought in Spain. And I was kind of late for my flight. And I had to run in ballet flats. And sit next to a British child and a Peruvian. And try to make myself stop sweating and looking all gross after running.

And then I went on British Airways. Hooray. And that one was 9 hours of awesomeness. Because I got 2 meals and watched 4 movies (American Beauty, How to Train Your Dragon, Sex and the City, Up in the Air). And it didn’t even bother me that I had to wait for an hour before I knew what gate my flight was departing from or that I got lost again. Well it did kind of. But I was kind of just excited to come back.

And I did. And it was amazing. To hear American English. And speak American English. And be in Phoenix Arizona. Even though I had to go through Customs. Which was a really long line. And then customs where they made me declare my belongings: how many key chains did I buy, and how much are they worth? How would I explain Joshua’s sword and my Poppa’s slingshot without making them sound like real-people weapons?

And then I hugged my family. And went to church. And distributed presents. Because I am so utterly awesome when I pick out mementoes. My mother said so, and she doesn’t lie. At least, not usually.

And now I pretty much just lay on my brown bed and listen to music and think about writing my essay and listen to Envy on the Coast. And I don’t think I’ll ever stop listening to music that screams at me. It’s my favorite.

July 13th
It’s been one month. Aw dang, so long.

I’ve turned in all my essays for Spain. And soon I shall get my grades. Shall see if I was at awesome at being Spanish as I thought I was.

I crave kebabs, and I hear myself mentioning Spain a lot. The formula goes like this. Oh, that’s interesting. In Spain, it was like _____. I feel I must mention it in polite conversation. All the time. Yes, I’ve been there. See how I’m more amazing than you are.

Subtlety is for weenies.

It’s been a month, and I kind of miss it. Kind of a lot. Like how I missed the US, only not really. I’m glad to be back, but I have already idealized this situation. And that country. The one that won the World Cup.

The Parts of You That Have Died

2010-07-07T22:10:00.004-07:00

They fed us the works, son. And they changed all my words. 'Cause I would never say that to you. 'Cause I don't have to lie to keep you from the truth.

(Also seriously do yourself a favor and listen to the hidden track that starts about 2 minutes after the song ends. You dance and you sting. Just like the jellyfish do.)

You said that words aren't understanding
And that the vocabulary that drips from my lips
Like juice from oranges
Is only further proof

Because I've swapped out names and blacked out faces and broken smiles
I fall for nameless shadows and decorate silhouettes that dance in dark houses
But I can't possibly have known those things
They're too pure, you claim
For girls with chipped nail polish and too much eyeliner and tights to hide their bony knees

And you don't meet my blackened eyes as you speak
Of incognizance and romantization and the schema in my brain
Underneath my teased hair
I draw too much attention
And girls like me like to pretend

I'm lying, you assert
Speaking to your dusty sneakers
Hunching your shoulders as you ruminate, pontificate, exaggerate
Because these words are speeches
Like those love poems I once whispered could be spelled in the stars
The ink won't run, my love
It's like a tattoo, only not an abomination
I'm like a tattoo, only I am

You've murdered the pretty phrases that once fluttered in your brain
And replaced them with declarative sentences
That lack dependent clauses or introductory phrases or sparkling adjectives
And you can't love without those plain letters, darling
You can buy milk and do your taxes
But you can't love

Let me see the color they've tried to steal from your skin
And the words and heart they ripped out when they promised that your limbs would grow
And that that wound would heal
Memories are static, they promised
And you would only need to sacrifice your soul to biopsy these recollections
False memories like how I can't remember the day I was born

Did it hurt just as much to let them cut out your creativity?
Just as much as those scars I left when I clawed at your brain
When you used to speak of moths consumed in flame and carving someone's face out of your mind and sandpapering away all your flaws
Because death hurts and love is death
I hurt and I am love

None of it was true, you whisper
Not even my existence
I don't know if I am real
Or even if you are

But this is art, I chant
This is art

Envy on the Coast. "Clean of You (with unindexed track 'Just South of Heaven')." Lowcountry. Photofinish, 2010. CD

I Think This Is About God

2010-07-05T17:58:00.000-07:00

Things that are remembered
Tattooed over scars
Like your name on the inside of my wrist
Over that time I left my veins run
But not long enough, not nearly
To bleed out his name
On that apathetic blue tile

They said that this was love
Or close enough
Because emotions wear masks
And we have hormones and pheremones to blame
For senseless attraction or rash suicides
Even failed ones
And we'd sooner kill ourselves than the romance

But you, you said you'd stitch the skin together
Much better than coagulated blood
Or whatever the term is to describe senseless healing
Or wounds that don't fester
My heart was made for the arts, they said
That's why it breaks so easily

And it must be Plato's Forms
The physical is imperfect
Shadow reality dancing on dim cave walls
Turn out the lights, love
My eyes are burning
My skin is fine, though my soul is bleeding

But you offered your name
In pure syllables skimming over sheared flesh
As a cure. A salve, you said
With gentle fingers and whispered coersions
Pressing against dripping recollections
It hurts to kiss the pain away

And you're better than fortunes
Or pink capsules swalloed dry
You're love

And I'm better than milk crates
Or my name on some headline
I want...love
And for you to help me recall
That there is permanence to my exhalations
As your name pulses with imperfect blood
Over scarred skin and suicide

When Men Become Gods

2010-07-01T22:37:00.003-07:00

And I know that you love someone, but that someone isn't me. Or is this me?
I don't want to do this, I say
Even as my fingers close over cheap wood
And bristles stain your skin
And acrylic cerulean fumes around your nose
I want you to be real
Real like me
Like he was
At least before I painted, sullied, loved him
And then built a tiny altar
And then broke a great big spirit
And then made jealous all the gods
For long-neglected cults
The Olympians screamed, I swear
My soul was damned, I swear
But he was beautiful, I swear
And you are, too
Even masked, even smeared
With tiny bubbles forming on your perfect skin
And I don't want to do this
But it's all I know
It's the only way I love
And I do or I will or I have
Even if this isn't you
You look so much better painted
Everyone does

Madina Lake. "House of Cards." From Them, Through Us, To You. Roadrunner, 2007. CD

The Truth And How It Hurts

2010-06-28T23:14:00.000-07:00

And you said that the sun doesn't kiss or caress
It just fucks
Rough and fast and unloving
With no pretensions or pretty words or slow seduction
Just like you and I
Because there is no romance
And love is questionable, too
But you can be like the sun

The Words I Stole For You

2010-06-28T18:06:00.000-07:00

Do you collect words like I do, darling?
Half-priced in clearance boxes
And in between dirty bookjacks
Written by men who lacked initiative or clarity or love
And are they heavy on the lips?
Like the names of lovers
Or receipes we never cooked
Or admissions of feelings we're not supposed to have
You said I shouldn't love you once
With your fingers shredding paper napkins
And your eyes not meeting mine
In the moonlight
You were made for destruction, you confessed
And you can't unnurture nature
I was depreciating my own soul
Because you'd only pull it apart
Slowly, sadistically
Like unthreading crotched scarves
Or maybe hats
Pressing your hair against your eyes
Those broken eyes
That dance over the words I pilfered for you
Because it would be much more romantic, love
And maybe just more tragic
To know we stole for each other
Like the Gift of the Magi
Only wrong and painful and not okay
Like us
Oh, darling, do you, too?
Do you, too?

(And I write poems on my Verizon Razzle and read Tolstoy and like to imagine that I was worth the plagirism. Because you were. Oh, how you were.)

Late Reflections on my Father

2010-06-22T11:08:00.000-07:00

It's always hard for me to talk about the Poppa. At least seriously. Because casual references are super-easy. Because they're superficial. Like, oh he's bald. Or, oh, besides that, the kid seriously looks like me. Or, oh, he's in Canada right now, but normally in Vegas. But beyond that, deeper beneath the surface or even if we rewind to a couple years in the past. That's different. And that's awkward. And that's painful.

And it's because he was and is who he needed and needs to be. And that person wasn't and isn't always enough. That person hurt me a lot and that person is often blamed for some of my issues. And that's why I've written this purposefully after Father's Day. Because that needs to be acknowledged, too, even though it's a special day. For that person. For my father. Who he was and who he is and who he will be.

So here's to my Poppa. Imperfect and loud and bald and super tall and slightly chubby. An awesome dog-trainer and hunter and Vicente Fernandez-imitator. A man with callused hands and skin the same color as mine, who used to pay me to pull the white from his hair, when he still had it. Who divorced my mother when I was six years old. Who I don't see nearly enough. A man who still smells the same way he did when I was little. Who hugs super tight. And still insists that I'm his little girl.

And the point of Father's Day is to celebrate. And maybe ignore fault or logical incongruences--like how angry I was at this man, or how I've lived more years with my stepfather than with the man whose blood pumps through my veins and whose features are stamped on my face. And maybe that's why I suck at holidays. Or at the very least this one.

Because I love my father. Very much. But I can't lie. Because that doesn't foster growth. And it took me a lot to admit this, Poppa. Much more than I'm truly willing to acknowledge.

And maybe the point of this is to say: he wasn't the best. But he tried. And even though sometimes he didn't really, he's changed now. And I am grateful for him.

For crinkly smiles and warm hands and hugs and laughing. And maybe making it a little easier to recall memories with you. To building new ones.

Pebbles

2010-06-16T12:35:00.000-07:00

Let's collect memories like pebbles from distant beaches in July
Or maybe June
Depending on when managers give us the week off
And we can afford bus tickets and taxi rides and sandy towels and maybe love
And let's press seashells to our ears and hear tiny symphonies
As blood rushes to our eardrums
And maybe imagine life after death
When we stare at m-shaped birds in darkening skies
And hear God's presence in tumbling waves
Pressing against our curling toes
And let's walk barefoot
Or at least flipflopped on wet piers
And eat too much salt water taffy
And pretend that these things are enough
At least for, maybe only for, now
And maybe let's bury the bad ones in the sand
And sidestep glass from beer bottles
And peeling sunburned skin
And people that press to harshly against our fantasies
And let's pretend that experiences are truly like beach pebbles
And that you can select the prettiest and roundest and smoothest to feel against your palm
And maybe ascribe to youthful nostalgia or naivete or lust or love or existence
And feel me against your skin
Or your consciouness
Like stones in glass jars
Gathering dust and desire and hope and false memories

(Written sans caps and periods in my new phone)

The One Where I Read Steinbeck

2010-06-08T15:33:00.001-07:00

Adam Trask, East of Eden, "A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid anymore."

Samuel Hamilton's response, "It's my duty to take this thing of yours and kick it in the face, and then raise it up and spread slime on it thick enough to blot out its dangerous light...I should hold it up to you muck-covered and show its dirt and danger. I should warn you to look closer until you can see how ugly it really is...And I should straighten out your tangled thoughts, show you that the impulse is gray as lead and rotten as a dead cow in wet weather. If I did my duty well, I could give you back your bad old life and feel good about it"

And my ex professor (ex because he didn't let me take the exam early so I had to drop his class because I couldn't fail) said that we should never take words out of context or manipulate them to our own ends. Because it's unfair to the original writer. To twist and distort. But this is a blog. And I don't listen to people. Not usually. Besides, this is easily one of the greatest books ever written. An expansion of the relationship between Cain and Abel. Come on, what's not to love? My tattoo is based on this novel. But I digress.

Darling, I have learned
To live among those shadows you once banished
With words and fireflies and promises of life after death
And they'll kill me if they know their forms are lies
Because you speak much too loudly
For someone who gives secrets
And they can hear, love
Musing on what I have known and what I have lost

And please stop
Forcing recollection of sunlight kissing skin
Adding painfully vivid colors to my outlined concepts
Telling me there is more to this world than dark shapes and feigned affection and incomplete thoughts
And don't ask me to tell you why I loved you
Because I won't know what to say
Except maybe that you were an illusion
Reflected on a dim cave wall for dim eyes and dim minds to perceive
And romanticize and lust for and love

And I don't mean to break the heart I thought didn't exist
Inside of me
But I couldn't grasp at these emotions
And I let them die when you left
To survive after you stole back your light and your colors and your words
And I tightened my own fetters
Because the colors bleed outside the lines
And remind me that you promised there was more

So, let me caress these shadowed projections and imagine them trees
Because it's nice to pretend
Because they lied
Because having known, I miss you all the more
And I long for darkness

Language

2010-06-05T07:47:00.000-07:00

It's like verb conjugation--instinctual
In the way you don't have to think
About he, she, we, they, love
But in your native tongue, you amend
Pressing your fingers against my wrist
Your forehead to mine
Breathing against my skin
Because French has silent endings and foreign subjects
And they even have different vowel sounds
But the way I love you is pure, thoughtless, perfect
And love has no language save for fingertips and lips and skin and pantomimed affections

(I found this in my notebook while trying to write my paper on Ezra and Nehemiah. And school is over, but I keep finding poems I jotted in the margins of my notes. I will get around to consolidating them one day. One sloppy poem at a time).

Because You're Too Complex for Complete Thoughts

2010-06-03T09:53:00.001-07:00

I listen John Cale's "Hallelujah" on repeat
And I dogear pages in the Bible and 1001 Nights
And I conjure up your face whenever I'm feeling happy
As if to say that there is proof that this world is ugly
Or that it hurts when emotions aren't returned
Or reflected dimly

And you don't ask how I feel
But I pretend that you do
That you smile and pronounce my name with clipped syllables
And pretend that nothing ever happened
Because it didn't
At least not to outside obsevers
But this is unreliable first
And the victors and the brokenhearted write history

And I'm wondering how to tell you that I am still alive
And whether you care that it's your name when I'm lonely
Or when I'm feeling masochistic
Which is much more often than normal
Because you've made me not normal
Because it's nice to pretend
That we can transfer faults
That liability is reflective
And that your eyes once adored me

And I wish that I could write in complete sentences
Especially when it comes to you
And the lips that kissed me in a dream
Almost 20 months ago
When I pronounced this love
At least for, only for me
In a dream where you held my hand and pressed your forehead to mine as we breathed

And I'm sorry, my darling
I had forgotten
That you were real
And that I was, too
At least if we stop questioning our existence
And trying to make meaning of the patterns in the stars
The way I try to piece together the flecks in your eyes
But only in a dream

(I can't be blunt when it comes to you. But this is the closest I'll come to actually telling the truth)

These Are the Hearts of Lonely People Ripped in Front of Us

2010-05-29T15:47:00.000-07:00

These are the veins of the way that we love...We only did what we had to do...

And you say that whispers can break necks

And that caresses can pierce skin

And that kisses can cause implosions in distant galaxies

But that hearts are like diamonds

They can only cut, can only hurt one another

They're indestructible until you let someone in

And you asked with your large eyes

And your large smile

And your large words for me to make this grand sacrifice

To suspend disbelief

And pretend that you knew what this meant

And to let you carve something beautiful of the emotions that danced

And the affection that fluttered

And the way that it felt when you touched my face

And darling, you taught me only how to love only with destruction

With wars

And charred fields

And blood

And broken smiles and broken promises and broken hope

And love, my love, we've collapsed throats

And cut flesh

And folded distant stars

And shredded once enduring, once beautiful hearts

Each others', for each other, you promised, you swore

And love, my love, it hurts just as much
It's hard to breathe, hard to heal, hard to believe when the moons bleeds
When the sun darkens
When angels cry

Oh, and love, my love, is this love?

Isles & Glaciers. "Hills Like White Elephants." The Hearts of Lonely People. Equal Vision, 2010. CD.

Acknowledgments

2010-05-28T05:15:00.000-07:00

I came to another realization earlier. While talking to the Momma, who is amazing and beautiful and a blessing in my life. And I was attempting to explain to her what it was I sought, what fueled this wanderlust, and when and if I'd ever find that place that I'd want to spend the rest of my life (the closest I've come is Los Angeles).

And I think I've gotten to the heart of it. Eutopia or utopia, ideal, nonexistent. Because Sir Thomas More must have known that these imperfect human locations leave one feeling empty.

And I know this because I was talking to my Momma about the racism (against Arabs and Gypsies and Romanians, for a change of pace) and narrow-mindedness (in regards to an unwillingness to acknowledge the importance of other Spanish dialects) that exists in Spain. And I lamented how I thought since they were a European country with socialized healthcare and this rich history and cultural diversity that it wouldn't exist. But it does. Because I think it's pretty much everywhere, you know. Fear of the other. Generalization of them, as well.

I told my Momma, "I just want to find a place where this doesn't exist." And because we were speaking on the phone, I couldn't see her face. But I knew she was nodding. Because the Momma gets me. And she has the same tendencies. To want for something more. To want that special place.

But said place doesn't exist.

At least not yet. Because I must be the change I wish to see in the world. Because progress is proactive. You can't stumble upon perfection. You have to work for it. And I'm unlikely to find that place.

Except for LA. Because it's amazing. As are the people. And the streets. And the graffiti. And the smoggy air. And I once wrote a poem about bleeding its broken, brown skies. Because I feel it in my bones.

But it's not perfect either. And I want it to be. And an awkwardly religious statement would be that this is a fallen world and that because of that it isn't ideal. But that we can advance slowly towards it. Even though that's humanism. And people assert that humanism is incongruent with Christianity. Though Erasmus, one of the unwilling inspirations of the Protestant Reformation, was a Christian humanist. And an awesome one at that. But people don't listen to logic when it comes to these things and perceive any faith not overtly Christian as being overtly anti-Christian. Because...they suck.

Whatever the case, I loathe racism. Truly loathe it. There is not place for it in my world.

I'll place my arm beside yours and tell you that your skin is beautiful. I'll hear your stories, your legends, the lullabies your mother whispered to you in the night. And now that we are all human. And beautiful. And I'll continue to hope for change in this imperfect, little world.

On Falling

2010-05-23T17:17:00.000-07:00

You say that when you kiss me you imagine falling

Falling in love, falling in place, falling in debt, falling from grace, falling for lies and half truths that round my lips

And you say it's easier when I smile

Because sacrifices look like gifts in the right light
And it's not as if you'd shed this blood for another

And even if I hurt you, tear and drain and betray you, it will still be beautiful

Even if you feel pain. Because beauty and normalcy and sanity is relative

Because you say I make you lose gravity
As you fall apart, fall into disgrace, fall to pieces, fall for me

And sometimes certain parts die when you love. Rend and wither and hurt.

Oh, but others come alive, even as you fall

Now That My Departure Is Not Some Vague Concept

2010-05-20T17:35:00.000-07:00

There have been many hiccups on this whole "study abroad" dealio. Having my luggage lost, struggling to find housing, loathing where I live, walking 40 minutes to school every day, freaking out over the validity of my student visa, breaking my iPod, not being able to change my plane ticket, freaking out over that class that wouldn't let me take the final earlier. As well as several, smaller tragedies.

And now, I glance at my plane ticket, and it says that June 13 at 5:10 PM, I shall be in the US. The country I've been away from for almost 4 months. The country I've defended and depreciated and missed and known.

I'm going back. I want so badly to go back.

Because there are things I'm looking forward to. Like tortillas and Mexican food. And my mother. And things being open from 2-5 PM and even after midnight. And my buddies. And my family. And hearing English spoken. And my bed.
And there are aspects that I shall miss. Of Spain. Like the people--specifically the stout men in newsboy caps that call me "guapa" and the little children that exclaim about my hair or get ridiculously excited at my being American. And the language, in the sense that I'm much better at it than before. Because I've learned in this language. Because hearing it spoken changes one. Learning in it. Writing essays in it. Ordering food in it. Reading in it. Buying clothes in it. Picking up packages in it. Getting help in it. Looking for monuments in it.

And I still speak with el seseo, the indelible mark that comes with having learned Spanish from Mexicans who don't distinguish between c's and s's and z's. So that my last name is Lo-pez, not Lo-peth. So that I live in Ari-zo-a, not Ari-tho-na. But even then, my Spanish is more awesome. Dealing with bureaucrats as you try to figure out the legal ramifications of maybe overstaying your visa are (The aforementioned overstay was 3 weeks. It's not even like I'm planning on living here. They don't show Criminal Minds, and I hate the actor they use to dub House. Also, they play too much Lady GaGa. And I'm not even going to stay anymore, because British Airways told me I couldn't. This is a really long parenthetical thought).

Also, I like who I am now. I know that's really cheesy. Because that's exactly what they told me I would feel. And I don't like fulfilling the cliche, because truly, that's what everyone does, and I'm supposed to be special. Unique. Awesome. One-of-a-kind.

But I do feel different. In the sense that, I'm changed. The way I see myself in relation to the rest of the world. I'm a global citizen. Not just an American one. And my country has quite the impact on the rest of this fine planet. We're pretty ubiquitous. It's quite unnerving how important we are. How much our culture seeps into everyone else's. And the jealousy and disdain that that provokes. I've been witness to that. And maybe we--we as in Americans--should become more sensitive to the fact that we are so huge. And that everyone knows about Miley Cyrus and Ke$ha and the Hills and Rock of Love. That's how we're perceived. And we wonder why they hate.

And hearing this, experiencing this has made me a better person. In the sense that my skin is a little harder to pierce. I've heard enough anti-Americanism for me to come face to face with my own country's problems. And to truly become embarrassed at certain aspects of our existence. And it's different. Different than it was when I mocked the Hilton sisters or laughed at sorority girls. Because now, I am aware that others laugh, too. People that speak different languages and have different national currencies and don't proscribe to our brand of society. Because we don't live in a vacuum. We are all denizens of this tiny little planet. And we are connected. The internet helps.

I lost that chart from the CIE, but I think this might have been one of the affects of studying abroad. A cultural relativism. A growing realization of the marks left by the country I know, little tattoos of our society. For everyone to see and touch and analyze. Discomfort with what little exposure we've had to the other. How closed off we are to difference and tolerance and change. How as an American, I am different than these Spaniards, how I do take certain cultural norms for granted, how uncomfortable it makes me to notice how uncomfortable these differences make me. Because when someone eats and how someone dresses and their attitude towards cleanliness, as well as perception of time and ideological values held dear and interpersonal relationships. They're all cultural. And culture isn't necessarily universal. So, I'm weird here. And I think they're weird, too. And that's culture shock.

And as a minority, I'm distinct in some ways from the "typical American" but not really. Or at least, not as much as I originally thought. I've met Mexicans here. And they're different than I am. Because their culture is different. Because I'm a Mexican-American. A Chicana. But here, just American. Because that's the culture I most exhibit. I'm not the prototype, but I don't really break the mold. Because I found myself defending our founding fathers and our country's baby history and economic self-interests and even heard myself approaching the whole "If you think we're so lame, stop copying us!" argument.

And discussions on race and immigration and general politics made me uncomfortable. Because I got the distinct impression that I wasn't arguing as one twenty-year-old Chicana female who grew up in the Southwestern United States, who spoke English as a second language. A single Christian currently attending college at a public university in order to obtain a Bachelor's Degree in Religious Studies. Nope, I was arguing as all of America. All 50 states. And that's not cool. So I said I would rather talk about movies. Because they're really popular here. Excessively so, I would argue.

And it does bother me that something that was so integral to my identity really isn't that integral. And that I'm more American than I would have thought. And that that's all the Spaniards wish to know. That I live in Arizona and speak with an American accent and watch television in English and once lived in the state where all of the movies are made and also where all the gambling is done. And that I've never been to New York or Washington, D.C. And that I voted for Obama. And that we weigh things in lbs. and measure temperature in Fahrenheit. And that I'm 5'11" tall, not whatever the conversion to meters is. That we have stereotypes about the French and the Canadian, but not really the Spanish. That Protestantism, and not Catholicism, is the norm. That we don't sell beer at our Burger Kings. That we have things open 24 hours. That school is ridiculously expensive. That our government is not particularly okay with socialism. That our graffiti isn't as awesome or political. That we had this thing called Manifest Destiny. That we abolished slavery 150 years ago. That we have an FCC that doesn't let us say too many no-no words on TV. That Top 40 isn't really that awesome, and all the cool kids listen to underground shizz. That that is America. Not Britney Spears or Kim Kardashian. Not rich kids or workaholics or racists or fat kids or the Bible Belt or Tea-Partiers or flag-burners or our politicians. That we're not a caricature, but a country. With real people. Not just images on the screen that you import from Hollywood and deem the norm. Because I belong there. More than I would have thought. I miss there.

I feel that I am rambling. This is stream of conscious.

I don't know if I've changed all that much. The true test shall be the designated "reverse culture shock" when I go back. Whether I'll be unable to handle the return to my country.

And maybe I'll reflect on that. And feel uncomfortable and isolated and lonely. Like I do here. I truly do not know much about how I'll be in the future. But right now, I'm so excited to go back home.

Perfection Can Only Be Imagined

2010-05-18T14:52:00.002-07:00

You say you want to remember what it was like before we existed
To remember dreams we had in the womb and conversations we had with stars
When we were made of dust and hope and love
And were simply and perfectly and paradoxically
Before the sun was born or at least before it kissed our faces
When there were only vague concepts like individuality and logic and knowledge
And you wonder aloud if we hugged angels or saw God
And whether or how we breathed and the essence of which these planets were carved
Because you wax poetic on being knit in the womb and being beautiful, terrifying creations
And you touch my hand as you muse
Smile with your distracted eyes as you recite ancient poems and whisper complicated cosmologies
Pondering things imagined and occurring long ago
Because you say love is as close as we'll get
At least during this life

Psalm 139

I Said I Wouldn’t Do This, But Everyone Knows I Lie

2010-05-16T07:15:00.001-07:00

Hey, remember the last time I did a “study abroad reflection” post?

Yeah, me neither. Because I don’t want to talk about my life. I just want to post poems that I scribble in my school notes while waiting for my professors to show up.

They described a roller coaster, and they didn’t lie.

Spain is difficult for me. On the one hand, I love the country. I mean, it’s beautiful and all old and history-y and foreign. But I’m not a fan of my housing situation. And this is what teenagers do, and I’m not “technically” one anymore, but I still feel that way when I start discussing my problems. I really, really, really don’t like my housing situation. Seriously. The FH is awesome, but he’s kind of the only one. I’m butting heads with people and bearing the brunt of anti-Americanism and generally attempting to reconcile this latent-but-emerging-only-when-I’m-in-a-foreign-country patriotism with a desire to fit in. I am an American. And as such, I am representative of the entire country as a whole. I am to blame for Paris Hilton and Miley Cyrus. It’s my fault the Jonas Brothers are here. It’s my fault that we have bad reality TV shows. And it’s my fault that Spain imports them and dubs them and uses them to make fun of us. It’s my fault.

And any misstep is also applied to my entire country. Sarai forgot to clean her room. All Americans are lazy and fat and stupid. And apparently not okay with people making comments about how dumb their country is. They’re also cheap. Did you see how she’s not okay with spending $450 a month on Spanish food? She’s actively rejecting a big aspect of our culture. Why is she even complaining? Aren’t they all rich? And gah, these kids are so touchy. Seriously, your country is greedy and arrogant and only looking out for their best interests. They’re also only 200 years old. And unimportant. Because we have buildings older than you. See how we’re better?

I’m getting tired of staying quiet. But people don’t always let you get a word in.

And I got yelled at yesterday. Which was not even remotely fun. It never is when someone talks at you. And I cried. Because I do that when I get frustrated. I do that when I feel impotent.

And I don’t want to complain, but I honestly think that where I’m living right now and the experiences I’m having are for sure contributing to my inability to completely assimilate into Spanish culture. I’m on the defense, trying to tell people that in the same way they don’t like me mentioning the inconvenience of the siesta, I would prefer they not mock my country. Mutual respect, you see. You think my customs are weird, but I think yours are. Don’t you see that “normal” is a convention? Don’t you see that you’re not better, just different? That we come from different cultures and that's okay? I’m not wrong or strange or broken. I’m just different. Also, just as an aside, I don’t believe anyone should ever say “I don’t know how they do things where you’re from, but here we don’t do that.” I even called on my buddies to punch me in the face if I said that. Because way to alienate someone and also make them feel culturally inferior. Butt-face.

But that’s not the point of this. The point is that I’m leaving in June and so very excited to return to Arizona. To hug my family and watch Criminal Minds and eat corn tortillas and cottage cheese and play with my dog and be…American. Without having that work against me. And it’s kind of the same thing with being Mexican in Flagstaff, but not really. Because I can be like, “Hey, I am a part of the cultural diversity of this country,” and not “Hey, I’m an American you can monologue at and pick apart as being the prototype for my country, while also blaming me for the maybe-envy and disdain you have for this baby superpower.”

Fact: I don’t think I can live in Spain. At least not in the situation I’ve been in. Expatriotism (it says it’s not word, what’s the noun form for ‘condition of being an expatriate’?), I assume, would be hard, because of the prevalence of American society in world and the immediate correlation between these representations and my existence. I’d be defending, I presume.

[Insert segue here]

Also, I went to Cordoba with the FH, and it was spectacular. And I liked it so much more than Granada because it was much prettier. It was worth the blistered feet and cramped bus ride and 25 Euro roundtrip ticket and waking up at 5 AM. In short, it was awesome. I stood in a tower and went inside a mosque and a cathedral and a synagogue and got all cultured.

This is my favorite picture of the trip:

From the top of El Acazar de Los Reyes Cristianos

Also, I purchased my father a slingshot. Because he’s in Canada, and also going through a little bit of culture shock, I think. Plus he’s awesome and all old and bald with a crinkly smile that looks too much like mine because we have the same face. Other purchases: whistle for the little brother (the littlest one, not the one that’s 18 and taller than me) and my baby cousin (who I’m pretty sure is me minus a few years and with a Y chromosome) and a decorative tile for the Momma. I wanted to buy more. But my feet hurt, and we left the same day we got there.

The FH is in Sevilla right now. I passed. Cordoba was what I truly wanted to visit. Plus, Sevilla is supposed to be huge. And my legs hurt. One of the awesome aspects of having an arthritic knee.

With my current track record, who even knows if I’ll make another post like this before I’m back in the U.S. of A.

But I want to do one on slang, a little bit.

Firefly

2010-05-10T14:19:00.002-07:00

I dreamt of you last night as a lightening bug

A firefly flitting across the night sky
Inconsequential and flickering and transitory
As your iridescent wings carried you away
Away from me and my words and my weak love
Your name fell carelessly from my lips
Two exquisitely painful syllables--my love, my heart, the one
And I had only Freudian slips and stained checkered bedsheets and ink blots on paper to remember your smile
Because I knew you could not burn brighter
Because I knew you were an ill reflection of an ill reflection
And I needed the sun
I needed his words
Because your life span was shorter and more beautiful--as you were, as were your brain, your thorax, your abdomen--shorter, more beautiful
And I said I could keep you in spotted mason jars
And I reasoned that there were more awful things than glass and solitude and the broken way in which I touch your face
But those delicate wings and those delicate limbs and that delicate way in which you evaded my affection
I knew I couldn't change you
I knew that there were more beautiful things
So, my love, you flew away
Towards twinkling stars and darkened horizons and loves that didn't crush you as I did
As I did, as I would, as I will

(Truth be told, I have no idea of whom I speak. So just take these pretty words at face value, darling, and don't question the clever evasion of your beautiful eyes or the practiced omission of antecedents. For when I know for whom these clauses dance, I shall let you know. For now, let me mull over these loaded phrases and wonder after the pain and art and beauty.)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/plj/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

To The Momma

2010-05-10T05:32:00.002-07:00

So, I've been thinking of the best way to do this. Because I rock at agonizing over things and procrastination.

But also because it always seems like not enough to thank someone for so much on one day.

And I remember the slideshow I made and even attempted another one, but it was halting because I couldn't think of an appropriate song and I also lacked pictures. I also felt that such an endeavor should be left to the more visually creative daughter (not me, the little one).

So I've decided on this method. Simply declaring my mother's awesomeness on the internet. Because she is. And the internet is a public forum, and I'm better at writing.

So here it goes:

My Mom is awesome. She seriously is. I know that everyone says that, but mine is still better. It's okay; you can be jealous because I seriously lucked out.

For sure.

My Mom is awesome because she gets me, and I mean really gets me. Because I'm a strange child with strange ways and strange thoughts and strange mannerisms. And mostly people don't, at least not really. But my Momma, she doesn't mind that I'm weird or different or have an awkward sense of humor that few understand. And she lets me be myself. Truly, myself. Which is always amazing. I can be me, and sometimes she raises her eyebrow and pronounces me "not well." But she still loves me for who I am.

Also, my Momma is motherly. It's redundant, but so what? I can count on her for anything. Seriously anything. Freaking out over school, freaking out over money, freaking out over life. And she understands. I find that I need her advice more and more as I age. I never really took advantage of it when I was younger. But now at twenty, I find myself wanting to be smothered with her affection. Because I'm away at college a lot, and I often miss her really loud laugh and her angry voice and the way she squeezes when she hugs. My Momma has a big brain and even bigger heart. And she's like what a Mom is supposed to be. Warm and loving and understanding. And other traits: funny and loud and full of life. Sarcastic and spunky, as well.

And she's been there for me. Always, since I came into this world as a wrinkly baby with a dark eyes and even darker hair. She's love me the whole time. She's known me longer than I've known myself (Isn't that weird thought? My Momma has known me since before I was born, before I really knew myself. She has like 9 months of prior knowledge on me). And it's weird to me, because she was my age when she welcome that baby with that squished face into the world. And I can't imagine being a Momma right now. Especially not one as cool as she is.

So, Momma, here's to thanking you for changing my diapers and potty training me and teaching me to share and showing me how to tie my shoes and giving me a little brother and sister(both of whom are taller than I am) and buying me things and hugging me and letting me cry and watching me grow up and accepting me and understanding me and cooking food and trusting me and talking to me almost every day over Skype and not letting me put myself down. Here's to being an amazing mother.

Truly amazing.

And I remember el Hermano Marcos saying that mothers were something special, because they could create life. Like God does. That they were the only ones that had this special ability. One that men/fathers don't. And I am grateful to God that you are so awesome and that I get to know you. That I got to be born to a woman that has trouble modulating her voice and understands things like credit cards and bank statements and occasional dyes her hair interesting colors and is almost painful in her affection. That I got to have a Mom that says things like "fo sho" and "Whoever said I was nice?" That this woman gave birth to me and loved me and raised me.

Also, you helped make me ridiculously attractive ;)

I seriously could not find a song. It was tragic.

And I'm Not Afraid, At Least Not Do Die

2010-05-06T13:56:00.002-07:00

I'm afraid to live and not remember why

It's tragic, you say
Less like salt in the wound, and more like used for torturing slugs
And there are so many stars that have died—souls, too
And all we have are old night skies and carcasses of dreams
And you say you wished for something akin to this, but He doesn't always hear you right
And we break bones and stretch muscles to accommodate aging limbs
But I become more beautiful as twilight kisses my forehead
You said; I believed
And even as your fingertips dance over my skin and your eyes smile
It's still tragic, you muse
Because cities are built upon cemeteries and altars erected upon sepulchers
It always hurts when you die

^This is raw, uncut poetry.
Written before my Jews in the Modern Era class. Because this is what happens when I arrive to class 10 minutes early and sit by myself in the dark.

I leave Spain in 5 weeks. I can't believe I've been here almost almost 3 months.

Envy on the Coast. "Lapse." Lucy Gray. Photofinish, 2007. CD

This Isn’t Youth. This Isn’t Rebellion.

2010-04-29T15:53:00.002-07:00

We wax philosophical on bathroom walls—with scribbled black, block treatises on why and what and how we are, desperate attempts at grasping, lavatory solipsists and narcissists and metaphysicists

We dig for meaning in binary code and sift through html formations for that connection and that acknowledgment of self, of truth, of empathy, for love they say we don’t have and don’t want and don’t need

And we hope, how we hope, for redemption in painful basslines and snarled lyrics, for beauty in graffiti-scarred buildings and tattooed memorials. Because the lonely understand. Because you will not understand.

But we’re not broken. At least not really. For we’ve taped paper tears and glued dented hearts. Because convictions are stronger than words and wounds and stains. And you can only shatter those that are willing. We are not willing.

We are not lost. I am not lost. Please, find me.

And Maybe I’m Not Perfect, But, Love, Neither Are You

2010-04-26T13:20:00.001-07:00

My great-uncle once told me that we are all empty gas tanks, looking for another human being to fill us up. But they can’t. And we can’t. Because we’re all empty. Because, only God can give us that sense of completion. Because only God can fill us up.

We can’t give from our debt. We can’t give from our want. And we can’t be that saving force behind another human being.

And I was 12 when he said this, whispered to my aunt on the kitchen table. And I was very much in love with this boy. His name was Nicholas, and I wrote it on my notebooks sometimes and wondered if he felt the same. And I wanted to believe that people did complete one another, that there was this other half, and that God was simply complementary, but not enough.

Because God didn't have Nick’s brown eyes or his spiked black hair (I was 12) or his deepening voice.

And I’m only remembering this because I repeated it to my Momma while talking on Skype with her this morning. Because people want to know if I struggle with my loneliness. Because people want to know if I hold another’s hand or cradle another’s heart.

And I’m only remembering because I still want to believe.

Because God doesn’t have your profile or your smile or your other distinguishing features. Too specific to name, my darling.

Because I wanted you to complete me. Like a semi-colon between two independent clauses, like that Facebook flair. Because I wanted you to complete me like the way they do in fairytales.

I think this might be growth.

And maybe I’ll never get married. And maybe I’ll never have children. And maybe I’ll never know what it’s like to hold someone's hand in the dark and know without a doubt that we belong.

But I’ve found comfort in the certainty that I will be okay. That your emptiness, my love, would not be enough. That I am empty no longer. And that I can and will love. That I am loved.

And now, I must go back to life beyond these revelations. To papers I must write and books I must read and words I must learn.

They said I would change. I think they were right. I think that’s why this hurts.

Skin

2010-04-25T16:10:00.001-07:00

If I invited you to spend a day in this skin, would you take up the offer?

Because we speak of universal truths and overarching human experiences. But not of the way that these arteries and veins are arranged or the haphazard connections between synapses. Because you mention how DNA is really just an arbitrary collection of protein sequences and that we’re 99.99% the same.

But that .01%. And that blood pumped to my heart. And the stimuli my brain perceives. And my skin.

If I invited you to spend a day in this skin, richer in melanin and scarred with childhood games and different and special and beautiful in its own way, too

That almost 100% and those biological similarities and that gray matter and your own skin--They’re not enough

Because those distinctions, minute as they may be, make it so you won’t understand. So you can’t understand. Though we all long for love, though our DNA is similar, though your heart beats like mine

Just one day. With my skin and my name and my heart and my life.

So, would you?

I don’t want to get political (again), so I won’t. Suffice it to say I’m returning to Arizona when my semester in Spain is done. Suffice it to say this is my skin.

Bribing The Executioner, Part I

2010-04-16T04:04:00.001-07:00

I've bribed the executioner, darling
Dirty money and broken jewels pressed into grimy hands--hands like yours, my love, but not as soft
And, love, I'm going soon
Is there something you want to say?

Will you be there, my love, when silken knees are stained with dirty rain?
Will you be there, my love, among jeers for fallen, seditious nobles?
Will you be there, my love?
For exposed necks and clenched fists and my blood
My last moments, when I shall only think of you. Will you be there?

Please answer.

And love, will you remember me?
That you were loved by an unvirtuous girl
Who adored your coarse hands and coarse clothing and brown eyes
Your impure love and dirty fingernails and lisped affections
Will you remember?

Though I am going soon, though you seem to have nothing to say

And love, you spoke to me of iron and fire and past lives and souls that were made for each other
And love, you pressed with your fingertips insecurities about sanctified water and murmured liturgies
And love, you brushed the hair out of my eyes and told me that love stains and that words do, too, as you marked my arm with soot

Say something, if you must. Say something with those lips that once pressed against my forehead and told me that I tasted of rain

And love, you sighed about what could never be
And love, you whispered passages of books I never read and thoughts I never had
And love, your hands once brushed against rich fabric where my body curved--fabric that will soon be stained with my blood--and told me there were more awful things

But now, now I am leaving and you speak not to me

And love, you told me that you were soiling me
With dirty hands and poor love and hasty, inappropriate sweeps of your fingers
And love, you told me that I was beautiful
And love, you believed me when I told you I loved you
And love, you promised that there were things like Fate and Eternity and Unconditional Love
And love, you said I made you believe in them
Love, you promised

Love, speak to me. Love, say something. For his ax is sharpened. Tell me only that you'll be there.

Rein In the Awesomeness. This Really sucks.

2010-04-14T04:02:00.001-07:00

In, “I had this saved in my Windows Live Writer and probably should have published this shizz” news, my blog got approved by Encylopedia Britannica, and I now get free premium access. That’s a $70 bargain, and it’s quite cool. Offer extends to all bloggers. Check it out.

http://forms01.britannica.com/help/blogwebmasterform.html

I was ridiculously excited for this. I expect others to be, as well.

Also, in “Well that went much better than expected” news, I think I aced my History of the Bible course. I happy-danced and bought myself a chocolate bar.

It was pretty cool. I was one of the first ones done. Really, the first one done, because another girl turned in a blank test and said that she’d rather not pretend that she’d actually learned anything because she hadn’t so she’d gladly accept her F (or whatever the Spanish equivalent of an F is. I wasn’t really listening; I was answering a question about the Masorah).

It’s nice knowing I can string Spanish together even when ridiculously nervous. I have another test tomorrow. In my Judaism and Christianity course, and am similarly nervous for that.

In, “Wow, this really sucks” news, an unknown musician from an unknown band has decided to leave. Dylan Anderson, Of Machines.

And I am sad. Because my bands have a tendency to recycle members and break up and “take breaks.” I swear the scene is so inbred at this point. But they still sound amazing.

Only, now a little less so because of what happened.

So, here’s to you a) taking some time to rediscover yourself b) rebuilding relationship with those you’ve felt you’ve neglected because of this band c) or learning how to make music fun again

You didn’t specify, so I can’t know. And I was a) too lazy to log into my myspace account and b) not seduced by the idea of creating a tumblr to comment on your not “impersonal or anyway insincere” post, to ask said question. I do want to know, though.

Even if cats are killed for this shizz.

Because this is still my favorite song by you kiddos and the music will change:

Songs In My Heart and Thoughts In My Head

2010-04-12T06:24:00.001-07:00

I’ve had this song stuck in my head for the past week. I woke up one morning humming the melody, muttering the refrain “Throwing punches at ocean waves.” Also, “These bones are mere accessories.” Now it’s in there, and I can’t get it out.

I’m not entirely sure why, but I can’t stop listening to it. I can’t bear to not listen to this song. I’m sure that in a little while my housemates will be able to sing all of the lyrics. I skew my Most Played playlist on iTunes.

I’m also getting the “I have to buy a new CD itch.” Right now it’s Sleeping With Sirens. Generic post-hardcore loaded with whiny clean and angry cookie-monster vocals. Also sad lyrics. And boys with skinny jeans and fringed hair.

I need it. I want it. I have to stop myself.

And David Ruffin. I have to buy the Ultimate Collection. I have to. I don’t care that it’s $35 and an investment in DRM-protected media. I hate DRM. That’s in addition to the fact that it’s an expensive whim. He is who I wrote of as my dream musician. He was so prolific, yet extinguished much to soon. Talent died when you did, my favorite Temptation.

I haven’t really been posting from the perspective of an international student much, mostly because I’ve been a hermit and noticing a tendency towards being easily offended. I don’t want to yell at anyone or misrepresent my views or my country or my experiences.

It’s just getting hard.

I made a joking list on my Facebook (Yeah, I have a Facebook. Let’s be best friends. We’ll comment each other’s photos and like each other’s post. Yeah?), about how to offend Spaniards.

1). When the Spaniards were in Mexico, they treated people colored like myself like second-class citizens.

2). What’s the deal with the European Union? I’m an American. Stop treating me worse than you treat the French.

3) Wait, you believe in Racial Profiling? Just because someone is a different color or speaks Spanish differently doesn't mean they're criminals. I don't care if they're Gypsies or Romanian.

4). Just added to list: The siesta makes it really inconvenient when you’re trying to get anything done.

I will acknowledge that the last one was done on purpose. Because I was being told that that I had a skewed view of how things got done in Spain. I was feeling grouchy. I know I hit a nerve because I was told that America was a baby nation that shouldn’t even have museums because it didn’t even have history.

I wanted to respond with something along the lines of “Well, it’s funny how in those 200 years we’ve become this superpower, don’t you think?

Instead, I stepped away from the situation.

What stage of study abroad am I in?

I’m getting mad at the way people make fun of my country. A country I didn’t really appreciate.

Because I’m stressed and confused and sad. I miss the US. I love Spain. I love learning. I love how pretty it is. But I still miss the US.

I keep getting pestered to go out and explore the country. So I did. Even though I didn’t really want to. I have to study for a written exam in my History of the Bible course. My first real-people Spanish test. I am so terrified of finding out my Spanish sucks.

El hecho es de que lo hablo mejor que los demás estudiantes internacionales con los cuales me he encontrado, pero aún sé que no lo hablo al mismo nivel que los españoles. Nadie me pregunta ya si entiendo, porque en verdad la razón que se sabe que soy internacional es que hablo con el seseo. Sé que no he escrito mucho en este idioma. Sé que soy más comoda con el inglés.

^Babelfish that shizz

Exploring Granada, armed with a digital camera and my iPod, playing “The Gift of Paralysis” on repeat was ultimately a good exercise in alone time. I took plenty of pictures and enjoyed playing the role of a tourist.

It helped me relax and gather my thoughts.

Now, back to that exam.

Fact: I Don’t Learn in my Spanish Literature Class

2010-04-09T15:14:00.003-07:00

I just rewrite whatever is written on the board (names, dates, half rhymes, Spanish words I don’t quite understand), stare at the attractive American boy in front of me (he is very, very beautiful), and write. Write of you, of him, of love and life.
Mostly just about how hungry or tired or bored I am. Mostly about my loneliness. Sometimes about how I feel. Others, song lyrics.
Sometimes, there occur works of genius. Gems buried underneath scribbled admissions of guilt and love unrequited. Those sometimes are definitely worth living for. Those are something worth rooting out.
I switch pens when I write, too. Black for anything not pertaining to Spanish literature. Blue for everything that does. I write so much in black.

You are gone much too long, love

And you speak to God

And you caress stone tablets with words I don’t understand

And you promise that I’ll see, that we’ll all know

And you say that I’ve been chosen, that we all have

By God for eternity with a covenant cut into skin

Though we danced before statues, though they are easier to conceive

And you are gone much too long, love, in that mountain that kills

And you tell me of Him with a name too pure to pronounce,

With not a man’s face or words

He who appears in thundering mountains and ashen clouds

He who parts seas; He with whom you speak

When you’re gone for far too long

And you fed my sheep, and you taught me to love

And you are beautiful with your oversized eyes and stuttering lips

Those that have seen and pronounced and known far more than anyone else

Far more, you say, as you leave yet again

And you stumbled over dreams of burning bushes and unsandaled feet

And you tell me with your broken smile that there is hope

I know of woven baskets and whispered prayers

For I have seen. I have known, too.

Though they steal you away, my love

And your hands touch Yehoshua’s

As you swear of Promised Lands and our community as more abundant than the stars

I have seen drowned Egyptians and heard of water made blood

But love, my love, you’re gone far too long.

But I don’t want to be a prophet. I want to be a man. Simply a man. Do not make me someone special. Do not burden me with so much, my Lord.

I tried to look up the Scripture cited, but it’s difficult again. I don’t reference Scripture actively. It’s just done in passing. Pretty much, Exodus.

Sometimes I Wish I Was Catholic

2010-04-05T12:28:00.002-07:00

Not for any theological pining, but simply for the richness and beauty of the faith.

Americans can’t compare.

I’m not even sure if I wish we could. Just observing a difference, a marked one, as I take in the splendor and complexity of these rituals.

They have people dressed in black, pounding drums and making music. We have Charlie Brown Easter Specials and Egg Hunts. They have gigantic cathedrals, with Latin etched in marble arches and gold leaf declarations of Catholic supremacy. We have…yeah, we got nothing.

Spain wins

Semana Santa has reached it’s end, and I can only reflect on the surprising not-seperation-of-church-and-state presented before me as entire avenues close to make room for religious processions (repeatedly).

The Catholic kings triumphed, reclaimed Arab land. Andalucia is Christian. We must celebrate this. We must demonstrate that we still believe. That people died not in vain.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=160761&id=815594372&l=e5ec06b312

I Need Moneys

2010-04-05T06:02:00.003-07:00

I’m being capricious. I have to purchase every CD you’ve ever touched, my dream musician. I have to feel your voice washing over my skin and caressing my ear drums with words that drips like honey.

I have to possess if only this part of you, if only floating melodies and palpable bass lines. Purchased art from a soul like mine, rhythms felt in weary bones. I have to connect in some way, fingerprints staining glassed enclosures, separating me from you, dividing us. Because you know me. Because you complete me. At least for now. At least until tides of whim pull me away.

I think I need a rhapsody account, unlimited musical downloads for a fixed monthly fee. iTunes is too expensive. You’ve touched so much, my love.

I also need to fancy less prolific musicians. Because you've created so many beautiful things

I love music. Much too much.

& Yours even more.

(I feel like we're connected. Like we're two kindred souls. But really, I just feel like you make music that makes me feel...so much.)

I Don't Know Why I Feel This Way. Now, Lay Down [Boy],Take My World

2010-04-03T03:44:00.005-07:00

I know why I can't see your face. I've placed every mole there is to place on your wasted body. Now, lay down [boy] and take my world.

Confession: This is another "emo" thing I found on my laptop. This is also another song that doesn't really apply but is still awesome (Dance Gavin Dance is, and always has been, ridiculously awesome). Thus was life when I felt those things for you.

The title lyrics don't show up until 2:06 into the song, just in case the music is a little intense

& words are not enough. I wonder if they ever were. I malign my art form—this, my only medium—for you. I align my wishes, my future, my life with yours. Not parallel, but intersecting, congruent. Together always.

Oh, and you can say “no.” But duct-taped pleas are paramount to assent, my dream lover. And I could glue these strings to your weary limbs and paint a frozen smile on your perfect, protesting face. I could make you dance for me, my marionette. And maybe then love could be feigned. Only on your end. At least until delusion makes opaque the clarity of this wrong.Until you need me as much as I need you. Until you want me, too.

Because I would take care of you, darling. And this love confines and imprisons and enraptures.You’d want for nothing, save for free will and liberty and control.

& you’re already my world; just let me be yours. Codependence, love, is romantic, too. You’d be my everything, and ego demands you accept this offer. Tell me that this isn’t a narcissistic thrill.

I could name more reasons, object of my affection. I reflect on them ever. Just in case you should ask. Just in case you should go counter to your better judgment and seek this, too.

& rest assured that eventually Stockholm Syndrome would provoke adoration. Even if these butterfly wings were torn from mounting pins. Even if melatonin production was limited by decreased exposure to the sun. Even if these feelings were not truly your own. Just mine reflected blindly and imperfectly. Even if, in the process, you should lose your individuality.

You’ll love me so. Eat from my hand. Breathe the air with which I fill your lungs. And hear the words of love I dole. Because man cannot live by bread alone.

Oh, congruence is not the goal. No, you are not only my slave, dear. Not only this object that I hold and treasure and never release. Because inherent in this fixation is the worship of you. You, my chained deity, my fettered muse.

& my veneration would be genuine and complete. I’d compose ballads to you, odes that I could chant to your statued form. I’d cloud your eyes with sweet incense. I would spill blood for you to drink. There would be no ritual injunctions with me.

Because I worship so devotionally and so intensely that I must arrest you and possess you and absorb you through my pores. I must consume you through these open wounds. I must have you eternally. As my god, as my muse, as my captive.

& baby, this request is only a formality because your fate is etched in stone. It’s written in those stars that I write your name in. And you will be mine, love. You will feel this, too.

Dance Gavin Dance. "And I Told Them I Invented Times New Roman." Downtown Battle Mountain. Rise, 2007. CD

Deuteronomy 8: 2-3 or Mark 4:4 or Luke 4:4

(Take your pick. The Bible is generally pretty awesome)

I Wish It Weren't True, The Fact That I Could Write This Song...And You Can't Speak a Word

2010-04-01T11:56:00.011-07:00

Confession: I write “emo” things, save them on my laptop, forget about them, and then remember.
I also quote songs that often have nothing to do with the content of the actual post. Case in point:

I wrote this love letter in crayon.

No, I haven’t put away these childish things. I still see through a glass darkly. I’m still here.

And oh, my golden calf, won’t you but love me? Lead me out of the wilderness. Banish me not to the desert. And please rain honey from the sky and sprinkle milk upon my lips. Though your end is wormwood, bitter and empty. Though they kill me.

Oh, attire discarded reveals the claws once hidden by wool, and the mark stamped upon your forehead is one I can’t ignore. But I’d forgive you for trampling these pearls, darling. Any contact. Any touch.

And I am still but dust and ashes undertaking to talk to you, you, my supposed lord. Oh darling, I have spoken of things too pure.

And I wrote this in crayon. Because these thoughts—though expressed in impressive words—are childish. Because I am, too. My feet slide in my mother’s shoes and lipstick is smeared and blush sloppily applied.

And you are taller. On this altar on which you’ve been placed. You’re not bigger than my mind, but you’re my god, nonetheless. You’re not worthy of this worship, but it is doled out still.

Oh darling, darling, is it okay to love? Is okay to want and desire and yearn?

I’d have no other gods beside you. I’d never take your name in vain. But I would be ever making images of you, feeding narcissism. I’d pervert the Bible for you. I’d twist the commandments for you.
I’d damn myself for you.

And these prophecies are always fulfilled. Is it the incense, baby? Is it the blood I’ve been spilling at your feet? It’s not a turtledove, but it’s all I have. And these veins are running dry, and I recognize nothing of self-worth or propriety or temperance

Apotheosis. Written in green to demonstrate the immaturity of the act.

Tell me I’m enough. Tell me this is okay. Oh, be my deity. Let me be your faithful follower. Be my god.

Shizz cited/alluded to (actually super-duper hard to do. I make a lot of offhand references to things I struggle to cite. Like a true Religious Studies major, I take for granted the fact that people will immediately recognize what I reference):
1 Corinthians 13: 11-12, the Exodus from Egypt, Exodus 32:4, Numbers 14: 26-35, Proverbs 5:4, Matthew 5:16, Revelations, Matthew 7:6, Genesis 18:27, Exodus 20: 2-17, also the Torah/Pentateuch in regards to offerings and sacrifices.

Envy on the Coast. "You Won't Hear This."Envy on the Coast EP. Photo Finish, 2006. CD
^Even though it's technically an EP...

This Really Does Suck

2010-03-28T16:01:00.005-07:00

The second time in 2 weeks I’ve been stood up for a webcam chat with the Poppa. After waiting seven hours.

And I’m lonely. But I think it’s selective loneliness, because as I was leaning over my boiled eggs, watching the little suckers shake in the water, the FH came and spoke to me. And I was curt, because I didn’t want to talk to him. I wanted to talk to my family. And I wasn’t feeling it. Kid left. Back to his room. He’s probably lonely, too. But his isn’t apparently as selective. He wanted to talk to me, after all.

I just feeling like crying, you know. And hard. Crying hard. I almost started to, while leaning over my boiled eggs. That’s part of the reason I was so curt. Because I wanted to cry because I was lonely. I wanted to be left alone to my loneliness. And he was intruding.

But now he’s not. And now I’m in my room. Really, really sad inside.

I miss my Momma. And I miss my sister. And I just want to hug both of them. And it isn’t really fair, because today was supposed to be “Make up for lonely birthday” day, but I didn’t. I just stayed in my room listening inexplicably to You Me at Six’s “Finders Keepers” on repeat (Inexplicably, because I don’t even really like that song). I think it has close to 20 plays now.

And I don’t want to cry or be lame or do this anymore.

I even went out last night with the FH and ordered coke and sparkling cider. It was kind of awesome, because every drink purchased came with free tapas. But the bar smelled like cigarette smoke and there were so many people and it was hard to breathe and the FH started acting funny by the second beer (Purposefully using a word that could either mean "meet" or "f**k" in reference to me and Spanish boys).

But I know that that’s not what’s really upsetting me. It’s not the lack of people. It’s the lack of very specific people. That aren’t here. That won’t be here. That I’ll have to wait some time to see.

I’m even willing to buy plane tickets if it will mean that I get to hug my Mom.

And this wasn’t mentioned on the chart. It was supposed to go initial elation, culture shock, gradual acceptance, growing love, then elation again upon returning home and sadness/difficulty readjusting to American life.

Heartbreaking sadness wasn’t covered. At least I don’t think it was. The chart just explains culture shock. I’d rather have that. I would feel alienated, but not isolated.

Unfortuntaely, you don’t get to pick your misfortunes.
^I feel like that little statement should be on a fortune cookie, or on the foil wrapper of Dove chocolate.

^And I'm apparently regressing to middle school when pop-punk was so totally awesome.

The Only Story I’ve Written That I Actually Like

2010-03-27T06:32:00.004-07:00

The result of my buddy telling me to stop trying to be all dark and cathartic with my writing

Stacy, Loser of Children

January 17^th at 5:23. The moment of my reckoning.

Oh crap. Oh Crap. Oh Crap. I lost the kid. I lost Marcos. I lost him. I have failed at my sole responsibility. I fail. I fail. I fail. I’ll be that girl, the one that fails at babysitting, the one that loses innocent children, the one that sucks at life. Stacy, Loser of Children. Another glittering appellative to add to the list. It’ll come after “the Projectile Vomiter.” Cottage cheese and Merry-Go-Rounds. Bad, bad, bad birthday memories.
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.

How do you explain and/or justify this to someone? Yeah, sorry, Mrs. Garcia, I kind of, sort of, hardcore lost your kid. How, you ask? Well, that’s a fine question. You see, that Marcos is a fast little bugger and an excellent hider. So good, in fact, that I would never, ever recommend playing Hide and Seek with him. He rocks at it. It’s a gift, really. I mean, the kid outsmarted me. It speaks volumes of his intelligence. And even more of my own. Yeah, I was watching him. That’s the sad part, really. Would you like to know how the events transpired? Well, you see he was all “Stacy, we should play a game.” And I was all “Yeah, sure, kiddo. How ‘bout Hide and Seek?” He consented. I counted to 25. And now here we are. That was 15 minutes ago. This park isn’t that big. And I kind of just want to die. Stacy, the Failure and Suicidal.

And, I’ve progressed from the whole “Wow, this kid is a good hider” to the more panicky “Where the hell is he?” stage. In truth, it was not that welcome of a change. There was much less panicking in the other stage, much more happiness. Rainbows and unicorns and pots of gold, even.

Three times, I’ve circled this park, hands shoved in my jacket pockets and shaking as I blurt out the occasional, terrified “Marcos!” I’ve even begun asking people if they’ve seen him, trying to downplay the desperation in my voice as I question men with beer bellies and women with bad dye jobs. Has anyone seen a nondescript Mexican boy win a Hulk t-shirt and matching Velcro sandals? No, okay. Has anyone seen my sanity? Dang it. Cool, I’m going to go crawl in a hole and die, okay?

No, gotta find him. Gotta find him. Gotta find him. What if he’s been kidnapped? God, please protect him. Please make sure the kid’s smart enough not to get in some unmarked, white van, lured in by the promise of puppies or candy. Pretty, pretty please. For the kid’s sake. It would be a sad, sad world without that little one. He’s a really cool kid. And he’s really smart. He got a sticker on his last spelling test. He even showed me. I don’t want him to not be okay. Please, please protect him. He could cure cancer or write the next great American novel. He could leave this shitty town of concrete and callousness and make something of himself. He could make his mommy proud. He has potential. I’ve seen it. I know it. And yes, I’m praying. Yes, I know it’s been awhile. But, please, God, c’mon.

I grab a kid that kind of looks like him if you squint really hard. He’s minding his own business, playing on the monkey bars, when I reach out for him. Not him, damn it. Kid freaks out, and his mother shrieks at me. Because normal people don’t go around manhandling other people’s children. They also aren’t outsmarted by elementary school kids. I’m so not normal.

Jungle gym, swings, ugly patio things, crab grass, soccer players, cracked sidewalk, joggers, dirt, dog poop. It all begins to look the same after awhile. Six billion people in the world—four million in Los Angeles alone–only one I wish to find. One Marcos Garcia. Seven years old. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Tall for his age.
“Marcos!” Getting dirt on my knees as I crouch by a giant neon green tube thingy.

“Marcos!” yelled into a slide seconds before a kid whacks me in the face with her Hannah Montana sneakers.
“Marcos!” screamed in the near vicinity of the boy’s restrooms. Stacy, the Would-be Pervert.
“Marcos!” shrieked by some little girl’s birthday party. Stacy, the Murderer of Children’s Birthday Wishes.
And finally the pre-breakdown. “Marcos, I’m not playing. I’m really scared. I don’t know where you are. Please, stop hiding. Pretty please.” Stacy, the Hopeless. Stacy, the Dead.

Sitting on a questionable park table with cracked brown paint and a spots of bird poop, putting my head in my hands. Desperation. A keen sense of my own failure as a human being. My fundamental crappiness. A catalogue of my every shortcoming flashing across my brain. So this is what a mental breakdown feels like. Hm, I thought it’d be more dramatic. That it’d have more oomph. This is so utterly anti-climatic. I can never do anything right. Or completely, for that matter. I’ve always been the kind of girl that looks both ways before crossing a one-way street. Overly cautious. So very hesitant to make any decision pertaining to living. Stacy, the Robotic Not-Living.

The tears are running down my cheeks by this point. Quite obviously, too. Smearing my eyeliner and mascara. I haven’t cried in public since the Christmas party incident. Stacy, Ruiner of Family Gatherings.

I’m calling it. January 17^th at 5: 39 PM.Time to face the music. The fat lady has sung, loudly and slightly out of key. Stacy, the Soon to Be Dead.

My phone begins the opening chords to my favorite song, what my Mom has labeled “generic angry music” and with my hands still shaking, I answer the phone.

“Mrs. Garcia. I’m so sorry. I was watching him and then he hid. And I can’t find him. And I’m so, so, so, so, so, so, so sorry. You have every right to kill me. I would welcome at this point, in fact. But, can I please say bye to my parents first. And I want to draft up my will. But I know I deserve to die. Because I lost your kid. An eye for an eye. I just wish it didn’t have to be like this. I’m really, really, really sorry.” I’m sobbing into my phone. And I can feel snot accumulating on my upper lip, no doubt mixing with my smeared eyeliner and bleeding mascara. Stacy, Ugly Crier. Stacy, the anti-Demi Moore.

“Stacy. Stacy. Stacy. Calm down. Calm down.” She has a soothing voice and pronounces my name with a soft e before the s. E-Stacy “It’s okay. Don’t cry. I have him right here. That’s what I meant to tell you. I have him right here. He came home. He didn’t know not to come home.”

“Ah, thank God. Thank you, God. Thank you, Mrs. Garcia. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Tears of happiness. Elation. Joy. Dancing emotions. Actual dancing, of the crappy variety. People at the park glancing at me. Stacy, the Strange. Stacy, the Relieved.

I can hear Marcos in the background. Laughing. Being reprimanded by his mother. He’s seven. Mental breakdowns and teenage freak outs are hilarious to seven-year-olds. Marcos, Worst Hide and Seek Player Ever.

Happy Birthday To Me

2010-03-23T16:43:00.003-07:00

Yup. I’m 20. At least on Spanish time. I was technically born in California, so I won’t be twenty for another 8 hours, but it still kind of counts. I’ll celebrate it again when I wake up this morning.
20 years old. The big 2-0.

This is my I’m 20 face.

Yeah. I’m kind of beautiful, you know.

Note the hair (not only the unnatural color, but also the fact that it’s parted kind of special). And the glasses. And the lack of eyeliner. Also, the skin color. I’m not that white.

& as far as reflections, I don’t feel any different/older. I do feel kind of lonely, and I’m also remembering my last birthday, which was kind of awesome because people I love were there. And I had ice cream cake. And then burgers. And it was awesome. This one probably won’t be.
I’ve stopped becoming a teenager in another country. Fail or win?

I can’t decide.

I’m contemplating buying myself a birthday cake, but who does that?

(Maybe me. I’m not sure. We’ll have to see how this goes).

The family that I’m staying with is Jehovah’s Witness (meaning no birthdays), so I think that’s further reason not to buy myself a cake (besides the whole being lame thing, it could potentially make things awkward). And then it’d probably be just me, the FH, and the other housemate.

I miss my Momma and my Poppa and my sister and my brother and my other brother and my tio and my buddies and my dog.

I’m lonely on my birthday. It should be a crime.

But it’s not.

Whatever the case, Happy Birthday to Me.

Updated photo:

Updated content:

I didn't buy cake. I just went to class and didn't tell anyone else about my birthday. Talked to the Momma. Hugged the FH for buying me chocolate. And also helped my landlady untangle the yarn she was using to crochet her hat.

I was feeling lonely and cried a little bit when I talked to the Momma. But then I got a bajillion (like 15, isn't hyperbole the greatest thing ever?) Happy Birthday messages from Facebook, and my heart felt a little less sad inside.

How Jonny Craig Almost Made Me Late For History

2010-03-15T14:34:00.032-07:00

No, seriously, he did. I was really excited for Isles & Glacier’s EP and I bought it online and had to wait for it to finish downloading. The sucker took like 10 minutes, and I had to run to class and get there are sweaty and gross, only to realize that I still had a good five minutes before the professor showed up (because everyone is late in Spain. No, seriously, I'm always one of the earliest kids there. It's weird.) It's weird operating on "Spanish time"

It wasn’t exactly a pivotal moment in my week, but it was still noteworthy. I found out I could make it to my class under 20 minutes if I didn’t mind smelling icky and looking all ugly (I mean, I always do, but it was even worse, you know?)

Speaking of music, this week I also purchased Hot Chelle Rae’s Lovesick Electric. Been bumping both for quite some time. I like music. I like it a lot. Even if it’s a little poppy (HCR). Even if it includes Craig Owens (He sounds like Him from Powerpuff girls. I abhor his voice. But Jonny Craig is a beautiful singer. Amazing. Perfect.). Even if it’s not what some would consider BAMF. The problem with being a music elitist is that you’re paranoid that everyone else will be the same. I really need to stop that.

Moving on, I talked to someone about him.

My French housemate (He’s the not the him; he’s the person I spoke to of the him).

I showed him pictures of Phoenix. He asked if my boyfriend lived there. I said that I didn't have a boyfriend and then that I wasn't sure and then I explained. He shook his head, widened his eyes, and then nodded as if he understood.

I think he does.

It's just weird, because those emotions are almost gone now.

But they resurface. They always resurface. Ha, you thought you wouldn’t feel that shame. You’re so silly, child. I am ubiquitous or at least hard to kill. I’m still there, Sarai. Can’t you feel me? Can’t you remember the way it felt?

No, I don't want to. No, just leave me alone.

I like FH (My French housemate). He's a sweet kid, and he is lonely. And in a way, he's forcing me to stop being in my room all day. He doesn't have many friends. So I shall suffice. Despite the language barrier. It’s actually not that bad. His Spanish is decent, and I can communicate most concepts with pantomimes and English phrases.

Besides that, I’m becoming increasingly ethnocentric. Ah, we knew it would come.

One of my professors blamed the decline of higher education on American capitalism, claiming that the US’s economic self-interest reduced the value of “non-lucrative”careers. And it was cute at first, all the graffiti I saw about how capitalism belonged in America with the blood-thirsty and the selfish, but it’s getting old. I’m not even a hardcore capitalist, and I’ve actually complained about it. But there’s a definite difference between a citizen’s lamentations and those of a foreigner, I guess.

And the funding for liberal arts does suck. And people are primarily going to school to get a job, but why does that have to bleed over into other countries? And why does the United States have to be blamed for it?
Not fair. Not even remotely.

Who knew I’d be defending this shizz?

For sure, not me. I don’t like discussing politics.

Because people get angry and bad names are shouted. That's not fun for anyone, you know. Unless you're into that shizz (which means you have even bigger problems)

[insert appropriate segue here]

I’m starting to get less awkward when talking to other students. I even had a conversation with one about how the international treaties for music and TV suck here (They do. I want to watch Modern Family so very badily. And Pandora. I cry for Pandora). But “this content is not available in your region.” I bemoan my Spanish IP address. It’s also the reason I couldn’t purchased Imre Kertesz. The Momma’s sending it. I love her.
Random tribute to the awesomeness that is my mother.

Isn’t she beautiful?

Yes. Because beauty is a convention, and I have decided that it shall be determined by people with kind hearts and even kinder words. Plus, she's also gorgeous. Beautiful on two counts, that woman.

Also, I need a haircut and to mail out some letters and to fix my visa and to stop being lame. The last one is the most important. It includes making friends and not spending hours in my room watching documentaries on the internet and playing Chess Titans (I have yet to beat that damn computer. I really suck at this game). It also involves not reading too much into certain things that certain people have said. Because seriously the last thing I need in this moment in time is to be that girl again. An elusive creature that emerged a little after my 18th birthday when I met him and fancied myself in love. Ah, what a child I was/still am.

I want to perform a ritual, write your name on a piece of paper and burn it or tear it or throw it away. Because a French boy shook his head, widened his eyes, and then nodded when I spoke to him of you. What does that tell you, love?

Yeah, third parties rock at objectivity. Someone removed can judge better than you or I ever could.

Another update, the FH and I went exploring Granada. I told him I had to go the Oficina de Extranjeros, and he told me that he would like to come. I saw the line, decided against it, and then walked with the kid to the Post Office. 10 Euros to send all of my post cards. The postage is less expensive then I would think, but still more than I had hoped. If that makes sense. It should.

Now I’m watching a documentary on evangelical Christianity and wondering what it is exactly that I believe. Not religiously, but politically. Yeah, politics. That’s a great way to alienate people. So let’s not
I played chess with Raul, one of my landlady’s grandchildren, and I beat him. It’s sad that it’s seriously the first time I’ve won a chess game. He’s 10. Scratch that I won against my father, but my sister had already given up and my father took over. He made a point of clearing off my board with his two rooks and king. Kid’s amazing. Random shout-out to the Poppa. I don’t have any pictures. Fail, I know.

I still haven’t gotten my hair cut and I really don’t want to go the supermarket. I don’t know why. But I’m not feeling it. Not even a little bit. My hair is too long. And I need to leave my room because I’ve already gotten dressed and applied eyeliner and put in my contact lenses. I’ve even put on socks. But I want to watch movies on the internet and play Solitaire and talk to the Momma (even though she’s busy tonight).

Okay, so I didn’t leave. I discovered this spiffy little website called omegle.com and started random conversations with random people. It was awesome. I met an American, a Canadian, a Brit, a Dutchmen, an Indian, and a Chinese girl. The Dutchmen was a perve, but only after a good half of an hour spent discussing music and art. Seemed like a nice kid until he started mentioning his length and girth. He was the longest conversation, save for one I had with a 16-year old British girl. We traded lines from Up and Forrest Gump and talked about Aristotle and Socrates. I swear, I love the internet. You meet the most interesting people on it, even if some of them are a wee bit icky, even if some asked me to perform certain favors. Yeah. No. I don’t play that way. But a distinct part of me feels that I should probably stop trying to meet random people on the internet and just try to meet random people in real life. Spanish people.

Other than that, I played chess with the FH. Promptly lost. That was fun. I believe that my Dad had a point in asserting that chess is a matter of intelligence, and it’s not really about how many times you’ve played. Because the kid pwned me and he’s only played three times. He’s just smart. I’m okay with that. I know that I’m not as smart. I mean, I wish I was. But, you know, we can’t always have it our way.

Plus, I've been told I rock at life by other people. People that matter. So, there you go voice in my head. I'm awesome, okay?

Update. I went with the FH to Burger King to show him how Americans eat. We also took pictures and looked at monuments (the Capilla Real is seriously beautiful enough for me to consider re-converting to Catholicism), and he promised not to let me get lost. I don't know what it is about the kid's presence, but I immediately started talking about my little sister, and how I think she's so much more beautiful and just sure about life than I am. That's an awkward thing to admit to someone you haven't known that long, you know. It's something that I personally kind of feel guilty about. I'm jealous of her. I envy her. A part of me wishes I was like her. I don't know why I said it. I didn't mean to.

I think I’m just lonely. I think that I have all these pent-up emotions and need a healthier outlet. More blogging, then? Probably, yeah.

Doodling on the Margins of Notebooks (in Spain)

2010-03-10T16:44:00.003-07:00

I wrote this while “learning”about Spanish baroque. Gongora is actually really interesting; in fact, he’d probably be even more so if I was given the extra twenty minutes to decipher the elegant Spanish of his phrases. But I’m not. There’s no sympathy for the foreign

My Brother:

You gave up your birth right for lukewarm lentils and squished brown bread

And I stole your blessing, brother, with old animal skins and whispered ploys

And we hated, you and I

Even in utero

Because our parents’ love wasn’t doled out in equal measures

Because there were grand promises but only one heir

And they said I’d be great

That I’d bear this burden of divine convention

They spoke in analogies to sand and stars

I was favored, promised, chosen

And you were left with broken land and broken hopes and broken memories of childhood games

And we parted ways, weighed down with separate destinies and separate souls

But now forget those past injustices and embrace me, red sibling

Fall on my neck, Esau, for I have wrestled with God

And I won’t with you

Not with you any longer

And oh, let your tears stain my cheeks

Let warm, hairy arms shake with pain and shame and love

Because I have 2 wives and 11 sons, but only you my brother

And I won’t wrestle with you

Not any longer

(I feel like the ending is lame. But then so am I)

Self Reflection

2010-03-05T05:36:00.003-07:00

So, I’m officially matriculated/registered. I, Erica Sarai Lopez, a Granada student. I even have an ID card. I’ve even eaten at their cafeteria (seriously overpriced--that's a lie; they're are just more expensive than I was promised).

I have 5 classes.

From Hebrew Philology: The Jews in the Modern Era (T, 5 PM), The Biblical World(MW, 6:30 PM), and History of the Bible(TTh, 6:30 PM).

From Spanish Philology: Spanish litearure in the Golden Era(TTh 11:30 AM)

From History: Judaism and Christianity(TTh 10 AM).

I’m only taking 15 credit hours (Isn’t 15 credits full-time enrollment? aren’t you bit of an overachiever, Sarai? Would you have taken more if they’d let you? Yes), and all but one of my classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Classes periods also last and hour a half, which is fun times when I have to get from my Judaism and Christianity class to my Spanish lit class. Good thing there close, and I don’t get lost (anymore).

Other than that, pretty awesome I would say.

Random thoughts:

I’m currently quite settled into my room. It’s just weird, because now having internet and not really caring that I’m being a home body, I spend all day in my room. Toni, the lady renting this room to me, has expressed concern over this. She keeps telling me that I should come out and talk to her. But “talking”usually consists of sitting and watching badly-dubbed television. And what’s more, I’m trying to connect in some way to the world I’ve left behind. I read blogs and spend hours on Facebook and try to resurrect some semblance of the life I’ve temporarily put on hold to be here. I miss it. I now that’s lame and childish and dumb, but I really do miss my friends and my family. I don’t want to make new ones here. But I also don’t want to be lonely. I am a teenager and quite histrionic. (I'm also almost not a teenage anymore. Which is freaking weird)

In my history of the Bible class, I introduced myself as an American and then was asked if I understood the Spanish. It just made me wonder if I really look like what I am (Mexican). They seemed surprised I could speak Spanish so well. I thought my race was sort of self-evident. I guess it’s not. I was also told I had an American accent, which sort of hurt my feelings. It's a sentiment that was echoed by one of my housemates, a Spanish girl. I don't want to have an accent. I want to blend in.

Also, speaking of housemates, I have a French one; his name shall not be disclosed. I know it’s kind of messed up, but I’m glad that he’s here because he speaks Spanish worse than I do. Instant ego boost, you dig? And he does have a discernable accent. That’s childish. Who does that?

Me.

He’s a nice kid, and he seems really lonely, this brown-haired French child. Small talk, by the way, is very difficult when there is a clear language barrier.

Also, just my further reflections on being an American in Spain as demonstrated by two occurrences in my Jews in the Modern Era class

1) My professor likened Guantanamo Bay to Auschwitz, and that just made me horribly embarrassed of my country. I didn’t want to be an American, then. Especially because he looked at me as he said it. There’s another American kid in the class, but for some reason he looked at me. It’s probably the blue hair. The blue hair always draws undue attention. That was not a good experience. 2) I was told by this same professor that I could read our assigned book in English. I didn’t ask, but I wanted to. And that just makes me feel funny. Part of me wants to feel relieved, another part offended. Because he said it’s really dense and really hard to understand, something you have to read slowly and carefully. And I get that it would be even harder for me considering that my English is better than my Spanish, but I still wanted to feel a little indignant. I know it’s dumb. I know I’m dumb, and I probably will read it in English.

I miss Phoenix.

I love this City

2010-03-01T13:25:00.002-07:00

Broken cobble-stoned steps, love, and greedy ashen clouds

Chest cavities that were made too weak

& chapped lips exhaling in moist, white puffs

Bitter protesting muscles and knees that beg for relief and strolls that aren’t inclined

Music that bounces off ear drums and a mouth that grimaces in exertion

Oh, but when it comes with the promise of this

When hands can press against moist sandstone and trace ancient patterns.

When mist kisses foreheads that press against stained glass

& when tired eyes can feast on things more beautiful and vast than they’ve ever imagined

Physical representations of things more beautiful and vast than can be imagined

Then it’s worth it.

Mood music:

(Also check out their song “We Are Beacons” but that’s a little heavier. I find a lot of people can’t handle breakdowns and cookie-monster vocals)

These kiddos remind me of old skool Emarosa, circa This is Your Way Out. I like it.

Continued Journaling…Because I Can

2010-02-18T15:24:00.004-07:00

I was told that journaling was ultimately a good idea to ground me.

I was also told to bring my list—the list of things that I was hoping to accomplish/learn while here in this fine city [all alone, and not as awesome at comprehending the language as I had originally thought—Seriously, though. Spanish doesn’t sound like Spanish when it’s murmured and s sounds are dropped and c and z lisped]. But I forgot my list. Because I’m me. And because I suck at packing and organizing. I also don’t remember what exactly I expected. Awesome Spanish skills? Friendship? General indelibly life-changing experiences? I don’t remember. I’ll never know. Unless I find it, I guess.

Maybe that’s why I’m feeling so down.

I’m just a wee bit emotionally unstable and all, and I seem to take every unfortunate incident personally. Missing my original flight, losing my camera, having the airport lose my luggage, getting charged exorbitant bank fees, struggling to find affordable housing, my feet hurting, the rain, the cold, issues with my student visa.

I’ve anthropomorphized this city and said not-nice words to it. It’s not a culture shock, so much as antipathy directed towards the general environment. This tiny cramped city that has tested my limits. And made me cry.

Oh, how I’ve cried.

I’ve also been blaming God quite a bit. Not clamando ( Spanish: to cry out for, as my mother says I should, but demanding). And that, that just doesn’t feel right to me. It feels so formal and so disrespectful.

Hey God, here’s the list of things I want. And I expect you to give them to me. Please and thank you.

Nope, doesn’t seem right. It’s childish.

And that might be why I haven’t gone through the whole “culture shock” thing, yet. I’ve been too angry about dumb things to get hung up on the differences. Though, I will say I am irrationally irritated by the accent and also just how well-dressed and hipster-esque the youth culture is. Also, the smoking. And the drinking.
Maybe that is culture shock, rage compelled by a series of small, insignificant culture differences. Little quirks that get under your skin when they really shouldn’t.

According to the graph they showed me in the CIE, I should eventually come to this great acceptance and adoration of the culture. Eventually. Which I guess means I will come to accept these parts, too. Or embrace others. Maybe I’ll even pick up the accent.

Oh, and I have a place to stay now. No longer paying $30 a night to say in a hostel, now it’s 300 euros. A month, I mean.

Internet access and a bed to call my own. Also within walking distance of all the major necessities, and not like with my hostel where “walking distance” was measured against cobblestoned, cardiac-inducing staircases. This walking distance is on an incline, but not as sharp.

The time difference is also less harsh now. 8 hours for the Momma. 9 hours for the Poppa and the tia. But I’ve adjusted somewhat. And I even keep normal hours now. I wake up at 7 AM everyday. That, my friends, is truly a feat for someone as myself. I only hope that they will continue when classes start.

Semi-deep utterance: Issues seem less serious when reflected upon at great length. But the whole student visa fiasco is being to worry me a little bit. As well as the bureacratic organization. And the fact that no one emails. Seriously, what’s up with that?

Other than that and a couple of encounters with some major creepers, I’d say I’m fairing pretty well. It is currently 2:46 PM back home, and I have a webcam chat scheduled with the Momma in 44 minutes.

I’m trying to remember my list. And hoping that I finish everything that I set out to do.

Also, this makes me feel like Carrie Bradshaw.

And I recommend you listen to Regina Spektor’s Begin to Hope. Great trudging through rain and looking at ancient monuments music.
Like this:

or this

I feel I should develop a catchphrase. Til then, “Okay. I love you. Goodbye”

Recommendations from the CIE

2010-02-13T04:55:00.004-07:00

Recap: my trip to this fine city included a 9 hour flight from Phoenix to London (on British Airways, which seriously has to be the best airline ever because they gave me free food and let me watch Big Bang Theory and listen to Smokey Robinson), a missed flight to Madrid (because aforementioned amazing airline also took longer than it was supposed to, and London Heathrow is a confusing place with adorably accented but slightly clueless airport personnel), a flight two hours later to Madrid beside a man that crossed himself before the flight took off and then proceeded to read his newspapers, misplaced luggage, a conversation with a fairly cryptic airline representative who assured me that luggage was never “just lost,” and a 5 hour bus from Madrid to Granada.

For casualties, see digital camera. See also earphones.See also sanity (temporarily).

I arrived at Makuto Guesthouse at around 8:00 AM on the 11th, and the weird thing about this place (the Albayzin) is just how tiny it is. Cars can’t even pass through here. And everything is cobble-stoned. It’s really pretty and in the early morning when just the fog and I am awake to take in the cathedrals and the squished little buildings. I wish I had my camera, but it’s gone bye-bye.

But these little back alleys all kind of look the same, and I got really lost, too. For 3 hours, when I was literally five minutes from where I needed to be. I’m not even going to lie; I cried and hard. Because I was hungry and tired. And it’s also easy to go from the Albayzin to anywhere else, because it’s all a series of descending stairways, but it’s really hard to go back because there are so many stairs. I was huffing and sweating in spite of the near freezing temperature.

I got home, showered, and then crashed at 4 PM, after functioning on 2 hours of sleep for 2 days.

And it’s quite weird just how vast the time difference is. I’ve had a full day including a visit to a surprisingly Asian-owned supermarket and an hour of trying to appreciate how beautiful the city is as I walked blindly around trying to find my main streets—Calle Tiña, San Isabel la Real, Calle Elvira, Cuesta de San Gregorio.

8 hours. That’s almost half a day.

Communication is quite difficult. I called the Momma at 3 AM, 7 PM Mountain Time and had to whisper into the microphone for fear of waking the other guests or getting reprimanded by staff.

And it feels like I’ve been here forever, when I haven’t. I feel like I’ve been awake for days. It’s only February 13th, but I’ve been in this weird, alternate psuedo-reality since I boarded that plane on the 9th. Time is truly relative.

I am currently playing the role of a hermit. As I lay here on the very, squished bottom of a three tier bunk bed. Listening to music in English, because I have been hearing a lot Spanish lately.

Likes: the “indie feel,” the cobblestone, and castles and cathedrals, the small Arab shops, the size, the friendliness

Dislikes: the price, the lack of Walmart-esque supermarkets, how impeccably dressed everyone is, how easy it is to get lost, and the constant, bitter rain

I had a moment where I said to myself “Self, I don’t think I want to be here. I don’t think I can last.”

Quickly got over that and now here I am. Alive and ready to conquer this tiny town.

But the rain. Ah, the rain is killing me.

Listen to The Temptations “How I Wish It Would Rain” or The Chase’s “Nothing But Space”

In My Humble Opinion…

2010-02-08T15:28:00.001-07:00

You, beautiful, broken, bleeding sheep

You don’t need to wail God’s name for Him to notice you;

You don’t need to tremor with reverence and passion for Him to love you

& beautiful, broken, bleeding sheep,

Admiring glances cast in your direction cannot pay for your salvation

& for looking at you, wooled companions have strayed from the pastor’s gentle hands

You, beautiful, broken, bleeding sheep,

Seek to wash, not guide, their wounded feet, beautiful and broken and bleeding, too

& use these excess emotions to create things as perfect and loving and kind as the One who has saved you

[I am not a charismatic]

Oh Dang, Oh Dang, Oh Dang

2010-02-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, I leave _________ (my family, my friends, my comfort zone, my country)

And I didn't even think of you

That makes me feel This big

The Truth Is...

2010-02-05T17:45:00.003-07:00

Photo credit: alvimann from morguefile.com

If people, like cellphone contracts and credit cards, had fine print and two-year agreements, I never would have taken you, baby. I would have seen through the glittery facade.Would have squinted my eyes and uncrossed t's.

Make what you will of that

Let Us, Love

2010-01-22T14:01:00.006-07:00

Let us be appareled as well-behaved aristocrats and adorn ourselves with the hesitance of timid lovers, casting intersecting wide-eyed glances and chancing telling smiles

Let us be shy and decorous and amorously inept

I’ll never speak too you directly and see you only through modest, lacquered fans, averting my eyes from your perfect brown ones

You can ask for me to dance at your side and then for my hand, stroking it through lace gloves

& what if we’re bold enough to tentatively touch lips?

& what if our meetings our supervised?

& what if we compose awkward letters inspired by awkward emotions?

Let us attire ourselves in the costumes of laypeople and wear feigned ignorance as a fashion accessory, shouting vulgar words and thinking simple thoughts.

Let us be coarse and crass and improper

I’ll hike up my skirt to my knees and pull the pins out of my curled hair, speaking even when not spoken to

You can loosen your tie and take off your coat, kissing me passionately in public

& what if we take off our shoes?

& what if we laugh much too loudly?

& what if we scream of our love in the cobblestoned streets?

Let us be garbed as failed intellectuals and bedeck ourselves with the medals of eloquent disappointment, peddling our poems in the streets and scribbling ballads in the mud

Let us be brilliant and bitter and frustrated

I’ll stare at your beautiful, dirty face and compose exalted sonnets, hyperbolizing emotions

You can raise complaints as to the decline of intellectualusm and pronounce words with foreign etymologies, pontificating on the latest literary trends

& what if we live off coins tossed at our feet?

& what if we find inspiration in trash heaps and plagued rats?

& what if our love truly does nourish and warm and replenish?

Oh, love, let us play dress up in this lonely word.

Oh, darling, let us change our clothing, costuming ourselves as everything but apart.