Sunday, January 30, 2011

A Natural Festival

Patches of sun are magical things, really. Light shows on your bedroom wall. Dancing shadows too.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Ringing Truth

"Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don’t want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you’re doing here. Believe in kissing." 

-Eve Ensler; reblogged from Bldg 25

Puppy Love

I took a tea break. Beside me sat Rambo, gazing into my soul with eyes full of question, so I hugged him, and squeezed him close, and whispered that I want him right here with me forever. A look like terror flitted across his face; he shook free of my grip and proceeded to the next room to comment on a YouTube video my mom was watching.

Masha is in the city with a new boy. I hope they fall in love.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Intermediate Dimension

Dreaming of bare legs and grass stained feet; hot sand and eyelet.

Thinking how cool it would be if through posting here I find my voice.

Wondering if there's anybody out there.

Listening to She Wants Revenge and soaking my mind in melody to prepare for when the whirlwind of work tomorrow takes it all away.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Solace

"Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today."

-Lawrence M. Krauss

A Whiff of Nostalgia

Last night I was looking through the window at what looked like a cluster of marshmallows on popsicle sticks. I inhaled the brisk, snow-saturated air and it smelled of a quintessential winter wonderland. Standing there with my nose pressed to the net I caught a memory. It sped through the million tiny boxes of mesh into the warm interior of [Anya's first, then Masha's, now nobody's] room and there I placed it. Something about the scent on the air reminded me of winter as a child, the way winter felt under my fingers as I read fables and fairy-tales and stories about seasons.

 I dug up the old storybooks and was swept up in nostalgia.


Love Park

Note from a stranger. Fished from the abyss of my bag where it had settled amid the empty gum wrappers and cookie fortunes.

Souvenir from my first day alone in the city.

Winter You Are Swell

With your blue sky and your blue snow. You give my fingers blisters.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

The Dead of Winter

Flakes like fallen angels. Trees the specters.

Hush.



It's a ghost town.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Thriving On Connotations

I keep a post-it list on my laptop screen of all the magical little words that I want to use over and over. The newest addition: cloudburst.

Diverted

"They both like the feeling of being attached by the hand but with their thoughts branching off in different directions. It is similar to the feeling of falling asleep side by side [...], [...] bodies touching and [...] dreams going someplace separate but connected."

From Sarah Shun-lien Bynum's "The Erlking"

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Soap Puddles and Superheroes

Sadly neither my feet nor the attached body with the swishing thoughts floated amid the clouds this week; rather they were pressed to the slushy ground by a force similar to gravity only marginally more irksome: homework. 

I think that I really missed this blogging thing because at the first opportunity for thought-drifting my mind had a ball. Between the time the sponge touched the cold porcelain of the plate in my hands and the last frothy spoon was cleansed and put away I must have run through a full track of post ideas, beatific and heavily wooded.

I thought back to the other day on campus when I saw a man at a food cart. There was a fluttering mass of black fur at his feet, soon identified as two Cocker Spaniels jittering in excitement. I thought that was sweet. 

The next day I walked into class only to see the same curly-haired, soulful-eyed duo, a notch calmer, spread out on the floor at my professor's feet.

Then today I was thinking how cool it is that a bunch of people used to really believe that humans possess a superhero quality, the stuff of comic books. Superhero vision. That rays of maybe translucent matter are issued from human eyes to feel up the universe. That people take in an object's physical likeness tactilely, eyes touching the glowing blinds of their window upon waking the same way fingers would. 

It reminds me of when I was little and my sisters and I watched Charmed and Prue had the ability to move things with her eyes and Phoebe had premonitions that would leave her breathless and if we saw in the way described by some of these ancient philosophers it would be like merging both their powers.

If eyes are the windows to our spiritual core, and everything we behold precipitation that grazes the glass, it would make sense why sometimes a whirlwind of dizzied flurries between your window and that of the neighboring train is so captivating. Why a cheerful patch of sun shared between the blue felt of the subway seat and the shiny metal pole beside it warms the soul a little.

I think I might like it if our eyes could with the help of rays close the space between and really touch what we see, giving us a little shock like a premonition as we feel the nostalgia rushing to our retinas. It would be tangible.

Anyway I thought about all of these things among others and felt my sense crumble to soap bubbles.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Rambo

Rambo my German Shepherd has a forehead that smells like a Ukrainian Vatrushka.

Adorning his neck with my body weight, I bring my face to his and bury my nose in the little patch of fur between his eyebrows. One long whiff and the sweet blend of sugar and pastry dough leaps to my nostrils, the aroma taking me over and fixing me to his velvety fur as if with invisible strings.

I think in the future this is what I will miss most.


Saturday, January 15, 2011

One of Those Days

Wanting just to lie and focus on nothing more than the feel of the cool bedsheets against my bare legs.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Fallen. Can't Get Up

Throbbing head has me thinking I might remove it from my body, submerge it in bubble wrap, and mail the parcel across the globe. Maybe to Argentina.

Masha, don't fret

There is too much pressure in society to achieve greatness. To be known. To do something that makes the world weak in the knees. I think that goodness is in loving each other and believing in connection and trying not to screw over the people and creatures with whom we share the earth. If we do what we do with passion, I think we will be okay.

Then

I still remember falling asleep in my father's arms. I counted the stubble of his chin and neck and imagined the bristles were minute people on a hill.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

and boy was it pretty

A fox drifts along the fresh blanket of snow and in the instant I wonder.

A twitch of my elbow makes a ripple in the curtain. A tug and the metal bar holding up the fabric sends a wave of sound through the glass plate sealing me off from the wintry scene.

The scavenger stops in its tracks and the breath catches in my throat. I swear it sees right through me. A moment's thoughtful deliberation before a graceful turn pioneers its retreat into the woods.

I stay and I watch it weave in and out of the trees with their moon dust coating and try to imagine how it would be to skirt between the trees on this dark snowy night.

Monday, January 10, 2011

To be continued... why I don't know, but I like the way writing this makes me feel

I want to sit under an apple tree. It doesn't even have to be an apple tree, though I like the ring of that. But it really doesn't matter. This tree would have a great big trunk and branches that go down and out. They would form a magical little canopy above my head and slope towards the ground in a ring all around me. Not too low though, or that would make the claustrophobia and arachnophobia rise to the surface and threaten to send me scurrying off into the sunset, shaking from limb to limb. Suspended gracefully from the mother branches would be the offshoots that grow thinner and thinner the closer they get to the end. They grow so slender that, when entwined, the tiny branches form a sieve through which I can view the world.

I am resting against the rough bark of the trunk, but the wood has an agreeable shape; it conforms to the contours of my back just so and I feel cradled in its ancient vastness. I want to just sit here never forced to move. The land chases the horizon and the sky is like a giant cut out in the scene. An idyllic mass of blue nothingness that when looked upon removes the eyes from all worldly chaos. A serenity washes over me. An overwhelming sense of peace. Inspiration. A wild rush of emotions enters my conscious mind all at once. Excitement. I can't pin exactly what I am thinking but I know it is something wonderful and the lithe murmur of the thought wisps fills me with meaning. If thoughts are not naturally articulated when they appear before the mind, are they not mere feelings? I find solace in the idea because that means it's okay the way I sometimes can't catch my thoughts and let them flee to the oblivion they came from. 

It is summer and the backlit grass is the brightest shade of green I've ever seen. So bright the pigments pulsate within the gullible framework of my eyes. It smells like summer, and that is my favorite part. I can sense the aroma on my skin, taste it as it tumbles into my nostrils. It consumes me until summer is all I feel.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Masha

My second oldest sister has brown hair that used to be black and straight before deciding that life on her head was better suited to curls and lightening up.

Today she met up with a friend downtown and I did the same. Phone in hand, I abandoned the warmth of a Chinese restaurant, the wealth of water chestnuts and vegetable fried rice nestled cheerfully in my tummy robbing me of the usual buoyancy. New text message from sister. Racing across her words my eyes halfway relayed to my brain their message before flailing arms and loose brown curls in my peripheral vision interrupted the dispatch. She had written that she just parted with her friend and was looking for me and didn't know where to find me.

It figures we would run separate circles in the city and subliminally find our way to each other at the timely moment. 

We are tethered by soul.

This Feels Important

When I was about thirteen my dream of keeping a blog that would collect my thoughts was crushed by my dad’s firm no. Now I stare at the shining screen of a newborn blogspot six years later as a result of the same desire—the desire for a little space in which I can wrestle down stray ideas and romanticize to my heart’s content without the confines of a journal. Knowing that my thoughts are unfettered and very fond of tangents, I vow to embrace my meandering nature and embark on this journey a river: totally free of expectation, course of action, and discrimination against direction.