"I admire anyone who wants to smile more, complain less, never take themselves too seriously and believe in beautiful things."
-Edythe Hughes

Chest of Drawers

My grandfather was the most beautiful man. A sailor in uniform. He can't see now, and his whole family lives on the other side of another ocean. His photo lies among louder treasures but feels saddest under my fingertips. Just another thing he doesn't see.

 Gold headpiece down, silver to go. But always the sadness when Christmas is over.

"I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again,  I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil."

-Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

The Subdued and the Subliminal

The rain has a funny way of fusing everything together like watercolor. The air is poisoned with the smell of rain. Try picking a patch of oxygen that is untainted. You won't find it. Then there is the melting. It can be likened to the effect of looking through smoke, but instead of the blur that comes with the latter is a melancholic sort of clarity. You see things as they are, a world of personal universes braided limply with the mutual experience of rain.

The rain has a sound, but not every tone is voiced. The iconic patter you hear playing on the glass of your window upon waking is but one dimension, then there is the lament. Rain deposited it in your subconscious while you were busied with its smell, with trying to store it someplace deep, not realizing that this will happen regardless of whether you try. It is this wailing that you hear when you see and smell rain and feel a tinge of sadness whose origin you cannot place.

The third dimension is silence. How can rain have both sound and silence? I can't tell you, but I believe it is there, lurking under the wail and weaving through the rhythmic strikes against the pavement. My conviction in the silence comes from the sense of peace that moves every creature to inertia. But maybe it is just the rhythm that lulls them.

And the pictures, let me explain. 1. I have been obsessing over the need for a bookcase in my life, or room. I don't have much space but I have enough will to make up for my wanting it there. 2. If my hopes do not pan out, will somebody take me to St. Petersburg, or Kiev? I think it would be like entering a fairy-tale, but better because it is real. 3. The tea/cake image needs no explanation. This is my place, after all.

image sources: 1. weheartit.com 2. igougo 3. unknown, from tumblr

I'm not a pair of combat boots

Yes I said I hate it but there are so many things I am falling for again, and like last time I am teetering on the edge of something high. It's high enough to activate my fear of heights, or the fear of where I might fall.

This nostalgia is starting to be like one of those dreams that start out peaceful and then morph into a nightmare and of course that's when you wake up and the bad is the only part you remember. It's been five years yet I'm falling back into the old pattern of thinking, obsessing over what could have been if I had gone to the big city and shown up on a doorstep wearing my vulnerability like business casual, because that's what's required when you give yourself a sticker price, or at least until you've been broken in from being beaten up long enough and you wear your cracks like they look good.

Good Night

Dark and light coexist, and each one sheds truth on the other. There is immense beauty in both.

The rebellious soul thrives on this contrast, and so we haunt the day and frolic in the night.

Twisting and turning

Mine is a quiet rebellion.

Sitting in the little haven I wrought with fairy lights and a glitter lamp from when I was small and saw reindeer weaving through the capsule. Here I spin a web of words. A tangled web with too many words, too thick and not far enough in between. Words with no origin, nor a destiny. But I want to show you how warm it is, this place I hide. Bedroom a mosaic of wood finishes each one deviant from the next; purple velvet hung to dilute daylight, burned out in places so the rays come through in rings, but night rained long ago and extinguished the curtain into surrounding darkness. Treasures, a mass of tangled beads and chains belonging to masks and headpieces and chokers, consume the surface of the black lace table mat on which I arranged them. They speak in glint and moody charm. Only missing are black bed sheets and velvet hung from the walls to catch light that slipped past the curtains. Also, a tapestry rich with texture to settle over the carpet. And a Victorian chandelier. Christmas is near but because no one knows of this wishlist it is up to the imagination to give my room these gems. And yes this language is tangled because I am twisted up but that's okay because I don't deny it. I am safe here because this is my asylum.

Dark Inspiration

There are whispers about taking me to the land I came from to see my roots. Even though I don't believe in roots. That would mean believing I once was tied down, and had to have had a part of me cut off to be where I am now.  But oh how I want to go.

Pandora

Consciousness stripped of ornaments. In the shower a naked conscience. Wish the laptop could materialize in the steam because ideas fall faster than liquid heat. I catch them before they fuse with the precipitation on the bathtub floor. Ocean floor. Studio taught me the more information you put down, the more the drawing grows and develops. Because all art is merely a medium for thought, making ideas interchangeable across disciplines, of course this applies to writing. And looking at a quote and a collection would make the pen fly if computers had not subverted my cursive hand, but keys are deliberate and melodic so no romance is lost on me.

Resisting the temptation to fall into the indentation in the comforter dragged across my bed, sense of urgency defying the urge to slip into old comfort under the sheets, I carry my black box with electric fingertips smoothed by the weight of inspiration. I set it down in the mosaic of wood finishes and dub it a centerpiece to my table of treasures. The shift of atmosphere, the resistance of the chestnut under me will make this time different.

Meanwhile satin sheets and a tapestry rug slip into my wishlist.

Tensions

Heard this voice in a dark, crowded room and lost myself in a trance, or maybe I found some part of me. He plucked my resting hand from a swarm of limbs flown like kites through the darkness, they say to lure my body where my soul had been taken. Outrage ensued, though I am innocent.

Today, unchanged but not unmoved, I throw my child's fists into the air. Because his is music from the underworld, and that is a beautiful place to meet.

"Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth--but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour."

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

you were older than me then and you were perfect. i looked up to you. you took care of me. you kissed my face that erupted in child's giggles and i thought we were as close as any two humans had ever been.

its getting hard not to lose the truth that this room was not always so big and that the furniture occupied different spaces. but sometimes i'll remember and that's how i know that all those other times i forgot. im scared that time will make the way we are now overwrite the way things used to be.

remember how i would twine tape round my waist? yeah

The Rebel and the Coward

As soon as something becomes familiar I slip away, feet gathering speed and then my palms are clutching the grass etching prints in my knees and I am somewhere else.

Am I a rebel or a coward?

Using words when I ought to be using pictures and pictures where there should be words, I speed through the tracks my mind has cut in my head from years of running but end up nowhere.

Looking through high windows, I listen to the sound of passion and do nothing.

Dark and Beautiful and Transcendental

The most beautiful photos I've seen in a long, long time.

Creations and photos by Lusine. Click Read More to see more of her work, and visit her blog here.

its november november i love you

so happy i could dance on the rooftop in my underwear under all the stars
fall. crisp and cool, rolls off your skin like the words used to describe it roll off the tongue. isn't this the best time? like today. did you see the way the sun got really close to the ground and then seeped across the grass like a criminal?  just like a criminal, but i saw it, caught it with my eyes. but more than that, i dispatched it to my memory, which recorded everything i need to lock it up in my mind for good

Two Decades

Today

Going to run around a castle.

by addams

the afternoon sun filtered faintly through the trees and resonated under my feet. watching the lace patterns slip into cracks in the concrete was when i heard it: rippling over the land, the October wind. it whispered in a language i couldn't decipher and proceeded to spin spiderwebs in my hair.

yes, please

"Those who crafted me, be they gods or demons, crafted this mind that shapes my resistance to their schemes. Surely they were wise enough, at the wheel where I was thrown, to anticipate future resistance in the heart they were abuilding."

-Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

mental state

image source: fuck yeah goths

cold nestled between my toes where the socks cant get to it

i love the sound of metal on metal mama's spoon makes when she strikes it against the rim of rambo's feeding bowl. so does rambo.

Something Blue

I am in this place where I can pick out the individual grains of dirt and count the crooked branches along the road to self discovery. I draw them into my visual vocabulary and I brim with happiness and wonder. Nameless things assemble before my eyes. I look at them in my mind for hours, turn them over, give them motion. I study the shine on every angle and also the darkness on the undersides where mystery makes its hiding place. Will this last? I feel the start of something that is the product of everything my life has been up to this point and everything that will in time whip my windshield to be picked up and gathered along the edges of my glass. But things will never be the same, I feel that too. There is a loss welling inside me. It lies dormant someplace dark where I can't catch its contours without squinting, which makes my eyes hurt so I don't do it and am never able to yank the feeling out from the shadows to bring it to the light. Yet still it grows with each thought I feed its existence, and once it expands it can never be insignificant again.

Sailboat

I sense a shift on the horizon.

When the tears dry, and lashes stick like spider legs to the invisible crust formed over your cheeks--in that space between hysteria and tranquility, you heal.

and we tried so hard and we looked so good and we lived our lives in black

Velvety Darkness

Every time my head fills in the hollow cast into my pillow by nightly travels, it's like a curtain gets cut loose. Lids they creep shut, pushing out light until a rich darkness penetrated only by the colors of my thoughts is all that remains. I like goth because in my mind it's more even than a mood or a feeling. It's texture. A tapestry of textures that flicker from deep velvet to slippery satin. The words that build the mood they too have colors, deep reds and burgundy and midnight blue, and if you could touch them they would have these brilliant textures that vibrate under your fingertips and wash over your knuckles and the surrounding skin.

Lair

image source: fuck yeah goth

Goodbye and Hello

There are pictures in the distance and there are words. Giant hats that droop upward and mugs made to fit neatly inside palms. Purple lips and headdresses dripping gold into black eyes. Eyes that blink away the wind that bloodies the cheeks. There is a familiar melody to its battle cry but what makes you surrender is the scent of Snegurochka that it rescues from the recesses of your mind.

World of Beauty

It exists

There was a restless girl

There was a restless girl that one day sat in a rocking chair under a willow tree. Its young, fertile leaves curled in the blushing face of her radiance. They curled a crown around her head, thoroughly transparent save for the thin veins that formed an organic pattern the length of it. Their tresses curled into the earth under her feet. This made her feel cozy so there under that willow she made her home for an eternity. One eternity day, her hair that under the watchful eye of the sun assumed the coloring of seashells in the surf, ascended and descended far enough to unite her corporeal being with the willow. Another, her long, straggly strands galloped up the brown stems and the indistinguishable from them branches before the three began breathing as one. All lingering illusions of time dissolved and scintillating butterflies were born of her pores. Her toenails dug into the cool earth, dusting her skin with brown flecks that like sun rays burned permanent freckles into her flesh. The wood from the rocking chair crumbled into the soil until all around was softness.

Rambo like sentences runs sometimes in his sleep

Rambo, motionless as the tile beneath his stomach save for his rhythmic breathing. Carpet of fur like black silk covering the floor next to the armchair holding me and, with each stroke my hand administers to his back, a new sparkle catches my eye, before receding into the blackness from which his fur runs. Raindrops in the plush.

Daddy

I fear the prospect of impermanence because it means even in the refuge of my mind, nothing is safe.

My father, sits across from me with the phone tucked between his left ear and his arched palm. My father, skin bronzed in exchange for courage, in exchange for each tick tock passed burning as one foot after the other descended into the hot sand, to be seared by the earth while above exposed skin was offered to the sun. There is a gentle curve to his features: the slight crinkle at the eyes, the bounce in the corners of the mouth. It hints at an inner calm as he trades technicalities with his father, discussing the construction of the new chain link he is putting up around our backyard, because the old picket was weak and unsafe to contain Rambo. 

I study his face and his mannerisms and the sunbleached gray of the tee shirt i gave him. I study these and try to press each gentle curve and every corresponding harsh line into the wet mud of my memory, try to hold them there to place the image, so that when i go back to it it will have set, like the metal post I helped hold steady while my father poured concrete mix into the displaced earth around it. But now i worry, because only two days have passed and i can't think if there was a line of sweat guarding his brow. No, his skin was bronze but matte, that i remember. It framed well the watercolor of his eyes. That's what i love most. The bronze skin around the bright eyes; the content tranquility against melancholy lines.

His hair is not the charcoal black from the pictures, nor does it stand tall with thick curls amassed into a crown. Instead, it is cropped close to his head, where a pseudo widow's peak has formed. Before my eyes my father's hair has gone from black with gray flecks to gray tinged with black. His skin and features are lived in, but he is just as handsome, if not more, because i think age makes some things lovelier than before. i just worry that this mud i play in where no prying eyes can catch me will never turn to stone. And if it does set, will i no longer be able to frolic in it with this freedom? 


We try so hard to make things last, try so hard to go against nature, to immortalize things, take photos to freeze time, halt aging, yet maybe the beauty of life is the fleeting impermanence. Maybe the transitions and the transience and the metamorphoses and the ebb and flow of thoughts and recollections are what keep our lives interesting, makes them beautiful, different yet the same. Swimming in thoughts that have no structure and molding them constantly into shapes, always different and never solid; the innumerable outcomes and the infinite space to think and grow and recall newness from that which is old. This is perhaps more striking than if everything was a perfect picture pulled from a photo album in the back of our mind. i don't know what i am talking about but i hope maybe you do.

These words like colors run

image source: keira love

Don't want the beach trips and days spent collecting kisses from the sun to end, yet lately my affections have been taking me elsewhere, to a place where there are bright white skies and a chill on the air that calls upon boots and socks and warm knits to seal your body. At first glimpse of the color black coupled on fabric I am taken prematurely to this place where I shall touch down a week from now, only again I run ahead of myself and the universe because in my mind it is cool there.

this is my sunday morning

there is something so seductive about a moon that sees everything. shadowed by turrets and towers and church steeples of distant lands, i paint pictures inside my lids and color outside the lines

always always desiring to be in the company of tall structures gaping boulevards and narrow streets that have lifted and cradled so many that came before. with trust in the vignettes i sought out in pictures and on the television i want them to surround me, to prolong the visual whispers that tickle my eyes and give them breath.

everywhere i go my senses are taunted by scents and sounds and images, flashes of stories the plotlines of which i know not of. glimpses of the lives the faces might have pull me down tunnels of melancholy where i live vicariously through shadows of my own creation. when time comes to emerge again i tuck them away in a safe place where i can pluck them at any moment of my choosing

little frost covered shop windows and girls sitting together under a tree and european students with flyaway scarves along watersides or milling about in outdoor cafes and song lyrics that sting deep, make me want to freeze time and listen to that one line for an eternity, trying to replay a feeling that is not tied to any experience i've had, but one i seek every time my gaze becomes caught like a fish on a line. a love story that does not belong to me but one i find the memory of through looking. i want to be the people that i encounter, want to put on their face and try on their perspective. i want to look up at lights in windows with different eyes each time and see paris streets like someone who grew up within them.

i want to go everywhere, yet i'm happy here where the promise of all the seeing and living to come is fresh off the wind's lips and i still believe it. maybe the dream is better, maybe this place where i am and with these eyes that i see is exactly where i want to be. and i want to be nineteen forever, just like this, pain still dancing in my left hipbone as i knock the right on a counter top.

these words that haunt me, make my life beautiful

Because baby tells me it's a hundred degrees

The human body is so beautiful when swimming. I could feel it. I felt beautiful propelling my limbs through the liquid jello water. Like a mermaid with her head inching along the ever changing surface, tail sheathed in a curtain of blue. But I felt every muscle as my arms and legs elongated and contracted, so in my mind I became something like a frog.

The sparkling content of the pool was crazy magical and swimming in it even moreso. Who needs clear, cerulean futuristic computer screens and gadgets when there is water? Where I got to be a mermaid, a reptilian creature, and a ghost drifter, all at once.

i am in love

with the sky, with water, with the way my arms glow when basking under both; with words, with light, with moody dark, with summer

Would you want to see the moon up close? If someone offered. To see if it glitters?

You catch your breath and hold it still in anticipation each time you walk outside. You are waiting for molten sky, because at first glance of it your mind will serenade you with long since broken in lyrics. You wished for songs you could carry in your pocket, and a genie somewhere responded to your request with an ipod. Now maybe someone somewhere can think up a way to tattoo songs on your body, stitch the music into your skin to patch up your wounds with melodies, bury them forever in your flesh so as to better soothe the soul that rattles noiselessly its commotion. The day screeches. Your mind tells you it's cars but you imagine creatures prowling under a harvest moon, a moon not unlike the one you swear hovered in yesterday's sky even though it's summer.

You venture onto the first page of a new book, but your mom wants you to listen to her talk instead. You comply, your starved eyes still transfixed on the page. With an audible sort of magic it fizzes, and you buckle backwards into the desire to soak up every word, backwards into the need to balance each syllable on your tongue as if getting poised to speak, but there is the deception. Your greed lets them melt there, to be absorbed by your being and nobody else's. You read in silence. People talk about passion like it's a good thing, but you see how it sows selfishness in he that possesses it. Passion is always lusty and ardent like a flame, even when burning in the most innocent of lanterns.

You walk, and the last of the sand your toes carried like treasure between them falls away. Sea salt clings to your strands, pulls them into distinct little crescents that hang from your head in content isolation. In the mirror, the resultant stringy hair jumping around your shoulders gives you the appearance of a child.

You tire, yet you don't want to stop, you are inspired. Want the spell to inundate you like a cup, overflow your center and pour out over your corners with the energy and the momentum of freedom. But you press pause on your fingers that fly wildly, put an end to the sweeping caresses that touch down on the keyboard before falling away as quickly as they had come.

has been playing in my head forever

and i wouldn't have it any other way

apparitions in the sky and fairy lights in the water

  

time doesn't exist

Rebellion-->Liberation

Running through the hallowed halls of the office after hours is exhilarating. Why is it that feet in motion are always heavy where running is commonplace, but light as whiffable chocolate when breaking the orderly behavior expected of them?

hush

While Waiting

Elements of nature suppressed by the inability to speak come up with alternate methods of communication. Cars make noises as they slide past each other, as if in greeting. Shadows form their own language; contorted into shapes like Chinese characters, they lie at my feet. Overhead, trees tremble with understanding, sending each little leaf into disarray. I look closer. The texture on the bark makes each branch look painted, and I remember it is. Not every artist uses a paintbrush.

There is a charming little house a few blocks over that I happened upon by a fortuitous accident. The paint chips and speckles the closer it runs to the ground. The shadow-plays from the tall trees are like a hint of black magic in the white light of day. Chairs and small tables are assorted in shades of steel blue and truck red on the veranda. Hovering above them, a flock of wind chimes hums softly in loose harmony.

Standing there a mere observer, I was overcome with the urge to amble up the cobblestone garden path and search the door for a little buzzer. I wanted to see who owned the house and listen to their story. It seemed crazy, which made me want to do it all the more. Then I shifted a little to the left due to the natural shuffling of my feet, and caught a glimpse of liquid rushing out of a watering can behind the house. They were there, tending to the garden. I felt silly for being intrigued.

It would be nice to sit on the grass under all those trees. The ground would get a refreshing break from hosting the shadows, which would instead rest on my lap—sketching with air designs on my skin, pulling black lace over my pale thighs. Like patterned tights, only I wouldn't feel them. It'd be nice to write a story about a character living in this charming little house. I wished for shadows and a computer on my lap.

in a spell wrapped up and under

Goth must be in my blood. It feels so right, always. And these are so, so beautiful:

Clock in

Days too full and evenings surrounded with branches; branches that scramble up wire fencing to form trees; trees that remind me of a picture of Max's transformed bedroom in Where the Wild Things Are, from when I read it to little ones in school and felt old and young at the same time; old to be in the position of reader, and young for still remembering how it felt to be in the reverse. Can't watch the seconds stretch and loiter like I want to. Everything goes slow slow and then too fast after the fact is over. These days cinch moments together like a corset, and everything blurs in unison.

Protect Our Coral Sea

Protect Our Coral Sea
By Isabel Lucas

"I don’t think I can recall a time when I wasn’t aware of the beauty of the ocean. Growing up in Australia, I had the good fortune of always having the sea at my side, and one of my first memories of the ocean became an important life lesson for me. My parents had taken my sister and I to this really special beach, Halfmoon Bay. I was so little, but when my mum and sister began to swim out into the ocean I tried to follow and keep up. I suddenly had this feeling of not being able to feel the ground with my feet anymore. I started sinking amongst the waves, watching the blue of the sky begin to slip away — like I was a little grain of sand sinking to the bottom of the sea… So my first memories of the ocean were powerful and I was taught an important lesson that would stay with me forever, that the ocean is powerful and is to be respected in every way.

For my 10th birthday, my sister and I were taken out on a big boat to Moore Reef in the Great Barrier Reef. There were fish in stunningly unimaginable colors, caves and layers of coral that looked like underwater flower beds. The beauty of this magical underwater land made such an impression on me. It completely shaped my appreciation for the beauty of this world. When I learned that only 1 percent of Australia’s Coral Sea was protected — I was stunned. Even as a 10-year-old kid, it seemed so obvious to me that this gift to our world must be preserved.

These fantastic coral reefs are often referred to as the “rainforests of the sea” because they contain such a huge diversity of life, and Australian marine life is particularly important because our reefs have more marine species than any other country on earth. But sadly, less than half (45 percent) of the world’s reefs are considered healthy now with all of these reefs threatened by global warming. Our world has lost 19 percent of all coral reefs, which means that one in five reefs have disappeared, and we stand to lose another 15 percent in the next two decades to overfishing, mangrove loss, pollution and disease.

These statistics are disheartening, but unfortunately for many it goes far beyond percentages. About 500 million people around the world have some degree of dependence on healthy coral reefs, so it’s incredibly important for us on a human level — especially the world’s poor — that we do everything we can to protect them.

We are however slowly making improvements. In 2004, the Australian government put in place the world’s largest network of no-fishing zones in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. After several years, the good news is that the reefs that are highly protected have fewer outbreaks of coral eating species like the Crown of Thorns Starfish, and more top predators, like sharks, which are being depleted dramatically all around the world.

The hope that the Coral Sea remains an intact eco-system, has led me to take action and do my part to see that dream realized. I’ve become passionately involved with the Protect Our Coral Sea initiative, which aims to create the largest marine park in the world, free of fishing, oil and gas exploration, and seabed mining. It would protect a huge diversity of habitats from tropical coral reefs, to species living in the open ocean, to a huge pool of biodiversity living in the depths of the ocean that we don’t even know about yet. This marine park would also protect almost one million square kilometers, right next to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. It would serve as a place for inspiration, enjoyment and where the ocean’s species — whales, dolphins, sea turtles, rays — will all have a safe haven forever.

Together, Angus and I created a little video that we hope will inspire people to want to be a part of a movement for positive change for the protection of the magical Coral Sea. Angus also shares many beautiful childhood memories of the ocean as a young boy, growing up sailing, admiring the ocean as it taught him about life and respecting this treasure. We filmed our video with a beautiful old super 8 camera that captured our feeling of first falling in love with the ocean, and all of our childhood memories at the beach. We believe it’s our duty, together."
source: Huffington Post via Isabel Lucas Online

Sign the petition for the preservation of wildlife through the creation of a protected marine park in the Coral Sea here.

travel

image source: freepeople.com 

can hardly wait: a foreign land's native sun on my shoulders, its breeze in my hair

The Sweetness of Doing Nothing

Staring through the window panes of a vase, searching. A week ago roses grew from its sparkling depths, but now it is empty. Triangles in the crystal lattice ignite one at a time, lightning bugs looking for love.

Rambo's breathing comes in waves. It is cool against my fingers, but his nose is warm. Twisted into a ball and tucked under his left ear is my dad's karate kid t-shirt.

He tilts his body a little and, pulling him sideways, gravity completes the motion. With his legs kicked out in front of him, one paw curled under like a hoof, he resembles a pony. 

Footsteps sound and he is stirred. Abandoning the couch, he crumbles to the floor on a stretch of cardboard. Adorning the entrance to his crate, the board serves as the designated place for chewing his bone. Open it up, and you will see the vestiges of an old science fair project. 

All winter our shoulders and arms waited patiently to breathe again, and the time has come. So why do I seek a metal band to snake around my arm and contain its newfound freedom?

My mom placed a doggy scarf on Rambo the other day, and, to our immense surprise, he didn't shake it off. The tables were turned, and we became the shadow that trailed his movement through the house, delighting in his attainment of a whole new level of dapper. 

Borsch awaits. 

sisters

gif source: ruby aldridge tumblr

Just Hanging

Standing in front of two sitting girls on the New York subway, I caught a few words of what they were saying, their contemplation a response to the crass jeering of nearby men. Something about a self defense mechanism in the form of finding humor in the taunts—how in such situations that is all you can do, but "it just sucks sometimes". It made me want to be their friend. They seemed sweet, and genuine. They didn't bully the smiles off their own faces the way others did, the way I was pressured into doing as I attached to the subway pole of their city, foreign though it was to me. My stop came. I tumbled out of the metro, realizing I'd never see them again.

On the streets I looked at people, half expecting them to have airbrushed skin. Masha muttered something about feeling like everyone was a character from a movie. I acknowledged the strange sense of disconnect mingled with empowerment that pervaded the walk down city streets, though I soon realized the latter was an allusion. The humidity lingered on my hair, inciting my hands to push through the thick air and clutch helplessly at the frenzied locks.

Black choker with black onyx stones dripping onto the swell of my collarbone; nestled in the web, a black cross, stripped in my possession of any meaning it would have to another, and lain powerless to rest on my neck; velvet vest, black; black tube under; black skirt tangled around the length of my legs; black hat; boots, blackness broken only by a spattering of studs. I roamed a shadow.

The strobe lights worked in layers, new intensities slipping over old ones like color transparencies. I found Masha's left hand, then her right, weaving both through the fog. On my own hands, black exes flickered gently in the sifting light, resembling a cult symbol but really a stamp to brandish my still-youth. Dancing, words mouthed, and smiles. Energy, electricity. All of my worries melted into the music, while the beat of my feet against the floor shook free the remaining thoughts, except one: I love concerts.

it's cold today

image source: prism cell

what i'd really like is to crawl into a picture. venture to the other side of what is in front of me and be what i see.

image source: 8luemoon

classes are over. i've been dreaming of this state of disconnect for a while now, ironically counting down the days until the emancipation of time, the moment when this perceived antagonist is released back into the universe, loose now, unassigned to anything but free to transpire naturally. now that i am actually here, the pool of time that i imagined would swallow the world around me feels more like a bathtub, complete with all of the confinement but none of the playfulness. i suspect it is the weather that has me tied up in this strangest of moods. contrary to what my mother thinks from looking at me, i am happy. it's just my consciousness is permeated with flecks of sadness, and my struggle to trace its source has found no justification. i have no reason to be sad. i am so lucky. i was thinking this the other day and only wish i could carry the thought with me always, never losing the comfort and the wisdom that it radiates. this must be the trick to making us impermeable to the cloudburst. or maybe the solution is to find no fault with the inevitable odd day and follow the advice i came upon recently, which is to embrace the whole of the human experience, good, and bad. although i guess within this line of thinking, there is no bad. even that which we strive to avoid—flaws, mistakes, pain, sorrow—is only natural.

La Prochaine Fois (The Next Time)

Somewhere sounds the jingle of an ice cream truck

Don't you love that phase of summer when it is not yet too old for its nickname, spring? Carelessly, the cherry blossom trees disassemble in the wind, their petals settling like tea leaves underfoot. Though I must confess, sometimes I get jealous when, billowing in front of me like outstretched fingertips, my hair plays clapping games with the wind. I remember being that free.

so long

won't be seeing me for a while.
image source: nature love

i want to live life

in this
image source: style bubble via bldg25

Creativity and Perseverance

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

-Ira Glass

anthropomorphisms

to be a ripple in the water, transcending physical boundaries by having none. a calm entity without a body, or knowledge of beginning or end. almost like not existing, until all of a sudden you emerge from your hiding place of nothingness with a vengeance, come alive in energetic bursts over what moments prior was a smooth surface; reminded of your being in one instant that, despite its brevity, epitomizes the energy and the ecstasy of being alive. all this life contained within transparent, transcendent ticks in the tranquil water.

to be a ripple, disconnected rings experienced as distinct entities, and yet they are all your own. no body, no overwhelming sense of obligation to feel all at once. i read a story in which a man was held up at gunpoint while working in a magazine stand. he felt no fear, realizing that his life was not exclusive, there are others transpiring that will continue even in the event that his should cease. he imagined dying and then walking off in the body of the assailant, extra money in his pocket. being a ripple would be kind of like that. you are one ring, and yet also the next. you are separate entities coexisting all at once, no one ring taking precedence before another.

and what if i am wrong, and a ripple is merely water's twitch? how would it feel to be omnipresent? does water discern everything that is happening on its sweeping body? every ripple; every wave; every time a ship passes through its dreams, stirring it from slumber; every displaced water molecule, squeezed from the liquid and propelled into the air? wouldn't it be overwhelming? i think it might be the opposite, calming and freeing. with so much constantly happening, you are instead able to tread into grounds of oblivion, justified in selected ignorance.

and what about air? to be a breeze? or twirling fabric that, with no skeleton to enforce order, knows no bounds?

and how would it be to wind and flutter like silk charmeuse underwater, fluid, continuous, and wild?

McQueen, I loved you

The Chronicles of Narnia

mine

Celestial Voices

The Rites of Spring

It's hard studying at home when your house is set before a patch of forest.

The odor of freedom pours in through the window, beckoning me to join in the festival of spring transpiring outdoors. And there are the trees, performing tribal dances in the wind. The rustle of leaves moving against each other escalates, carried through the air on the trees' communal rhythm. It creates a continuous chorus that is almost like a song, or maybe it is a whisper.

The Way I See It

Writing a story is an act of filtering—filtering events in life the way we filter the words spoken to us. Through filtering, we attain focus, which enables the beauty and the pain of moments to shine clear. Writing a story simulates the natural filtering system we develop with age, which maintains the prized moments from life in crystal condition.

And knowing what to say and what to leave between the lines makes all the difference.

The Momentum of Words

In the margins, she leaves words—little mysteries—for someone someday to find.

The Momentum of Rhythm

A surge of music moves from the pores in your headphones into those of your ears. After traveling swiftly through a channel of veins, the surge ends in your fingertips. To complete the cycle, it grows into the tap of your finger pads against the music player.

Here, the cycle begins anew, so seamlessly, you don't notice a pause.

"...be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can."
-Thomas Hardy


"I love that there are very few things that books cannot do. They can pluck you from under the covers and drop you into the outskirts of your imagination. They can rearrange the chemicals in your brain until you feel happy and uplifted, or wistful and nostalgic. They can, with the careful placement of words side by side, remind you of places you have seen in the dreams of your childhood that you thought you had long forgotten."
-Me, on bldg25 here. 


Almost a year has passed since I became smitten with the idea of a delicate journal, one whose "beautiful exterior would inspire me in my quest to make the inside equally as magical". Since then, I haven't acquired such a journal, but my passion for words and stories, along with the conviction that writing is what I want to do, has grown so much I almost can't believe it.

Transparency Theory

I have this theory that all things sheer or otherwise transparent are magic. Because, if you think about it, what you see is a physical object, and yet you can still watch the world through it. Our long exposure to this phenomenon, and the knowledge that tells us about form and matter and chemical makeup, has removed us from seeing it as such; and yet, sheer fabrics, wine glasses, bubbles: magic. Considering their tendency to denote a clear glass with a mere white brush stroke here and there, applying no layer of paint to represent its surface texture, I think the painters in the old days knew this.

I said this to my dad and he told me [my] imagination is the force behind [seeing] magic. And then I was happy.

Tis the season

Of Rittenhouse picnics on patterned blankets, frayed corners curling in towards the cool earth; of smooth melodies emitted gently from vintage guitars; of grainy picture planes and plastic lens flare; of the world seen through the dreamy film spun by your sunglasses; of backlit silhouettes against blue skies when the sun makes glowing orbs of everything, from your breeze-tossed hair, to the peach fuzz on the arms of everyone in your company.

Is it peace, or simply the idea of it

My head feels like it's about to explode, so I'm just lying in the dark. I turn over on my side and then freeze, straining my ears to catch if the pattering on the window is rain, or merely the ghost of a song drifting in my mind. No, it's not raining, but birds are chirping. I close my eyes. The moody blue tint that the dark lends to everything disappears, so I resolve to keep them open. The image of me lying in a haze of black and blue, listening to the birds, fills me with an excitement, and I don't know if it is the excitement of acknowledging the experience, or the want to write it down.

Electric Dreams

          I want to have electric dreams, the kind activated by the moment of your eyes sealing. One minute you are a person, complete with a face and torso and all of the necessary appendages; the next you are a mere being, not mere because you hardly matter (you do in this instant more than you ever have), but mere because suddenly, all of the ornaments that gave you weight and kept you on your feet in the face of gravity have dissipated, leaving a mere ball of sensory nerves and a perceptive aperture where your identity used to be. In this state of oblivion you exist, unaware where you begin and where you end. Weightless, you slip like Alice down a tunnel into an intergalactic universe.
          There you wash through century old seas pacified by rhythmic brush strokes, eventually sticking to hydrogen oxide molecules that lift you from the waves into darkness and carry you onto a vast ship. In this ship, you meet creatures, and drift as vapor left to right and back again, imitating the brilliant violet to amber light gradient (a reflection cast by cosmic dust) dancing across the walls behind you. You travel like this for eternity, before waking with sweat beads draped across your forehead like Indian jewelry.

image source: glow in the dark eyes
Watch once without sound:

my artist sister

she used to paint patterns and vistas on seashells. maybe these days she can paint me.

body art without the permanence of a tattoo, for people like me who want to change skins like a cicada:

image source: photographer Mariam Sitchinava

Ruby

Love everything about this.



Minus the smoking.

Excerpt

“The trees,” You point to the stalks that form a canopy around you. A web of offshoots cuts patterns into the sky. “Do you think when we get older they will no longer seem beautiful? That the years will strip the magic and leave only the skeleton of what we used to know? Just trees, and nothing more.”

You look ahead, the words pouring of their own accord. The air is gray as you drive together in the car, comprising a unit very small in comparison with the vastness of the universe, but very warm.

“No, I don’t think it will get old.” 

Updated Summer To-Do List

This summer I will

star gaze

sleep outside

learn to drive

find sea glass

find my cause

sit on a rooftop

have an adventure

make people smile

take lots of pictures

go barefoot in the grass

teach Rambo something

and run and run and run and run

Cymbaline

There is a place where paint peels from the walls;

Brightly colored patterns on the ceiling, residue

From plastic bodies in their attempts to fly.

It is what it seems, not what I hoped it would be.

Bohemia

"I will not wait for you." The breeze unravels like a turban against your skin. "Find me, and I will show you."

Birds descend from the clouds and together you haunt the land. Your bare feet breathe in the dirt, weeds, and flowers that fly under your soles. Ahead, secrets and time make their home in the curly contours of trees. They flutter just beyond the horizon, so you chase them.

image source: cosmic dust

Yes

"Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously."
-Tom Robbins, via bldg 25

Not just a dream anymore

Good Music

ec·sta·sy    [ek-stuh-see]

1. rapturous delight
2. an overpowering emotion or exaltation; a state of sudden, intense feeling
3. a state of being carried away by overwhelming emotion
4. a trance or trance-like state in which an individual transcends normal consciousness
5. the frenzy of poetic inspiration

Moonlight

"Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk"

-William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

Obsessed

Nifty Fifty's

We got our milkshakes and, trading the bustle of the interior for a quiet freedom, escaped to the parking lot. The air poured in through the rolled down windows as we nudged the front seats into a horizontal orientation. Upon reclining, the road with its stream of cars became replaced with clear sky. Our laughter bubbled from our souls and injected the air around us with a sweet poison. In this cloud of contentedness we spent the lazy afternoon, smooth melodies in our ears and peace on our lips.

Harbor Wisdom

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but words are worth a thousand words. Heck, words are worth a thousand pictures.

Spiritus

The root of "inspiration" is the the Latin word for wind, spiritus, which means "breath" and "soul".
Inspiration is to breathe life into the soul.

(The Broadview Anthology of British Literature)

Tintern Abbey

Everything that I have been thinking and wondering and wishing and questioning and hoping lately is in this poem.

i'm doing this