December 2010
38 posts
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As 2010 concludes, and I sit at the computer trying to reproduce some of the many memories from the past year, I’m having trouble. As I try to pull them to the front of my crowded mundane thoughts, to force them out so they drip from my fingertips, into the keyboard and onto the Internet, I’m having difficulties. I don’t think it’s easy to sum up a year at will, at least...
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“Poseidon was easier than most./He calls himself a god,/but he fell beneath my...”
– Patricia Smith, “Medusa”
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It just so happens to be ironically fortunate that I woke up around 6:30 this morning, incapable of falling back to sleep or working the remote to my TV (have the batteries died?) seeing as it prompted me to write a poem I’ve had filed away in my head for a while. I’ve felt extremely prolific in the last three days: I went jogging the first, I went to dance twice yesterday (the first...
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Why not try again? It’s not as if the sensation will leave me, if anything it’s grown stronger since last night—the feeling of missing New York. I left the island of Manhattan with a pile of melodrama squatting at my feet and a climate as cold and still as my body when conflict stabbed me in the navel and left me to bleed. And even then, I still miss it. Not until recently,...
Definitely just deleted a post by accident that I put up last night about missing New York. And the worse part is, I was really proud of it. I could try to rewrite it, though, but I feel as if the attempt would be futile. This has happened before, and even when I do rewrite something I’m proud of or that exceeds the original, I still feel defeated. This makes me want to save my post in a...
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“In My Bed” by Amy Winehouse
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“Before you speak, ask yourself: is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it...”
– Sai Baba (via oceanofmind)
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It’s been Christmas eve for four minutes, and all I can think about is next year. I don’t expect to find any answers in time, nor do I expect to gallivant through 2011 problem free. As many lessons as I’ve learned at 2010’s conclusion, I can’t ignore the fact that I am only eighteen, and wisdom is something acquired much like arthritis. I fucked up, I watched others...
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Today was slow. Yesterday was slow. Tomorrow will be slow. Christmas will be slow, too. And after the festivities and family functions settle down, I will return to my routine of uninspiring leisure. I’ve written a little, I could write more. And I’m reading Running with Scissors, which gives me a good laugh here and there. My family and I are close as usual but disconnected in...
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I’m going to get to these poems extended across the pages of my journal. I have so many lines to cohere, and after, so much editing, deleting and adding to do. But the first step is always getting everything onto the computer. I become excited when thinking about what the final result will (not ‘could’) be. I feel my writing becoming stronger, and I know what I have in my...
Oh, the things that my Moodiness shoves out of my mouth when common sense is too weak in comparison to stand in the way. I’m always saying too much, and when I say too little, I have a tower of obtuse frustration constructing itself inside of me, too formless and ambiguous to be identified and conquered, found and destroyed. And now my mom thinks I’m an out of control hedonist. But...
I need to get to writing. I have all these poems I have archived in my brain that have yet to put to paper. I’m excited about writing them, but I need to be in the mood to do so. And, unfortunately, boredom is not the appropriate state in which to be prolific. I’m kind of in a knot right now. Last night I felt nice. Now, I’m just in a knot, and I need to untie myself. The...
Despite the cynical quotes I’ve recently posted, I feel pretty great. I dipped into some fun with people I used to party with in high school, I went to my brother’s graduation and dinner with my family, and tomorrow I’ll be going back to my high school—the place from which all the heavy emotions and inspiration for my writing had once come before I moved to New York. And...
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I have people who I mutually love, respect and appreciate to an extent that almost defies the principles of logic. And while I am ending my first semester of college not on the best note, I must always remember this: that I am loved. And even if I am not loved—even if the sun refuses to rise for me and the clouds refuse to pass, I am completely worthy of the utmost respect and affection,...
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“It’s useless to be troubled by death, because then, of course, you can’t live at...”
– James Baldwin
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What’s wonderful is that when misery or anxiety or fear, or any of those negative things, has its hands clenched around my throat, has its fist in my chest, art is what redeems me. When I’ve slid under one shoe just to be imprinted with the tracks of another—when tears are the only thing spilling from my face and words are no longer strong enough to crawl, what gives me power...
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This past two weeks has felt like the slow descent of a dagger down my throat—like a paperweight implanted into my chest and a lemon squeezed into the cuts created by the effort of the blade. And it’s not even finals, not even quite as serious. It’s just my own emotions and how they manage so well to latch on to things and weigh me down so easily. I hate to sound melodramatic,...
malomematome asked: I can say the same for you my friend, thank you. *tips hat* What's your name?
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“The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent,...”
– Chuck Palahniuk (via mcskinney)
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I’ve spent the last forty-five minutes or so cleaning my side of the dorm room, feeding various sheets of paper accumulated over my first semester to the recycling bin and organizing my desk space. I always get sudden urges to clean—to organize and find balance. I feel wonderful having done so, and the thought of the mess I used to have at my feet makes my stomach turn. I can say...
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Finals are a hurtle over which I must jump and after which I can sink into the comfort of family, home cooking and Christmas gifts. When I went back to Virginia for Thanksgiving break, the pace bored me, but I look forward to it after the past few weeks have been congested with situations begging for a detox. I miss my mom and my dad and my father and my my friends and their houses, and my...
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“It is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised...”
– Thomas de Quincy, “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater”
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I said I wouldn’t vent on here anymore, but I consider this to be more of a proclamation than a whiny address to cyberspace. I have, in the past two weeks, found myself amerced in two conflicts, both resulting in the extinguishing of a relationship. While I would usually find my skin tingling with guilt and a brick lodged in my chest, I have chosen not to allow this sensation to consume...
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So, I decided I want a tattoo on my thigh of a swan retching, and this is why:
“Giant Swan” by The Blood Brothers
The Giant Swan’s got ghosts in his wings. His guts are stuffed with polaroids, and they’re all humiliating. And when the wine’s drunk and the wild cabaret has sung its last voice, and you’re sitting all alone in the 4 AM darkness of a...
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“The tongue, the Chinese say,/is like a sharp knife:/it kills/without drawing...”
– Anne Sexton, “The Dead Heart”
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I can feel my writing improving, which has never been something I can say I’ve felt before. And although this is good, it’s forcing me to confront certain realizations in my methods. I remember watching a video on Anne Sexton and her relatives noting her incredible ability to lie—equating the poetic severity of her work to melodramatic exaggerations. I think all art is...
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“Give thy thoughts no tongue.”
– Shakespeare
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Patricia Marx: Do you find that you are more truthful in your poetry than you are to yourself?
Anne Sexton: Yes, I think so. That's what I'm hunting for when I'm working away there in the poem. I'm hunting for the truth. It might be a kind of poetic truth, and not just a factual one, because behind everything that happens to you, every act, there is another truth, a secret life.
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“It’s very hard to reveal yourself. Frankly, anything I say to you is...”
– Anne Sexton
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