|oystershell|

HANDS

they say the snow is coming back.  but today i woke up with hands on my stomach.  hands other than my own.  hands i kind of like. 

they say the snow is coming back. but it's the last thing to really cross my mind.

RADICALS

i'm having dreams about a boy, and that can be nothing but bad news.  bad, bad news.  i'd tie my wrists if i had another pair of hands to do it. 

i'm doing some modeling these days.  even getting paid for some of it.  i'm getting out of debt.  i'm having a social life.  i'm counting down the days until colette moves in, to which we're almost at 30.  i'm waking up exhausted and going to bed uneasy.  unready.  unmotivated to sleep.

i'm drinking about ten cups of coffee in a work week, which have been varying 4-7 days.  i know this because my floyd's coffeehouse card usually rewards me with free coffee come monday.  every monday.  sitting there, on their leather couch, waiting for the slowest brew i've ever known, has become my favorite routine.  staring at the art.  glancing at the mercury.  watching all the people watching and talking and swallowing gulps of their stumptown whatevers. 

i'm thinking thoughts i shouldn't be thinking.  thinking about how things are always so much easier when they're over.  i think things were easier than we gave them credit.  i think it's been a long time and a long road and somedays i don't even know how that person became this person.

but i'm having dreams about a boy who paints monsters.  pretty dreams.  tumultuous dreams.  fuck, even dirty dreams.  but, more and more, with him i feel i'm staring at the art.  glancing at the mercury.  watching the people watching and talking and swallowing gulps of whatever it is we swallow when we fall silent.  when we can't say the things we'd like.

so i'm doing some modeling.  and working 4-7 day weeks.  and buying lots of giant sunglasses and hooded sweatshirts.  and cutting all my hair off.  and drinking coffee and coffee and coffee.  and swallowing whatever it is we swallow when we can't say the things we'd like. 

SEEING STARS

the clouds roll in again.  and we are addicted to talking about when the weather will change.  the summer sun and flip flops on hawthorne.  and every time a bit of blue shines through, we put on our sunglasses and go for a walk.  and we talk about how the weather is changing.  and how they're even changing daylight savings time.  and who decides and gets to change something like time.  we talk about how we wish we could change time.

i have no hair.  i drank too much espresso one day, came home and cut it all off.  perhaps because it was too cold to run naked through sprinklers.  perhaps because i'm getting too old to wait around for things to happen to me.  perhaps because of the lack of warm bodies pressing up against mine.  and it's not the sex.  and it's not even loneliness.  it's a connection.

we go through life as addicts.  addicted to ideas or lovers or sex, drugs and even rock n roll.  we find something to cling to, to focus our attentions on, so we don't have to spend so much time looking around and taking things in.  so we don't feel so alone.  we sit on our living room floors, spinning bottles.  spinning our heads.  spinning in circles until we can come dizzy.  some sort of great escape from the world that surrounds, sometimes so harshly.  something to quiet the voices in our heads, to get us out of ourselves.  something, even in all its awfulness, to help define us.  to help etch us into this world that surrounds us, sometimes so harshly.

until eventually everyone and thing become buffers.  just buffers.  high above ourselves, just looking down.  dizzy from all that spinning.  from the spinning of stories.  the spinning of wheels, in the ditches we've been sitting in.  just looking around.  hopeless, like the grey skies under the clouds rolling in.  dizzy and seeing stars. 

so what if i want a connection.  i've had my fair share of fucking up and fucking off and fucking around.  dizzy from all the distractions we do imbue.  here comes the summer sun, they say.  they say.  it's out there; just tucked away safely, waiting for us.  disconnected and dizzy, seeing stars.

AT A CERTAIN POINT

at a certain point in life...

you just have to say, "ah, fuck it", take off your clothes, and run naked through the sprinklers.

i'm stripping as we speak.

LUPERCALIA

lupercalia was a celebration of the coming of spring.  a warding off of winter's bad spirits and welcoming of new life and harvest. 

the church created st. valentine's day, based on several martyrs they historically (ie. full names, what they died for, how/when they died) knew very little about, to overshadow lupercalia.  you see, lupercalia was a pagan holiday celebrated on february 15th.  and we all know the christians couldn't stand to be shown up by the pagans. 

so, happy valentine's day.  a holiday essentially pulled out of the asses of the vatican and capitalized upon by hallmark, just so we can all feel bad about love instead of celebrating the arrival of spring. 

A PLACE TO LAY DOWN

i think about the lives we´re living. the way these lives are changing. the changes all around us and all so out of our hands. the way life happens, even when we´re closing our eyes; no matter how hard we cling to it.

life is changing and i catch myself trying to stop myself from letting go of it. i catch myself trying to stop myself from waving goodbye. to the things and the places and the people and most of all the connections. the connections that ware and spread so thin. thin to the greatest of lengths and mass, before they just slowly peel apart like taffy.

but i let go. i let go of what seems impossible. of what just isn´t right. and even, on my better days, of what is no longer mine to hold.

we are in turmoil. everything around us is changing so quickly and in such ways it´s all so entirely out of our hands. more often then ever in my life i find we are forced to, for the first time, really fight for what we believe in. with all these changes. with all this turmoil. and in the end it is our passion that undoes us. but in the end, it is also our passion that saves us. that makes us. that makes us us. and with all these distractions, we´re forced to scream it out. to anyone who will hear. because no one´s listening. because there is too much struggle, too much fighting, too much passion, just too much to listen anymore. we aren´t listening.

we are only changing. and letting go, because it takes too much to hold on for too long. too much to hold on, when we need more than ever to fight for what we believe. no matter what we believe. no matter who we believe in. it´s never been more selfish to believe in anybody else.

i think about the lives we´re living. the way these lives are changing. the way these lives are changing us. the changes all around us and all so out of our hands. love and war. passion and grief. what we believe in. what we believe in just to get through. just to get through. just to get through all these changes we can't control or stop or slow or wrap our heads around their raging pace. we've become points on an ever-descending horizon. ever so often statuesque when the sunlight attaches to our faces before they fade into the dark.

we have to learn to let go of what is no longer ours to hold. the way these lives are changing.

i cut off all my hair.

TAK

sometimes something soft comes over me.  i let my head go light.  and i think about all the good things.  and not all the things that might be good.  or all the good that was and went away.  i think about all the good things.  that between any two points is an entire world of understanding and reasoning and spectacular views.  an entire world between any two people.

sometimes something soft comes over me.  and i see myself in the light.  and i think about all the good i have become.  and not all the things i´ve done wrong or might fuck up.  i see myself standing there.  light and alive.  reflections of light and tiny matter.  and it´s no matter that i have tried and tried and failed.  and it´s no matter that i have been selfish in some of the worst ways. 

because i see myself.  i see how i have changed.  for the better.  for the dregs of my decisions.  my decisions to be better.  i see the way my feet touch the ground, as i´m walking.  through the dregs and the lead of my decisions.  as i´m walking.

we are all moving.  we are all the movement of light and matter.  we are all intrepid in our own ways.  moving through the leftovers of our own wakes.  the invisible triumphs we barely take notice.  we can´t all be everything to everyone all the time.  it´s exhausting.  it´s impossible.  it´s pathetic.  running group to group.  asking who loves me.  pleading someone love me.  killing time and each other, because we´re too afraid to look down.  to the lead and the dregs and the invisible triumphs we barely take notice.

the tricky thing about evolution is you rarely see it happen.  sometimes you just have to know to look beyond the big and the brave, the severe and the loud. 

sometimes something soft comes over me.

VOLCANO

i want to do this.  who's with me?

LUCIDITY

we all look around at the world that surrounds us and occasionally catch ourselves wondering why.  why do we coexist so separately?  why do we effect any bit of anything at all?  why do we react the ways we do?  and what, if anything, ties it all together?

cooking in my kitchen this evening, i thought about neil.  how resistant i have been to maintaining any sort of correspondence with him.  something i have struggled with for a while now.  never really knowing why i could never just press reply.  and i realized that maybe it isn't so much him.  maybe i don't want to be reminded of who i was when i knew him.  he knows me as a person i don't want to remember being.  a person i understand, but don't like much.

and then i realized, maybe that's why ryan has such a difficult time talking to me.  the way parts of ourselves live on in others' memories long after they've left us.  that we all really want to be remembered as our greatest; not the shadows of who we were that got us there. 

brixton comes in saturday.  i have no idea what we'll do for two days.  but it'll be nice all the same.  it will be nice.