Regress and Press

We are in a relationship again. What happened? I’ve been wondering about needs. How everyone has them and how their ubiquity trickles into different facets of life. Needs from friends, boyfriend, self…although the role of the boyfriend is always played by a man on the stage of my life, there is always, and there always will be, an understudy. The one currently playing the role is S*. And when we arrive at my needs, he makes me feel guilty for having them. I need to feel important to him. I need to feel like an excellent version of myself. But these needs are not met and now I need to stop thinking about him. 

Feelings Are Not Facts

In a letter to L*:

"I am, as they say, single. It's a liberating and morose feeling, really. I realized that 23 + long distance relationship = not cool. So I did something about it. Now I'm seated with a Hesse book in hand wondering what to do with all these notions of forever."

X

August Moons

This is the year I turn August from what is typically the most uneventful month of the year to one in which I thrive. I have begun to establish closure with the ex. While he has yet to be seen completely in the past (I recycle memories and instant replays), I’ve gone minutes building up to hours without thinking of him.

My days are mundane and regular; I no longer try to escape from the suffering of everyday life. I embrace the days, sometimes idly flittering them away, and sometimes fucking them hard in the ass. Either way, Eleanor and therapy have helped tremendously and I am in an amazing state of mental and psychological health. Could this all be because I’m sober and actually allowing myself to feel process emotions and thoughts? Just could be. 

Regress and Try Again

It’s strange reading past excerpts. The days of confusion and dissatisfaction began to haunt me as my perusal went on—so I stopped reading. I needed to stop. I fear abandoning the clarity and satisfaction gained in the past six months. Truth is, whether I read my past words or not, I am regressing.

I haven’t written, studied or painted for a month. This was what the beginning of he and I was. We’ve been spending a lot of time together lately. Again. I can’t call it a relationship…because we’ve already failed at that. So I’ll call it a dynamic. ‘We have a great post-break up dynamic’. But, when facing up to this brain-fuck I realize that no matter how I put it, it equals regression. 

Happy Heart Day

This used to be my favorite holiday, but its novelty has expired. The time of making valentines is over. The days have passed, only to be replaced with drunken declarations explaining the inevitable solitude of what will be my twilight years.

I’m tired of the nights; the bar scene is stale and boring. And all the cutest boys, for their own respective reasons, are unappealing. Indeed, I vie for the attention from boys who aren’t as smart or fun as I am, who don’t get me or make me laugh, while in addition to never making me happy make me miserable. These laws of property surround me and I fall victim. But I am ever so eager for gravity to take its course and for one of them to fall for me. 

One Foot in Yesterday and One in Today

I hesitate writing this for I fear its dissipation upon recognition...His ghost has been exorcised. I have serenity. All the events of the past year have led to a sense of peace in the present moment. The prospect of fulfilling my life with things that don’t involve him elate me. I regret not having cut men out of the equation of my ultimate fulfillment sooner, but that’s the thing about the past, it’s always mocking you. 

Saved

There's nothing that I wish I was doing right now. Not even this act of scribble helps me find a place to mentally belong. I am homeless.

So much for the poor little rich girl. 

What happens when scholarly pursuits don't suffice? What the fuck am I supposed to do with all this education? 

I just add more; and in between learning German and perfecting Persian calligraphy, an annoying little bug starts biting my ass to let me know it's not enough. It's never enough..."there's never enough time."
-Jesse Spano

X

The Heineken Factory Is across the Street

I hear my Swatch ticking. The one my dad bought me in the Amsterdam airport during our nine hour layover heading to Iran. 

Time surrounds the room—every room I enter. I feel so conscious of time—in the sense that I’m always waiting for something. It’s the classic waiting for Godot act: awaiting that which makes us happy. Constantly waiting. Unlike the protagonist in Beckett’s masterpiece however, I do know what my Godot’s are—too many to count. 

The point is that “here and now” offers more than ‘there and then’. Because they are real. I want to stop waiting and simply see that I have found Godot and I am wasting my time with this longing. Wait, maybe that was Beckett’s point? Fucking genius. Fucking Estragon. 

Unleaded

I see my reflection through a most disturbing object: a pair of men’s eyes. 

These noxious and deceiving things have superseded mirrors, and in addition to my less than expected reflection bring with them disturbing realizations. It is only through male perception that I conceptualize myself; they suggest my beauty, my intelligence, my ability to love, my self-worth. Without them, perhaps I don’t exist. And without this notion, if only I could rid myself of it, I may be able to live a semblance of a fulfilled life. 

Time, Again?

The man I love, that I lost my virginity to, is gone. Almost dead in my active thought process. I do think of him, but the feelings that erupt inside of me are hardly explanatory. I can't say that I'm in a horrible amount of pain or totally remorseful. It's almost like my wounds are scabbing. After 8 days.

What baffles me is how stable I am. Why fight it? Because it's eeriness is killing me. 

The idea of us getting back together becomes more fantasy than realistic fiction...if that's even a genre. It offered an insecure and dependent hope at the initial moment, but is now an incredible event indeed. Fantastical really.

I don't know where I'll be in ten years. Maybe in his arms, maybe in a woman's or maybe just my own. Wherever it is, I would just like to accept it. Appreciate the future as something so trivial and vain upon which to muse, because in turn I lose moments in the present.

Now, today and at this moment I'm OK. To think of him doesn't offer comfort as much as it does fear. The ugliness might just start the next time we talk. Deciding to 'maintain' the friendship that never existed could cause the negative repurcussions I've been avoiding. Maybe all this bad shit will unleash then...the badness between he and I, I and I, and maybe just I. Oh, how self-absorbed is the writer to assume somebody cares. I refer to the self more often than not.

Fearing the future won't get me anywhere except to a very tired point. So I enjoy the moment and don't question it, realizing this multi-faceted thing called 'Eleanor.'

X

Sculpture

He thought that he, that all men, trickled away, changing constantly, until they finally dissolved, while their artist-created images remained unchangeable the same.

-Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund

Plexiglass

The ‘platonic friendship’ (possible or not) is slowly developing. He came over—even brought a pizza. We laughed, played video games, and then I went to bed. I won’t say that there wasn’t sexual tension…it could have shattered glass. Maybe even Plexiglas. I can’t say that I didn’t attempt to suggest myself, but then I realized the futility in the long run of such a task. This is the wrong time for us. We’ve already tried twice. One must learn. Experience can’t just be the anthem of the loser. How about putting it to some use?

Belly full of Jelly

I know now that idealism distorted my relationship with the ex. When he cheated everything shattered and this realism flooded in. I wish it could have been a trickle, but there was no way. Every day I recover and strengthen from this malnourished relationship. Since the nucleus of our relationship was attraction, I think now about self-absorption and how to achieve fulfillment with no connection to men. 

It's a Boat Metaphor

He is the “wind in my sail,” my sister once said of a friend who is very close to her. Who isn’t here anymore. So do I.

At one point, when the freshness of discovering facts and tastes about the other person was magical, he made me feel so free. I found a way to soar in our little boat which we, mistakenly, assumed was sturdily built. Suddenly, it leaks. Holes welcome water and my new skirt: water damage, water damage, water damage. What do I do with the notions of Cyprus? Or Spain? These notions…I amused myself with them. And he amused me with his. To learn foreign tongues among our foreign tongues, until irregular verbs were the most regular parts of our vocabulary. We made promises of forever. We swore it to each other.

And now: leaks, holes, wet dress, wrinkly crinkly fingers, stupid tongues. Like prunes. We were supposed to turn to prunes together, but in a different way. There is the hope, I realize, when we reach shore and get out of the water. Nevertheless, the sea is big and so are our hearts and our hammers. Hope and reconstruction lie everywhere. But to keep building and mending old holes, to dry off only to be immersed again, to drown while learning the breast stroke, to learn to swim at all will not achieve the ‘forever’ dream. It just perpetuates the fantasy and the pain. One must realize their ability to survive in the deep waters without that ‘reliable and sturdy’ boat locked into the notion of forever. 

Clicking

Today I was very conscious of my lack of boyfriend. Perhaps it’s because I’ve taken up masturbation again…or maybe it’s the natural wanderings of rumination during quiet summer afternoons. They are having an ill-effect on me. 

Humps

I talked to a llama a month ago at the zoo. I remember how I expected this to heal me. The sporadic and carefree grown-up heartbroken girl takes herself to the zoo in the middle of a SF winter afternoon, and figures it all out. Because the sad little girl version of herself shared a moment with this animal. I am so tired of these fantasies. 

S.O.S.

Who is this girl seated here--waiting for an answer? If only to explain her.

Swimming within my head are thousands of toils and heartaches 
Coming ashore on a daily basis to torment and greet; 
They do the former with great insensitivity and
the latter with a mocking tone. 
I only wish to drown them, but they are such good swimmers.

I can see my need for perspective; 
that I'll always be coping with some problem or another. 
It feels though that now, it's all at once.

If only to have a mother,
a lover, 
a sister, 
a job, 
an education, 
a friend, 
a novel, 
a religion, 
and a self. To have myself would supersede the desire for any of the latter. 
But, that is the most difficult to attain.

Someone could approach me now with the will to repair my broken life
And I would deem it a miracle,
Because, you see, 
it's too much work for me.

My apathy arrived unexpectedly and without viable references. 
For this reason, I don't know whether or not to take it seriously. 
Ask not for weakness to accept you, but for you to accept it. 
After X amount of fighting, 
my fatigue reaches relentlessness, 
my apathy is astronomical
and only matched by my insatiable misanthropy.
They're all swimming within the current of bullshit in my river of self-induced suffering

and so I surrender to weakness. 
Let's see where I end up from here.

X

"Wonderments" Isn't a Word

Therapy has welcomed unannounced visitors:

-the realization that the complete version of myself is obsolete unless there is a man to complete it

-the necessity to stop approaching the death of my relationship as the death of the man with whom I was in the relationship

-it’s not him I miss, but being in a relationship with someone to whom I was so attracted

-The comfort in knowing that all of this is ok

The first one fucked with me most, as it means that I have become the woman I hate. So now, enter the forced self-accolades and lauding of my wonderments in order to gain perspective. Fuck that. It’s easier for a man to just tell me how pretty I am. 

It Doesn't Add Up

To feel with a heart: a desire; to think with the mind: a goal. Performing each action reflexively with the other creates confusion. The mind works much better pragmatically—so why do I muddle it in emotion? Not to mention the breathtaking role of the heart as ‘feeler’ which positions the individual as a disrespectful host. 

I am hosting these guests of heart and mind and by not allowing them to play their respective and designated roles, I am insulting my guests. I have created havoc within the home, dirtying the dishes on which are served the foods for thought.

Indeed, I have lost the ability to correctly assess and process—even recognize thoughts vs. feelings. I have surrendered to my guests of heart and mind, hoping they can just figure out how the rest of the party should go. Maybe they can find sense in the havoc. I scramble. Not seeing myself from the mirror, or maybe just concluding I am that reflection I see in the pupils of others’ eyes, I have arrived at a quasi-reality. What should be truth is muddled and stagnancy pervades every version of reality. The factors to achieving a unity in this mind-heart conundrum…well, it is, at the very least, an algebraic nightmare. 

Emotional Surgery

Djuna was intrepid in awareness, in painful exposures of the self, and dared more than most in the matter of emotional surgery, but she had a fear of violence.

-Anais Nin 

C'est facile, non? Not Really.

Much time has passed since my last entry. Probably because I spend most of it with a wonderful man who fulfills me. 

There are no complaints—except one, from him: my drinking. This has resurfaced into a potential detriment to a relationship. 

He told me to fix it or he would leave. It wasn’t as so much a threat as it was a testament to what he is able to tolerate.

I appreciate his honesty and wonder why I am so reluctant to undergo this change that I so badly want myself. 

Things That Happen in the Past Only Happen in Your Mind

Ziggy Stardust is playing at the Red Vic the day after tomorrow. I probably won’t go. The Divine Comedy of Mr. Alighieri waits patiently for my eyeballs on the nightstand. I know I won’t read it. Cognizance of my idleness will definitely be key to the melancholy of my later years. I can only say to start now. NOW. For a project. A reason. An amusement. I go search. Now. A reason to wake up tomorrow. 

Radical Face

So, the long awaited rise of the phoenix, results in waiting for phone calls from men while practicing a false version of self-preservation. Where did she go? That broken-hearted girl equipped with the confidence to play the heart-breaker. To suck them in and discard them when she’s through. It’s humorous: to recover from a man who didn’t care enough by turning to the arms of a man who doesn’t care enough.

Waits by the phone. Checks it frantically. Sadly realizes that her enjoyment of life is directly linked to male attention. Not friends, education, travels or wit. Men. With this she realizes how she compromises self-respect…but will stop this destructive pattern tomorrow, because he might call today. Her concept of self-worth is made, molded and stripped by men. In a world of sadness, she turns to masturbation…if only to continue the fantasy. 

The Present is Your Present, Idiot

 “An intense, a vivid present was the best exorcist of the past”

-Anais Nin

So is my present tense, pregnant with intensity and vividness. I exorcised his demon and now live in a healthy world devoid of fantasies. The present is vivid, indeed. I was betrayed by a man who didn’t believe in me or our union. And now I encounter men who stumble or glide into my life…and actually recognize a future tense with me. However much I resist playing the role of the fatalist, I look to these men as symbols of progression, transition and enlightenment. Like the phoenix I so often laud and valorize, I rise. 

Baby New Year

New Year’s resolutions:

1-maintain unavailability to men
2-Not hook up with anyone younger than me
3-Not hook-up with anyone I met in a bar

The 38 Geary...Unlimited

Last night was stupendously alcoholic, as my nights often are. From arriving to late to work, getting abadoned at an indie lesbian bar, and then stuck in downtown SF with no money and no way of getting home at 3 am. I ended up speaking to a very heart-broken homeless man until the 38 Geary showed up at 3:30 and I begged the driver to let me board.

I called him during all of this. He didn’t answer, which was good. My therapist called this victimizing myself. He called this morning and we actually had a civil conversation. I was not trying to be anything but myself. I didn’t try to be wonderful or funny super-girlfriend. Ironically, this resulted in me being all of these things. The during was fine, as was the immediate after. It’s this 12 hours later I’m battling. There are two people inside of me now. the one who picks apart and analyzes to the point of nausea, and the rational one who accepts the varied phases of her mending heart and that they will lead to her recovery from all this. 

Scott-free

Not in a family way. In an empty-womb way, gladly accepted. The conclusion to this scare has also led to the his conclusion. Better. He has the most obsessive effect on me. I’ll take this lonely feeling, and so will my womb. It’s better than the false security developed from having a handsome boyfriend. 

Smoking Made Me Shorter

Could there be a reason, however justifiable, to stunt one’s own growth? Is masochism too simple an excuse? Could it really just be that an individual prefers to dwell in the stagnant mires of the present moment?

It’s too easy to judge. Perhaps I am just not ready to develop, to continue, to let go of the past. This focus on all the yesterdays obviates prospects for a full and lively future…which couldn’t affect me less. I’m a past-dweller, and I’m comfortable with that.  

When You're Expecting

I might be pregnant. The whole thing suspends me in shock…that I may be opening my legs to…a machine that cleans you out.

If this is the case, it means the return of him in my life. I debated not telling him. I fear that all of the strength I’ve gained will flitter. A semblance of hope has grown inside me…but maybe that’s the baby.

No, this hope centers on the idea of another. Somewhere out there, with whom to laugh and have sex with, in a more phenomenal way…probably because we’ll be sober more than 10% of the time during intercourse. We spent more than half our nights together drunk. Alcohol rushed, escalated, heightened everything; from our first kiss, to our first fuck, to our break-up. I may be in a family way from one such encounter. A drunken encounter with my ex-boyfriend could have been the night I got pregnant with the fetus I will inevitably abort. What the fuck happened to my life?

Ebenezer

Christmas? Bah Humbug. I don’t care that it’s cliché. Why do I feel the incessant need to ‘expose’ a cliché? Anytime anyone ever uses one, it needs to be pointed out as if part of some spy novel and one found the dirty secret the butler had been hiding.

Well, Christmas was lack-luster. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I should pinpoint it so as to avoid expecting it for next year… Perhaps my melancholia is attributed to the fact that I didn’t watch the Peanuts Christmas Special. More on New Year’s and the Y2K-Millennium craze later—but one thing is for sure: I’m not buying bars of fucking gold or  building a Panic Room. 

Hide and Seek

I have so much hope for the man whose only hope was getting rid of me. I can’t keep him around anymore. He chose this. What we are now, and I…I pause for the first time, my fervently wicked hand doesn’t know what to dictate next…and that’s the problem. It’s directly reflexive of my mind. I just need to stop making him the focus. Where do I go in all this?  

His Hangover

I don’t want to catalogue all of the emotions that I have endured this month, but it was a lot. One of the most difficult months of my life. I went through every stage of mourning:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Denial: the night we split up I went to bed with a ridiculous smile thinking of how fortunate things had turned out and concluding that it was all for the best, as the freedom of single life may offer time to apply to grad school. And I woke up that next morning with my whole face covered in tears.

Anger: for cheating on me, not believing in me or us, not taking a chance, and of course in perfect Scott fashion, putting himself first.

Bargaining: prayer at China Beach, out the apartment window, in the car at the Golden Gate, anywhere. Everywhere. The streets of San Francisco are saturated with my prayers. I'll do anything to get him back, dear God. 

Depression: going strong, all winter long.

Acceptance: this is recent, so I don't trust it. I hope that every time it creeps in and goes away a bit of it remains. Like a hangover. He is a hangover: the terrible present remnant of a past joy. 

Not Perfection

Hopefully this will make sense one day. We are through. He is my ex, and I his. I entered this relationship with no expectations and exited feeling that I had lost out on being his wife and somebody’s mother. But I also left loving a wonderful man. And he loved me too. And he does not love easily. He claims to not be ‘fit to be anybody’s boyfriend right now’. I told him that he just let the best woman of his life go and he claimed that I was probably right.

He needs to be alone right now. And honestly, that sounds lovely. Being without him is degrees more pleasant than being with him. I really mean this. That’s nice to know. 

If is successfully make it through the next 22 minutes I would have survived one day in three weeks without crying. My progress is slow, but I suppose that’s the nature of progress. 

Update:  I didn’t make it the 22 minutes.

Your love life's DOA

The bubble bath went wrong last night; I lost the initial solace it was meant to deliver and instead tried to drown myself. I’d be free, at least. But it’s too erratic, and I’d ultimately be running away from my problems. I must remember that everything won’t always be easy. This is what people mean when they say that relationships are work. Here’s what I need to remember to maintain healthy perspective:

1.     He cannot be the source of my happiness. If he is, I will end up in the bathtub again

2.     I am not a priority in his life and he shouldn’t be one in mine

3.     I have a million more important things to do than think about him

4.     Let it happen, don’t control

So there’s the bullshit wish list. Time will tell all. Thanks for the idea, Monica. 

Pole Position

This is written by the hand of a woman who has gained far greater clarity than she’d ever hoped. I realize that it wasn’t me he broke up with—but the version of me I chose to present to him every day. He never knew me because I was a totally different person around him, and one that she happened to dislike.

All of my relationships go sour when I switch over like this. It’s when I starting expecting, which leads to getting let down which leads to playing silent sulky games out of disappointment. I hate this version of myself, but I can’t get her to go the fuck away. I call this the hurricane. It swoops me up and I get dizzy and enthralled in its cyclone of shit. Instead of communicating in a healthy and normal way, which I am capable of doing, I resort to pouting and bitchiness. So, I become super Persian. No, that’s not fair. It’s more truthful and fair to say that I become my mother.

I need this behavior to stop. The Taoist mentality is vital here. Don’t analyze, just exercise patience. Things always end up working out the way that they’re supposed to. Eh, fuck fatalism. Just BE ME. But who the hell is that? I can only say that the game is over. Prepare to disqualify. 

The Break-up Blues

A broken heart cannot function. The main organ to survival has been pulverized and made its host immobile. So is me. I anxiously await days when smile and curiosity are genuine, when I stray from the self-absorbed obsessive organism of myself and bask in something else. Something more human. More humane. I stopped listening to people’s words weeks ago. I can’t even hear them.

Hope is the only sustenance for an otherwise hollow and emaciated heart. With this it scrambles for its other pieces albeit solely, and fixes itself back. I end with this hope for hope. 

Pussywillow

Tonight for the first time in four years I told a boy that I was falling in love with him, and I even meant it. There are many ways of concluding this, but as history and experience have suggested the best way to measure love is to evaluate one’s feeling around the person. And around him, I feel like the most important, smartest, prettiest girl in history. And though previous lovers naturally lead to skepticisms, I feel totally confident in my feelings.

He stated earlier that he holds back saying things because he doesn’t want to scare me off, I told him that the first three months of any relationship are the greatest because of those feelings which he is afraid to express, and so he should communicate them. As naïve as they may be. And then I reminded him that there won’t be a ‘first three months’ to our relationship ever again after this so we should live it up. 

Time Takes Time

36 years-old and the sweet dream of playing the poet in the sonnet of my life has lost its airy nature. I have realized that I spend a lot of time planning. Despite the usual (budget, work, random beauty secret of the week) I then plan a time to be happy. And it never comes. It’s very waiting for Godot. And I’m very much sitting atop that fictional hill and thinking that something better will come along any moment and fix everything. What was that thing about carpe diem, again? 

Download Spirals

I met a boy named D* who lives in Prescott, AZ. He is funny and smart and laughs at my jokes and he’s cute. I think. That’s the only thing, I have to go by the pictures. Internet dating…where can it all go? All I know is that we’ve talked on the phone every night for a month and I’m not bored. That’s good enough for me. It’s the newness I love. My newness. Let's wait till my novelty wears off, but until then...let's carpe the fuck out of this diem. 

His Verb Tense is Present

He held my hand, and while letting it go advised me to write a poem. A boy who likes my poetry…amazing. “You are magic,” I once wrote in a letter which I never intended to give him. Because what came after that sentence was sabotage.

He was the first person to hold my hand in this way. He was infatuated with every finger and made sure not to miss a single nail-scrape with our respective digits along the way. Holden Caulfield once said that you can tell a lot about a person (or was it a relationship?) by how they hold your hand.  I think he was talking about Jane.

While he affectionately—although obsessively—took heed of the tactile prowess of each knuckle, I gently took my hand away. Thinking about the letter. Thinking I should give it to him. I took my hand away before I could notice the perfect fit of our hands…enough to make Ronin angry for dying before sculpting this perfect fit. These nails are knives and my hand, when departing his, cut a little of his hand. “That’ll scab nicely,” I reassured him.

He smiled. And I realized the toxicity of giving that letter. What was once my Shakespearian truth isn’t any longer: “where we are, there’s daggers in men’s smiles.” This isn’t mine anymore. They don’t cut, they heal. In his world of linguistic genius, he would shudder at this syntax. But somehow I doubt it, for he told me never to doubt myself.  So, at least for today, he will not be recognized as a ‘was’. He is an ‘is’. I may get used to it…maybe.

Carpe This Fucking Diem

My nerves have been unmanageable when I think about revealing a certain message to the boyfriend. I believe I am falling in love with him. Why would I be afraid to say this to him? I mean, I could die tomorrow and he would hypothetically never know. Maybe his response to the words scares me. This is, however, the elixir of life. Falling in love is what makes it worthwhile to think of being 80 years old and not having stuck a bullet in your head. Maybe I’m just not ready. Bullshit. I’m just scared. Carpe diem, carpe diem, carpe diem.  Blerg.

Big Fun

For the first time in years I considered putting a bullet in my head. I mean this metaphorically, of course; really, I’m just talking about killing myself.  Then I remember something I wrote in high school. It wasn’t important at the time or profound, but it ended up summing up my thoughts exactly: “I don’t want to die, I just don’t want to drive”.  The extremist sometimes becomes the problem-solver who sometimes becomes the drunk. It’s about control either way. 

What is Love?

Sometimes it feels as though I’m one of the horny guys from ‘Night at the Roxbury’. As if the whole of my existence or at least the goal of the night is to have a throw with someone. Anyone. It makes me wonder, though. Do the boys make the night or do I? Is the success of the night contingent on this attention from men? At 2am I called two boys about after hours and was let down. But the mornings with these boys are imminent and this is when self-reflection prevails. So perhaps it is best my night at the Roxbury was unfulfilling. 

Ani

He told me I was beautiful, then asked if I believed him. “It depends,” I responded “do you mean it”? He did, and there were no doubts in my mind.

My penmanship has regressed to that of a very organized middle school student. I suppose, like this imaginary tween, I too am changing every day. Mutually exclusive of my recently transformed font is that way in which I perceive my surroundings. They are new, yet the same. The point of view is new…that ‘s the secret to it. I read a lot about this in literary handbooks which I deemed futile at the time, but now I live the definition. Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right, and this beauty which was once haunting now captivates me in a newly painted world. One that, strangely, never actually changed. 

Network

"You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays"

Mr. Lyon and Signs

My room is surrounded with water that I don’t drink. Bottles that won’t think and that I won’t drink.  The 2:1 ratio of hydrogen to oxygen is supposed to be good for me. My high school chemistry teacher once referred to water as “the ultimate solvent”. So why can’t it solve anything right now? This teacher also had a picture of his wife swimming in a hotel pool with Ozzy Osbourne, so maybe I shouldn’t count on his judgment.

I often adopt new theories or idioms to live by. I try and I fail. Ironically, they make me feel worse. But why scramble to find a life motto? What exactly do I need to take guardianship over in order to help me? A proverb can only go so far.

Maybe a good friend…fair and, yet, invisible friend. I turn to you, and how I would cry…and your smile would turn to bite. In the spirit of self-healing, since wisdom and companionship have failed, I turn [appropriately] to myself. But, the pain and confusion reigns. What am I looking for? A new speed or mode. Modes are simply that—same in the Persian ‘mod’—a transient thing. Suggesting the universality of languages. And that I’m really confused.

Some of the water bottles are halfway empty [I know]. I’ll keep drinking to see if it helps. If it ultimately solves as the teacher said. I’ll hold on while I can muster the energy to grip the bottle. 

The Cold Floor Kids

This disconnect is hard to explain. It isn’t familiar or irritating. It isn’t offering any cold comfort nor is it pulling me into a vortex of self-destruction. It’s just an unmagnetic feeling taken over me in relation to everything: writing, breathing, fucking, laughing…

This could be due to the absence of a real hobby, a real love, a real reason. I just know that I sit on this kitchen floor and debate what to do next. I attempt living by the refrigerator-poetry I have affixed to the door: you are only as deep as the depth of your interests. 

Where’s the proverb and wisdom about the ones with no interests? Forever in search for the poem telling me that it’s ok to feel nothing.

Jigsaw

He told me that he liked me because of the happy sound in his voice—apparently I put it there, and he appreciates that. “You bring me quite a bit of happiness,” he admitted. He is totally the puzzle piece. He fits. His sense of humor and conversation make sense. Even I can’t complain…well….

And while this may be read many years from now through the eyes of ‘The ex-girlfriend,’ his girlfriend is writing things now. Why this constant battle with pessimism? Because it’s all I know. But , pessimism is for the weak. It’s too easy. I’ll try and enjoy the beauty in all this while ignoring the searing expiration date stamped across our dynamic in neon-ink. 

Yesteryear with Bowie

*By lingering on who you were, you prevent who you have become

A pot calls the kettle black. The pot wants to take it back. One can’t find more wrong in anything like they can with the past. It’s so reliable. And things that happen in there—only happen in your mind. 

Daggers

Although I am a writer, I have nothing to write. Perhaps I’ve pumped dry the wells of the past. I’ve grown weary of my past as a writer. Perhaps it can serve as the subject for someone else’s poem.

The present is simple and here. It is almost too simple to be written about. At the very least, too fleeting. Besides, as compared to the past, it can be controlled and manipulated right NOW, adding that much more pressure to achieve and succeed. 

Write that poem, idiot!

Alas, the present bores me. So naturally, I’ll turn to the future. Pregnant with dreams, possibilities and…other boring things like that. I’ve lost interest in time, I think. Each mode, moment, state inspires me to put two letter Xs on my eyes and take a nap for a while. But, I must find something in all this. Some beauty here [to write on]. [dangling parti....who cares]

Ephemera

Borges, someone told me, realized his own mortality when entering a gigantic library filled with thousands upon thousands of books and suddenly put the fact together that he cannot possibly live long enough to read all of them. 

What does this have to do with anything? I should fucking read more. But I don’t like Borges. 

Hide and Peek

I suppose there’s a ball. One that I could crawl into. I wonder, however, if this tale entails my body’s distortion, because I just don’t feel up for it. 

Your breath

 I spend my nights creating tomorrow’s hangover. 

I spent all of my 20s waiting for someone to call me. And in my waiting, I kept leaving. The time that passes hits me like bad breath and my reaction is the same: turn the other way. 

Taming

Regrettably, inspiration escaped hours ago. But I, being the stubborn fighter that I am, picked up my pen (sword, bla) to attempt the amazing.

I wonder why I’m scared. Love. I try to convince myself I don’t believe in it, nor in its calculated numbing tendencies. That’s what love does, or at least the notion of it; love makes everything better. Before it makes everything worse.

But, I feel it now. Suddenly. Thrusting towards me. His hands are a companion. His hands I want to hold. One would think I’d cry more. He’s definitely one to cry over. He is magic.

I will allow him to penetrate into every drop of existence I can possibly tolerate. Says the shrew. But I don’t want to fall in love with him. The departure would be too painful. Love is fleeting. Is this wise or ignorant? Am I hurling the cup of life to the ground? Shattering it intentionally? Have I, as the old knight would disappointingly testify, chosen poorly? Is the unexamined life not worth living or the unlived one. Precautions can sometimes ruin the beauty that could be. 

Descartes

The more one thinks about something the more they understand it.
-Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man

...and yet

Analysis is Paralysis
-Something I heard once and continuously say to calm myself down

...and yet

The unexamined life is not worth living 

...and yet

Ignorance is Bliss

Enter: lemniscate

There are No Stupid Questions

I scared off another one and currently berating myself for my incessant need to know what’s going on. Instant replays, flashbacks, split seconds and detailed play-by-plays are what drive me to the brink of asking this question. For fear of being led on and the fact that I’m super confused and it took this guy 9 texts to ask me out, I asked.

Instead of berating myself for inability to ‘go with the flow’ I must accept instead the fact that I will never be able to ‘go with the flow’ and the only time I’ve ever come close is when I have the assurance of his interest. Ten years of dating and I just figured it out…yet I still feel that I know nothing. 

Rivers in Egypt

It isn’t surprising that a month has gone by since my last entry. It feels unnatural to do anything ever since I decided…that I had a drinking problem. I suppose it’s incorrect and misleading to recognize this problem in the past tense. I have a very real present tense problem. I can’t only have one glass of wine yet I assume, at the check stand every night, which it is feasible. And then I sneak the bottles out so that my amazingly centered and drink-free boyfriend remains unaware. But I know that he knows. We both pretend. So, in the end, I hope I remember how happy I was on in my last sober entry and that it could have been the start of a truly beautiful thing. 

Tryst

Nine hours after the first one of our pack got married. Depressing. Not for the newly married but for the hopeless spectator who views love with the utmost skepticism. The love that my friend feels for and receives from her husband shows that I can at least see a semblance of good in marriage. I just don’t think I’d be happy if they were my nuptials. I can’t hang around one person for too long—we’d mutually annoy each other to no end. I don’t feel inclined to fall into this institution; certain people are good mothers, while more than the majority are capable of bearing children. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. And what are the odds that you and that kid will be complementary to the husband/man in your life?

A friend earlier tried to emphasize the errors of my perspective arguing that I should get married as “everyone is put on this planet for a reason.” "Yeah," I replied, "mine is to write books." That shut him up. I guess my priorities weren't what he expected. 

Felicity

Somehow I’ve changed and I’m skeptical believing that it’s for the better. For a girl with no expectations, I seem to get disappointed fairly easy. Getting a PhD meant redefining myself, and showing that person off…whoever she is…in whatever light I chose. Why didn’t I realize the absurdity in this expectation? Why did I want to ‘redefine’ myself when I had never actually been defined at all. I still have no idea who I am, ironically less so than before. 

Cutting

“Deafening my pillow with the screams I throw into it.” A perfect way to begin a poem, I thought. But poetry has become an intimidating word. I once leaped to embrace it, not caring where I fell but I now fear it with all my life. I do to the words now what I am guilty of doing to myself: force beauty out of nothing.

Fiery passion, which once filled pages and books with a passionate fury, couldn’t even light a cigarette now. Rhymes are for nursery tales…and I’m the jaded scholar…tired of poems because I’ve read too many. I can no longer take heed to dactylic meter, nor do I care much for alliteration. What was art to me is now hanging in “drafty museums.” Plath? How fitting, yet not fitting at all.

My verbal embrace has lost its edge. It used to cut. I would scream—not into pillows, but unto paper. Blank, hollow, virgin sheets of paper—impregnated by my pen. Is this what happens to old whores? They fade away? Forever? Perhaps this is the beginning. Perhaps I’ll take control of what’s mine again. 

Misanthrope?

Somewhere, people are talking for hours. Somewhere, people are interesting. Somewhere I’m not.

Blaming others in this feels petty. It’s too easy. Others are none of my doing or responsibility. To talk, no— to converse, is to be alive. So, I suppose, I am guilty of a daily suicide. Carpe diem? If only someone would write a book about it…again. I should probably go talk to someone. That is the first step to conversing, after all. But these steps sound exhausting. I’ll just blame others. 

I am Blue and Unwell

I am blue and unwell                   -J. Newsom

....now it’s done. A boy. Don’t meet them at bars. I have to accept the fact that I’m cursed. I should stop trying. Three dates, sex once. Dinner, cocktails and the realization that he’s ‘just not that into me’.

I am not upset that we won’t be moving forward—he’s a frat boy who spit all the time and interrupted me constantly. I’m upset that I fucked it up by my aggressive behavior. He says my bossiness was the deal breaker. Is it time to change now? I really don’t want to. I genuinely like myself. But let’s face facts. Something needs to happen because whatever I’m doing isn’t working; perhaps tweaking some dating behavior wouldn’t be so bad…actually…No.  Now that I’ve come to think of it, I’ve had plenty of men in my life who loved my personality. He’s just an over-sensitive wuss. 

The Purge

Right now I am drunk and about to throw up the pizza that the delivery man just brought me. I would like to believe that this will one day end. That I won’t be haunted by alcohol or food. That I can get a glass of wine at dinner with friend and be free from neurotic behavior.

But today I am eating alone. And drinking alone. And purging alone. It wasn’t so bad sober. So why did I go back? One reason, one answer: it’s easier. It’s not my style, but I took the easy way. Even though I have learned the hard way, that what comes easy, comes wrong. 

Vampira

I celebrate myself. I found joy—at least for one night. I celebrate myself because I’m not searching for the destroyer of beauty. I cease to lurk in dark corners of my mind for things left unsaid and undone—or even worst—for those things actually spoken and acted on. If this feeling of complete acceptance be for only one night, so be it. I do not claim perfection, nor do I savor consistency. I am imperfect and progressive. I celebrate the night. This night. But reaching further than this, I celebrate myself for allowing the night to permeate through me. 

The Gashlycrumb Tinies-Ed Gorey

A is for awesome, all over my heart.

Neon

The eager blinking of the answering machine light which jubilantly indicates a message of hope only crushes you when the voice coming out of the machine isn’t his. 

Homeless

This Spring Break bears the anti-climaticism of New Year’s Eve. Time with my family is misspent—if spent at all. Most friends seem to have flittered away—withered, as opposed to the live flowers I came to enjoy. I find myself explaining my current rite of passage to these now-strangers over cups of coffee. Every time I come back it seems to get worse. I feel like I’ve changed, or maybe it’s this city. Whatever it is, being here disorients me. I want to be happy—pray, eat, smile, laugh, karaoke, dance…I just want to feel at home in my hometown. 

Peppered In

The past two weeks would tell the story of a girl trying to get through the day—and in-between the times he’s calling or texting, she squeezes in the mundane and petty activities she had formerly known as ‘her life’. These include working out, drinking water, not boozing during the week, tanning, school, playing with dog, avoiding annoying roommate, cleaning/thinking about cleaning my room, teaching, working at the curriculum development place, smelling good, and keeping up with friends. These are the things I ‘fill my time up with’ in the between his texts and calls which occur about every two days.

It’s gotten better than it was in the past. I’m maintaining my sense of self. Making him not the whole pie but just a few pieces. Now to reduce the size of his pie in my life, really not to realize that that catalogue of activities is what gives my meaning, value, color and purpose. 

Homesick

I feel ungrateful for failing to see my hometown as heaven but it feels so terrible here. Everyone is unhappy and confused. About directions and themselves. I guess the six little words in the cliché are true: you can never go home again. 

Home

Though I am on vacation, ironically I’m also at home. Referring to where I am now as ‘home’ however, feels forced. I’m inclined to employ purgatorial vocabulary and metaphors  to explain the phenomenon. Both hometown and college town feel like home, so I don’t know which would be the heaven and which the hell were I to truly execute the metaphor.  

Bound

I wish to be freed from the mental shackle of men—keeping me bound to myself and causing more calamity than I thought possible. When the cycles and waves in my mind, patterns of my soul, and movements of my body loafe together in balance, I may then share these internal and external forces with one another set them to song. But, my trinity is unable to hum let alone sing, and only solitude may aid in their harmony. 

Hale-Bop

I had a lovely conversation with a comet earlier this evening. A dazzling and breathtaking comet at that. Before we encountered one another, I had one hundred million tense muscles—each bearing a small pulse, beating, haunting me through my skin. After our exchange, I felt without bones let alone muscles.

Perhaps I healed myself, but this recovery is often sought and rarely found. My star spangle in the sky simultaneously inspired welcome words to my mind and heart. The gas and dust of the comet has cleared my mind, and even stranger, increased my appreciation for whatever falls below it. 

Changes

One such day could ruin the rest. The one when you realize there’s no way to change the things about you that you’d like to change. To live in the course of nature and accept things is far too simple…and absurd. Simpleton notions are ones I need to breathe in like the spores of a pollinating flower. This is me, who I am, what I say and how I live. I need to accept that these aspects may be unattractive but beautiful, as is their bearer. 

Bittersweet

Goodbyes are so bittersweet no matter what the circumstance. I use ‘sweet’ only under which the context of goodbyes should be put; I use ‘bitter’ for what they actually are. Whether short and sweet or endless and tear-bearing, the hurt creates a piercable and meek shield around me, which I try to strengthen but unfortunately know of its weaknesses. I feel like these awkward embraces are slowly becoming less awkward, only because I know it’s not really goodbye. 

Elm St.

I’ve realized many things in the past—and upon discovery, threw them in a box, never considering to uncover their details. Tonight one such realization occurred to me, ancient yet important. The one of my happiness—or whatever closest to it I can attain—disappearing for no good reason when in the mode of ‘crush’. I fall apart only because I am undoing the seams and lose my voice because I thrown all my dongs into the sea. All of this is in my hands. The hopelessness of it torturing me then, and partially now, can die through the hands of its possessor. I am the girl who killed the dream and replaced it with a nightmare. I sleep now to face this. 

Splicing

There are nights I miss him more than others. Tonight is one such night. The brooding, or shall I say longing, began earlier this evening when a friend asked if he was my "first true love." I stumble when trying to answer such Romantic questions, often posed by little girls...but it's a real question. I'll try to answer it attributing a separate concept to each word in the trilogy.


"First": So ideal and childish. Why does order matter so much for lovers? Does the first really indicate the primary? Does it imply the truer and more special love than any i will [hopefully] ever have in the future?

And "Love": Pregnant. I, as a lover, don't know what it means or symbolizes. Many languages don't even have a word--implying its surreal nature (word?). I can't grasp the poetry or the science of it. Emotion and pragmatism lie buried under a dirty heap of ignorance. It is a question fit for the great scholars and philosophers at the time when fat women reigned. These philosophers would only answer questions with more questions, in the form of hyperbolic syllogisms. Further giving their audience of lovers more to muse.



"True": Is not as childish as the prior term when it pertains to love, but a source of pressure for the lover. How can one ever affirm that it's real? As if it's a home appliance or a mountain. Lovers cannot tangibly see or manipulate, only feel and think. With the overabundance of peril and unknowing contained in those last two acts, how can one judge anything based on them?

So, while standing in front of a pool table, with a Bud Light in hand--for it was not to be taken outside--and a cigarette between my unmanicured fingertips, it was difficult to answer my friend's question. I stalled while trying though, assuming that perhaps an acute moment of bravado may appear and bring wisdom with it...allowing me to answer. But I just replied with "yeah," because the latter would have taken too long.
X

Away We Go!

Friends and myself=group. I despise groups=self-ostracism. There is, however, one personal goal which is challenged by my feelings towards people: I wish to be good. How can I expect to exercise…or even contain virtue when the idea of intermingling with the people repulses me? This aggressively independent one: trapped between herself and what she wants.

Being alone doesn’t mean lonely, but it’s starting to. Holding hands with oneself loses that element of spontaneity, and one tires of laughing at her own jokes. So…do I change? Overrated. Acceptance? I’m too jaded. Normalcy? Invisible. Honestly, answers are boring when the question isn’t interesting. 

Just Enjoying the Sunshine

My life has become so easy to live that it makes me sick. I’ve realized the futility of lists and declarations, while self-loathing has failed to provide a stimulus. I have reached a point of deep, deep lowness. I think of doing nothing interesting while the days are filled [in an attempt to pass time] [only to do the same thing tomorrow] with TV, food, booze and cigarettes. Somewhere in that mix I squeeze in some phone calls. And that’s literally all I do. I can’t make another list preparing for such things as sobriety, exercise, sewing, and early slumber. But I also can’t continue like this. I will seriously die. Either from depression, substance, boredom or all three. 

Letter-Writing is a Dead Art No More

Dear Farrah,

One drink is never one drink. You are not able to live that lifestyle—no matter how much you want it. It’s not because you’re weak, but because you’re human and all humans have imperfections. I don’t want yours to be where you put a shotgun to your head.

It was boring sober, but it was livable, feasible, and functional. Besides to be totally honest, you were happier too. If anything, everything feels so much worse right now.