My pallor cede, colly string, infinite stillness ---

it's not about you anymore
to be so so blue underneath something so so bright
half small, half smiling
new bedrooms shadow here.
who shrink away from the light

remember talking about writing poetry with old friends, spitting up over the window, cold air escaping in, smoke air escaping out, a nd poetry all around.

and now it honestly hurts to breathe.

B A L A N C E

i must find a balance for me, social, job. i am so far in my own head after only two weeks of holiday. i didn't expect to adapt so quickly to the lifestyle of living with family. i sleep in, i watch netflix, i make coffee, i run. i fear leaving my house again. i would rather hate being at home than have a stressful drive out. i have to find a balance. i fear insanity so much. i want to find somewhere where i feel i can hibernate. i dont crave human interaction at all; in fact i generally don't want it in the slightest, and that terrifies me. i want to make these six months about reading all the literature i can, write as much as i can, running, yoga, learning to make new recipes, i wonder if the only way to combat my fears is to make myself drive more. make myself cook more. not get overwhelmed by text messages, following recipes, directions. by contact. when i get so far in my own head i feel completely incapable.

BEING PRESENT ONE OUT OF TWENTY-ONE YEARS

i have spent the first year of my life knowing what it is to feel complete. i did not feel empty for people or memories. i did not feel nothingness. i loved without losing the present. i did not worry about missing. i cried, good cries, often. i stopped living so blankly - i felt; i can feel the world again. i breathed deeply in, exhaled and emptied myself of loss, sadness, and anxiety. i am not bitter over human connection, but i no longer fear human contact.

i found ways to relieve stress and anxiety in positive ways rather than abusing alcohol. i cared about my body from the inside, out. i ran every day. i did yoga every morning and evening. i wrote letters. i adopted a vegetarian diet. i loved tea, good coffee, and pale ale. i've become a braver driver. i achieved an intermediate level of spanish. i'm writing a lot more, sketching, and reading. i spent three months in spain. i finished my bachelor's. i applied for a fulbright and masters programs. i stopped wanting the momentarily impossible and opened my eyes to my surroundings.

this year was about finding what i needed physically and mentally and next year will be expanding and further exploring these needs. i feel so sure of being okay. all things feel right with me now and i have learned to not feel empty for anyone or anything.

overcast, undertouched

AND TOMORROW IS THE DAY

sometimes if i can't sleep i put my fingers on the wall of my room and i can feel my heartbeat in my fingertips and then it feels like the walls are breathing and that they're alive and everything is so still except the walls and then i remember it's not the walls or the house that's alive, it's me.

i wonder if there's humans so solid i can feel my fingertips pulsing when i'm touching them.

FEELING NYQUIL AND NEUTRAL

the fist time i smoked a cigarette i was in my car with my friend molly. she was driving us and i was in the passenger seat because i hate driving. she drove my car a lot our first semester of college. she went to buy cigarettes at the convenience store and thanked me a handful for not getting angry at her for buying them. i told her how little i cared. i'd never smoked before but cared very little about anything in those months. she said it was because she missed home and cigarettes reminded her of her dad. she said she didn't really smoke. very near where i live now, we were paused at a stop sign and i asked if i could try it. she passed it to me, and as i held it comfortably between my index and middle finger, i inhaled. "it tastes like nothing."

we went out smoking several more times in the following weeks. they were pink and black camels and she kept the package in her pants pocket. i remember walking numbly to her dorm late at night because i needed to see someone. she dyed my hair purple, brushed it smooth as i sat on the edge of her bathtub. we walked around the campus and down several streets smoking and talking. one cigarette after another, one secret after another. "i'm hopeful that all we need is time."

that night, and now. i am so thankful for molly. i am so thankful for those lost and terrifying moments of searching for anything to make me right. i am graduating in less than two weeks and i am not as sure about anything as i was in that cigarette's nothingness.

THINGS I THOUGHT I WOULDN'T WANT

take me back to madrid walking down crowded guzman el bueno during the morning commute
racing well-dressed hard workers and children in school uniforms
on my way to my academy and feeling on fire from keaton henson,
my shy "café con leche por favor, para llevar" every morning
crossing the two crosswalks and greeting the doorman
listening to music on a bench, alone outside
realizing the walk from my favourite coffee shop to my home was so short
just a few turns to keaton's sounds

how lonely and empty i felt most of this summer; retrospectively, growing
in the moments of the most hurt and loneliness i have scrutinized life the most
only once i've now come out onto the other side can i look back and think how challenging something was and how now i'm not so afraid

the reason behind every cigarette i've wanted to smoke - was this one about vanity? boredom? curiosity? desire? dessert? fear?

to spend a weekend in the haunted house playing along with ghosts snuggled in a sleeping pile awaiting the three am lights and electricity

it's a strange thing to miss things i never thought i'd think about again because i lived them in a different light; wishing most of it were over sooner and now i'm wishing i could go back and enjoy it in better way all over again, and that is one of the worst ways to miss something...when i didn't enjoy it the first time round.
i bet this is what divorce must be like.

APPALACHIAN SPRING DEATH TAPES

over stimulation

cold drink in the morning
clock tick
dirty hands dirty face
baby powder smell
loud music
spicy food
fine motor (threading needles, zipping bags, drawing, handwriting...)
sleep in total silence (ear plugs)
cover all light at night (darkness)
food, touching
can't eat too much of same food - feels sick
nausea caused by particular sounds
rigid posture
feet to fall asleep
the taste of the rusted forks, the only one who tastes them

the things you realize no one else around you feels everyday
at almost 22.

I'D PROBABLY STILL ADORE YOU WITH YOUR HANDS AROUND MY NECK

i always knew you were a reptile! little old you!

why are we even doing this, across the table, broken eye and sunken, thrown to pieces in the car. am i too selfish? or am i someone worse? does it all come down to forgetting my paints in the car, and you coming back to bring them to me?

i can't understand why we come together for death but not for life. someone put paints back in my broken and sunken eyes, forget the broken pieces, the long, too familiar rides across the subway, the mistaken taken photographs of the sunset, the cross shaped pattern on the moncloa station, running and crying through the crosswalk, for. more.

RIGHT THIS MOMENT, MOMENTS

i've been worrying about how many moments i am actually living in. totally, mentally, immersed in the present. i'm anxious it's not enough moments in a given day, year. i'm determining in which moments i do feel completely there.

during conversation. conversation is so pure. perhaps the details of the conversation itself aren't about the present but the action and voice and the ears listening, are. to share like that is something special. maybe that's why i often get anxious during conversation. it's so inthissecondrightnow and i could fuck it up with one word. that's the kind of in the moment i want. listening to a song for the first time. before it becomes background noise, really listening. i've got so many songs where i am actually several times removed from reality. if it's the xx i'm in stockholm huddled on my bed with two others, it's late, it's cold, it's smoky. if it's any song aaron and i danced to in his apartment, i'm immediately back there, getting crumbs everywhere, spilling wine, dancing with closed eyes. if it's manchester orchestra, i'm in high school again, in the car with my best friend. with degausser, i'm on a school bus going to a basketball game, sitting alone, mouthing every word. with a song i can easily be three times removed from reality. being in transit. whether it be by airplane, car, subway, bicycle, foot. i feel very rightthissecond in those moments. during showers. while reading a good book. not the kind where your mind drifts, but an honest to god good book. while doing yoga. kissing. as long as i'm not thinking i shouldn't be, or wondering what's next. being in a new city and seeing everything.

i'm trying to make every moment a right this moment moment. it's not as easy as it should be.

IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN THROUGH OSMOSIS

I've been writing about soulmates. I think about that a lot. I have met nine so far. The other morning, I spent another morning thinking about them. And in those moments, I wonder, are we contemplating the same subject matter over all different morning coffees on this very morning?

(those I have, and have not, met thus far in my experience. those who have been involved in my experience for moments, months, or words. those who have entered into my experience and never left, and those who have come and have since gone. a burning connection. energy, not words. blatant. stimulate great personal growth in most desperate times.)

At what part of our experiences will we intersect?

I've been writing down the things I'd want to, but never will, say to you, and I think it's good for me to keep them. One day I won't feel them anymore and I won't have any idea what I'd been thinking about. I wonder what I was thinking about three years ago, six years ago, ten years ago, at this very date and time. I think about that a lot.

I wonder about the places each person has fallen in love before, where they were in the moment they first digested the thought of it. I wonder about the places where each person has felt the most broken and in what moment they thought 'this is it, this is the end, i can't wake up tomorrow.' when did they stop feeling broken and how? and do they feel much of anything now? not loved, not broken, not dead, but neither much alive?

I've been thinking about how comfortable drives home feel, so usual. but no one's drive home is the same as mine or anyone else's. windows down through the stoplights, up on the highway, loud music, loud singing, occasional crying on Highway 50. it's not usually sad tears, but tears of clarity. i do my best thinking in the car and in the shower. and i've been thinking about that a lot lately. turning left next to the brick building, slowing down over the railroad tracks, where there are beautiful christmas lights in the winter, fields, sky, grass, knowing the man in the house on the right is dying of cancer, the end of FF, never stopping at that stop sign, impulsively checking my phone on that corner, the skinny horses, knowing the man down that gravel road killed himself, the sharp corner at the top, if i want to go through the woods i take gravel, if i want to listen to music a little longer, i take highway, and i'm almost home. around the last corner i wish the drive could last a bit longer. and god, no one else has that.

I've had some of the best weeks yet. last week, in one day, i talked to almost everyone i love. i went for a swim, watched a physics class boat race, ran two miles, studied, ate healthy, drank lots of tea, was inspired, met with a friend just for good conversation, hit every green light, told my mom i loved her, did yoga, read the stranger, and slept early. if that's all it takes to feel so good, i can't believe it's taken me this long. I am so happy. 

I gave a presentation in class this week. i just want to make others think, think for themselves, question their actions, question their future, and learn something they hadn't known. i'm so passionate about learning and spreading knowledge and opening minds and opening hearts and opening eyes and sharing and love.

Yesterday and today, i've been running, eating well, and i started doing yoga again, i feel so magical. i feel so good about my body for the first time since i've started thinking about having to feel good about it. i just dont want to wake up one day and not be able to run or stretch or swim anymore because i've gotten too old and broken. if i run and stretch and swim every day im going to outsmart basic human biology.

WHERE BEAUTY ISN'T

There is nothing beautiful or delightful about waking up wondering how to make it through another day. There is no entitlement or enlightenment that comes from bleeding into a bathroom sink, relying on pills to sleep, daydreaming of crashing the car. Walking, terrified of seeing a familiar face and the hello or conversation that follows. Purposely diverting eyes into the ground or up into the clouds.  Then, replaying that unsettling interaction for months. There is no beauty in collapsing into bed after the day is over of pure emotional and mental exhaustion. There is no beauty in feeling incapable. We have to stop romanticizing anxiety and depression. Sadness should never be encouraged or idolized. 

THE ROOM WAS FILLED WITH CONVERSATIONS WE WEREN'T HAVING

to my favorite
your mother is writing in the Nothing guest room
you can't love anything more than something you miss.
your mother's charcoal-stained metamorphosis
is the silence of my life.

"i'm pregnant"
"overjoyed"
everyone went to the shelters, but no one hurried
in its eyes i was sure i saw some form of understanding.

into the black water reflection: "as long as i am thinking, i am alive"
it was her touch that saved my life, all of the searching was in vain.
and thinking is killing me. red flares, black water, i had everything.

one hundred years of joy.
"you love an idea"
"life is scarier than death"
the last time i ever saw her.

for reasons that need not be explained, you made a strong impression on me.
and here i am, instead of there.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO IT ALL ALONE

when i was four years old i would plead for my grandmother to give me pickle juice in a cup because i liked the way it tasted. we would play chinese checkers in the darkness of the living room and she'd tell me how grandpa had made the board. grandfather clocks and cuckoo clocks interrupted us and marbles spilled. she'd dismally listen to the radio when she was alone and i know she did it just to hear a voice. i was terrified of the convex glass portraits of her parents hanging on the wall but i never told her that. we would share a bed on the weeknights when i'd sleep there. she'd take her teeth out at night and they'd clink to the bottom of a glass in the bathroom. i wondered why her teeth were floating and why she didn't own a hairbrush - didn't she brush her hair and how did she brush her teeth?

BUT NEVER ONCE INTO IT

it's not what exists in me, or what exists in you, but about what exists between us
it's about emptying a wine bottle in one sitting
it's what exists on the underside of umbrellas during a rainstorm,
inside half-filled, mostly scribbled diaries, behind closed doors of bathrooms, fucking
it's about being dry on a day when you need it the most,
where your mind wanders when you wonder who in this world has read the literature that has built your life
finally learning to love, and to share that feeling, and to share your art, and to share your mind's creations,
i regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.
like the ending of missing someone, like the ending of missing a fleeting feeling, and to have found it again

taking everything i've ever done, everyone i've ever met, every word i've ever heard, every feeling i've ever shared, and leaving it all here

i missed you even when i was around you, i surround myself with things that are already missing

and i hated myself for going. why couldn't i have been the kind of person who stays?

i'm so afraid of losing something i love that i refuse to love anything.

I SAW YOU IN THE LIBRARY EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE TWO STATES AWAY

it's not about finding my place in the world, it's about finding myself in each place and building something bigger. what do i expect?  i expect solemness, loneliness, challenge, fear, grasping new mental states, culture shock round eight, vast amounts of time set aside to think, read, and write. consider new ideas, wonder about life away, wondering about life here. second guess eleven months away. expand expand expand expand expand and dobrý den. stýská se mi domů, nemluvím dobře, chci se vyjádřit sám sebe tak špatně. i miss my home, i don't speak well, i want to express myself so badly.

we're existing with co-morbid conditions (love ballads in the shower). the small details of new coffee dates with squinting eyes, light rain, light wind. found my favorite part of the human body, finally joked in the ways i know how (and they were understood!)

 the desolateness can be discouraging. claustrophobia caused by emptiness. i have no real sense of direction. nothing keeping me here nor pulling me there. it feels so good. in one year, in six months,  in one year and six months, i have no idea. to that, i say, thank god i have so much time to think alone and be alone. you can go back to the place, but not the time. i've tried.

ASPENS IN ASPEN IN AUGUST

the old, crumbling house
my parent's yellow 70's style - wood paneled walls, sparkled ceilings, hideous tiling and brown carpet
the third floor of fitzgerald
big summer house with amanda and a bed on the floor
the second floor of building c in björnkulla
one year and a half on the top floor of pine st. opera house lofts
alberto and martin's room - björnkulla
amaya's vacated bedroom
a flat in moncloa
warrensburg subdivision apt a
?????????

SONGS ARE AS SAD AS THE LISTENER

grew into my surroundings
the way that language organizes reality
i have a number of loose ends
if i could wrap up your voice in a pretty package with a pretty bow on top and give it back to you i would.
time present and time past are both contained in time future.

CHESS MONDAY

we nicknamed her from the start
did we ever see her face?
we hid everything,
the hamster in the bathtub,
cleaning products under the sink,
worried about her for months, linda
we smelled the vomit from her bedroom

we watched the body bag behind fitzgerald,
pulled out of an ambulance at four in the morning,
"i can't believe it" watching from our beds what we thought we'd witnessed
"someone's dead"
"they're dead"
"no"

the dreaded, unwanted phone calls midsleep
your drunken boyfriend drove home again
forgot to call, forgot to care for you
i asked you to stop. stop?
i cant get to sleep,
i cant even hope to wake up in the morning
and i cant get to sleep right now
tell him to fuck off

i drove my car as far as i could
as far away as i could
i thought about driving it into the lake
and no one would ever know
and i wouldnt try to get out the window
id just fuck off forever
do you like your park with culp or no culp?
sunken?

spent a year forcing myself to eat
spent a year sleepless
i swear to god i wished someone would hurt me
explosions in the sky meant everything

id scream and scream, id avoid the street, id avoid my bed, id avoid my head
crossing that bridge in january wasnt in my mind all over again
no drug, nothing has ever fucked me up like that
im my worst here, ive always been my worst here
counting my goodbyes on the same two hands i loved you with

CROSSROADS

hot drive and drunk on a porch swing
gums bleeding over brunch
making yourself throw up in the bathroom at YJ's
cigarettes taped to the wall, jazz coats in gold
bagel here, there

and forcing my lungs full of you.

YEAH IM A NOBODY

just want to be drunk enough to forget my sober mind.
fuck the alarm at 7am.
fuck the spaces i cant feel comfortable in.
fuck the spaces where i dont know what to say.
fuck my ability to roll cigarettes.
two whole weeks gone.

fuck my ability to be so sober. so god damn sober all the time
where is my mind you're only what you are after you die

UNDER TOUCHED

we fell in love and had our hearts broken on the same night to be both dead and alive

UNDER MY KNEE

felt the curve of the wall. into a darkness that i cant even be sure if my eyes are open or closed. saw the shadows into my room from the open door. i'm not going to be sweating in this unfamiliar bed for much longer. (neither feeling the rhythm of my upstairs neighbors having 2am sex.)

i want to clean my new house. fix my closet door. figure out the lighting. repair my bike. recycle. begin and end my days with green tea and honey. drink boulevard on my sister's patio. see the god damn  shining stars in the fucking night sky. run, walk, and make movements for myself.

DESDE VIERNES: EL CUATRO DE JULIO

Desde viernes, el cuatro de Julio,

Y el domingo

there’s nothing quite like missing someone you barely know

or like the feeling of learning someone new (their voice, their movements, their smell, their words, their past, their future.)

the unsynchronized and unknown touch of a body you haven’t memorized yet. the tracing of collarbones, rib bones, leg kisses, slow kisses on quiet and empty city streets

your grey sweatshirt hangs off of me. my arms hang off of me. my words fall out of me. my mind rifles through the sentences you’re spurting. because I know enough not to give in this easily. it’s surreal; all of the moments feel too good right now. if only you knew how hard i struggle to connect with anything. and right now i’m trying half as hard as usual and i can still feel something.

the waitress delivers our mojitos in slow motion. the world begins again. americans talk behind us. we’re in my bed and you raise your arm above you. you’re practicing your brain being stronger than your body. you say you do it when you can’t sleep.  you say i have to read your poems. i let you borrow moon palace.  i can’t get the door unlocked. maybe you have to stay. you leave an unfamiliar taste in my mouth and on my skin. 

it's been one month and i'm never going to get moon palace back.

BLINDLY LOOKING FORWARD

"caught in the symmetry of your mind" whispers, then
walk your hands into me
what a coldness i feel for you
so fearlessly i touched you
so thoughtlessly i spoke to you
loving and living impulsively
just listen, baby.

to a word that hasn't been in my vocabulary since
and now i'm still working on a definition of the word "love"
how can you redefine anything so strongly once felt and since faded
how can you learn again how to move on top of the world

who is it now spilling wine on your bed?
stealing half of your cigarettes and all of your time?
wiping away what is left of your kisses?
who's getting your morning sex before your morning class?
is your body still wet from the shower?
your mouth still stinging from toothpaste?

sometimes i feel a great black wave of you
and how i spent years putting all my thoughts into one feeling

and again
i'm touching the safeness of your back
like breathless bodies on the edge.

what if there was a machine that recorded all your thoughts all day. when u read through it would you have forgotten some of the lines? would there be things that u didnt even know u'd thought? where do all the missing thoughts go? 

you're like the bug you can see flit around your room in the white light of your computer screen once you have turned in for the night. you spend good minutes watching the thing helplessly, or perhaps carelessly, bounce into the illumination of the glass again and again.

it's impossible sleep with the thing buzzing around above your head. this is my bed and i won't be able to sleep until you leave.

DON'T LET THE WICKED CITY GET YOU DOWN

the sickness rolled through me in great waves. after each wave it would fade away and leave me limp as a wet leaf and shivering all over an then i would feel it rising up in me again, and the glittering white torture-chamber tiles under my feet and over my head and on all four sides closed in an squeezed me to pieces.

WATCHING THE ONLY WAY OUT DISAPPEAR

my fears don't linger. they have downright consumed me.
my fears have consumed me.

NEIL

the kinds of things you have to do if you want to stay alive:

sit alone on a park bench in the middle of the night and watch the crosswalk signs change colors in the silence of no one. tell the people who you love that you do. preserve your days through writing and plucked leaves and flowers. surrender afternoons for downing hot coffee and ingesting literature. write poems and recite them for free on the street. love without fear of abandonment or subsequent brokenness. run until you can't hear straight anymore. choose your home based on proximity to the sea. make stupid lists like these. think about stupid things like these. imagine that all of these things are actually keeping you alive.

IN WHAT ways do people preserve their past if not through jotting thoughts or dabbling in photography? more often than not, i'm the only person in the room who writes regularly (if only to keep in contact with some part of myself.) likewise for being the one with a kodak. perhaps it's easier not to preserve the past, so people prefer not to take part in the whole mess. it's true that my past stings, even burns sometimes. and if it's not burning you to think about memories, then it's not quite the past yet, it's not quite obsolete yet, but it will become so. at that time, will you have nothing to remind you of what was? you can't be expected to remember the tiny details of things such as falling in love on a mattress, sharing cigarettes under a dripping roof, marijuana induced shadow sleepovers in your dorm room, trembling in the backseat of the car and learning how to move together, lying in the gravel to watch the meteor shower, carving diamonds into your windowsill with a tack.... unless you form these phrases and lock them down somewhere. maybe it's possible that other people live their memories, live their pasts every day. whereas i push mine far far away from my consciousness. why do i waste my time remembering when i know full and well that it hurts to remember? am i specifically trying to salvage remnants of my youth? when i level out will i continue to have these impulses? what does leveling out even mean? will i find bliss and calmness through other mediums? or is this some kind of poison that will eat away at my reality for a lifetime? the heart has a way of remembering what it wants, i suppose, regardless of the way one opts to preserve it.

do you ever think you're going mad? well that's a terrible question. i don't think it, i know it. it's something that's only whispered about.

funnily enough, you have to make due with reality. there are many things that might have happened in my life that haven't happened and there is little point in being regretful and angry about it.  i see that life comes once and it's quite short and you have to appreciate what's good in it. i was just sunbathing and a butterfly landed quite close to me. beautiful wings deep red colors with white little circles on them.  these creatures don't last very long but it landed very close to me, it didn't seem frightened, and it just seemed to delight in opening and closing its wings and just actually being beautiful for that period of time and enjoying the sunshine. and perhaps there isn't anything more to life than that. than just being what you are. realizing that life goes on all around. there are millions of other living creatures who all have to find their parts as well.

TRADE EVERY SCRAP TO GET SOME ABSOLUTION

seeing that time cannot bloom graciously. trying to have bettering. sit in sad garden. go river blind. edinburgh, june 2014. sit all alone on the riverbank until i forget that i can talk. standing on the edge of a million landscapes emptying. water from the glacier filled my shoes.

drinking everything in the park. bit off all my nail polish...red in my teeth. shadows/shade/shadows/shade/leg shadows. take a photo with my hair covering my face because i hate seeing it. "i. also. feel alone here." madrid, june 2014.

let's skip all this and go to touching moving trains outside of my apartment. climbing abandoned buildings to get a view of the lights. running home half-gone-fully-gone across the train tracks. warrensburg, 2013. a-a-a-a-a-a-a-again. plucking the grey from your head. you, the chronic phone pacer. stop getting fucking lost. coincidentally, we share the morning commute. SO WHAT IS MAKING YOU SO HEAVY?

everyone is just trying to win everyone. so imagine that you are becoming a butterfly emerging from your cocoon and dance to that. sometimes i write things in my dreams. and only when i wake up i can acknowledge that none of it was real. all i can do is highlight in my books with hopes that they can make sense of what it all means. can you learn about your feelings from books? is there a clear science in literature? when will i level out?

"she was amazed at the number of years she had spent pursuing one lost moment."

I WILL MISS YOU, DISTANCE ASIDE.

(i will never be sad again) (me) (january 2012) i feel so little that i ask myself what does it remember like. i found some strange catharsis in 'freaks' and i think i've cried for the first time in over a year. i have become an emotionless wall and as i sat in the theater i couldn't even understand why. continued on the metro, on the walk home, breathing down the cries. i suppose it's because i saw myself in those 'freaks' and the way that people view others. as if i'm incapable, cold, withdrawn. i've prevented myself from feeling anything 'too strongly' since january almost three years ago and now i feel like a complete robot fumbling and failing to make contact with anything. i cant think of anything to say to anyone. my thoughts are my dreams and i don't dream anymore. it's strange to not recognize yourself. to lose all categorization of your own thoughts. to feel your senses slip from the present.

i'm all alone.
you're not alone.
i am.
you're not alone. you only feel alone.
to feel alone is to be alone. that's what it is.

but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. and when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.

.

not the feeling of completeness i so needed. but the feeling of not being empty

WE DEMAND THE HIDDEN LOVE OF EVERYONE WE MEET.

do you feel less lonely in a place where you can simply have hope that there are thousands of other people in another place of the world who you could love?
or do you feel more lonely from another place in the world where you still feel disconnected from everyone?
ok, well here they are, here are the thousands.
we demand the hidden love of everyone we meet.

i can't see your face anymore. even if i could it wouldn't look like before.
if this is all just in our minds, would you mind getting out of mine.

TALKING SHIT ABOUT A PRETTY SUNSET//BLANKETS AND OPINIONS THAT I'LL PROBABLY REGRET SOON

i was lucid dream-thinking this. what i had in my head isnt what i've written down . this is a thought twice removed.

a bad habit. a selfish, painful, mutual love-drugged addiction. it was never enough to save me from feeling lost. the more i gave of myself, the more i missed myself. only believing that it was something more than habitual .

this is the most selfless love. there are no expectations. there is no right or wrong. i don't feel empty. i don't feel obligated.  i haven't lost myself. there is no missing. there is no sadness. there is only this feeling. this innate sense of validation. like i belong in my head. like these outside bits and these inside bits formed something sane and stable. like my thoughts are worthwhile. i will feel this until i don't and i wonder if i'll ever not. 

RED BLOODED, WHITE SKINNED, OH AND THE BLUES

so now i try to keep up
i've been exchanging my currency
while a million object pass through my periphery
now i'm rubbing my eyes cause they're starting to bother me
i've been starring too long at the screen

where was it when i first heard that sweet sound of humility?
it came to my ears in the god damn loveliest melody
how grateful i was then to be part of the mystery
to love and to be loved
let's just hope that is enough.

ANXIETY

i'm focusing on better management of my anxiety. i think here (when i'm in the US) it becomes much more obvious to me. or perhaps it has gotten much more intense in these last months, though when i look back, i'm sure it was always there before, too...... maybe it is because i don't have a close group of friends that i feel comfortable doing anything or nothing at all with. every social interaction seems forced, strained, like i'm overexerting myself, like i'm forcing connection. like the situation revolves around my every action and hangs off each of my words. 

this week i will limit my caffeine and alcohol intake - surely this has some impact, because i've sworn by coffee this entire year - something to make me awake and focused and not irritable. but perhaps it's done more damage than good. i'm going to compliment people who i see on campus. i'm not going to avoid interaction in passing with others.  i'm not going to overcompensate in casual conversation.  i'm not going to plan every interaction i have word-for-word.  i'm not going to toss around a conversation i had for hours, even days, and wonder if i said the wrong thing - because, honestly, who's got time for that? and surely the other person doesn't either.  

i'm going to continue exercising every day - yoga - meditation - clear my head, become my body.  don't skip meals. stop weighing myself. don't focus on what i dislike about my figure. 

i can't keep living in this way - fearing even the most mundane, monotonous exchanges. every day life has become a struggle to breathe with so much pressure. all because of this anxiety that has suddenly crept up. and i know it stems from the stress that school generates, but it is crippling even the slightest chance i had at enjoying these last few months here. in my head, i get this idea that with these looming tasks before the end of the semester, if i don't complete them right now, or perfectly, i absolutely cannot function until they are completed. i keep a tedious list of every moment of every day and something is just sick about that - especially because i feel like i need that to keep me afloat. 

dear my own lifetrinkets & everything 

write letter to 31-year-old self

hug the sunshine 

yoga 

treat body like it's as fragile as a child's: 

feed it well, let it take naps, make it go outside, don't let it stay still for too long

stop obsessing over the small stuff 

stop meticulously planning every moment 

stop living by staring at that clipboarded schedule 

remember to breathe

remember that you are here for you and you are the first priority 

dont be afraid to say no and remember that you cannot do everything 

stop trying

you're killing yourself trying to do everything

AN EMPTY PACK OF CIGARETTES BY THE BED

locked carelessly together in a stranger's bed. with our clothes on the floor i remember crying not quite silently to the room. into the blankets. into the pillow soaking up your drunken head. my arm going dead underneath you. my words like shards of glass in my throat. every slur was an attempt to swallow them, shrink them back down. i pushed you awake with forceful trembles. i couldn't be alone anymore with these drunk and sobbing tangles i kept finding myself in. i'm almost screaming out at you now. surely audibly. it was someone's birthday. stole their bed on their birthday and successfully failed each other for the last time. i couldn't even pry your eyes open. none of my words sunk in at all. that is the most alone i ever felt. you in your blissful stupor, my body sweating into yours. holding on to a person who i couldn't reach, in a body that wasn't familiar, but would never again be as familiar as in that moment. retrospectively, that was the most honest and familiar encounter we had.

PROVE TO ME I'M NOT GOING TO DIE ALONE

today i
drew on seven tattoos with a sharpie
maybe in the summer they are something that i can make permanent

today i
woke up at 7:20 because my body told me to say hello to the morning
hot green tea with honey
didn't inhale
yoga
twice

today i
looked through the books i read as a child
particularly one on unicorns
and another on horses and ponies
and i think that that is why

today i
completed my tie-dyed shirt
hooped to gold panda
got called kath
felt extra alive driving home
made a packing list for my second european summer
of living out of a suitcase

most importantly
today i
took care of myself

4 WEEKS

i can't believe everything.
or
anything.

i dont love you but i live with the idea of you. you're the best idea i've ever had.


(so much is supposed to happen in these next four weeks. and then what? i am stuffing my brain with physics of sound waves & formations. do you prefer vowels or consonants? i can tell you everything about them. SIETE repuestas. y qué?)

the first and final year in this apartment. packing up my things i feel an emotion for the first time in a long time. living and moving with strangers. clean sheets and clean thinks. in the end i can tell myself- i did grow in this apartment. early 2014, language melts in my head. i feel one less heavy. but i cant feel the world vibrate anymore. that's how i exist.

"at each moment we begin again, as ripe for a low blow as we were the moment before."

i wish that timers had camel scandals
candles

sift around as sea pollution. see? pollution.

imagine your kneecap as the great wall of china.
u do u

i don't think about bats enough.
the noun not the verb.


treat everyone like their kneecap is the great wall of china.



treat everyone like a rare sea anemone
spicy meatball sub
bears
ANYTHING that i wasnt expecting



because all the nightthoughts get wasted on endless scrolling

BECAUSE OF THE WONDERFUL THINGS SHE DOES

ool
ovf
peep

and i drink this green tea, which i quietly made, in the corner of this mind.
and i say goodbye to her.
because we have to.
(it's not because of before. not the kissing in 12-story bathrooms with my best friend, asking "where are you" or demanding "let's practice")
no

but because i can't compete.
i cannot stop my feelings. they exist by themselves. a separate being, and i tell them to stop. i tell them all of the time, stop.
so i try to uphold this image,
being different than what my feelings say.
and that's what is so hard.

0:00.

concerned about: how to make self feel better?

being here means feeling quite alone. running from here to there. without time, without anyone.

check out books from the library. monitor the daylight through the window, typical on a sunday. have brunch at blackadder. wash bedding. remember how a shower makes a new start to the day possible. read moon palace again. clean the space im in. donate the clothes i dont wear. grocery shopping. go for a run. small movements in big places. listen to sounds. smoke some, have tea.

dont think about how you prefer the person you were before, at a different time, on a different day, in a different phase. remember how interests and hobbies change. stretches. burn candles. dont look at old photos until they dont hurt anymore. take a warm drive, scream a warm song. write more concisely. dig more music without words, life soundtracks. take out the garbage. literally and figuratively. sit by the water. sit in the sun. sit in the sun by some water. sit in the shade. find out what makes you grow. study language, study literature. cook something healthy.

smell clean air, open the windows, watch the curtains dance. put your hand out, please the neurotic tend\encies, be partially inside and out. stick your feet out. light a spliff. dont focus on the distance. focus on the feeling that is very here and present despite the distance.

listen to the sounds of the outside and wonder who else hears it. feel the smoke enter, exit, filter, fly. think about dying your hair a lot of the time when really you're actually quite satisfied. see the purples, aquas, dark blues of the lights below. fall in love with characters in books. dont wonder about the future. onedayatatime. connect the shapes. sort the copies. cradle the soap box. shuffle the card deck. cut the simpleton. swat the cornfield. clarifying the sunshine. string out the crowd. wondering about vegetable gardening.

STILL

lonely for accepting the broken bits
lonely for being too drunk to finish a lucky strike
lonely for complimentary breakfast
lonely for strange beds
lonely for forks and knives

lonely for holding
lonely for broken shoes
lonely for ripped tights and painted faces
lonely for the morning

lonely for southern kindness
lonely for castillo de gredos, boxed, warm
lonely for sunless months
lonely for closed aquariums

lonely for västerbron
lonely for anything gentle
lonely for streets filled with people
lonely for wondering if we've lost it

lonely for eating the flowers
lonely for naps in cafe string
lonely for nights spent on public transport
lonely for marshmallow battles

lonely for a genuine connections
lonely for the car ride to colonia jardín
lonely for tapas and mahou
lonely for overpriced clubs and taking the first train home

lonely for reading and iced coffee
lonely for las resacas en el retiro a la sombra
lonely for unpredictability
lonely for björnkulla
lonely for the people who i found a home in


lonely for closure.

IT'S GOOD TO SIT WITH PEOPLE

It's good to sit with people
who are up so late
your other homes wash away
and other meals you left
unfinished on the plate
it's just coffee
and a piano player's cigarette
and Tim Hardin's song
and the song in your head
that always makes you wait
I'm thinking of you
little Frederique
with your white white ski
and your stories of wealth
in Normandy
I don't think I ever told you
that I wanted to save the world
watching television
while we made love
ordering Greek wine and olives for you
while my friend scattered
dollar bills over the head
of the belly dancer
under the clarinettes of Eigth Avenue
listening to your plans
for an exclusive pet shop in Paris
Your mother telephoned me
She said I was too old for you
and I agreed
but you came to my room
one morning after a long time
because you said you loved me
From time to time I meet men
who said they gave you money
and some girls have said
that you weren't really a model
Don't they know what it means
to be lonely
lonely for boiled eggs in silver cups
lonely for a large dog
who obeys your voice
lonely for rain in Normandy
seen through leaded windows
lonely for a fast car
lonely for restaurant asparagus
lonely for a simple prince
and an explorer
I'm sure they know
but we are all creatures of envy
we need our stone fingernails
on anothers beauty
we demand the hidden love
of everyone we meet
the hidden love not the daily love
Your breasts are beautiful
warm porcelain taste
or worship and greed
Your eyes come to me
under the perfect spikes
of imperishable eye-lashes
Your mouth living
on French words
and the soft ashes of your make-up
Only with you
I did not imitate myself
Only with you
I asked for nothing
your long long fingers
deciphering your hair
your lace blouse
borrowed from a photographer
the bathroom light
flashing on your new red fingernails
your tall legs at attention
as I watched you from my bed
while you brush dew
from the mirror
to work behind the enemy lines
of your masterpiece
Come to me if you grow old
Come to me if you need coffee.

- LEONARD COHEN 

I FEEL ONE LESS HEAVY

"My french was neither good nor bad. I had enough to understand what people said to me, but speaking was difficult, and there were times when no words came to my lips, when I struggled to say even the simplest things.  There was a certain pleasure in this, I believe--to experience language as a collection of sounds, to be forced to the surface of words where meanings vanish--but it was also quite wearing, and it had the effect of shutting my up in my thoughts.  In order to understand what people were saying, I had to translate everything silently into English, which meant that even when I understood, I was understanding at one remove--doing twice the work and getting half the result. Nuances, subliminal associations, undercurrents--all these things were lost on me.  In the end, it would probably not be wrong to say that everything was lost on me."

The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster pg 338

VOID OF ALL WORTHWHILE

somehow well, even after all this time
goodbye from the steady, slow phase
the cause of nystagmus symptoms lurching about within my heart
i find it hard to swallow the never knowing, the undone, the unkempt affection
and wondering, just how deeply did i become a part of you? because i can't feel your bones anymore
"nobody ever takes my eyes off of you. entranced, i make myself look away."
can we schwabach a portrait of our feelings because i can't feel the world vibrate anymore.
my blood requires some tactile responses and once i've placed you on a pedestal, you are too far out of reach. i am afraid i am not growing by masking my emotions. get out of me, please.

glasskath

inaglasshouse
withaglassblouse

TANTALIZING

-

FOCUS on disposables, café con leche, navigation, expatriate,
sleeping on floors couches and others' beds
detach
spend time.

LA BASURA

comiendo copos de nieve con tenedores de plástico
y un plato de papel
por supuesto que piensas en todo

amor corto con un divorcio largo
y un par de niños
por supuesto que no significan nada

yo grito que estáis todos falsos
debe haber visto la mirada en su cara
y supongo que eso es lo que se necesita
al comparar tus dolores de vientre

que ha sido un tiempo largo
que coincido con este reloj de la mia
y lo sé que te echo de menos.

i am feeling so defeated.
having tantalizing dreams defeats me

i cant believe that probably none of this is ever possible

“When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?”

The text above is a quote from one of my favorite books, Everything Is Illuminated.  So, the question at hand here is, what makes you want to breathe, what sounds make you want to dance, and what is it that you are living for? For me, feeling alive is appreciating the beauty in everything, like seeing the world through the eyes of a curious child. Children absorb every detail of what is around them. Everything is fresh, and exhilarating, and worth questioning. They haven’t yet been tainted by hatred, and they can still see the world with wide eyes and an open heart. I want to find the space for every color, every language, every culture, and appreciate the movement in every object.  

When I get butterflies in my stomach, this is associated with feeling like a child again; why can’t that feeling also be an adult feeling? Shouldn’t it be? Pushing myself into something new creates that feeling and that is something I don’t experience enough. What I need is to feel uncomfortable. I need to feel the discomfort in being too comfortable. I get too restless. Everything becomes predictable, monotonous. The easiest way I have found to continue to live life feeling everything is through travel. I have to keep moving. I love the sense of living out of a suitcase; of having everything that is mine in the world tucked into one bag.

Give me something more. Throw me into a society where I know and understand almost nothing. Give me a metro map to a city with stops that I can’t pronounce any of the names of. Force me to order a coffee in a language I struggle profoundly with. Form relationships with people who don’t speak English. Learn to communicate in ways more meaningful than words. I feel brave when I do these things. I need to feel brave again to feel alive again.

I need visible progress. This is why I love studying language so much. Maybe at first, the only distinguishable thing is where a word stops and another starts, but soon it becomes clear if something was a question, or if it was out of anger, and finally an entire statement becomes somewhat decipherable. Finding these patterns in language are beautiful, small victories. Like navigating from the city center back home. Maybe for the first trips, the map is required, just for reassurance. Shortly, it is so familiar as if it has obviously always been the way. But after time, these routines too become too comfortable, and I feel the need to find something new again. Onward. There is such beauty in the small doses. The temporary. The storm.

I have held onto empty bottles of European products for the mere sake of having something tangible.  Now I read the fine Swedish print on the bottle. I read this for six months. This combination of characters that I didn’t even take notice of anymore after some time, which I now cling to as if it is a vital organ. Traveling, discovery, and exploration constantly show me what is meaningful.  Everything good in this world is something that isn’t tangible. That is what makes it so difficult to feel, to see, to understand. So hard to love, to appreciate, and to scream about anything of importance.  These important things cannot be contained in glass jars, neither pressed into an overflowing suitcase, neither plastered to a wall, and neither preserved in paint, nor written in a journal. They have to be felt, seen, understood, loved, appreciated, and screamed about in the moment they occur.  Because now those moments are over.  The smells of smiles so faded, dumb photographs covering my walls, drunken signatures sprinkled across a world map, the forgotten voices and dispositions of people I love.  
While visiting a beach in A Coruña, I remembered how much I love the ocean. It absolutely astonishes me. The vastness, the blueness. The sky and water becoming one ethereal entity before me. Thinking, “How could anyone ever get used to this?” But we do get used to it. (My friends could not understand why the ocean made me cry.) Just as I am used to looking out from a window in Missouri and seeing every building, every house, every tree. The flatness of the land displaying everything before me. Just as I am used to the boundless blue sky--the biggest sky I have ever seen--and just as I am used to seeing each star in the night. But the ocean, how could anyone ever find this ordinary? I want to live life never becoming accustomed to anywhere, anything, or anyone. I never want to overlook the beauty of a relationship or a city or a landscape or a sound or a shape. 

Now that I am back in the United States, I find myself distracted by all the English surrounding me.  I no longer have moments of excitement when I hear my own language being spoken in public.  Instead, I hear things that I don’t mind to hear, intimate details of lives that I would rather go on not knowing. I even begin to stop listening all together and instead I hear the rhythm and the sounds and the patterns that language forms. But I hate that. I want to constantly be fully engaged – like when having to focus so hard to understand something from the Spanish conversation happening at the dinner table.  I am no longer excited about my own language, because it is no surprise to hear English.  I love being surrounded by unintelligible words that I can only appreciate the sounds of.  Falling into a silent world where everyone understands me, but I cannot understand them.  In these moments I also feel brave.

So for now, I try to find the beauty in small details. Good friends and good coffee, getting lost and getting found, travel and exploration through a camera lens, learning and exposure through language, and genuine connections with people. I never want to get used to this life. I want to see myself growing and progressing and learning every day. I want everything to move me and I want to feel so much. I want to live raw emotion. I want to discover myself through discovering the world.  I want the perceptions of my own life to change as my perceptions of the world change. I want to feel alive because the world feels alive.