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