Monday, November 14, 2011

I'm not sure yet if it's finished (I guess all that I write never really is). I've been needing to write lately, and this became my outlet. So, bare with me...

Teddy
    Teddy’s hands became weak and his eyes grew tired. There wasn’t much left for him to do here. His mind was exhausted. His head was heavy, his thoughts were swollen. He thought of the people in the park playing chess. He had never been very good at chess, but he loved watching it. Sometimes he made himself believe that if he watched for long enough he could learn to be very good. He knew this would never happen though. He wasn’t an undetermined man, just tired. The tiredness had begun in his chest, and had now spread to his muscles and bones.
Sometimes he imagined that he wouldn’t awake in the morning. The thought didn’t make him sad, just content, at ease.
He had never really lost himself, but he liked the thought of it. He liked the thought that maybe somewhere he could let go. Somewhere he could sink into the soil and grow with the plants and rise with the trees. Maybe somewhere he could fall into nothingness, and, all at once, feel the weight pull him down while the air would lift him up. And he would pull with his strength and be pushed by the Earth, and he would fall and rise. Somewhere he could be everything and nothing, and everything was important but nothing mattered. And the sirens would cry out and sounds would blare, but everything would be silent and free.
His mind carried him through, moving him away from the wiry couch where his body laid, his face upon the rough pillow. His eyes were cloudy and his skin was dry.
He looked down at Earth, the tiny planet that had turned to swirls of green and blue, and he smiled and closed his eyes.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011


Balance
There’s a need for finding a balance between the physical and the conceptual, the visual and the metaphysical, the perceived and the actual.
The drum of life and living beats at changing paces, and everyone experiences it (even if they’re not in tune to it). Because we are all connected, we are affected by one another. Although we don’t necessarily see it or understand it directly, the connection is still there. We’re constantly playing a game of dominos—when one is pushed, the others are at risk of falling. If we’re not close enough, we stay erect…at least for the time being. But the pieces will be rearranged, and there are more in the box that can take the place of those that have fallen.
Can we be completely replaced? And if we are replaced, how does that affect the other side?
Is balance achievable? If one side is balanced, is the other?
Maybe balance is achievable, but not everyone is a part of it—maybe you are not a part of it. But if not every one is a part of it…is that really balance?

Monday, October 3, 2011

It's a somber day.
Earlier I remembered a small, sort of irrelevant scene. I was pretty young, and I was at a park with my parents and two family friends. We were sitting in the grass, and the man, Tom, was showing me how to make a whistling noise with a blade of grass. His wife tried too, but she and I weren't very good at it. I don't even remember the rest of the day, just us sitting in the grass, laughing and brushing the dirt off of our pants.
It's strange how I'd forgotten about this memory for so long. My family and I used to spend a lot of time with them--they lived just down the street from us. My dad and Tom were very close, until things began to fall apart. Tom died about six years ago in a motorcycle accident. A lot of things were left unsaid and undone, things that will probably never be mended. Thinking about it now, I wish some things could've turned out differently, but that's the way it all works and we can't change that.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011


I’ve had an incessant need for balance lately. I’m not sure I can describe it exactly. Everything that I know or question has been leading me in circles. I keep coming back to the phrase “everything is relative”. And it’s true, everything is relative. Nothing isn’t connected, but many things have no connections.
I’ve been running around in my head a lot. And I can’t sleep. Sometimes I think I could, but it’s as though I don’t want to. But I don’t want to stay awake either, because it’s too quiet and I get easily stuck in my head. (Is it possible to think too much?)
I want so many things in life—many of them that I have no control over. I want to see people as people, and I want to live with them. I distance myself a lot though…although I’m not sure that’s entirely bad. Hopefully that’s just me looking at and observing the bigger picture. But I really need to come back down to Earth, and I need to sit with someone and talk with someone about little, menial things and big and abstract world issues.




Wednesday, September 7, 2011





A day once dawned
And it was beautiful
A day once dawned from the ground

Then the night she fell
And the air was beautiful
The night she fell all around


So look see the days
The endless coloured ways
And go play the game that you learnt
From the morning


And now we rise
And we are everywhere
And now we rise from the ground
And see she flies
And she is everywhere
See she flies all around


So look see the sights
The endless summer nights
And go play the game that you learnt

From the morning.

-"From the Morning" by Nick Drake 

Thursday, August 4, 2011

So, I'm starting a "diary" of food. This isn't going to become a food blog, but I'm going to track what I've been learning/will learn about nutrition--at least for a little while. There's no particular reason for starting this documentation, just that I've become interested in nutrition and I've been "sick" lately (something about my digestive system). I've decided to start a vegan/raw diet, more so a choosy vegan diet (meaning the only breads I can have are sprouted or gluten-free). I'm trying to seriously cut down on processed foods--at least the really unhealthy ones. Hopefully all this healthy nonsense (I don't plan on being this persnickety for too long) will kick-start my organs into working correctly (and maybe help me begin a healthier lifestyle).

Today, Larabar vs. Kind Fruit & Nut bar
 Larabar (Cashew Cookie): 230 calories, mashed up, two ingredients (cashews and dates), gluten and dairy free, mushy, tastes like old cashew butter, $1.49


Kind bar (Fruit & Nut Delight): 180 calories, whole nuts bound together by fruits, more ingredients (including soy lecithin), gluten and dairy free, crunchy and soft, sweet, $1.69


The winner? Kind bar


(By the way, I'm at work and I feel like a total health-nut. You know, one of those whack-jobs who has nothing better to do with her time...)

Monday, July 11, 2011


There’s something about dreams that, for whatever reason, I base some of my core emotions. I guess it’s because they come from me, and they are a part of me. I don’t think they tell anything that you don’t already know, but I believe they often confirm feelings that are rooted in the pit of your stomach that you’re sometimes unwilling to admit. It’s as if dreams are projections of yourself that you have to face to come to some sort of truth about your self. Of course they’re not always deep or meaningful, but rather random, and often current thoughts that float together. Sometimes they come from thoughts that spark from other thoughts or things that you’ve seen recently. Sometimes they’re reflections of concerns that you’ve been having.
No matter the real reason they come about, they are part of your consciousness and your unconsciousness. I find they’re sometimes therapeutic, even despite their terrifying approaches. 




Friday, May 13, 2011

"...As the truth hits your ears begin to cry
"Why is it like this!" Why the fuck do I care?
I don't have the answers, or at least the ones you want to hear...

Don't get worried now (We've been in a cold world!)
We just getting flurries now?..."

"Bent Life" by Aesop Rock

The other night I remembered a thought that I had a few years ago. It was an image of a man who digs a hole in his living room. And he digs more and more every day. Then one day he shoots his dog, because he doesn't want his dog to fall in and die. And he just keeps on digging.
It's not much of a story, but I've thought about it over and over, and I still can't figure out how to present it. Maybe as a poem? Or maybe as a short-story, or a one-act? I'm not sure.

(I don't know who this image is by or where it came from, but it emotes what I've been feeling lately.)

Wednesday, April 27, 2011


Do we want to help, or are we just voyeurs? When the excitement of happiness is muted to a quiet lull, how do we mask the often undeniable truth of getting joy from pain? While all humanity is not lost, and while there is still hope for sanity, it’s hard to really know whether all help is good help.


Monday, April 25, 2011


Seaside

The sky was closing,
the clouds lining the falling sun’s path,
leaving scattered traces of light among the bank.
The wet air filled his lungs with salt and grit,
but he paid no mind to its barrenness.

He thought of the way her fingers curled around his,
and the way her hair fell in his mouth when her head lay on his chest—
the way it stuck to his dry lips and parched tongue.
He could see her and feel her.
He could touch her skin and smooth the hair from her cheek,
and he could feel the weight of her leg pressed against his waist.
And he knew that it wasn’t all gone.
He knew that she probably thought of him, too.

A breeze rolled in,
sweeping open his worn coat,
exposing him to the frozen wind.
And he sat and waited
for nothing and for everything.

(Andrew Wyeth's painting Baleen)

Thursday, April 21, 2011

It's been stuck in my head all day...well, I've been listening to it all day...

"I know what you're thinking
But I'm not your property
No matter what you say
No matter what you say

Move along, there's nothing left to see

Just a body, nothing left to see

A couple more for breakfast

A little more for tea
Just to take the edge off
Just to take the edge off

Move along, there's nothing left to see

Just a body, pouring down the street

Move along, there's nothing left to see

Just a body, nothing left to see

Move along"


-"Gagging Order" by Radiohead

Thursday, April 14, 2011

It's hard to conceive time sometimes. I know it's there, and I know it's passing, but I can't always get a good hold of it. Sometimes it seems that it loops back around or that it overlaps itself. After a while everything becomes constant--even the things that should shake me become so normal, so ordinary, that I'm hardly moved by even the hardest push. And then things come flooding back, and I lose myself, once again, in the rush of all the things that once were gone.

Monday, March 21, 2011

What makes a person human?
No one person is any more or less of a person than any other. Sure, we can measure one's "greatness" or humility, but when it comes down to it we are all people--physically, mentally, and emotionally. There is nothing that can stop a person from being...well, a person. There is not one instance that can change a person into something else. Not even death. Although one may (and will) die, he or she is still a person...just a dead person. Like the worms on the sidewalk in the rain--we're just trying to make it to the grass so we don't drown. And some of us do drown, and some of us dry up in the sun. Then there are those of us who make it to the grass until the next rain. Of course, we're not worms.
 
 
 
(please excuse the terrible colors)

Wednesday, March 2, 2011


Los Novios
Written by Octavio Paz

Tendidos en la yerba
una muchacha y un muchacho.
Comen naranjas, cambian besos
como las olas cambian sus espumas.


Tendido en la playa
una muchacha y un muchacho.
Comen limones, cambian besos
como las nubes cambian espumas.


Tendidos bajo tierra
una muchacha y un muchacho.
No dicen nada, no se besan,
cambian silencio por silencio
.

Music written by Eric Whitacre

Thursday, February 17, 2011



If I could photograph the way Andrew Wyeth paints... That's what I want.


"Your prettiness is seeping through
Out from the dress I took from you, so pretty (on you)
My emptiness is swollen shut
Always a wretch I have become
So empty
Please, Please don't leave me.

I'm watching Naomi, full bloom
I'm hoping she will soon explode
Into one billion tastes and tunes
One billion angels come and hold her down
They could hold her down until she cries.

I'm tasting Naomi's perfume
It tastes like shit and I must say
She comes and goes most afternoons
One billion lovers wave and love her now
They could love her now, and so could I.

There is no Naomi in view
She walks through Cambridge stocks and strolls
And if she only really knew
One billion angels could come and save her soul
They could save her soul until she shines.

Until she shines.


So pretty

Please, Please don't leave me."
-"Naomi" by Neutral Milk Hotel

This song describes how I've felt all day.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011


"Then press yourself against whatever
You find to be beautiful and trembling with life
Because I'm so happy you didn't die"

from "Three Peaches" by (who else but) Neutral Milk Hotel

Thursday, February 10, 2011



 Clementine Trees

I can't really explain it, but I've been praying a lot lately. Or maybe it's not praying. I've never really been religious--not in the sense of the word. So, maybe it's just internal speaking? I don't exactly know who or what I'm speaking to. I guess God? I'm not even sure what that means. All I know is that there is a strange comfort in the idea that I'm never alone--the idea that something, or someone, is listening. I get lost in my head a lot, and it's hard to express things aloud when there's no one who can listen. And even when there is someone, I often can't speak as quickly as my thoughts pass. So even if these dialogues are just with myself, it's nice to imagine there's an understanding ear.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

(A photo that I took sometime last year)

I've had a lot of time to myself today. It's strange, it's as if I've been conversing with myself all day. Sometimes I feel cramped, but that goes away...and then comes back. I guess it's just an endless cycle. I can't always put my feet on the ground, but when I can I'm not sure that I even wanted to stand in the first place. Hm, who ever really knows...

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Monday, January 31, 2011

As a young girl, my grandma became an army nurse during WWII. This is a picture of my grandma (right) with her brother, John, and her best friend, Eileen (left), in 1944. She and (Aunt) Eileen traveled to Europe and Africa during the war, and they were part of the group that liberated the concentration camp Dachau. There's even a book dedicated to my grandma by a Holocaust survivor, called In the Mouth of the Wolf. She doesn't talk about the bad times; she physically can't bring herself to.
I don't think I could ever describe how much respect I have for her.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011


My mouth tasted of metal all day today. It was a strange day. I want to say complacent, but that doesn't explain it at all. It was a dry day, the kind that sticks in the pit of your stomach.

Monday, January 24, 2011


I keep dreaming of Rocky. He was my cat that I found when I was eight and when he was a tiny black fur ball, hardly four weeks old. Someone had thrown him out a car window, and abandoned him in the summer heat. I heard a tiny cry, and found him in a green patch of leaves behind a bush. I don't know what it was, but somehow, on that day in Rockford Park, Delaware, hiding him from the park rangers, that little kitten--Rockford Soda-Pop Oreo-Cookie McCormick--moved something inside of me.
Because he was so young he hadn't learned a lot of vital things yet. I had to give him formula and teach him to walk up and down the stairs. In all reality, he was like my baby (much better than any doll I had ever had). He used to do the strangest things too. Whenever I came home from somewhere, I found that he had dragged all the clothes in my room down the stairs, leaving a trail of shirts and underwear from my bedroom across the house to the garage door. He would also cry the entire time I was in the shower. Sometimes he'd even stick his head in and look at me, crying until I came over to pet him. One time he even bit my finger and began to walk backwards, as if he was trying to pull me out of the shower. But I guess all this nostalgia doesn't mean much to many other people. I can't explain how he was, or why a cat could be as important to me as a person. And I guess it doesn't make much sense trying to explain it. But he was.
He ran away last winter right before a big snowstorm. He had never run away before; he went outside all the time, and he knew his way home. But it was different this time. He had been getting progressively sicker in the past two or so years. I think he knew he was going to die, so he ran off to make a nest somewhere where he could be alone. I guess the hardest part for me is that I never found him. There's a strange unrest within me not knowing what really happened. Maybe it seems stupid that it upsets me as much as it does, but there's no other way for me to feel. He was my little Rocky, poking his head out from the shoebox that was too big for him to sleep in, waiting by the door for me to come home from school, running down the stairs after being away from me for two weeks, crying somewhere in the house listening for my echo.

Saturday, January 22, 2011




I woke up this morning (well, afternoon really) with the feeling like something happened last night that I could vaguely remember--that feeling where everything's quiet, and when you start remembering things you start regretting them, but you're not sure if they actually happened or if you just dreamed it. It's strange because nothing like that happened last night. So, I guess it was all the weird dreams that I had.

Also, some lyrics to a song that's been in my head today:

"...Take a number, the apple seeds rained upon each slumber
A hundred thousand freaks on parade for the village hunter
My every when acted upon has gone loopy...


Tummy full of sand running man impossible
Stop
There's a wing in my gut and I'm all dust
Surfing the earth and I dine-rise certainly flushed
Now one in the hand is worth two atop the tallest cedar
But what lies inside my heart is off the mother fucking meter...



...I don't play in the man race cycle
Hope floater
Gloating inside carnal indifference till doom cops are slight
and potent quotas
I'm 20 something pumping acrylic tomorrow side ways
Blazing passage with a map tattooed on the back of the classless
Now tip toe across a lost cause
Because a lost cause found
Don't mean you found a cause
That means you found a lost cause...


See the Water ain't safe no more
'I'm just trying to build my self to act as a truly better man'
'damn'
'See the water ain't safe no more'
'Nah nah'

'The water ain't safe no more'
I'm just trying to be a solid oak tree for every child to carve
its name across
'The water ain't safe no more'
I'm just trying to be the dream of every peasant the hurricane
can offer
'I'm just trying to be some body I can talk to in the morning
with a smile'
The Water ain't safe no more..."


"Water" by Aesop Rock

Wednesday, January 19, 2011


Today was a really nice day. One of those days where you feel everything, and when you walk home everything around you is beautiful. Not the cliched beautiful, but the kind of beautiful that you find in the strangest, smallest things--the way the rain hits the dull, gray sidewalk and the way your heels click on the salt scattered unevenly among the concrete. And you don't really know why you're so happy, you just are. And it all kind of makes sense, and the stuff that doesn't, well, you don't really care about that.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Sunday, January 16, 2011




The Egg
By: Andy Weir

You were on your way home when you died.
It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.
And that’s when you met me.
“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”
“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.
“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”
“Yup,” I said.
“I… I died?”
“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.
You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”
“More or less,” I said.
“Are you god?” You asked.
“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”
“My kids… my wife,” you said.
“What about them?”
“Will they be all right?”
“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”
You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”
“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”
“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”
“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”
“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”
You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”
“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”
“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”
I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.
“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”
“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”
“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”
“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”
“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”
“Where you come from?” You said.
“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”
“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”
“So what’s the point of it all?”
“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”
“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.
I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”
“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”
“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”
“Just me? What about everyone else?”
“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”
You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”
“All you. Different incarnations of you.”
“Wait. I’m everyone!?”
“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.
“I’m every human being who ever lived?”
“Or who will ever live, yes.”
“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”
“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.
“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.
“And you’re the millions he killed.”
“I’m Jesus?”
“And you’re everyone who followed him.”
You fell silent.
“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”
You thought for a long time.
“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”
“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”
“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”
“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”
“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”
“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”
And I sent you on your way.