summer plans

one hundredth post.

two days until the end of the semester, and then another week in pulaski until graduation. summer is coming soon and for that, i'm extremely excited.

my tentative summer vacation plans include, but are not limited to, the following:

holland with my parents/brent
damascus, va/mount rogers with my parents
colorado with claire
maine!! to see andrea.

i don't know how much more excited i could be for this summer. it's going to be beyond wonderful. if anyone else has any other plans, any road trips to add to this list, make it happen!

nature: a focus, pt. 1

a blank page and i are enemies. mortally so - engaged in combat between fist and teeth. snyder sat on a mountain far out on the east coast. quiet - never mustered a word - and this mountain top was his self-inflicted god positioning. zen taught him to be still. life taught me to be still. therefore - in our own ways - we are similar. (i need my silence - this is why we are not compatible. our energies do not match and my levels are overly-dependent on times of complete quiet, whether by body or by mouth, and creative independence which denotes my every thought.) when i need placidity, i create my own. when i need coherence, i develop my own.
the most beautiful union is in that of music and environment; the way certain melodies intertwine effortlessly with the simplest things. the gentle swish of a branch is depicted by simply sliding one's fingers against guitar strings. it's not hard to see the underlying beauty in all of nature - all one must do, in theory, is return to their creative roots. we are born from this earth, from these roots, those leaves, that dirt. we are given to it in hopes that we are able to see our own inequities. we have a relationship with it - at times, an unheard union; at others, a fully-developed, gallantly-approached marriage which we scream at the top of our lungs.
it gives and it takes away. within itself, nature is it's own goddess (goddess because, like general female nature, it is both rational and temperamental - moody as she may be, as i am). it is every piece of art worth mentioning, every line of a poem quoted from a poet's mouth. save prestige: it is all of humility. save humility: it is all of prestige. all encompassing, all surpassing, all creating: this is the merciless yet contradictorily forgiving "God" the bible speaks of. and yet the image of this biblical "God" is tainted by the mortal presence and the mortal hand.
religion, like nature, is a personal experience - a journey which takes place within one's own limitations and one's own mind. quite possibly, this is where it should be left - an inner creation, to each his own, played by ear or by practice and repetition. never confined to meaningless, controlling rulings of time-restrained cultural beliefs. that one may live as one pleases, without harming the lives of others, should this not to be the general thesis of religion?
thus - everything is touching. religion, science, nature, mathematics, music, philosophy, psychology, music, art, sex, and all it's many genres and subdivisions and sub-sub points and roman numerals and bullet points. the only way one thing cannot touch another is due to the mental limitations and need for compartmentalization humans have placed on every aspect of this beautiful, non-restrictive earth.

got it all wrong.

4 am in the morning - reminds me of finals week last semester when wes, chris, melody and i played hide and seek in walmart and then fell asleep in mel's room because i couldn't find my key (it was perfectly placed between my seat and the console. i found it the next morning at 8, half-groggy from sleeping on her floor, imprints emblazoned in my skin from where i had laid). except this morning we bought care bear bouncy balls and a bra and i felt stoned as i sat with brent in my car, bra attached firmly to my head (reminding me of, in a way, a cat whose ears had been cut off) listening to louis armstrong and annie lennox and joan osborne and enya - anything ridiculous, you name it, we played it. i burnt the edges of my hemp bracelets with the lighter that was hidden in my cup holder. 4 am - indicative so much of my life that i love. the crazy situations and the people and the things that just make it so undeniably worth living. and even though we listened to gary jules' version of "mad world" (these dreams in which i'm dying/are the best i've ever had), these dreams in which i'm living/are the best i've ever had.

someone left in my truth box that i underestimate the power of my words. i wonder what it means, but i think i know (i just always tend to over-guess). sometimes i wish my words meant so much more to certain people. sometimes i wish people wanted to know me as much as i wanted to know them. sometimes i wonder - sometimes i wonder if this foolish game we play is really just a one-way street and i'm the one you trample on.

that makes no sense to anyone - but i wish you had taken interest. really, i do. i wish you had wanted to know things about me. but you never did - never will. so what's it matter?

"sometimes they aren't as anonymous as one would hope" - wouldn't life be better without anonymity? sure, it makes guessing fun, it makes life full of adventure, but... when do the masks come off? when is everything revealed?

all in a matter of time, and i guess sometimes we'll never figure it out, right? sucks to think that there's a week left and there's no possible way for me to turn back time.

credible love.

the last day of school was today.. i had three classes this morning and then my last speech for speech class at 5 30 (about pj harvey, who else?) and i'm done for the year. that's exciting - no more school for a whole four months? hell yes. i'll miss everyone who's graduating or leaving this year, so that's sad, but we've got a week.. i wonder if i'll stop being a pus and do something about it? eh. it's not like i can rewind time - not like i could give it more.

i don't know. i'm so confused about a couple things. things that will go nameless, so what's the point in even saying anything about it?

i forgot how much i love the lucksmiths. especially this song..



'cause trying to sum you up in song is like trying to catch sunlight in a jar.


yea... for you.

she knows me better than i know myself.

'cause we'll all just lovers and takers, breaking hearts to make the papers. she wants love, i told her to stop trying, 'cause the reasons for her tears aren't worth crying.

(this life is a beautiful one.)

pungency.

i got through the past week of non-stop working, which is definitely taking a lot of stress off my shoulders right now. i've taken four tests, written a paper, given a speech, and made an outline and now it's time for just a little rest. and we all know that "resting" directly translates to "thinking"... so here goes nothing.

i haven't been nice lately. not at all. i wouldn't call it straight being a bitch - i really try to stray away from just being mean. but i've been easily annoyed and the way i deal with frustration is by, in a way, ignoring most everything except that which i have to get done. so if i've been snappy or out of it lately around you, i'm really sorry. i have some things i need to figure out, some decisions i need to make, none of which have been easy on me - but that's no reason to take it out on anyone else. i think it's just human nature, though.. to get stressed and take frustrations out on anyone else who comes close. it's just natural.

i've been listening to lykke li and el perro del mar a lot lately. lykke li's voice makes me swoon a little bit; i won't even lie.

i think i'm going to start taking some time out to just be by myself completely. it's the only way i think i can really thrive. the more i'm alone, the less irritated i am, and that's what i'm striving for, right? so that's something.

turned in my pre-application and application for the tycc. now i'm waiting for a call back. :) i'm really excited to be living at home this summer, and hopefully working with them and volunteering for the red cross. it'll be a great summer.

on that note.. i'm done. for right now. something else will probably pop in to my head later, but for right now i'm too tired to even think of anything else.

... oh, and one more thing? graduation is the same weekend as beale street music festival. i am NOT happy. i think they should fix it.. to suit my schedule. just kidding. :)

you,

i will stay away.. avoid that which i want. seems like a good idea right now, might not be, who knows. they say go after what you really want and yet i cannot. what i really want is fleeting. what i really want is most definitely not what i really need. it's unrequited - this i know. and i was looking for that but to me, it would not be unrequited. it would make my heart hurt in the best way. and thus i will not think anything of it.

take different paths for the next couple weeks. ignore. repeat. ignore. then go home. the end.

home is the end and how many things i wish i could say is the beginning. i will skip the beginning. what i want to say will not come out of my mouth, to save everyone. in the words of newton faulkner: "you do so much that you don't know."

what am i even worrying about? vague isn't necessary, this won't be seen.

(say anything. please.)

harold weathervein

you were laying perpendicular to the ground, head first, hair hanging precariously close to the carpet below. i remember it more clearly than i really ever wished to: the way you'd look at me, then at the accidentally draping fabric that made up the interior of my car, then back to me. i'd blush every time you'd look at me, and i fully admitted it, each time; there was no use hiding candy-apple-red cheeks. cursive lyrics danced from my speakers. we liked this most: driving at night when the road was ours and ours alone, listening to music that reminded us of our own self-inflicted teenage angst (if at first you don't succeed/you gotta recreate your misery/'cause we all know art is hard/young artists have gotta starve/try and fail, and try again/the comforts of repetition/keep churning out those hits/'til it's all the same old shit) and talking to each other as if our words were being written down in a leather-bound journal as we spoke.

yeah, i had every intention of leaning over that night our feet hung off the ledge of my roof. i had every intention of wrapping you in my arms. i had every intention of you wrapping me in yours. le chevalet et la palette hangs above your head in the blue backdrop, but we can only feel it is there... it is not to be seen. de lacaille could have pointed out for you, but you chose me instead. asked me what kind of paintbrushes you should use and what type of paint and what colors and..

i picked out a vibrant blue. you knew blue was my favorite color. (hercules peeks out from behind the golden draperies. with a raised eyebrow, he asks if i have seen pegasus. no - hercules - i have not.) you gotta sink to swim, so we jumped off that ledge. fully clothed. broke a couple bones, nothing major, just something to pass the time away. when i told them they'd say i was fucked in the head for what i did with you. for the time i spent and the minuscule trouble we got ourselves into. they didn't understand that broken bones meant nothing more than battle scars. us against the world. us against us. you'd write it with your paintbrushes, i'd write it with my fingers dug deep in the clay. make something to put on the top shelf of your two-story apartment downtown. another to stow away in your bottom drawer.

[in the smoky bar, we sat in the back where the floor was raised slightly - they assumed that those in the back would need a little lift to see past the crowd. the boy in the band had gritty, stringy hair that fell all around his face, contained only by a makeshift bandanna tied to his forehead. (my name is driftwood.) his arms were moving at an alarmingly fast rate for my mind at that point. the phenomenon was coming from his drum set as he beat so precisely, each time. forget the guitarists - they were all played out, anyway. forget the lead - her voice cracked every time she made eye contact with me (i'm still sorry. i didn't mean to steal the heart that once belonged to you). bloody murdered. redrum. redrum. danger will robinson.]

big brother is coming. radar and hawkeye and pierce. it's only a flesh wound... the tape deck was broken so we loaded your gun and shot into the sky for effect. made a pretty noise. crack, snap, pop - we hit phoenix in the wing. pyxis guides home. pegasus is hiding behind ursa major - hercules is still looking.

you - you do not guide home. you do not provide any solitary confinement for my ever-wandering mind. you... you torture me. with every smile. i think what i should not think and i tell you so each time and it is as if i can feel my feet being pulled out from underneath me;


(it's almost time for sleep.)

thinking fight, fight, fight...

i heard the sound of your bike,
as your wheels hit the gravel,
then your engine in the driveway
cutting off
and i pushed through the screen door
and i stood out on the porch
thinking fight, fight, fight
at all costs,
but instead i let you in,
just like i’ve always done
and i sat you down and offered you a beer
and across the kitchen table
i fired several rounds,
but you were still sitting here
when the smoke cleared.
and you came crawling back
to say that you wanna
make good in the end

and oh, oh,
let me count the ways
that i abhore you,
and you were never a good lay
and you were never a good friend
but, oh, oh, what else can i say...
i adore you

all i need is my leather,
one t-shirt and two socks,
i’ll keep my hands warm
in your pockets
and we can use the engine block,
and we’ll ride out to california
with my arms around your chest,
and i’ll pretend that this is real
’cuz this is what i like best,
and you’ve been juggling two women
like a stupid circus clown
telling us both we are the one
and maybe you can keep me from ever being happy,
but you’re not gonna stop me from having fun.
so let’s go before i change my mind
i’ll leave the luggage of all your lives behind
’cause i am bigger than everything that came before.

and you were never very kind,
and you let me way down every time
but oh, oh, oh what can i say...
i adore you

i heard the sound of your bike,
as your wheels hit the gravel,
then your engine in the driveway
cutting off



yeah - it’s a little egotistical. maybe a little mean. but anyone has to know this is how i operate. you can do whatever you please, and you may think that it will upset me but most of the time - most of the time it won’t. i’ve had my fair share of high school relationship melodramatics and i’m surely not going to buy tickets to see the fake emotion show, especially not to please anyone else.

it has to be said. you fuck me over, don’t expect me to turn back around. i’ll walk towards something bigger, better than myself. maybe sometimes i push people away. maybe sometimes i am a little too drastic. but i will never be that stupid little girl who begs for you to come back. i will never be that girl who tries to force you into doing what you do not want to do. i am self-empowered and self-reliable... i can damn well take care of my own fucking self. i was once that girl - never again. it’s pathetic.

this is that spectrum brent and i were talking about.. my spectrum of codependency vs. independence. this is my independence - take it or leave it, love it or hate it - it’s beyond my control.

a little bit ridiculous, a lot bit amazing

just a little peak into how ridiculous laws can be. this article is from the journalism department at san fransisco state university.

fun facts:

places where oral sex is illegal: alabama, arizona, florida, idaho, kansas, louisiana, massachusetts, minnesota, mississippi, georgia, north & south carolina, oklahoma, oregon, rhode island, utah, virginia, and wahington d.c.

an erection that shows through a man’s clothing is illegal in: arizona, florida, idaho, indiana, massachusetts, mississippi, nebraska, nevada, new york, ohio, oklahoma, oregon, south dakota, tennessee, utah, vermont, washington d.c. and wisconsin.

in georgia those charged and convicted for either oral or anal sex can be sentenced to no less than one year and no more than 20 years imprisonment.

in missouri sexually deviant behavior between people of the same sex is classified as a class a misdemeanor.

in harrisburg, pennsylvania it is against the law to have sex with a truck driver in a tollbooth. (there’s every woman’s fantasy gone down the drain).

in nevada it is illegal to have sex without a condom.

in willowdale, oregon it is against the law for a husband to talk dirty in his wife’s ear during sex.

in clinton, oklahoma it is illegal to masturbate while watching two people have sex in a car.

in washington state there is a law against having sex with a virgin under any circumstances (including the wedding night!).

in newcastle, wyoming it is illegal to have sex in a butcher shop’s meat freezer.

in washington d.c. there is a law against having sex in any position other than face to face.

animals are not exempt from the law either, and here are three of the most ridiculous:

in kingsville, texas there is a law against two pigs having sex on kingsville airport property.

in fairbanks, alaska it is illegal for mooses to have sex on the city sidewalks.

lastly, even liberated california proves to be not quite so liberal for the animals... in ventura county cats and dogs may not have sex without a permit.


(i think this may be a bit outdated - the article states that the last olympics were held in georgia, and that was almost 12 years ago.)

speaking of which:

nothing to no one which is you

writing this down to be facetious
the curls on my letters and the dots on my i’s
playing a symphony on my breathing
wasting my time on you for years
all due to my own naivety

when they told me -
girl, it’s not right. just drop it
i did not listen; i did not hear
i wanted to believe -

that maybe you could have tried
to love me; to hold me, to keep me close
to care when i turned away
to drown in my tears

my head works this way
this way that says emphatically that
you should listen to my every word and that
i should be the only one you hear and
i should be the only one you care for and

it will all fall apart.
all of this will
when stepping stones become advances
and advances become stepping stones
and i am the stepping stone you
so graciously twirl upon...

neoclassical post-modern big-worded existence

feeling is overrated. like the feeling of hard-swallowed lungs or of soft-hearted whispers or of fingers against fingers against -- and you stop awkwardly in the syntax of conceptual period-ism. because punctuation is but a flaw in the human existence; lyrics a mistake in the pretense of a baby’s breath. if a song were to be the anthem of our heart beat could it also be the grammar of our placement? when three times three equals nine so does red times blue equals yellow. that each feeling, each notion, each instinct is an open, live, breathing experience signifies that each is, transversely, a person in it’s own reasoning. we will read all these things - "classics" from romanticism to classical to "neoclassicism" and post-modernism and --------------

all the labels will run over but in time will all be eradicated. movements, sexuality, gender, race - all mixed and confined to lines in a history book and all the passion dually felt is lost in the frugal ink of historians and artists and mathematicians and biologists and swimmers and idle on the tongues of dead Presidents rolling over in their graves. the ideals of feminism lost to time’s eraser; the girls who riot contained by headstones. chauvinism is stuck at the root of it’s ugly conceptions (because we know it starts from the balls and continues to the head). what will win? the persuasion of this century is slowly losing power with mini-skirts and animal-made covergirl (easy. breezy. beautiful: horse’s hoof) and the music that once created a movement slowly dies down and is patted to the ground by presupposing, lacking lyrics by our nation’s pink highlights - avril and aly & aj and britney. between your lover’s lips and statutory rape. strength here is underdone, lost in heels and high fashion and traveling and prefixes, titles, commands, demands and - above all - the quest for monetary fame.

imploring the possibility of a bilingual society

imploring the possiblity of a bilingual society:

tonight, brent and i were sitting at dinner when our waiter (a very sweet guy, by the way) came up and asked us what the difference between "i will" and "i would" was. we helped him, and then our minds wandered to other things.. thus being that as a society, i believe that we should be bilingual as many european countries are (i.e.: the european union requires of schools to teach not only the native tongue, but also two other of the official languages of the union). in an ever-expanding society, i really do think it is necessary to not only know at least the basics of minority languages (spanish, especially) but be fluent in another language (of their choice). just as musical instruments are said to help children focus as they learn to play, i honestly think that if children are exposed to different languages, they will be able to broaden their horizons at a younger age, thus encouraging tolerance as well as, possibly, a better success rate. just a thought...

i plan to be bilingual eventually, if not multilingual. preferably in spanish and either dutch or german. but we will see how that works out... brent also brought up the possibility of taking a class in latin and (atleast) knowing the basics because latin is the foundation for the romantic languages. i’ve always fallen in love with languages and how english ties in to different cultures, and i really do think it’s an important thing to think about... and i honestly think only ignorance fosters inhibition to learning foreign languages (and notice how i said "ignorance" not "stupidity": by ignorance, i mean not being informed on such).



in other news, i’ve decided that my persuasive speech for class will be over growth hormones and pesticides in food, and that my tribute speech will be a dedication to janis joplin. i was going to do a piece about women in the media and how it affects a female child’s self image, but brent said that i’d sound like a hairy-armpit, dread-headed, crazy-ass hippy feminist.. and i decided that the subject itself wold be too much passion for merely 12 minutes (really - i could dedicate hours upon hours about how women should not be seen as their tits or their sexual worth. i have a mind too, y’know). he also called janis joplin a gay tribute speech... yea, whatever. i love janis and everything she embodies.. a wonderful feminine spirit with a kick-ass attitude.


don't compromise yourself. you are all you've got.

i felt you in my heart ---

i need you so much closer. why aren’t you next to me right now?

i am glad that i’ve gotten you into tegan and sara in the last few days, because i want you to know that when i listened to nineteen the other day i thought of you (i felt you in my life, before i even thought to, felt the need to lay down beside you and tell you: i feel you in my heart, and i don’t even know you), and even more than that i thought of the night that i drove to where you were at 6 am in the morning just because i knew you needed someone to be there for you. you asked me why that morning as we laid in my bed, watching the sun come up. and i said i didn’t know. but the truth was that i felt you in my heart...

maybe i felt you in my heart those seconds that we had, those stolen glances, those are you really looking? or am i crazy? thoughts. maybe i felt you in my heart when we first made eyes at that party way back, last semester where i decided i’d take my straps off and tuck them in my back pocket. i don’t really know. all i know is that - one fateful day, on my way back from columbia (after a failed attempt to go to a band of horses concert) you asked me what i was doing and it was all over from there. for that day two weeks before - for that day in the cafeteria where you were sitting behind me - for that day where we laid in my bed until 8 am talking about anything and everything in between.. for that weekend when everything came crashing down and brent and i drove to meet you and i held you that sunday morning and the six of us watched the superbowl and complained about how shitty the weather was..

our roadtrips and everything else in between and i don’t know where i’m going with this, but i think - i know - i felt you in my heart, and still do.