Thursday, March 4, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
We used to sit stagnant in our memories, some of them graying and weighted and still like lukewarm bath water. Others were from the beginnings, from the deepest and secret places we can only find as children or right before and after the sun rises. It’s in these moments that we remember the softness of a cat’s paws kneading into your ribcage, or the way the graze of sunlight gently wraps around your eyelashes and remarkably strokes them open from the softest sleep. It is in these moments that we realize how alive we can be, even when we have become the most eternal of Januaries, ridden with numbness and the thrill of debauchery and new bodies to keep us warm and away from the fading black and white of such memories.
We learn to focus on reality (if we can really label what that is) and the steady hum of today today today. It’s almost as if I can focus more on my ravaged heels or the bruise at my hip that it will be so easy to forget the unhealing internal pieces that are constantly held together with the limpest threads. It’s as if I can forget the most beloved things, I can become something well-placed and successful; I can work and buy things and not enjoy them; I can be dismal and unreflective and unuseful in the most important ways. I can adapt to anything, but the more I stray from my passions, the more I come to understand that which I am naturally inclined and need to do, because I have the ability to create remarkable things that not everyone else can do. And it is this thought, among all others, that makes the decision to choose happiness and passion the most important to make, although it is sometimes the most difficult.
We reveled in the darkness. We sat in the blue-lit luminescence of quiet night that no one else notices and ventured into the inner-workings of the paradox of how logic, in itself, can defy its own logic, and then in the chatter of the others we both looked at each other and saw the same enlightened, hollow darkness inside one another and we both told each other we appreciated the other and sealed up the lights lingering in the shadows once again.
The next day the sun scampered the cold away. I went to the park and left work in my shorts and sweater. I listened to the mix CD made for me (400 songs of solid gold) for hours. I stayed up late with the boys and felt the blush creep into my cheeks when I laughed and when I went home, I sat in Abby’s room in the dark and delved into the intricacies of here and now. I let these people create intangible beauty in the margins on every page, letting their magic shine into my own life and create sparkling brilliance.
So I let the colors combat the grey spaces; I allow them to soothe the worst memories, replace numbness with almost bliss and the swiftest heartaches. Slowly (but perhaps never fully) rising from timidity and awkwardness and fear, but always looking for the right direction.
We learn to focus on reality (if we can really label what that is) and the steady hum of today today today. It’s almost as if I can focus more on my ravaged heels or the bruise at my hip that it will be so easy to forget the unhealing internal pieces that are constantly held together with the limpest threads. It’s as if I can forget the most beloved things, I can become something well-placed and successful; I can work and buy things and not enjoy them; I can be dismal and unreflective and unuseful in the most important ways. I can adapt to anything, but the more I stray from my passions, the more I come to understand that which I am naturally inclined and need to do, because I have the ability to create remarkable things that not everyone else can do. And it is this thought, among all others, that makes the decision to choose happiness and passion the most important to make, although it is sometimes the most difficult.
We reveled in the darkness. We sat in the blue-lit luminescence of quiet night that no one else notices and ventured into the inner-workings of the paradox of how logic, in itself, can defy its own logic, and then in the chatter of the others we both looked at each other and saw the same enlightened, hollow darkness inside one another and we both told each other we appreciated the other and sealed up the lights lingering in the shadows once again.
The next day the sun scampered the cold away. I went to the park and left work in my shorts and sweater. I listened to the mix CD made for me (400 songs of solid gold) for hours. I stayed up late with the boys and felt the blush creep into my cheeks when I laughed and when I went home, I sat in Abby’s room in the dark and delved into the intricacies of here and now. I let these people create intangible beauty in the margins on every page, letting their magic shine into my own life and create sparkling brilliance.
So I let the colors combat the grey spaces; I allow them to soothe the worst memories, replace numbness with almost bliss and the swiftest heartaches. Slowly (but perhaps never fully) rising from timidity and awkwardness and fear, but always looking for the right direction.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
You come to know people as places. The places they live, the lives they cultivate, the way they make the city come alive and how the city makes them come alive in turn. I guess for me, more so than any other place, New York has become that for me. I can't tell you how many people called me or texted me or left me comments asking how my city was, wishing me well and everything I'd hoped.
The romance of that city bewitches me every time I set foot in the streets, they way the buildings crowd around me and keep me close. The way the warmth from the restaurants invites you inside when you can't feel your fingertips or the way the snow in the park charms you enough to sit down on a bench and feed the squirrels who call the few trees near the playground home. How a day starts out with a .50 banana from the deli and ends with curling up in the softest blankets, the city still breathing around you. Where the boys in the pubs call you darlin' and you come to know the city better than any other you've known, because you're a New Yorker, through and through. Where you tear up when you land at the airport and can breathe easier when you leave because you'll be back soon and the gorgeous, glittering lights bid you farewell but even they know you'll be back too.
This time I ran around the streets by myself, up through the Theatre district to Gramercy and Murray Hill. I ate yogurt in Koreatown, spent an afternoon in Madison Square Park, and saw the ball drop in Times Square. I ate at my favorite restaurant, went to NYU and SoHo for the afternoon, and ended up all the way in the East Village. I found my marker, found my place, felt so at home.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
It's been awhile.
Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. All that Jazz.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
I guess in back then I never really cultivated anything besides shy smiles and a certain nack for making sure my collar bones were still apparent every morning.
Somewhere in this mess I have lost those important qualities, the ones that allow me to believe when I am told I look beautiful or that I should stand up straight because height is always an asset. I have always known only how to fade into myself, when all I want to do is shine.
This is what I have to learn. You have to make yourself into that one person they can't bear to let go.
♥
Sunday, January 11, 2009
I feel awkward today, for more than one reason.
I want that feeling to go away.
"You're meant to have whatever your heart desires.
Did you know that?
Whatever your heart wants that much is already a part of you."
Did you know that?
Whatever your heart wants that much is already a part of you."
