It rolls around to the same time every once in a while.  I suppose cycles must go on, even when we hope they will stop on their own accord.  Am I drained of time, energy, creativity?  Or is it that I just do not want to face reality?

Last night as I was walking back, the streetlamps glowed like orbs against the brick and latticework, and I just wanted to be there.  Camera rolling, warm wind blowing, leaves swaying, and all those old clichés.  I had always thought that someday I could catch a star in my hand, and that it would burn away my skin and that it would make me happy.  But there I go, dreaming again and avoiding the truth.  Go figure.



Sometimes even the act of dreaming seems like a dangerous road to take.  It is easier just to remain in a state of stasis, staring at yourself in the mirror from various angles but never making a move.  I know everyone else is looking at me, caring or not caring, understanding or bored.  It is the fluctuations I cannot stand.  I do not wish things would right themselves because I wish I would be the one to right them by myself.  At this point, I do not know if that is too much to hope for.



I have not written, really written, in a very long time.  Not for class, not for the amusement of others, just for the sheer joy.  Lately I feel as if I have been searching out accomplishments, or rather what other people would deem to be an accomplishment.  My personal definition would have to differ.  It would have to be something of utter meaning for me and perhaps only me.  It is night, late, and I cannot seem to capture the moment correctly.  If I looked at the sky and snapped a picture, it may just develop all black.

I leave for Italy in about two days, for three weeks.  People ask me if I am excited, and I suppose I am in a reflective sort of way.  I am kind of hoping with will jolt me, sending off sparks into my psyche.

It cannot all be about appearances, you know?  Leather boots, boyfriend kisses, four point zero, and cash cash cash.  It cannot even be about movie tickets, bookstore books, or dinners and lunches and meetings and gossip.  At some point it has to come down to me, sitting here, trying to create something from my brain and coming up with space space _ _ _



Slushing trough the snow, I perhaps made a noise, halfway between a scream and a yawn.  A quickly inhaled breath caught it short, leaving it unresolved as to what sort of noise it would have made.  People who thought they had heard something did not in reality.  Heads did not turn completely.  Instead they melded into half-motions, brushing away of hair strands, a scratch of the ear.  My lobes used to be bright red after a day of uncomfortable silences.  Perhaps the stifled screech would have boiled up into some hokey rendition of a song, unused to but strangely compatible with operatic tones.  How could I suppose what others' responses would be?  Yet, how could I presuppose mine?



Sometimes things go wrong.  Other times they are just right.

Happy December.



This is no pressing matter, merely the simple tiredness of one wanting to sleep and forget.  No, not forgetting, but instead time to reflect, to enjoy to breathe and to listen.  Time to see beautiful and be beautiful.  I had not even noticed the yellow leaves falling upon the parked cars like layers of pear skin.  I had forgotten how blue the skies could get, how bright and warm the sun could kiss.  How one stray look could make or break my day.

Time for flight, time for flight.  As if I could go ahead and cast off all the heaviness, washing it down the shower drain, pooling at my feet.  I suppose struggle makes the small beauties more precious.  I suppose that might be the wise way to view things.  Sometimes the difficulty overwhelms, but it always passes.  So I wait, patiently as I can.  I wait, and I wait.



They said, that's the plan.  Said this as we sat in the dark room, watching sillohuetes crisscrossing across the walls.  We were thrown up against the ceiling, pressing against the grains of stucco.  Pressure of these inanimate goosebumps upon skin.



Oh.  What out there, in the night, broken down into shadow and shade could be the object of worry?  It has blossomed into streetlamps, facet rays of light when I squint my eyes.  The illumination curves across parked cars, backs as gleaming as skin.  The cold draft, the awareness of my eyelids, all of the night, makes me sure that I just might could possibly be captivating as music.  What, that bird drifting thin as rice paper across the room.  Wings as soft as quiet as night, as tremulous as utterly transparent as the moon.  I do not need to see the moon to know it hangs there.  Fine dust as fingernail.



I have come up against a wall.  Unexpected, bare, and too heavy and stolid for me to push out of the way.  Backtracking seems impossible, and now I face this unyielding passage of brick and crushed stone.  The wall itself does not move.  I close in on it.  Less and less room for me to breathe.  The stifling air presses back, making the air stale and leaving a taste of wood chips in the back of throat.  Is it myself that is sucking me dry?  This lack of space correlates with time.  No time. Not enough.  Wasted.  Time pressed and condensed upon flesh.  I am tired of fighting against the current of my own thoughts.  But I hate giving in to mediocrity.

Ah, but who said it was giving in?  Perhaps this is the place I had fooled myself into thinking I did not belong.  I am pressed, full-bodied, tearing layers of skin off on cement and the gradients of brick red.  It is not, nor ever has it been, simple.  The motor has still within me.  The fan refuses to go on whirring.  I almost want to let it be.  But I cannot, exactly.  The unmoving air is making me sick, physically ill.  I suppose I must work on nourishing myself, but I just do not know how.



Strange, how in a moment the tiniest insubstantial thing can sweep me from one spectrum to another.  Fish in a stream of wave-like consciousness.  No, I would rather no make another extended metaphor out of this.  But I feel like composing, feel like sustaining every reverberating emotion into an undying note.  To pierce the air separating the clouds that have somehow descended without anyone noticing.



When I read poetry, it makes the world beautiful. It makes me beautiful. It makes my quick-bitten nails and stubbly legs beautiful. It makes the boy beautiful. It makes brick, steel and rain beautiful. It makes glass transparent, impenetrable, cold and hard. It makes the pregnant mother, the slimy baby, and the rotting corpse shine and glow beautiful. Blood, sweat and tears are made equal and beautiful. Poetry makes my silence screaming and beautiful.



I am filled to the brim.  My eyes are watering with the fullness.  And I have no idea what it is.  This swimming mixture of everything, shaking with desire to burst, explosion of shards of red, purple and orange.  Only, I naturally supress it. Shoving it down to the pit of my stomach where it festers.  It churns inside of me to the point where I am literally shaking, unable to stop the tremors running from my torso to my fingertips.  I had always decided that the only remedy was to sit it out.  Pressing my weight into my legs, rooted into the floor.  I am melding, flatted sheet-metal, reflective and unseen.  Only this time, I know it cannot work.  I cannot let it happen like that.  I cannot wait.  I am tired of being so stiff that my muscles ache from merely holding my body up.  If I let go, if I push the stiffness out of me, the looseness will let me crash, unhurt.  Upon impact, I will lift up and evaporate like fine steam.  Fine, loose steam.



The sky turned suddenly dark.  Rain was pouring down, creating a chain-linked fence atmosphere.  It was all I could do from running out there to drench myself.  I wanted to be soaking wet, able to feel the suction of cloth against my skin.  I wanted to shiver - out there, crashing about like a maimed lion.  That raindrop smashing against the window was me, a kiss upon the glass.  To think of how I could be quenched.  I might never need to sleep again, fulfilled completely by resting against the damp feeling of myself.  Compared to the world outside, the air in here was stifling and artificial.  This was worse than the sunniest, blue days.

I wanted to drive through the storm, feel the thrill of wanton puddles erupting under my wheels, feel the fear as the windshield wipers didn't clear the expanse of glass quickly enough.  The sudden thunder, it made me want to smash the panes of glass of the neatly parked cars.  I didn't question the image in my mind: rows and rows of wailing sirens, alarms, and corporate owners with their fine parking spaces. Perfect polish chipping under my swings.  I could not stop my eyes from flickering over to the window, separating the blinds, and pretending to feel myself being drowned.  By then, the sky was already brightening. Rain calmed and softened, leaving me with an immense sense of loss.  As if there was something I physically had held for the moment, something that I actually could lose.



The best part of the day is when everything else had built up to this locust-like buzz in your head.  The only recourse can be a shower, turning on the water to hot, on the point of an almost unbearable burn, and forgetting everything else.  The longer you stay in there, the better, because all that hot steam makes you heady and euphoric.  Water is forgiving, making everything beautiful and young again.  In the shower, it does not matter for the moment, and you allow yourself not to remember the deadlines and worries.  Something transpires between the rivulets and the soap bubbles, the smell of shampoo and the light dimmed through the curtain or textured glass.  I have always taken long showers, emerging clean with pruned fingers.  The mirrors have misted over and so has the air itself.  Or else my eyes have veiled over with showerfog.



If I could permanently sew the clothes I am wearing to my skin right now, I would. Just so I would never have to worry about changing.  I really wish I could just by lying in a large pool of opaque blue water right now.  Pale music and enough silence so that I could hear other people tinkering about or the house settling.

It's time I got back and I don't even know how I got off the track :  Weezer might just have the perfect songs for every mood.  It is really quite something.



Everyone I have ever met is just plain scared.  It is the artists who are so frightened that they bravely shut their eyes and hurtle through.  I do not know if I could ever do what they do.  How could you walk off a plane in the midst of flight and expect not to fall?  I wonder if they consciously know what they are about to do, or more importantly, I suppose, why they do it.  Maybe they have no other choice.  It is something that most people will never understand or hope to do.  I think I will just try to understand it because I might just not have the guts.



I am starting to realize what a shell everyone lives in.  We try at all costs to submerge ourselves in this sleek, streamlined skin of success, portraying ourselves as caring, multi-talented individuals full of drive.  I am not saying that I have no ambition.  Maybe my ambition is misplaced, or outpaced by others clamoring for money, popularity, fame, and overwhelming happiness.  Sometimes I merely have no desire to speak or even really exist.  I do not know if I can be more of myself than I am impersonally.  Recently, I look different, feel differently about myself.  Insecurity and independence mingle into an odd array of self-discoveries.  I would like to think that I am tired of overanalyzing myself, but chalk it up to some narcissistic, self-absorbed infatuation.  I am not professing that I am interesting.  Merely that I am me, all I've got at this point, and, hopefully, all I will ever need.