i have been wanting to write for so long now, but as my computer is decaying, i have not been able to.
i feel...i feel a little unnerved, emotionally pitted, and i'm not really sure about what. i am not sure what i'm drawing from my own life or what i'm creating now that i know that i can create what i want. i guess i'm not really sure what i desire. i keep having panic attacks and fickle thoughts about escaping everything and starting a new dream. you know sometimes i just want to be someone else, and then i have to remember that i chose to be this way.
and everything feels so immensely like a cliche, like a circle with edges, points to collect while i rotate in place. i don't know at all. my heart is hardly a cheap origami organ, a folded love letter stolen with words, words, and nothing satisfying these deep-seated fears. i want to touch something that is truely alive and solid. i want to wrap my mind around reality and still live here, and i think that's the problem.
i want a goal.
*sighs* now i cannot write because there are people here.
this is how i feel, on the first day of being 21 in a state of mind disconnected from both space and time:
i am raw earth here is a shovel with a man like an apostrophe point and point and point and dig dig dig my knuckled bones are cliches six feet deep and ankles pouring out feet
two feet to carry me into silence into bare forest defeat like nothing and nothing like a detour with no ending and no place to start, just trees for days
here is a body here is a day here is an idea here is a faith here is a mute mouth that licks you and you feel the taste of minutes at once acid with the enzymes exploding then base and stark as dirt
who is it that feels this hand, my Erica? i will tell you how my hand feels one bone sticks to the skin then five, so i can only think of skin cancer now.
but no, without my brain speaking to my hand i suppose it feels the glowing energy seeping into the pores over years of tending, shaping to wash rags, hand cream, cold coins, buttons, an apple some ex-boyfriend's turning cheek, the clicking of keys, the door, this sad letter, as in this lifetime we become what we touch.
so i write to you in hope:
dearest Erica, if i could i would slide through the dimension to you together we'd be a wild pangea or the Alpha and Omega and the coming of the oars of small boats with miniature people holding weaponry and pens, flag, color, and democracy would row toward our island with immense effort in hopes of finding new land to tread
we'd be standing there, you and I our eyes closed, my hand in yours or yours in mine the tide lapping at our feet stuck in the depth of the earth with only the feelings united between us as our safeguard, our hearts our love, and nothing else, because nothing else is.
questions for today (in answer to someone close who asks why i feel depressed when nothing is 'going' on.)
what is happiness? what is love? what is real? why is the world a cramped chessboard with only a few key global players vying for political power? why do we allow them to govern us and our emotions? how are wars preventable? does it matter? can you change your reality with your perception? can i disassociate from this world and suffering? do i need to? why can't i believe in anything without dissecting it until it becomes science, but with a literal feeling? why can't i be spiritual without religion? why do i need to find some organized set of beliefs to define my presence here? why do i need a purpose? why can't i believe in a partial truth, and dismiss what isn't right to me (such as the bible)? why does god allow the world to exist in this way? why is there seperation? why can't i be content with my surroundings? why do i feel the need to change everything if i don't even believe in the reality of the world? why can i see that we DEFINITELY make what happens to us real by acknowledging the power of our minds over our reality? why isn't that evident to most people? why does it not make me feel any better that i can use this power to make things happen in my life, simply by removing doubt? why does it make a difference to learn about how the world and its atoms work if we have no idea how close we are to the truth of the matter? especially why do we study how things work and then refute that those discoveries have an Ultimate Creator? why do we continue to use traditions and forget or even explicitly deny their core values (ie: why, roommate, do you celebrate christmas?) why is our love for one another unequal; why SHOULD we love our family more than our enemies? why can no one seem to understand the hard ethic: TURN THE OTHER CHEEK? why does it have to be a religious thing? why can't any one see how that kind of strict mortality is necessary for the GOOD of the world? why can i see that but find it extremely difficult to do? why don't i just give up the fight for justice and ease my mind? why do i care about myself at all? what intrinsic worth do i have to the whole? what worth are you? why don't we listen to one another? why must be (there must be) competition of species to substain life? why do people try to move up the monetary ladder when we are mortal? what is the goal here? why can i see that the only goal is love, but then not utilize it? why is it so difficult for me to "bring myself down to earth"? why is it that the more i try to advance toward wisdom, the less valuable i feel? why do i still have inhibitions? why do i still fight my ego? why do you? why doesn't god just become visible to me in some shape or form? i can see how this life is a classroom, but why can't god be a direct teacher? i understand how faith works, but it is clearly an insane idea! why can i still believe in god, but fight so hard against it? why can i pseudo-understand greater things in life, but not break down this simple mathematical formula into something relatable (i understand that math is clearly important)? why does everything have two sides, why is everything so RELATIVE that no decision that i make feels right? where do ideas come from in great thinkers? how can we speculate how the universe works when we can't even know where we stand in it's functioning? where does morality come from? are some people born with a stronger sense of interdependence or is it a result of upbringing? how can i rely on a teacher? what exactly does meditation entail? why do i do anything and why don't i do everything? which matters? why do i care about everything (obviously it's good) and why don't i care about nothing (obviously it's good)? how can i see things so clearly sometimes and then not be able to give advice that helps, that doesn't just soothe but changes things? how do i debate anything when i don't have any answers that are easily accessible, or rather, how do i give answers when i would have to explain an entire idea about how the world is nonexistent, just a dream? you can't explain that, no one understands unless it is from a deeper portion of their soul--a path most don't explore! i don't understand it but i belive in it from somewhere outside of myself! how do you explain that? how can i see that there is nothing wrong with me (because i truly don't matter), and then continue to dwell on how everything is going downhill? why do i envy people who are happy and then feel as if it is because they are in denial or naive or self-absorbed? are they? or are some people just truly beyond this life in their spiritual progress (ie: buddhists)? is it more self-absorbed to obsessively worry about being a better person or to not care?
why can i see that the only thing that matters is connection and then feel increasingly disconnected?
(ETC.)
WHERE IS THE MEDIUM? WHERE DO I FIND ANSWERS THAT DO NOT PRODUCE MORE QUESTIONS? WHY CANT YOU SEE THAT THIS IS A SCARY THOUGHT?
(but you can't explain this to someone who knows everything)
the kind of courageous love i need seems to only exist in the future
but why can't this unceasing compassion for humanity exist in the now? now, without having to purge this "self" of doubt and now without having to free this "self" from my dangerous assumption that life can only be bold with a new beginning, that a sentence: i love you. can only start behind a closing punctuation... although the kind of love i want can't be reduced to words:
agape ah-gah-pey
sometimes i think that i can only be truly helpful or can only find my purpose without this penetrating baggage i carry everywhere: this barnacle guilt or the fear of loneliness attatched to my beautiful ship sailing a frenzic "sea of love" or this explicit ancient mold or placid growth showing up underneath every fresh shoot of god's creation
(it's like i want to be so good that i forget that goodness is a way of life, not an endeavor. the people who i care about fade out of my presence because i feel like i need to leave everything in my life of "sin" behind, even the good that held it together.)
today my ethics teacher sees in me a "kindred soul" but that is not enough to redeem me from the feeling that to want any attention, even virtuous and good in itself, even acknowledging my own soul is still wanting attention. it is still wanting to be seperate from the unity surrounding or inside or perhaps beyond my scope of vision.
new age, new thought tells us that we have god inside of us. what i mean to say is that i need retribution for acts of kindness even though i see that everything exists as one and so to give outwardly is to take inwardly in a universe that is all interconnected like a massive springing web.
however sometimes i prefer to see earth as a garbage bag tied up with god's merciful arms. on occasion god will peak in to see if anything is worth saving, any lovely thing to salvage before throwing it away; and so i always want to be on my best behavior.
yet striving for selflessness only gets me in the trouble of my own devout judgement because it either isn't entirely possible or it is too ethical for everydayness... (i haven't decided yet. perhaps i am being a bit pretentious here in this simple purgatory life but i never want the simple to be reduced to stagnance, or worse. still ever-present is Thoreau's ringing of "simplify, simplify, simply!")
i have the means now to not seek this charitable love on the outskirts but give it a way to be home in me although i know it takes more to make it comfortable than i can give in my little willingness to create...
i watch Mother Teresa as she lowers her arms to a spastic, anorexic child of twelve flailing, jumping,kicking, wetting his diaper revolting against his own nature, he is unable to express love
his dark eyes meet her rekindling eyes: gentle, steady, giving and the light is absorbed between them as faith
here is a gift he doesn't flinch to receive a forgiveness that stops the incessant beating of his heart only for a second, no question a connection; a purity without symbols: race, people, earth, universe, galaxy,utopia, heaven... a love so moving and visible, that it can only exist in the now.
the child excepts without doubt (god says to love like the children) there is a divine love present even in the rotting flesh and she says "it doesn't matter how much you do, but how much love you put into the doing that matters." he accepts.
i saw this love today as a blinding truth but sometimes i think i can only fully feel it in the future although to be sure, my heart knows otherwise.
Yesterday a man and his wife came through my line at the cafe. I was asking the gentleman customer if he had a membership card when he stopped me mid-sentence...
"You have a pretty face."
I was really startled by it but I instantly, and without question, accepted the compliment as my own. I thanked him. I moved to the expresso machine and mechanically started making his mocha. And of course, left with a minute to my thoughts, the incurable doubt set in. I started to acutely overanalyze the situation. What did he mean by pretty? Which features? Was he just saying it to catch me off guard? Was he hitting on me? I stumbled back over to him, staring at the floor as if my shoes were philosophical inquiries, took his money without even looking up, and the couple was gone. Just like that, no explanation.
The incident left my mind for a while.
Today after school I took a short stroll downtown to check out some of the new art galleries and drop by my favorite used bookstore. Bottega, one of the more modern art galleries, has mixed media pieces outside for sale against a backdrop mirror. In a second glance, I caught a glimpse of my face in an archaic mirror chip. The slice of reflection was off because of the shape and unbalanced portion of the mirror, so that I had to focus my pupils for a minute to catch it.
And for the first time, I thought "You have a really pretty face."
It's not an extraordinary face, no remarkable features, no pouty lips, no stunning straight smile, no celebrity cheekbones. On the contrary, underneath a bold layer of foundation and icky-thick mascara, my face is rather sulking, somewhat blemished, definitely scarred. My eyelashes are dull outward lines and my eyes are not of a distinct color without enhancement. My skin is ghostly pale and blotchy pinks. My face has brought me years of discomfort: my smile is made of flat metal braces, chipped teeth from childhood sommersaults, multiple mouth surgeries, and a yellowish, coffee-stain tint. I have a long, prominent family nose. I hide behind dark bangs parallel to my eyebrows. And the bottom half of my face, which I cannot hide, is a half-circle; I have a sort of cartoonistic double chin and plump cheeks that characterize the symmetry of my face.
But what I haven't noticed until today is that when I'm not thinking about it too much, my face provides a rather kind front to the world. I have inquisitive eyebrows that arch in thought. I have a slightly-slanted almond shape that open my eyes sincerely. Even though my lips are pursy and thin, they have a tilt to them that makes me appear happy most of the time. And there is a sort of roughness, a harsh reality to my deep-set laugh lines that reminds me that we're all sort of plain in ourselves, all sort of the same, you know? Not pretty, but rather ineffably beautiful in our sketchings. Not ordinary but unseperated from the whole. We have different reasons for smiling, but we all smile. Or at least everyone has at some point in their life.
It occurs to me that a face will never delight the soul in itself. But inside the valley of eyes and through the timeline of aging, mute and speaking loudly, we are happy to have this expression of outward creation. I think when I saw my face today I mostly saw how indefinably pretty God is. It was more than asthetic. Like unfolding a love letter, I was reminded by my reflection of God's plan: an offhanded compliment from a stranger carried in my sub-conscience until I realized its true worth. You have a pretty face and I have a pretty face brought to the light. We cannot express our love any more than our inward smiling followed through our external appearance.
It isn't vanity but it is acceptance that helps us realize that we're all just kind of needing a small compliment.
i feel gutted. a blow to the sinless state, a bone pile of defeat, a little known territory revealed. i feel like my senses are cut off and floating, demagnatized, around my flat face and just out of reach. i feel like the underbelly of god is chuckling with damp thunder at my sad attempts to mend my sick heart. and although i know god is on my side, i can't help but to question his authority issues with all that my ego can muster.
what good will come of this world, when nothing but death cures my fickle appetite? i keep confusing death with happiness. the thought of escaping mortality is like a papercut that keeps thining my blood at the tip; the air stings and suffocates. i've found little purpose here.
i think it may be love. still, i will always think that everything real and true is open in some other task, so i'll reach for that actively. the truth, i know, is that everything real and true is open to me right now, but i feel abandoned by my gusto. there that lady goes, feeling thick at the hips and mind rooting at the surface. there she goes, all swing and sway and empty fly.
nothing is ever conveyed correctly in metaphors, so here it goes:
i am sad because i do not know what reality is. and the fact that i have the ability to question it must have give some depth. i'm giving my life up to finding answers i will possibly never know in this life; that of course, is death. and nothing really matters, nothing matters at all except god, whom i repeatedly find myself offending or seperating from. possibly i am scared of the real richness and understanding he could open up to me.
1:30 pm - this is not my life, it's just a fond farewell to a friend.
it's that time of day again when i'm not sure of anything or anyone. i feel split between two worlds: one of introverted madness, one of extroverted exuberance. one where emotions are sure and one where they are a tightening neuse, the enemy romantic.
and i feel change. i am listening to his elliott from a time before. i call all memories of him his own; to be sure they were never memories made by my own lackluster mind. and now he will do something. and now he will do something to accomplish something to go somewhere to find that he is just as raw inside as when he started the journey of dream.
something so profound in your senses you can't translate into language. that's my life. such an orbit of purity around my true self. last night i was lying on the couch pretty sure that any second my conciousness was going to float away from my quack of a body. i don't know if i could cause that to be. the sheets were damp with a psychic brain shift, a plethora of adjustments soaking my face. what can it be but tears, another word for something we can't pronounce?
the sun, the moon, the day, the night, the ocean, the sky. poetic nature and nothing to hold onto but a few morose words. well i've already seen the moon, the sun, the whole damn warrior world, god. choke them all and squeeze out their essence something that opens my eyes to a possibility. give me birth or give me death. it's pretty simple that we're complete, but what does it taste like? what wisdom does it draw?
what can i write that will move me to change! there is a tramp of anxiety that could be bought by another piece of truth. i think i'm stuck at some learning point. i think i'm a little less than found. i feel change. some involuntary force leaping into my joints like an idea.
Today you will think you are wise and know the truth, but tomorrow you will find something else to appease your emotional appetite. It isn't relevant whether they are universal truths or personal addendum's, or if they come easily or haphazardly, dashing in from the sides and swelling up in your soul like yeast. You will never find solace in the answers you produce, because you are unprepared to surrender to them. You will always search, infinitely, for the better possibility or the wider scope. You aren't the sum of the calculations of your mind. You aren't your immediate surroundings or the religion you hold. You aren't the places you've been or wish you were. You're twenty, and you have a lot to do with your life. You have to remind yourself that you create your experience and own up to it. You have to remind yourself that time is fictional. What you think this moment is wholly more important than what you wish to do in your human experience. There should be no staggering questions, only growth.
What you are is an atom in your own paused universe. Multiply years exponentially, you are still invisible to the naked eye. You are nothing more than part of something that IS importance, unity. If you are blindsided today by your ego, you have still used this day toward the growth of God's plan. You are neither bad nor good. Judgement is a concept; once you allow yourself to feel that, then you can create and produce and experience what you want. Most days you will not fully align with your own good intentions; but if you give up the fight for it, you will fill your spot in the world more aptly. You have to learn that you don't have to identify with the onslaught of ideas merging and regenerating in your brain. You can choose to believe in only the things that allow unconditional, binding love. You CHOOSE to BE love. You want it. There is no dividing line between negative and positive, but what you create. You can measure what is right by how much understanding it opens up to you; although, it needs no measuring.
You have to learn that you are always being taught. You have to allow yourself enough silence to experience your spirit honing in. You will never honor that silence-- your true self-- if you continue to worry that you can't retrieve it. Silence is your nature; searching for it is searching for the grave where your bones lie. I'm talking about stillness in your presence, a place where your mind rekindles its light, its life. You have to quit comparing what truths you find in this state of presence with the collective sanity of the world. You don't have to keep to yourself what truths arrive to you here, but what is more is that you should encourage others to pour themselves out in their own silences.
You have to only speak when you are convicted that it is only truth spilling from your mouth. That is a very important thing to remember. You have to stop trying to fill the proverbial gaps and distances between yourself and others with words that hold no value or even disrespect your true intentions. This may mean that you will think of yourself as seperate or even of a higher mindset than others; that is your ego talking. Learn to ALWAYS question your ego! Catch negativity before it catches you. The ONLY truth that you are completely aware of is that you are a part of every living thing, as they are you. The seperateness is a lie created by the ego. Therefore, silence may mean more true connections. You will notice more beauty that way.
It doesn't really matter if you never create great, poetic works of art, or if you never travel to a third world country and presumably live freely. You can be free wherever you are. You are beautiful because you were created by God; in this way you are a work of art. Try to remember that you will never fully understand that at its indelible capacity in this lifetime. You just have to become and live that statement as if you have always and always will know that statement's integrity. You have to remember that we were put here to exist, it was only over aeons that humans found that boring or hard to fathom, when we started to philosophize God's plans and then even God's mercy and then even God's existence. You have to believe that even our questioning of God (and even our language to denote a name to God) is a part of the divine breadth of functioning.
You are twenty years old, but in your soul there is no significance of age. You choose the wealth of love available to you. You choose your purpose, as you choose your imagination. Just make sure you are always exactly where you want to be and all else will be disclosed.
This describes the totality of my inner conflict: knowing, and trying to let go.
"Many people never realize that there can be no "salvation" in anything they do, possess, or attain. Those who do realize it often become world-weary and depressed: If nothing can give you true fulfillment, what is there left to strive for, what is the point in anything? The Old Testament prophet must have arrived at such a realization when he wrote: "I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind." When you reach this point, you are one step away from despair-- and one step away from enlightenment.
A Buddist monk once told me: "All I have learned in the twenty years that I have been a monk I can sum up in one sentence: All that arises passes away. This I know." What he meant, of course, was this: I have learned to offer no resistance to what is; I have learned to allow the present moment to be and to accept the impermanent nature of all things and conditions. Thus I have found peace.
To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on forms is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them-- while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.
The happiness that is derived from some secondary source is never very deep. It is only a pale reflection of the joy of Being, the vibrant peace that you find within as you enter the state of nonresistance. Being takes you beyond the polar opposites of the mind and frees you from dependency on form. Even if everything were to collapse and crumble around you, you would still feel a deep inner core of peace. You may not be happy, but you will be at peace."
(Excerpt from "The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment" by Eckhart Tolle)
the most real and unimaginable, absurd truth came to me.
i'm not meant for America. i told my roommate tonight that if i had to work for a corporation for the rest of my life, if that is what i was looking forward to, getting out of school...or even going to school, earning money, having a relationship, that i seriously could not contemplate life. i have always thought very seriously-- even thoughts dating back to elementary school-- about attatchment. i have thought about what dress means to me, what school means to me, what relationships mean to me, goals, people, places, and even what the questioning means to me. every year and a half in my life has been a new stage, a new slate or a new beginning. every time i have moved i have spent a half of a year trying to adjust to a new place and a half of a year of bonding with people, only to spend the next third engulfed in creating who i was going to be next. it is not a secret why i lie; i have been a floating candle my whole life, a very nominal amount of molecules bobbing me around an unshaky surface. i think very seriously about who i am because i have spent my entire existence adapting to new environments. there is no wondering why i am unstable; i question even the merits of my relationship with my family, who are ultimately the only comfortable thing in my life. tonight i questioned out loud how i had become such a different person on the outside, and then i wondered what i was being different FROM, you know? Maybe i'm on a totally different plane of thought. there is a reason why i think about connection so much...it's because it has essentially been the most scary and uncomfortable thing for me, and yet it has brought the most joy.
i tend to generalize family under the "societal concepts" folder in my mind and then i can trace it all the way back to how psychologically powerless i feel about being on a different wavelength than they are. sometimes i think about actual controlling my brain to make myself on a higher mental plane so that i can spend the rest of my life in a mental institution and unfold communication with people i can learn from. it is not entirely true that i'm not learning from other people, i learn from the people i am surrounded by (including family and friends) inadvertently every day lessons of what i don't want to experience. it's not like i hate my family, i truly love them, it's just that i love them so much that i want to become deeply ingrained in their conciousness so i can learn from what they have learned, made the mistakes that i can avoid and move higher above. i watch my mother be so much a part of what feels real to her, Christianity, how she devotes her life to the act in society, the forming of order and design it has given her, and the consistency it has brought her and i am jealous. at the same time i am overjoyed that she has something that is real to her; i see that i have moved past religion quickly (as a process of growth). or that perhaps maybe i just have not found my own reality of an afterlife or the soul or any other word devoted to continuity. as is, there have been none available that have made me feel SAFE with the all-consuming questions of existence. i ask aloud every day (to a god that is also a question) to bring me some kind of resting place, even if it isn't the whole truth, just to settle down in something respectable. My mother has become so intertwined in the romanticism of Christianity (and of something KNOWING her reality) that she can feel OK with the hypocrisy in her life. on the other hand, i wish that even for myself that i could become a part of a belief in something, even if it was completely fictional. i wouldn't give up my overanalyzing nature, but at the same time i would love a life where there was certainity in anything at all. so i think about relationships with people and i feel...well, unconnected to a point where i become panicked. easily considerable, seeing as how i can't control how far away from the concensus reality that i can get.
the only solace that i have is in creating. at night i wonder of how much further i can get with the power of my mind. it has occured to me lately that genuis is sincerely the gift of isolation. and if i could be alone from (overgeneralization: everything), if i could devote my life to cutting off communication with other people and spend time studying what humanity has previously created and developed from, that i could conceivably be empowered by great works of art and soul. i could be immortal in that way.
and the other part of me (because these are revolving plans) wants to immerse myself in a primal culture so that i can learn the fundamentals of human interaction and involvement. i look at America and i am ashamed and awestruck at how far people have demoted from former intelligence. we are a society of implausible greed. on the whole, i do not believe that i have created an existence that wants to be part of the societal goals of American people. when i try to imagine a forseeable future, everything is fuzzy and unmanageable, except for the fact that i do not want to earn money any longer. i do not want to be part of the wickedness humanity has created. it has held too much power for too long over me. i am restrained and unresolved. there is no want anymore for any attachment in my heart, and yet i can't grasp a life without it. so i wait for a future where no one is holding me back from finding a place where i am simply a part of those meeting their basic needs of survival. can you imagine what it's like to do anything in your life when you understand that nothing matters? i watch this pocket wisdom in effect as people carry with them to help cope with the hardships in life; it is easy to think that nothing matters when you have something to fall back on or an easy way out (ie: suicide). but the truth is that i think that something matters and it is both curiosity and love. and i talk about it a lot, but it's so much deeper than words. it's as if i want to be a part of a culture where i have nothing and i am nothing tangible, but just accepted by being a part of a group of survival and interdependence. does that exist? in my mind for so long it was the peace corps, ecause then i could be in both worlds, the one of American freedom and the other of basically what i have perceived as love. but i see now that it has been mostly because i didn't want to choose to leave my family to become of a different mindset. so i wanted to keep the options open and also not get too far away from the only thing that is familiar to me. now i see that the most beautiful thing of this other world is only an allusion, that i can't get away from my mind. i do think i would be a lot happier if i were more basic, however. i would have a lot less to think about.
i don't know what to do. suicide would readily have been the answer, but in place of it i have come to believe that i would continue into conciousness not as a solution, but just the opposite. i believe that life and death are the same thing. i think that's what is incredibly scary. where is comfortable ground? what does it mean to be alive? i don't understand how people cannot question their purpose as a human every internal second of their life. i want to just BE. HOW. i don't know how to do it on my own. i read about how to be one with myself and with nature and that brings a entire new relative anxiety.
it's like i understand a little more that there isn't a solution every day and then i wonder what i'm capable of doing. or why it even matters. i pray for more wisdom, but the wisdom is that we don't have the resources to arrive at the answers. and that fucking scares me. that really fucking scares me.
tomorrow i will be arriving at new answers, just for my own personal perspective to thrive off itself.
1:21 am - laugh and the world laughs with you; cry and you cry alone.
i have to be completely honest with myself. poetry aside.
i have reached a point in my life where i have no idea what to move forward for, or how to live in the now without regret of the past. i'm completely fucking scared. every day there is a new feeling, a flutter in my chest or spine, or hallucinations, or more lies. i am exhausted and frightened by the fact that i have absolutely no idea who i am anymore. sometimes it is so easy to detach myself and i feel that i am not a part of what is happening to me, as if i am just sitting in on a more distraught life than i want to experience.
i am tired and sad. very lost. completely lost. i have no idea what defines me or what makes me happy. positive people always say to me: do what makes you happy. and i honestly have no answer for it. i try to relax, to meditate, and i end up even more panicked and worried that i'm drifting away from reality. i am HONESTLY scared that i am losing the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is real to me. a walk will not help. therapy will not help. medication doesn't help. calmness is temporary. everything is edginess and mental sickness. i fear everything. i fear breathing and i fear losing breath. i fear death and i fear life. i fear letting go and holding on. i fear that there isn't a god. i fear that there isn't true connection. i fear the raw anxiety that overcomes me and manifests itself in my good intentions. i fear being loved and being unloved. i need help but i don't want to allow myself to be helped. one minute i'm completely elated by the idea that we create everything in our experience and the next moment it becomes a phobia: what if what i don't want happens to me because i choose to entertain the thought?
i lie. a simple story with a few extra plots and twists and exaggerations becomes melodramatic architecture. no one believes a word that comes out of my mouth. i talk flittingly about a multitude of subjects i'm not really invested in. i cheat myself out of enjoying a moment by breaking it down into the parts that are and are not justified. i don't even really know when this started; at first it was truth hinted with lies, and now there is no division. i believe my own lies. i'm scared. i know that. i'm scared, i feel it in my synapses. emptiness is starting to grow and develop and own me. and i don't know how to fucking change on my own. i try every day. i want to be a better person and i plead to god to help me, but i don't know if i'm talking to myself and then i start to question that. everything in this life is a question, including the end of it. i need to numb myself from the questioning.
the truth is that i'm incredibly ashamed that i can't control my own mind. and i can't control that i feel selfish for wanting people to love me and care about my stories and my opinions. they don't. everyday i realize how selfish humans are at the core of themselves, and reading new age philosophy only makes me feel that we all really want to believe that the world is about who we are. that we are the center of creation, as individuals. i have to be a part of something bigger than that! i want to be something that is meaningful to other's lives. and i want it to be a real, widespread truth through me. i feel guilty for talking about myself, so much that i become aware of every syllable that i speak. so i talk more to fill in the silences, and then i feel even more guilty. i feel like i shouldn't be able to speak about my worries because there are people who are worse off that i am. and at the same time i feel like i can't take any more depression or sadness off other people's concious. so i don't know about talking anymore. i don't want to listen because i'm sad and i don't want to talk because i feel narcissistic. and i don't deserve the people who want to help me. most don't anymore. all that i want to do is give to people so that i don't have to invest time in myself. because i hate myself, and i will always hate my mind, that incredible powerful warped manipulative deceptive animal. i feel guilty that i know it's powerful. i feel paranoid that i don't have anything to offer. it mostly is about being afraid to ask me to love myself. (i can feel that statement, it's making my chest tighten)
i can't do this anymore. i'm paralyzed. and i went back and read this and still, i can pick out parts that are complete lies.
what do i do? i don't know how to help myself. i just want to let go, and even that feels selfish. EVERYTHING about me is so selfish. i don't even know what to do. i'm completely and totally lost. and i know the only person that can help me is hiding from herself.
i even feel guilty for writing this. so much time invested in understanding what my needs are.
i don't know what to do. i'm physically sick because of my mentality. and it's only progressively getting stronger and more controlling. and i can see every angle of every facet of every tiny fathomable or unfathomable atom of life. i see all of the two sides, but no doors.
my biggest fear is that i will never be able to stop the analyzing unless i completely dull my mind to the good parts, too.
9:03 am - you'll find hours and hours of years in your answer.
there is a wide, gapping whole in something called the world and i exist in it. that's about all i know. everything else feels incredibly starved for the defining, and quite honestly, i'd like to just enjoy these few hours of plain incredible earth, no feelings.
there is something to be said for meditation: it brings you home. like a save haven, i slide under the messages, and i am truth. we are all working for god's purpose here in this abyss. if you don't understand me, watch the simplicity in an animal bathing itself, the multitude of stars, the thunder under fiery attack, your inner strength guiding you from death & rebirth, and you'll get it. silence gets it, but we're too busy outrunning silence to communicate with it. i became a sound wave yesterday, a frequency or a jolt, a line of intangible. the outlining of my body is no longer a mold, i become the color planted outside of touch. i accept human nature, but try to be less human. or more.
i believe in love. like a slightly unsyncronized twist of a tired deck of tarot cards, the magician's trick is open for interpretation, cynicism. what is love? you ask it when it speaks so clear. love is clothed in overwhelming robes of faulty mind power, but it's startling naked. take love bare and it is warmth and sweet, like laugh lines emerging at the end of a parched internal life. not a searing heat, but a sore and low hum, a vibration of earth cracking down the middle and soaking you in it's timelessness. and then sometimes its power is a breakthrough, an alternate ending to the fable passed down for heaping quantities of light & dark, what would be time. how is our harmony so off in our existence? where can evil fit in balance? i find that billions of people can find their answers coaxed and bouncing off each other in generations. the truth is, if we knew, we wouldn't search. i enjoy the search as it is, which is harnessed by faith and an innate intimacy and goodness in the crevices. it's porous but hard to digest: love is purpose. if evolution follows, one day it will be the only thirst to quench.
the best part is that our knowledge of this can only build upon itself. when i was three i saw my shadow and ran from it, an outburst of tears and anxiety over a newfound self that i couldn't escape. at twenty i am learning to let that self guide me and find new lands to tread. at twenty i am learning that i can't be free from that north star; also, the blocking of light is going to follow me until i reemerge unconciously. death isn't a decor, it isn't incognito, it isn't false advertisment. our shadows are a reality. death is a step quicker than our shadows. death is another form of love.
the body knows what the mind chooses to deny. there is an ache for happiness, but it is not a wound in my lungs.
the reason that i search & search for purpose and direction is not because i'm scared of moving forward, it's because i'm acutely aware of the infinite possibilities that are available to me. and i want to make sure that i chose the right pathway, or the one that can shine the most proverbial light on the world.
the answer is to quit searching? that is still a question.
i don't know where i'm supposed to be going or doing with my life, but i feel like i'm wasting time trying to figure it out. i sit around waiting for the future to pack its best punch and for the gut of me to truly emerge...
i should practice letting it just come to me.
also: i have been practicing and practicing aligning positive thought with reaction. sometimes it works, and sometimes it takes a lot of energy.
i'm partially scared of recoiling into my own mind & losing my "sanity". but more likely i'm not.
things i ask from the universe: - wisdom to make the right choices & knowledge - the ability to seperate myself from my ego (MUCH FOCUS) - an innovative mind - strong senses - a selfless perspective - sincere empathy - connection with others - loyalty - DIRECTION - to be positive.
i think that for so long i have wrapped my conciousness around this belief that i'm truly a negative person, which in turn makes me truly negative. possibly, i don't know.
i hate writing definitive sentences because i like being open to change. i honestly think that i'm keeping something grounded that needs to be surfaced. i need to practice meditation.
NEEDS NEEDS WANTS WANTS WANTS DREAMS DREAMS DREAMS i just wish i could stop my mind from rotating for a little while.
12:32 am - a life without highs and lows is flat and dismal.
i just spent hours listening to my roommate admit her lies to herself. the thing is that i see how she views me from her perspective and it is so far off from my reality and yet, at the same time, a lot of what she says can be taken in incredible value. so who is right?
are there any rights?
still when she talks about herself i can pick apart the rational and irrational thoughts that make her conscious mind true to her. but what i never realized, or didn't completely comprehend is that every time i judge her, she is also psychoanalyzing me.
i think that what will cure me is to completely take my mind off myself. i need to learn how to focus on other people and their problems to be empathetic. FULLY. i need to not rely on my self-fulfilling prophecies that may or may not work. i need to step up and take responsibility for my want to be selfless.
danielle says that i should not major in creative writing (ironically she thinks i'm a more talented artist.) she doesn't believe in my talent. RATIONALLY she doesn't believe in me writing, and i understand it. she doesn't think that i should go to school for writing, and i understand that because she doesn't know how it feels when i write. how i can connect with something when everything feels weightless and well, intangible, like i'm reaching into my grainy sandbox reality and all these people and ideas are just passing through my skin cells and out unto the safer, greener land. she doesn't see that side. she's not permitted to see because it's how i keep my brain intact and alive with ideas. ideas about my purpose that she's probably already summarized. i respect that she sees my writing as a loophole for other failures.
but it's also very true. i have no business going to school for something that will leave me ultimately wanting more and tieing me into a position for income. writing is an act for me, not a profession. i don't think my words are worth giving up that way. and i mean that. i'm tired of the questioning. i write because it's times like these, when i am needing something closer to the knowledge that keeps the earth blooming and reinventing itself, the wisdom that is in all the creases and folds of the fabric of life to emerge like intuiton before me, this all-consuming power that is the known world and worlds beyond and before me... all that i need is connection to keep me grounded and safe from floating off. honestly, it's a call for sanity.
i need writing because i need people to believe that i exist and want to know them.
there is something about the occult wisdom following the acknowledgement of immortality that pulls you away from rational conscious thought. or perhaps it's these times when you are closer to the bold truth. god has a unique way of developing and creating our intricate perspectives of how life does or doesn't operate. i have heard it said before- and the other day my friend brought it up again- but the way our lives twist and divvy around each other is impressive and it's also needed for our existence. so i go around thinking about this astonishing web and how i can expand mine to be rich and true and (more importantly) how to be generous with whom i extend a thread. mostly it has a lot to do with giving up all these perspectives about who you are, where you are going, why, and what you can do to accomplish the whole she-bang.
(i should edit the you's with i's, but i have a feeling that you understand the emotional capacity we have at hand here.)
so no, i'm not going to give up writing, but i will give up the kind of writing that doesn't free me or enlighten me or make me stronger so that i can fufill my life's purpose. there is so much that i could have said in defense of myself when she allowed me to sit there soaking up her depression and hurting twice ours, but it's not in the format of my purpose. if we want to live freely, we have to give up our very important prejudices. and there is no way to do that completely. yet, there is a way to try to be better at extending ourselves and to reinforce the universal connection that is love.
in all honesty, i want to say that Danielle doesn't have the gut in her to see both sides. but that would just be my subconcious mind still rolling with my want to open her spirit to my side. i don't want to admit that there is no way to do that because what it entails is extreme loneliness-- unless i quit thinking about myself entirely (impossible).
i will say that it's not easy to do, because there is nothing to combat my ego, no fair fight. i will say that i will give up the kind of writing that quilts my ego with unabashed lies and i will try to love myself less and i will try to do something worthwhile and i will try, god, i will try to help everyone i can.
IT IS SO HARD GOD ALL THAT I AM ASKING IS THAT YOU HELP ME BE A MEANINGFUL PERSON. it is so hard but i will do it optimistically because it will help her.
helping danielle will mean that i will need to reevaluate and enclose my depression so that she can breathe. actually, it will mean that i will have to do it for a lot of people.
sometimes i feel guilty for being so engulfed in my sorrow. i don't want to be sad but i have no idea how to change on my own. i feel so lonely now, more than i've ever been in my life. i can't stop philosophising every situation so that i am desensitized to connection. sometimes i feel so seperate from my body that i'm convinced i'm no longer a part of what is happening to me. i feel like i have no control over where my brain takes me. and she doesn't understand that because it's in my make-up, it's chemical. she says just stop searching for happiness, but how do i stop? tell me and i will pursue it on demand. i have to actively seek to stop my depression and i just don't know how to change. i have to recreate my imbalances as pliable situations in my life so that i can control the outcome. it is because i love the temporary euphoria my mind creates in my internal body when it has triumphed negativity. that is why i always create negative situations: it is motivation to excel over the predetermined biases that i have cultivated along the way. it is learning and experience and i don't know if i can give it up.
a life without highs and lows is flat and dismal. i have naively believed that reciting maxims or reading contemporary positive psychology would help me cope, but the fact is that i WANT emotional turmoil because trying to shift my outlook is where i comfort myself. it's why people procrastinate: it gives them a challenge to overcome; it's the only way to adopt a fresh take. a life that is truly positive doesn't exist. so i understand that she needs to confront her problems by (unintentionally) belittling me.
it's just. it's just that i feel very lonely here. and i feel like i shouldn't be impacted by everything small and huge. and i feel affected and involved and at the same time incredibly disjointed. and i feel shaped by these trite opinions. and i feel purposeless and misunderstood and insufficient. and i feel like a whole lot of people feel like this but can't find others to help create this massive web that is would-be hope.
everywhere i go i see sadness & absurdity. and i promise that i am trying and i ask the creator-of-all-that-is to help me figure things out the right way, but perhaps there just isn't a right way and we're all right in our own way. it's too abstract for me to interpret into language, but i know that there is SOMETHING COMPLETE that i am searching for.
i guess all that i can do is float around in this dimension until i find it or it finds me.
"Be patient with all that is unresolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek for the answers that cannot be given. For you wouldn't be able to live with them. And the point is to live everything, live the questions now, and perhaps without knowing it, you will live along some day into the answers."
-Rainer Maria Rilke =========================================================================== a couple of days ago i pleaded to some imagined entity for infinite wisdom.
today i spent 10 or more hours studying near death experiences. i'm pretty sure that i'm set for life.
i cannot tell you my answers because perhaps they are not right for you to know. i cannot tell you what you have to ask for yourself. and anyway, you wouldn't believe me. people only trust and love what knowledge they seek themselves.
i can say that what it amounts to IS love. crazy love. love for everything. selfless, incredible love. timeless, uninhibited love. it's hard for me to fathom, but it's what we need. love for everything because it's all connected, flowering, shooting pollen everywhere, sprouting cells and then life itself. and we as humans are only one example of the nature of things, ripe and unpredictable things, weightless and all-encompassing ideas that we search and do not completely reach in this body.
i want to know so much about the universe and it's aeons that it scares me.
i want to learn how to go places in true dimensions and help people understand the felicity that is outside of our current truths. i want to know truth. i want wisdom, more and more of it.
i am going to practice using more of my senses. knowledge is ecstasy (and it's powerful).
i want to let GO. i really do. let go. transform my mind. do things. and study more spirituality. and trust my intuition more. and less.
sometimes i feel that language is all that i am and if i transcend my words i am nothing.
that is either the purpose or it isn't.
i wish i were the graffiti on the train. i wish to be colorful and permanent and for my movement to be involuntary. i wish to be a splash of here or there, a second glance or a first one.
i rearrange the artwork on my wall to find that artwork doesn't appease my emotional appetite. in one corner or another, it's still flat and sulking. and there will always be someone who loves it more than me-- who birthed it from their most humane longing and nurtured its texture, crafted its lines, never once neglected it on the floor for the cat to tear into. i need my own beauty.
i really don't have anything to say. except for i just really don't own anything that matters to me. and also to him that i am alive so there is no need to fill his self-obligated duty.
word of the day: selfish. if you look at it enough it gurantees blame on someone's part.
it sounds collicky, hard to digest, like something stuck like a fork prick in your tonsil. i am astounded at all of these brave people who endure illness every moment, attack it with a vengeance and keep lacing their shoes and buying groceries, writing songs, enduring the sky-heaven-gods, grinning their half-lives with perhaps family, friends, their bodies molding, swelling, overpowering and (un)welcoming them into a life ultimately built on split decisions, dying bodies, dreams unfolding, knowledge of the clean world with ending. ending. it ends. that becomes the best part for some you know. you would never know had you not suffered. had you suffered reality.
today i patted my stomache and talked my spastic colon into eating a bowl of oatmeal. now that i have aquired a relationship with this body, this she-- curvature and savvy shape, drawn muscles, the house of towering organs, purple vein ropes surfacing, characterizing atoms, abilities-- this she that carries me and starts me off in the day, exhausts me, and perplexes me with her sad science, this thing that reverses my better intentions and categorizes me as a "mental issue", this filmy brain attatched, well...she is allowing me to gather her motives, surely now. lonely now, more than ever. one foot in front of the other, no equator to follow, no north star.
today i stepped into a bath of scolding hot milk foam white placid scuddy dip and devoured the closing of the day. i am ears for better thoughts. i have run out of ideas on how to be human, you see. if you soak up to your neck, your muscles will calm in you and you can become as complex and intricate as balanced water molecules. or so they say. so what happens when you must deal with the other parts of the evening? there is sleep, yes, and nonrestorative as ever. you might dream of becoming something, only to find that some otherworldly gift has been relinquished, making you animalistic in nature, and how you must succumb to more and more minutes of sleep before the ambition can boil into a possibility. or perhaps you have now been made aware of how you must treat disease and read up on the lastest in health and medicinal technology before striving for something new, as you should always be completely normal before attacking normalcy. you must be composed before applying your creativity into a composition. your goodwill is wanting to fade to some diagnosis, some tender point. but you must make it to feed her before allowing for that.
there are good things. there is the silence that you can wrap your eyelids around. there is the vertigo, which can make you feel two and free, sing-song, alive because you have no set ground. there are the heightened senses-- the spaghetti noodles smell of italy, the flourescent lights are chemical reactions, the front door opens and you float into the city sounds, the weeds are no longer weeds, they are god's choice fonts for humanity's hop-scotch game on the paved world. the entire earth is an orphan that can only survive by your adoption. CHOICES BECOME CHOICES. actions under scrutiny. your she-body is exhausted and you restore her, foster her development. you no longer exert her. don't focus on the mechanics but don't let faith blind you. there are good things like slowing down, tasting your delicacies and licking the excess unabashedly. acknowledging your friends' successes. jealousy is a child's plea bargain; you waste this moment being jealous and you're experiencing a malabsorption problem. there is plenty to die for, concern yourself only with the battles which you carry enough amo to fight. make lots of allies along the way. i still believe there is goodness and fullness found readily. there are days swolen with it. this morning my back escaped me, i had to realign it, but then i found i was still living rather pleasantly. living is not the handbook i'm writing here.
crawing feelings in my joints; my dramatic dermal issues. poetry in the threshold. achiness on the cutting board. i don't really have time to feel dolled up. what is it that i want done? that is the first goal. i want to master being a just person, never indulge in self-pity, realize my net worth, honor my morality. THE REAL WANT IS TO BE SELFLESS, but since it's impossible, i'll want to be less selfish. i need to find the scope of being and throw myself to it. tear into the antics.
11:40 pm - i can take care of you, the way you'd like to feel. there is this song and there is this wine.
i want to paint houses on maps and then live in the windows of them like fungus growing hidden and present.
i don't know.
everything is blurry and then there is the sky and her mouth is open and her jaw is locked and i don't know whether to be content with that or sad because she's pretending to breathe but her starry teeth are locked uncomfortably tight.
i wish i had rosemary and gardens to house my new gnome. i wish i had lengths to cross and places to go, but i only have flat days and guilty moments.
i am avoiding talking about the things that are important right now, because they are too honest and gut me like a wriggling fish, hooked right into the gill and through the spirit of me. i am so lonely and i like the twang of this music pumping ink drilled into a poor christianman's soul, his forearm. when you said christians get the most tattoos, i knew what you meant.
i am still here, even though i feel like i've left and done something with all of this time.
there you are. it is in the song. it is in the song, and i came back to write that beside there you are.
dramatic and poetry.
here it is: i cannot keep you, but i would have you every moment that is shut off to feeling.
something is ruined with the next song, it's too fierce and ankle deep. i thought i was through with writing, so i quit, but here i am again. staring at a blank page and smoking a cigarette that is turning my head back around and through the original thought. i am now looking at a picture of the girl i wish i was: silenced, hemming up loose seams that are too open to sew shut. i am all metaphors tonight because i can't convey what it is that brings me back to the wine and the wounds.
this music brings me back to a place that i once sought as home, but nothing is home, nowhere is home. i added syllables and lyricism to that sentence but kept deleting the words because they weren't true. laughter, i miss you.
are things coming to me or am i contriving them because i am needing something to fill my blood with movement? i am so distracted by what i thought was destination, but it is ever-changing and doesn't complete the want. nothing is making sense but this song.
push push push it away. this is not to you, reader: i keep saying, sorry baby for hurting your health but my health is so far away from what is accepted. i am concerned only with myself. i think it's because of the smoke eating you, but it's not, it's really only my inability to stop from trying to feel imprisoned.
i confronted that last statement 25 minutes after i wrote it and it didn't feel totally like it was meant. i am keeping this journal open so that i can write down thoughts as they happen, but all i can think is that this song by ryan adams makes me feel him here again.
perhaps i shouldn't be so dramatic, but i am. so can i stop? when i am really drunk, on happiness or on wine, i stare at the same two scratches on my wall in my bathroom and try to figure out why everytime i am drunk on happiness or on wine i stare at them. maybe it is because they came when i didn't know they would come and everyhting else is so calculated and thought about like trying to escape.
i want the people that i know to feel how i care about them. like my coworker, who would be just a coworker but when i think about her i am connected and wiser than this.
across the icy lake...reminds me of serendipity and why things occur in magic timing. i keep praying because when the thing i pray to answers, it answers in this timing that says: i was here when you were away from time and you didn't fully believe in me. is it myself? so many questions coming. smoke another cigarette and do not keep your regret. i changed the song because it was so felt.
i was really sick the other night, i just kept making myself throw up in my trashcan until i couldn't acknowledge my lungs any longer. they were hurt and internal bonding. i said that if i made it out ok i would never drink again, but here i am again tonight drinking and smoking and killing my hopes and well-being. it's ok.
school was unmerciful. i kept walking in circles and touching the walls to feel something more tangible than my senses.
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