she walks around quietly, but underneath it she's electric

her words pour out

as if her throat

were a broken artery

and her mind were cut glass,

carelessly halted.

you imagine her in a huge velvet hat

with great dangling black feathers,

but she shaves her head instead

and goes for three-day midnight walks.

sometimes she goes down to the dock

and dances off of it,

simply to prove her belief

that people who cannot walk on water

are phonies, or dead.

when she is cruel, she is very, very cruel.

when she is kind

she is lavish.

fisherman think perhaps she's a fish,

but they're all fools.

she figured out

that the only way to keep from being frozen

was to stay in motion,

and long ago converted most of her flesh

into liquid.

now when she smells danger,

she spills herself all over,

like gasoline,

and lights it.

she leaves the taste of salt

and iron

under your tongue,

but you don't mind,

the common woman

is as common

as the reddest wine.

- judy grahn

[you can't look in on one way eyes.]

been there a half an hour, i want to come home soon

won herself a pass to some far off moon

it was second class but what's to lose

and looking out her window she could more than assume

that you can't see air or time

started hearing voices sometime in june

she knew she could go crazy but didn't think that soon

now she doesn't feel lonely but she'd just as soon

try

try

try

we will sing pretty songs about love

and we will fight if that's what it takes

i now realize that the ancient greeks were right:
it is the human being that is the object we must seek to understand.

i guess its supposed to be that i see myself in you, but i see myself in no one, not even me.

"you should really stop letting the world tell you whats possible and try to find out for yourself."

and i turned to you and asked, "have you ever felt like you can burn the world down?"

"everday." you replied.

*****

so, this is my life.

and i want you to know i am both happy and sad and im still trying to figure out

how that could be.

"there's a big aching hole in my chest where my heart was

and a hole in the sky where god used to be"

- bob dylan

oh, the mystery

As a human invention utilized by humans, language is perfect only as an ideal; in human hands, it becomes a highly imperfect expression of our uncertainties, mistakes, ignorance, creativity and curiosity, our hopes, anxieties, fears, and desires.

"what frightening thing is the human

a mass of gauges and dials and registers

and we can read only a few

... and those perhaps not accurately"

- john steinbeck

nostalgia

... is a beautiful thing.

desire

never let go

of that fiery sadness

called desire

-patti smith

this is our decision

to live fast

and die young

we've got the vision

now let's have some fun

be here now

the future is no place
to place your better days

overlap

i build each one of my days of hope
and i give that hope your name
and i dont know you that well
but it dont take much to tell
either you dont have the balls
or you dont feel the same.

see ive got myself into this situation

i may never learn how to protect myself
but the one thing i've learned all these years on my own
is how to find my own way home

say yes

this is super powerful...
"this is for the ones who know we can sound the music of others
simply by playing our own strings"

falling is like this.

you give me that look
like you're choosing between choking
and spitting it all out
like you're trying fight gravity
on a planet that insists

feels like reckless driving when we're talking
it's fun while it lasts
and it's faster than walking
but no one's going to sympathize when we crash
they'll say you hit what you head for, you get what you ask
and we'll say we didn't know
we didn't even try

one minute there was road beneath us
the next just sky

i won't beg you for something maybe you could never give

"and all you see
is where else you could be
when you're at home"
- death cab

these sidewalks between us
hold the footsteps of tomorrow

if the sky falls, hold up your hands

i watched my shadow grow and fade
grow and fade
and at that moment
i wanted to melt into the earth
and live among cool damp soil
and breathe into trees
into roots into trunks into branches into limbs into leaves

i wanted to rid myself of concrete and of traps
and of paralyzing fear
i wanted to close my eyes and let the notes take me far away from reality
soothe soothe soothe my lost soul

"but you should never be embarrassed by your trouble living. because it is the ones with the sores throats, who have done the most singing"
- bright eyes

my newest obsession

CocoRosie - By Your Side

From 'The Color Purple':

Anyhow, he say, you know how it is. You ask yourself one question, it lead to fifteen. I start to wonder why us need love. Why us suffer. Why us black. Why men and women. Where do children really come from. It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don't mean nothing if you don't ast why you here, period.

So what you think? I ast.

I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love.

And people start to love you back, I bet, I say.

They do, he say, surprise.

how high your highest of heights? how low are your lows?

I have seen you in the eyes of a hundred thousand other stranger faces
I have seen you in unlikely and unfamiliar places
I have seen you be reckless in matters of love
I have seen by degrees the boiling point come and go
[im sorry i have nothing left for you]

JOSE !

this is jose gonzalez... going to see him at the end of march ! YES YES YES.... check him out, he's good stuff.

someone else's dream

I do not know if I exist... it seems possible to me that I might be someone else's dream... I might be a character in a novel, moving through the long waves of someone else's literary style... —Fernando Pessoa

Turn the light out say goodnight
no thinking for a little while
lets not try to figure out everything at once
It’s hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
- The National

then took flight, first light of new morning

and you make boundaries
you never dreamed you'd cross
and if you happen to
you wake completely lost

"he slept 'neath the stars

wrote down what he dreamt

and he built a machine for no one to see

then took flight, first light of new morning"

- Calexico

i was your silver lining...

rilo kiley, silver lining

and now i know something of how a piano must feel

when it looks at the fireplace to see sheet music being used for kindling

smoke signaling the end

sitting there watching all those notes burn away

of all the things i never had a chance to play

to hear the music of what you had to say

and baby, i've been fighting the dreamer in me

and baby, i've been fighting the cynic in me

i do miss you

and i keep thinking about your hands
the way you would subletly graze mine
and i keep thinking about sitting by the fireplace
the way i was leaving this all behind

the people i've met are the wonders of my world

this girl is amazing.... enjoy adele's song, hometown glory

the sun is shining for the 2nd day in a row

i just booked my ticket to cuba

im happy!

some things you want will just never be right

and i keep telling myself

'yesterday is gone

yesterday is dead

get it through your head and walk away

yesterday is gone

no use hanging on to your memory'

you are what you love
and not what loves you back

another reason i wish i was a teenager in the 80s...

long live pat benetar and all great things 80s !

thats how it was with you and i

so we went

and sent our regards on postcards from all the places we had been

and stories of all the things we had seen

thats how it was with you and i

why say goodbye when we can still write

because like a dog I’ve learned a hundred new tricks

trying to please them

because for some reason

I thought it was love

they kept concealed in their hands

bright ideas

we're like two bright ideas in a world that doesn't want to think

it is, isn't it ?

"and its true ive never been one to keep myself rooted to the ground
i found myself shopping for advice at an inconvenience store where the more you buy the more you need
and im seldom a person to fall victim to greed but when it comes to you im jealous of the whole world
jealous of the way the wind knocks at your window asking your hair if it can come out to play
jealous of the way the trees sway towards you using their branches to knock away the birds

willing to sacrifice their beaks to carve words

into the wood that could be interpreted as recommendations on how to turn these hands into foundations strong enough to come together

and beg please to all those trees that held up their stories about one night loves and long lasting stands
because like a dog I’ve learned a hundred new tricks trying to please them

because for some reason I thought it was love they kept concealed in their hands"

As I lay in my bed shivering with blankets wrapped around my body, with layers of clothing on, I think of you in your home. I’ve never seen it but I can imagine you in your old townhouse, in a room with little heat and worn down carpets, marked with stains from previous tenants. I can imagine you curled around a space heater, in your room painted a sloppy dark blue, with posters of Bob Marley and the newest indie band you hope no one has heard of yet. I can see you zoning out and staring contently at the walls, your brain empty with only flutters of sexual impulse and reminders of your hunger. Your blood pulses through your veins like electricity, almost as if there are millions of clapping hands applauding your superiority, rushing between your heart and your brain.

Here I lie, shivering and thinking of you shivering. Thinking of those microscopic hands clapping at the false greatness you’ve created for yourself. I lie here and listen to the click in the wall above my head to the right. I’m not sure why the wall is clicking; could be the wind, something hitting it from the other side of the wall in an apartment room, or it could be the new, sterile building adjusting itself for comfort. I start to imagine there is a small little man hidden between the walls of my apartment and the next, stuck in between the frames, jollily striking away with a hammer on the wall. This little man could fit in my palm, and resembles one of the seven little dwarfs, yet more timid and less aware of its meaningless life stuck in the dry wall.

Even though this all causes a second heart to appear in my stomach, beating opposite the one in my chest, it doesn’t seem wrong. More likely it would feel wrong were these feelings not there. It seems the way the universe had meant it, although I feel as though something is grabbing me and pulling out these feelings once in a while, setting them on the coffee table next to me and allowing me to enjoy pure bliss and a high with a friend or two for a couple hours. OH, and when that bliss arrives! This state of utopia compels me forward, dancing on roof tops and giggling into phone receivers. It allows for brass comments and shrieking laughter, until reality or idealism or optimism or pessimism seep back into my body, slowly gurgling down from my mind right to my finger tips and painted toes.

And here I sit. Waiting for the next high or next epiphany and waiting to have an explanation. Waiting for someone to sit me down with a book like “Where Babies Come From” or “How to Tie Your Shoelaces” and put their arm around me, cooing gentle and easy words. It would be wrapped up in 24 pages of illustrations and captions, and I would sink deep into your arm and reply, “Ah, that’s not so complicated”. Ah, but it is, isn’t it?

be here now

"i thought you were the kind of girl who knew when to say when"

"i don't know what kind of girl i am"

breathe

i had the most amazing conversation with an old friend today

i hadn't seen him in so long

so much stirring in my head

my friend posted this on her blog

and i fell in love with it

dum spiro spero

latin for 'while i breathe, i hope'

and what is truth ?

[they must find it difficult

those who have taken authority as the truth

rather than truth as authority]

and what is truth ?

"i don't know what god is, but i know what he isn't"

and now the questions come to me

double shadow

you're two faced

all sideways

you're dry eyed

you night fly

you're thin chokes

and split spokes

you're for keeps

and deep sleep

you catch up

you young pup

you old dog

you blue fog

your next kin

your lost twin

your side step

your better hip

you're snap shy

you're my double shadow

so this is goodbye

i got out of bed today

swear to god i couldn't see my face

i got out of bed today

just staring at a ghost

you can't kill something thats already dead.