Helen Frankenthaler

December 12, 1928 - December 27, 2011

I haven't been writing much lately. I've been reading a little instead, trail riding, stretching more, and running regularly. All of my favorite ways to adjust to the change of season and dropping temps.

September from start to finish was still morbidly hot and a total blur.
I spent it hurting from a crash into a brutally hard fence in the final sprint out of the last corner at the Tour of Austin. The rest of the time off and in bed I tried to focus on how to better let go of the crash and not to be angry about it. Andrew helped a lot along the way and by October I was able to run again. Naturally, I did so daily for two weeks straight. My first ride back was the North American bicycle courier championships which I didn't do very well in but I wanted to go to just to be around the whole messenger culture since it had been so long since the last NACCC I did in 2002. The best part was seeing a familar face or two and all the heckling going on along the sidelines going on from Andrew, Logan, Heath & Sharron.
During the courier race it was like going back to visit school grounds I grew up in but finding all the buildings and land have since been remodeled or completely renovated. It all felt vaguely familiar, but like trying to remember a dream after waking, only hints of familiarity. Nothing concretely nostalgic. If there is such a thing.

Despite not keeping up with writing, I still feel the desire to record the beauty I see in the world around me; but I'm doing so in different ways. Like sharing it a bit more privately, not in as many traditional mediums. It's the way it has to be for the place I'm at and probably will be this way for some time. I'm trying to keep up with photographing and keeping my libraries current and organized. Still full of inspiration, but within the inspiration, a new inspiration is born. I'm now learning how to grow into it all, old and new. I'm keeping up, or trying my best to keep up with but doing so quietly. As if acquiring a covert collection of all of my favorite things for preservation and refinement, only to one day pop open like a bottle of champagne at the blink of a new year.

Not to say that I'm at a failure to produce or follow art right now. It shouldn't be classified as a failure at all, of any sort, but more a way of internalizing this energy and keeping all inside, like fuel for the coming journey.

Or I'll sign off with this instead...


Reaching my voice over miles and miles to touch another quiet voice. The strangeness of love, longing, jealousy, like doors brushed with fingertips. Open some, keep others closed, others try to open a little, peeking inside the peephole.
Ghost colored dust blanketing the lampshades, the silent glow of 60 watt luminescence.
The drifting of separate people, each occupied in separate ways.
Big blue eyes and sun freckles.
The smell of earth, rotten wood, crumbling moss, the sent of damp cedar.
The debate about whether to replace, make new again, silence.
The sound of breathing. These are what my dreams are like.

I'm in an airport heading to NYC to race my bicycle. I'm flipping through the September edition of Vogue, sitting in a long, hidden, silvery corridor. Here I am at a silver table and chair, looking out onto the massive runways the heat rolls off the planes in quivering waves. I'm thinking, typing, and listening, watching the quicksilver of heat smearing its way across the engine air.
A cool breeze of AC occasionally swirls and drafts around my new birthday perfume from my sweetie.

I think back on the events of the day leading up to this quiet moment. Before I left the house today I baked a turkey and grilled all the veggies in the fridge. I stir fried quiona and lentils, made a salad to nibble with a carrots and tomotoes and a couple pieces of bacon. I drank the last of the milk, brewed coffee, when it cooled, I slammed the rest of it. Then I placed all the food from the oven and range into the freezer to freeze until after I return. So Andrew and I can enjoy a good home cooked meal together, it's been a while.

So now my hair smells a little like a restaurant kitchen. It would have been nice to have time to shower before the airport. Water somehow clears my mind. I never know how long I've been in the shower. Time ceases to exist in there because my mind spaces out a little bit. Which is allowed when in the shower. Sometimes the same thing happens when I'm riding too, all of a sudden the sun is about to set and I'm miles and miles from home. It's just it's too beautiful to abandon a setting sky. Everything surrenders, the wind changes, the birds fly in waves, thd bugs come out to sing. When I realize that I don't remember the last 10 miles, I somehow know they included a couple stoplights and several turns, and that's when I know it was a good ride. It all fuzes together like a long spine and time disappears into a mental vortex.

*schllllloooooop*

There are a couple of tiny tree branches painted red and purple on my windowsil. One of them is deep violet, and the other is arterial red and violet stripped. Strangely, in a childlike way. I'm glad i didn't throw them away, they have a certain beauty this way too.

Today I rode my bicycle alone. I miss my guy. It was a little lonesome but I saw funny things on the way home. It all made me laugh a little, but it's not the same when alone.

Outside of the window, it's black black black except for the streetlight shining on the hood of my nearby car. There is no wind, everything looks so still. I wonder if Andrew is sleeping.

I can see my reflection in the window, superimposed over the street light. If I focus on the window, I'm a bit clearer, but if I focus on the light, I become a blur of eyes and hair. A conscious memory, a subconscious dream. A blur, out of sight, and I dissipate into thin air.

Words are so awesome. They're an intellectual-sensual-emotional batter like a layer cake that you taste in your imagination through known experiences, visualized through love, understood through smell, touch, excitement, pleasure, even pain. Frosted in ink, out of the oven, and into our brain. This is why I had to go back to school, to study theory behind literature. All kinds, so much to learn and to absorb, but there's only so much theory can teach, it's merely a path to a door, wherein lies a world of creativity.

I want you to stay in my head for a little while, because it's a fun place to be.

I'll go to bed soon. Sleep is usually a better preparation for bike racing than training is, usually.

A piece of information for you: On warm nights, I like to sleep with my head on the windowsill and my arms outstretched of the window. The warm breeze over the crickets as I drift away are wonderful things.

This summer I realized I'll always spend more time in the sun and always get more freckles. And you know what? I love having freckles. I like when the sun sings into my eyes, blinding and deafening them. Today I looked back to the sun, and its white light shivered into a burst of a billion pieces, icy, triangular brightness. When the mists around my eyes cleared, the sky shone white, then blue and the twin curves of spinning crowns twisted away from helical view. I looked into the trees too. And each leaf danced a different dance, quickly, each a fluttering staccato.

Everything feels heavy, I'm not going to say anything else - you should tell me something.

The ceiling of the hands arching, like an old-world cathedral. Marveling. The world spins slightly, as though I'm a little drunk. I'm not thinking about anything but the tactile sensation. The slight dampness between our hands like dew in a hollow because of the contours of our palms.
My eyes snap open, suddenly. Wide and engaging. Courageous and vulnerable; the softest, most subtle elements of happiness.

It's amazing what fingers will do if you cut the connection between the brain to the hands, taking all the little tollbooths out along the way.

I watched the landscape inside of a wine glass for a couple of minutes the other night. It varies depending on the body of the wine. Sometimes with heavier reds the legs are thick and strong, sometimes with champagne, they're thin and dissipating, waif-like. I tipped the flute up to take a drink, and ended up transfixed by the bubbles, silhouetted on the surface of the inside of the glass, like a firework on the fourth of July. My fingerprint became a blurring pyrotechnic effect. Then I took a drink, and watched as it all sparkle and twinkle away.
Worth noting, for dinner tonight: Steamed garlic and bok choy, asparagus, and celery with peanuts and sesame-garlinc pork. Mmmm.

I need to go to the ocean sometime soon. I've been feeling too worried late at night when I'm alone lately. It hasn't anything to do with the ocean, which just sits there, majestic. The tide rises, and falls. I am so tiny in relation to that. It makes me feel better. Kind of like the stars, we're just babies. We're just sub-particles of space dust, really.

I move out of this apartment tomorrow. Tonight is the last night I'll sit up late and type a blog at this table, the one with the lion's feet at the base of its legs. The last time I'll sit at this particular table in the old chair from the 1960's, the one that starts to hurt my pelvis after a little while from its steely surface. My friend & I took it from the stage after the 'Man Or Astro Man?' show at the Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios in Denton, Texas. I was 19, it's seen above in the photograph. Would I do it now, steal a chair from an space rock show? Probably not, but at the time it fit snugly in the back of my metro and we've been a good match ever since. This chair will last forever, longer than me.

I'll miss these quiet times. So quiet that I can hear the plastic frame squeaking and wrestling against the wall from its balancing counterpoint on the table. Tiny little chirps of plastic while I type.

Ahhh, sigh, I'm such a scared child sometimes. This is better than being homeless. Have I grown spoiled? Am I wicked? I keep moving forward.

I'm going to start going back to yoga, I really am. I'll find the money somehow. if i'm not going to take medication - which I may or may not need, then I need to have yoga in my life, I think.

photo: http://www.vogue.it/en

The sun was out today. Really out, not just peeking. I sat outside for a spell in shorts and a too-big t-shirt with the sleeves and neck cut open wide, knees together and feet turned inward. My favorite way to sit. The sun warms like nothing else. It's not like fireplace, nor a warm vent - which are both nice, but the sunshine is different. The sun makes the air smell different to me. So nostalgic mixed with burning charcoal grills, when I don't mind the smoke so much. I rather enjoy the smell of smoke in the summer, a campfire or a charcoal grill in the warm sunshiny air.

Today I've been sitting inside for the rest of the time. Every door and window is open. Leaves are blowing in across the floors. Right now I'm stopping to glance up occasionally and look out the door. A moment ago, there was a squirrel watching me, it was hooked onto the tree in a funny way. After that, a bold male cardinal who stopped and gazed in for a while, well, a while for a bird at least. I hear the leaves rustling again, which is different than the rustling palms of southern california, still like rushing water, but in Texas it's more like a rambling creek - less like a brooding, dreaming ocean.

This morning the sky was deep bright blue, the sun was uninterrupted. Into the late afternoon it's still blue with a wash of white, superficial and moving. Right now I'm perfectly safe. Even with the sun in my eyes, I can still see clearly.

I'm on the floor and I smell like myrrh and vanilla and salt from sweat. It's one of those scents that catches in your nose for a moment. Warm and bronzing. I think so. It smells of a mix: One part human, two parts energy and life.

I slept in Betty's bed last night while a friend came over and slept on the couch. It's a safe place with a good friend, the best combination. Where I really want to sleep is on an immense teddy bear with certain someone. Warm and soft and inviting.

Photo from http://www.zeitgeistudios.com/

I'm so poor right now that I can't afford to go to yoga, I honestly believe it has a lot to do with why I've been feeling and acting a little weird. I miss it a lot, donation classes are available, but I would donate more than I should, so I'd probably end up spending more that way. I don't have enough discipline to actually do it on my own everyday, I would rather go to the studio, that's where all the progress through practice takes place. Maybe I'll take money out of savings, it's a worthy investment, but I really ought not to, I need that for so many other things. It's just, I'm not so bendy as I was even just a month ago. Sad. I'm glad our team made a little money this weekend at Redlands.

I've been feeling like slowdancing with somebody. Billie Holiday's on, and it feels kind of soft and contented and quiet before I get up and tackle the airports today. I wish I had the voice to be a lounge singer, hushed and subdued. My voice is too high and puny. I'd love to slither all over the stage seducing everyone, lying on the piano. If only my stage fright would go away. I'm working on it.

I wish I had more self discipline. I could go to bed earlier, read, and stretch more. It's really a struggle. I've got an addictive personality. Right now it's seven-fifty am and I didn't sleep until almost 2 am. I woke up at seven and I came here, online, looking at cycling news and gretchen's blog. I can't help myself because today is her Monday Mood Board post. The problem is I'm doing all of this when I should be asleep so my eyes are burning and my back still hurts from the race yesterday. Damn stupid of me to offset my sleeping cycle. I'll try falling back asleep now. Wish me luck.


Photo from http://gretchenjonesnyc.tumblr.com/

My darling Clementine

I spent five minutes carefully seeding a clementine, so I could savor it while I read. The first section tasted like some kind of strange perfume, tart, heady, and bright. I then proceeded to stuff the rest of it into my mouth all at once. I nearly choked on juice and sheer amusement of twisted tangeriney-orangy fibers.

There's a sense, inside of a rush, which is savoring.

Warpaint

Ms. Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart quotes:

Adventure is worthwhile in itself.

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.

Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.

I want to do it because I want to do it.

In soloing - as in other activities - it is far easier to start something than it is to finish it.

Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do.

Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn't be done.

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.

Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn't any good reason to refer to it.

Please know that I am aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward.

The most effective way to do it, is to do it.

The woman who can create her own job is the woman who will win fame and fortune.

There are two kinds of stones, as everyone knows, one of which rolls.

Women must pay for everything. They do not get more glory than men for comparable feats, but, they also get more notoriety when they crash.

The wind in the trees sounds like the ocean would were it made of leaves. It's dark out, so I can't see the leaves, but I know that branches are nodding and dancing. The sky is clear and dark, like sparkling grape soda. It's winking with little carbonations of stars. It's just slightly too bright out to see many stars, but I know they're still there. Up beyond the mountain tops, sometimes the sheer infinity of stars is overwhelming - breathtaking. On this side of the mountains, there are just enough to be comforting, tucking you into sleep. You know that the rest of the stars are up there. Just hanging out, wishing you well, one by one, even though they can't all be seen at once.

Watching plants move in the breeze is strange and invigorating. I've never completely figured it out only because I have difficulty deciding if it's actually the air moving the branches, or a power inside of the plant speaking and breathing.
The branches nod and wave, gesturing at whomever might be watching, or just making movement around, like an aquarium.

I feel the same way when I take a long car ride, or a boat ride and my hair is untied. It will leap up, it will writhe and tangle. It suddenly takes on a life of its own. I can watch as it hovers and waves, often twisting like the small tornado connecting the surface of bathwater and the drain in an emptying bathtub. I took a bath tonight, I used grapefruit and sandalwood bath salts. It was nearly perfect.

Camera Obscura - French Navy

Spent a week in a dusty library
Waiting for some words to jump at me
We met by a trick of fate
French navy, my sailor mate

We met by the moon on a silvery lake
You came my way
Said, "I want you to stay."

You and your dietary restriction
Said you loved me with a lot of conviction
I was waiting to be struck by lightning
Waiting for somebody exciting

Like you
Oh, the things that you do
You make me go, "Oooh"
With the things that you do, you do, you do

I wanted to control it
But love, I couldn't hold it
I wanted to control it
But love, I couldn't hold it

I'll be criticized for lending out my heart
I was criticized for letting you break my heart
Why would I stand for disappointed looks
I'm fully grown but I'm on tender hooks, ooh with the looks
On tender hooks,
Ooh, with the looks, the looks, the looks

I wanted to control it
But love, I couldn't hold it
I wanted to control it
But love, I couldn't hold it

Relationships were something I used to do
Convince me they are better for me and you
We met by a trick of fate
French navy, my sailor-

I wanted to control it
But love, I couldn't hold it
I wanted to control it
But love, I couldn't hold it

Stay under the blanket, we can't see the sun anyway.

We smell like three-day old flowers and a day at the beach. Your eyes the color of the small flecks in an oyster's shell.

I'm still a night girl, but I can wake up with the sun. It slants peachgold rays on the flagstones and plays abstract shadows on my bare, white walls. It stares quietly through slender gaps in long branches. It rests and moves in the thin early fog.

In the night, sound seems to be muffled, and in the dark, it closes around you like a flowered down blanket. To be awake is to be at odds. You can almost hear my dreams, drifting like perfume in the quiet air, but the morning is expansive and crisp, like the taste of iced pineapple.


1. Let's make dinner out of something from the farmer's market.
2. Let's find the tallest hill in the city and pin a love note to a tree at the summit.
3. Let's sit face to face and I'll inhale the breath out of your mouth and you exhale the breath into mine.
4. Let's fill a dish with confetti and drop it out a window.


The cracks in the street are like the shape of your veins as they fill us full of life, but it's not quite the same, love, not the same.

I really want to take a warm shower but am instead completely engaged in planning logistics for California; calculating numbers, looking at maps, registration, dates, sending emails, and planning how much money it would cost to drive. It will cost twice as much as flying at the current state of oil prices, and I'm sitting here cold and wondering where all the money is going to come from. Yet I know I'm still going to spend it. Letting go of security somewhat frightens me, yet there's something peculiar about going to California that feels like it's already been written. Life's big picture. I see it, or rather I will see it one day. I'm at an outdoor movie theater, in the middle of a desert, crooked metal posts peeking up next to cars with their lo-fi speaker popping and hissing the soundtrack throughout the lot. I have to find the means and ways to physically manifest this, I have to add more scenes. It's all so inspiring, it is meant to be, like a friend waiting with open arms.

Or maybe that's how everyone feels about California.

Sometimes when I'm riding my bike I realize I don't remember the last 4 blocks and somedays, the entire ride in general. Today I could have ridden all day effortlessly spinning. Last night I only remember bits of the ride home, it was so late and I was so tired. I remember feeling frozen as a block of ice after starting out, but by the end I was unzipping my jacket so that I could stay out even longer. I wanted to stay on the bike until dawn. Up and down the hiding hills in the neighborhood. I remember watching out for speed bumps, I remember my lights flashing on and off the roads. Time had disappeared briefly through a vortex. Then I was home, wide awake. Blue lights on the patio, buzzing through the blinds and over the couch where I fell asleep, sedated, reeling.

My eyes sting.

And you know what happens whenever i get grumpy. Yep, it's time to explode. Today it's a loud welping explosion. A water balloon full of jello hits the street and there is no crash, there is no crispy shatter, only a loud smack. The sound is full and carnal. Flesh in the jaws of something invisible, torn and hanging in bloody strands like a man of war. Trickling, oozing. I remain a subconscious mess; an annoyance to clean up. It is not beautiful. Everyone who sees it laying there turns away, disgusted.

My mind's clearly in a great place today. I need a nap. no, actually I need to register for Lago. Be back in a minute...


Ok. Deep ...breath.


There are gladiolas on the table. They look like they should be dancing. Stiff rippled underskirt and panels frozen in time, suspended in the middle of a twirl. A dancing dress with yellow flowers and a full skirt. Dance with me. I can wear the wilted yellow dress and you wear a herringbone vest. We'll put on a tragic play, spinning, spinning, spun and dying laughing in a heap. The only time that death isn't final. Get back up and we'll dance again. Until we get bored and run outside into the sun where we're blinded, a flash of yellow and bronze that fades into the present and it's over. Until the next vivid fit of nostalgia.

But we did dance, didn't we? It happened. I remember, you remember, and that's all that matters. I can always remember.

Switched On /// Grenades & Confetti

Today I feel the potential explosion of a confetti filled egg. Smooth, sharp, scattered, a thousand harmless bits and pieces flickered by the wayside. Picked up by a child, run over by a bicycle, nudged with the clammy nose of a dog. One false move and it shatters, like a champagne flute tossed into a fire place. My simple facade detonates, shrapnel clawing its way into my unlucky companion. Biologically engineered shards destroy everything in their paths. The image of the explosion is beautifully devastating, invitingly miserable, but none of this matters. It looks harmless, yet destructive, leaving a wake of pain in its confetti mess.
I am built for this; it is not a question of if, but when.

Padmasana

Photo: Ryan McGinley

At 3 am this morning I showered, but then I had to do my ab workout before bed so that I wouldn't feel like I wasted the day and fell off schedule. I'm like that with so many things, it's good but weird. I strive so hard to stay on track or I wander off like a lost satellite. I sleep better knowing I do what I need to do. I don't remember too many dreams from my last sleep, except, one about a traveling bag with a name embroidered on it, except the name was misspelled.

While I was drudging my way through the 3 am core workout, I lost count with every exercise because I was talking with Alan, the blogger staying with us during the North American Handmade Bicycle Show this weekend. I'm really starting to adore this guest, he's a super down to earth, awesome fellah from the Adriatic sea. He introduced us to Dalmatia fig spread. If you see it, get it. A neat-o side note about Alan is he went to school and worked with a favorite photographer of mine, Ryan McGinley before Ryan launched into his photography stardom - and Alan's blog is pretty awesome I might add.

I knew I'd be sleeping-in today so last night I tacked a blue blanket over the highest loft window. It casts a soft wash of blue light over the whole apartment, fuzzy and damp like a drying cool watercolor. The blanket doesn't keep the room quite dark enough, but that's ok, it's not healthy to live in a cave. It's 1 pm now and I'm still waking up with Flying Lotus and a second batch of coffee. I have laryngitis after 2 days of NAHBS, the coffee is supposed to help. I'm going to practice the lotus pose on the mat today. The mood I'm in now is one of rushing to slow down. In ASAP-speed, I'm going to do 4hour-speed yoga. As Patrick would say. At least having slept after 3 nights of a this big Austin weekend, I'm feeling much more human-like again. I'm still gearing up for breakfast, I'm so hungry my stomach is starting to fall in on itself.
After a stretch I'll make pancakes mixed with blueberries and a little ground fennel pork inside, it will go so well with grandma's maple syrup from Wisconsin, which is almost gone. By this time, it may very well be for dinner.

Flying Lotus featuring Thom Yorke "...and the world laughs with you"

I'll need to know you're out there
I'll need to know you're out there
I'll need to know you're listening

I'll need to know you're out there
I'll need to know you're out there
need to know you're out listening
I'll need to know you're out there somewhere

I finally had 8 hours of sleep last night and was awakened from a dream about model trains. The first thought that came to mind is that I want to start constructing them, that they should become a new hobby. I awoke with the idea of discovering a local crafts store and buy a really cool train as soon as possible, and getting really consumed with my new hobby. One that I could switch on and watch travel along the tiny tracks around and around. I could perch my collections up on my pantry shelves and there they would sit, running in circles.

Of course I just looked up the meaning of model trains, and as to no surprise, my subconscious holds all the truth. Promise not to laugh?

"If you see or play with a model train in your dream, then it indicates that you want more control and power over your own life and where it is headed. Dreaming of trains may also be a metaphor that you are "in training" for some event, job or goal. According to Freud, a train is analogous to the male penis."

But enough of that, time to get ready for a ride, then motorpacing later. Double workouts, are like double rainbows. Haha.

This morning's air is piquant and hushed. It doesn't makes my cheeks and nose pink like I wish it would. Sometimes I love to be able to see my breath in cold air. Sometimes I love to watch people smoke in the movies, the smoke coils and dissipates. It doesn't look so nasty when it's on film.

Photo by jgspics

I just remembered, I had my first cycling dream of the year. I know when I'm coming into form because I dream about racing, but even better, winning. Before I opened my eyes today, I dreamed of winning Sunny King in April. The last lap was pure chaos, I was dodging corners leading the pack - then I jumped and had such a massive gap on the field that as I crossed the line, it was as though I was swimming backwards in backstroke looking up at the finishing banner. From that vantage point I could see the rest of the field, scurrying to finish. In the fraction of a moment before I awoke I thought, I have a national win, it's already happened, now, I just have to go through the physical half.

It is all magic.

It was warm yesterday. I was glad to spend the morning with my good friends on a light-hearted ride, lots of laughter, sunshine, and finally a long visit on a deck. I wasn't able to see the rest of the day because afternoon time was so dazing that I walked in my sleep throughout it. I found a spell of energy much later and went out with my girlfriends. I wore a gray hat, the kind that looks like it's from the 1940's period, something a woman would wear to the train station when she's saying goodbye to someone special. This morning is flirting with spring but, there's a crispness in the air. There aren't quite blossoms all over the place yet. Still dry and damp at the same time, the trees are not yet warm and decorated, no signs of new growth, just yet.

I closed my eyes and the burnt orange splotches bloomed themselves into poppies. Poppies behind my eyes - can't ask for much more on a gray morning.

Maybe i'll get work done on the bike today. Right now I feel like the air has been punched out of my stomach. Maybe I'll even go to yoga tonight. Hopefully. Unlikely. I can hope, though, can't I? Losing hope is an unpleasant idea.



Tell me, from where you're sitting now, when you look out of your window, what do you see? I see a gray wall of cinderblocks, from the top of the ledge to the bottom of the blinds.

This is the stuff of dreams and crazy camera angles. The haze of tiny soft circles obscuring my vision, for a fraction of a moment I am in an entirely different place. I am four, eating the snow off of the branches of pine trees. I am five, playing piano upside down into a tape recorder. I am eight, riding my uncle's old road bike far away from grandma's house. I am eleven, in a nest of blankets on my day bed.

Something very tiny snaps within me, and I am perfectly, completely, happy - for only just a second. Then the water ripples away and I am left alone. During my bath, I shift in my tub and petals fall from the top water spout. I brush my hand over my hair and feel soft water dripping down my cheeks. It could be collections of steam, it could be sweat, it could be tears. Involuntary souvenirs, clinging to me, dripping down me, displaying my momentary need.

The Brain in Love and Lust

The Brain in Love and Lust

Pusher be the test and I beat to the rest
In my head, in my head now
Slow candle burning with your flame on high and now I'm dry land so
Play it, play it, player play
The sound of escape now honey
Take it take it
Say it lover, say it lover right
It's all the thicker, the light hearted taker
So take it, so take it, so take it

Dream is in this heart
Season in these years
Death is in this heart

So what so what
So fine so fine
So what so what
Be mine be mine

Burn it to the ground
With the planks all around
On the top
On the top right?
Flowers in this dream of easy thinkers
Fell out of love, out of love now
It's all the faker, the light hearted taker
So take it, so take it, so take it

I'm looking for something breathtaking, and though I'm finding images no words are pouring out of them. So i guess this is the end, for now.

Write something for me, will you? Haiku, limerick, prose, whatever. Maybe this will be an inspiration.


Photos: zeitgeist studios

Chapter 7 continued...

I looked at him secretly from under a fall of hair.

He was lying on his back, his hands under his head, staring at the ceiling. The starched white sleeves of his shirt, rolled up to the elbows, glimmered eerily in the half dark and his tan skin seemed almost black. I thought he must be the most beautiful man I'd ever seen.

I thought if only I had a keen, shapely bone structure to my face or could discuss politics shrewdly or was a famous writer Constantin might find me interesting enough to sleep with.

And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault after fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him.

The same thing happened over and over:
I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn't do at all.

That's one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitment and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

Plath, S. (1971). The Bell Jar. New York: HarpersCollins Publishers Inc.

Not caring about anything. I hate it when I get this way. Anxiousness wrapping around me like a mummy. I'm turning to stone. At least if I were an oyster, I could create something iridescent and luminescent and beautiful like a pearl.

When I feel this way I wonder if I'm perpetually afraid and only at peace momentarily - or if my inner most self is like a long row of sadness where happiness passes through in cracks, like a long, lonely sidewalk. I hate getting annoyed about things and then I have so much difficulty letting them go.

Just calm down, breathe deeply, pretend I'm having a good time...but that doesn't work so well for me. I can't fake it.

In my heart I'm naturally happy, but when the blues hit the ground shakes. I lock up because I know my foundation is being rattled and tested and the ground below me is turning into water and everything is going wash out like dark storm. Never mind.

I need sleep. I need to drink water, ride my bike, take a hot bath, and figure out what home really is.

Hawk

Sew the seeds
Of everything to be
Safe in sleep
I winter in my dreams

Speak your words
Defined by grief for me
Out of reach
Some things just can not be

From chapter 7 of 'The Bell Jar'

I started adding up all the things I couldn't do.

My list grew longer.

I was a terrible dancer. I couldn't carry a tune, I had no sense of balance, and when we had to walk down a narrow board with our hands out and a book on our heads in gym class I always fell over. I couldn't ride a horse or ski, the two things I wanted to do most, because they cost too much money. I couldn't speak German or read Hebrew or write Chinese.

The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.

I felt like a racehorse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.
From the tip of every branch, a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brillant professor, and other fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of of other lovers with queer names and off beat professions, and other fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I coudln't quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant loosing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

Plath, S. (1971). The Bell Jar. New York: HarpersCollins Publishers Inc.


"New Discovery" By Alex De Spain

by kozyndan http://www.kozyndan.com/

Frost // Soft Attacks

I watched the winter today.. slanted rips and tufts in the air, a shattering and crunching of feet marching over frozen land. The sky the color of milk mixed with dirty water. Harsh and silvergrey. The sun scarcely shone from the edges of the clouds, Through the bent trails of water on the car windshield. Dim shadows flanking luminous reflections, crawling across the backs of my hands as I watch the edge of the hood onto the road in wonder. Handcolor, whitegold and peach. My scars are shiny, pink, faint, white, and dull. I have 3 easily visible scars. They drove me to a hotel. My nails reflect the bed light, making them seem more awake than I am. My fingernails made up of a million hairs, pearls at the top, and light pink at the bottom. How many things have I touched with these hands? How many things have I made? how many more will they make?

My motion for magic is always to make the same loose fist and then uncurl all of the fingers kind of open outward movement, like a little puff of smoke expanding, then you expect something to appear in my palm. To make the motion would be to say swooossshhh! - but I can't write it because it's a whisper. It's the onomatapoetic sound of a tiny magic thing happening, I'm doing it now, something tiny and magic is happening right now.

The sky at dusk was bluegrey. It reminded me of the color of the skin under someone's eyes who wore too much makeup and partied too long last night.