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.

Semafora, Triangle Folds

Sometimes we sink, sometimes we float, and sometimes we fly. Today I'm submerged, but tomorrow, I'll shake the wet frost off my wings and race the frozen clouds. Tonight, I'm listening to Legowelt and hanging vintage garments in one lofty closet. Is this all it is to be a girl in the city? Only for now.