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.