Sip

I hated coffee today.

[sip]

Woke up in the grey-cold afternoon, trapped between months of 7:30 alarms, and there was nothing that took hold of me. So I raced down a million undetermined options and found no smile breaking the crusted eyelids. The corners of round raccoons that have seen the crevaces between too many unknown sheets.

I'm the secret.

So I figured it was a day for something new. [Sip]

I'm something new.....to myself. So much so that I mock mercilessly the other rings, the other shells, that I've worn-that now lay crusted like ancient newsprint in cream colored heaps about my carpeted floor. My carpeted floor......

Poked the button too many times on a new coffee maker, picked a brand namelessly, and went about a routine pretending. (Familiar?)

Anyone else's routine.

Maybe I can be anybody else.

Because I smoke now, and drink again now, and I drape myself in poet's black.....and haven't ever written anything without a "him" it seems.

I think I hate-don't understand-that sweet "him" of my 21 years.

That, (don't say fairy tale)-that placement of a word, that makes it seem there's love, makes it seems that any of else actually feel.

Feel less, feel normally, that is.

Because I feel the world upon the tiniest hairs, and I want so very much to live the way I hope. To live the way it feels so fucked up and falling........[sip] on the rooftops of every city all at once, reaching with arms stretched out in a near-silenced scream.....when you can be a Prophet, and a Queen, and a jester, and a magician.

[Sip that coffee I still don't like]

Magician, yes we're magicians. We're the magicians that pick-pocket from the push-pin wealthy, with ring-weighted fingers that can dazzzzzzzzzle all the faces of all the children that believe in what we wish to believe in again. They believe in us. (if we ever did)

And us, what do we bring to them?

And them, what did our magicians bring to us?

There was something magical that we did see, in the stars when I looked upon them Christmas Eve, on the fireworks; that catapulted our "imaginations" into Imaginations.

Run, Max Run. Build so many forts. See so many sunrises. Know so many friends. Reallyyy know, without a single conversation devoid of make-believe.

[sip]

I still hate it.

I still hate that I see them all again in the words I've written.

Hate that the clothes will never smell again after the wash, though all those 32 nights were on the fabrics.

Hate what they keep--that they keep, saying that I deserve. Cause its never been there. I kiss all the wrong places hello.

I still hate when I hope. (Don't we all?)

....And where am I ending today? They're leaving--we're leaving, I'M leaving. (Supposed to?) It's all ending, now you've come, and it's all happening!

[Sip. Stir]

Stir it all up for me, tap the wand against each point on the circle. Hoop-stick-pick.....

Pick it up, the smoke filling up throat with cracks.

Crackle-pop-the fire is burning and the cookies swelling. Heat it up and nestle up. Alone?

There's so many logs in that fireplace.

There's so many things we'll never do. There's so many things we WILL.

__Daily headphones: David Gray's "Please forgive me" , William Fitzsimmons's "I dont feel it anymore (song of the sparrow)", and Fleet Foxes "White Winter Hymnal"

< photo by Paul Nouge.

2814.

We, dear friend speak the same language. And it is something so rare from our origin, because you see they will never be - able to connect. It is more than the free love, the creations, the jokes; it's that we are so much more innately sad than they will ever, should ever, comprehend within themselves, for us.


Yes, the richest thirst for stories comes from sadness. It comes out of the wreckage; out of becoming so lost so many times that....you find yourself.
And we've found ourselves....a family. 

The red candlelight above the narrow cabinet stairs.
The sounds of those voices, in that haze of smokes, vibrating into the silence outside.

The city silence.
Our city. 

So joyous. Our moments, and the way that one room feels- filled with beloved eyes, and smiles you can't remember right, ...and closed within all the thoughts that are held in beads of sweat.

...oceanic water pressure with the music and the touch of skin, and lips.

And in my dreams I think I may return back there someday. Walk back there if I might live to be old. Walk along that kitshy street, with woodland trees and chipped wooden fronts, coming as if anew to the same address.
This....that, metaphor of our existence once.
______Feeling that rush of all the chances that lie free.

The love to be made, when we pretend, to be immortal forces. And all the nerves that make you uneasy....the sound of high heels on crackled concrete....places in that place that we have dreamed within. -Dreamed within nightmares and cocktails.

_______Turning on my heels-suddenly-each time right in front...because the door, the steps, the porch, appear as if its 9 and 3/4. Appearing, because we find it still stands somehow. Though its shaken down, and could've crumbled down....a toy hand sticking out of a mug was all that could've been left.

But anyway its anyhow. It's all really something how, the mundane days are so many days of made....art.
So oddly productive.
Really truly falling now, and how, we're so in love with the only "one true love" of--ART.
Art we seek and art we fight and art we build.
And ART actually runs through the high-content bloodstream, to the fingertips, as if its getting drunk......upon the very idea that maybe we can be immortal for just a period.

A period in time of being able to say its falling smoothly, we're treading evenly--no, unstably---into whatever the catastrophically beautiful IT really is.
Damnation on our heads already placed, cause we're the sinners of the normal life!

Dail headphones: Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance", LMFAO's "Shots", James Morrison's "Once when I was little" and Bon Iver's "Skinny Love"

Video Break #6

Take 4 quiet minutes and watch "Rivers and Tides" documentary on artist and naturalist Andy Goldsworthy. Brilliant, funny, painful.

"I am so amazed at times that I am actually alive"
~Andy Goldsworthy

Have a safe, and scrumptious, and fabulous Thanksgiving!

<3

Ignorance

I once slept, and was kept. White and blue lines that were sewn into the moistened, sweaty skin. When we had only just started; to know the lines and the patterns that go smooth. Felt so smooth. Even the white scars appeared within my hands, and inked themselves into poetry.

..And poetry it fails, when the smile is locked and the sky feels like its sunny...when it never is.

..Ain't it funny how that goes.

...............When--how--we wait for the sweetest downfall for the words to come again. The art suddenly tidal waves-over my red eyes...that once had a mirrored set.

..Then it is that I can write again. Cause we're both in black again anymore.

And its me, I know, that now wakes with tremor in the night. Sleeping alone with ghosts of childhood ancestors.

Move on, its such dissipation.

Move like when we moved with ignorance.

Then. "Ignorance is [my] new best friend...".

Just tell me to START, cause the sun is rising and that's excuse enough. And I'll never care that she's there, so don't tell me. Don't even tell me anything because the words don't bring anyone.

Where does it hurt, what's been neglected?

.....Curve my back and away it goes....Wake, and it's just another nightmare made into a dream one night.

Its another hush, a bitten lip. Match the sounds on the otherside of walls. Aren't we all, can't we all, just match what never exists.

It's nothing new, there's no shock factor when it's all understood.

...Friends feels so much better than anything I've burned.

...And that sweet virgin Pandora, that Grecian girl with the lightest hair and darkest eyes; yes innocent Pandora held the scum of all of us.

Kindness you see, carries the thorns of our sickly sins.

The vapid Vodka czars.

The remedies that do feel so fucking good going down....

Yeah. Go down with me into the crevace where the historical building meets the leaf-covered cobble street. That is my birthplace. That my dear, is where IT can reside.

.....The muck can cover up a diamond broken off from a bracelet. Glitter how it does below the heavy-moving rain clouds. The hills of autumn leaves. The pit, the death place of a poet that no one thought to scrub clean. Took his name and cast his arm into a demise.

..Isn't that what we are? Or rather, do we---do we strive to be the dirtiest, cracked, treasure?

Innately that, as artists?

But hey. Hey there. You there. Can you hear it?

I've got a new character to play that I've read so much about. And let's be all those characters we can't be, let's do all the things people say we're idiots for.

..........The night still remains, my temptress, she gives window for the moments - that maybe I've never lived. Maybe all the fingers never were. All the best ones the same as all the poor ones.

But I feel it all. It tremors.

..Tattoo'd beneath my tongue-that "sensation is better than the convent".

Stories and secrets, you see, are my perched companions. Totally ok with that.

Make one up and we'll struggle through the schedules...into a drug for restlessness.

Daily headphones: "Ignorance" by Paramore, "Whatcha Say" remix by Jason Derulo, and "Heroin" by Velvet Underground

Art History Paper...Has Modernism Failed?

2 of the questions on an 11 page paper, relevant to the blog...

"[1. Just at the beginning of her book Gablik has included a quote from author Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift in which he describes art as a gift, not a commodity. What do you think? What does Gablik think? Is art innately noble? Are artists nobler than other people? As an artist, can you, or should you, work for money? Does money automatically demean you as an artist? Do you need to nourish your spirit? Do you need to do this more than other non-artists?]

I believe that art is actually a gift because, preciously, of the giving quality within the soul of the artist and his creation. That exchange of relaying a life, an experience, an emotion into a given media creates something that is simultaneously noble and destitute. The artist is in fact someone who must come to a realization at an emotional point, that they may be in constant battle, constant debate with the society that raises them into adults. The struggle in a revolving check and balance which always feels ever so slightly like a loosing battle, but a loosing battle for the purest of Kings. It is the art created, it is the emotion spilled and contained, that makes the artist dream again, and believe again, when everything in the world is blank. That, intrinsically is nobility. There is a grace that lies in every soul-consuming artist, in every person that looks at the sky because it calls to him, that looks through ancient history books of artifacts because they feel connected to the hands that sculpted those precious objects. Somewhere we make a choice that makes us into a kind of vague royalty, a blue-blood family so wrecked by the years and the desire to just once, capture everything you feel inside, and everything you see other people making so wondrously. We cannot therefore, deprive art of their “aura”. And money, somehow still needs to be defined because yes, you actually do need food in the fridge, a little bit of utilities, and even, a certain validation. Money of course provides things of survival and placement in societal traditions, but in the art world it works as a pat on the shoulder. It works, almost, because every artist still does want to feel artistic; we want to feel worth it. This of course falls short for the people who choose voluntarily and unemotionally to make art-things because of the monetary value, they become no better that the buyers who buy what they are told is worth it; leaving the artist’s worth separate, leaving the life separate. Gablik pains at this fact, and aches at the knowledge that money will always cause turmoil. She strives to promote pieces that remain, even if unseen, quietly by themselves. So this cavernous place we find ourselves in with the money, the pressure, the stereotypes, the history, and so much other dirt, is what cries for nourishment. Great art may just come from great experience, great love-that is, for what actually opens our eyes every morning. I constantly return to the fact, as Gablik described on p51, that conversations and community with artists of any sort, is something important. We should more often come out of those caves of ours and speak. We should speak about our art, our pain, and our obscure things running around in our thoughts that only very rarely materialize into words. Art therefore, is nourishment itself. What could be more noble? "

[16. How does Gablik come to the title of the book? What price does she consider us as having paid for modernism?]
The author comes to the pivotal question “has modernism failed?” through a variety of small steps. She leads, that is, through the various triumphs and perils in the post-modern world; while citing the nostalgic days-long-gone of Michelangelo, Monet, and many more. Keeping the reader on a journey of opinions-to nod to or scream at-that cause even YOU to actually reevaluate where the proper place to stand does lie. Until finally, we realize that there is (in fact) a bad taste in our mouths; that we do subtly look at the borders of being a working artist as a battle line.

We realize, that we may be at the brink of failure. Failure not at the ‘we’ll never get famous!” attitude, but at the very spot where such statements are the means and the end.

Head smacked against a wall made entirely of mirrors, because the price being paid is on our actual heads. Our work, our expression, and our very goals are in the balance. These things are being turned and sliced and shuffled in someone else’s hands. Gilbert and George, in their 1982 film, declare themselves to the viewer. They declare their roles, their categories, their feelings, to come to the final statement “we are artists”. They stopped. They gave their audience possibly exactly what was being craved; a birth of knowledge risen from the decayed environment of industrialism and capitalism. Maybe it is thoughts like these that prove art as an idea, because as artists we live within ideas about what we are, and what the world could be.

So, Gablik rallies along with me, that there should be a stand-however loud or not-against the failing grade on modernism. It is time for a new phase, it is time for a clean break. Artists may just need to break up with post-modern grime, we need to close the chapter, write a script on it, and leap. We must leap because we are fighting for our own salvation, our own price tags on the spiritual.

(Link Break #7)

"Offbeat Sessions" blog - stumbled upon this while looking for inspiration/examples for an exhibit design promo project. Please scroll through it, great collection and variety of work going on right now...

Wish I had a couple days to just paint and sleep. 

Back to the drawing board tonight, literally - more pen and ink'ing. 

Someplace, somehow

So I can't be in all the wide places anymore, because I've got someplace to be somehow. And it's out there, it's out here; in the sunny near-autumn. Where it is that I can almost feel what there is to never speak. Where it is that there's laughter on the leaves.

I can almost breathe, and almost PAUSE.II

When all of us keep stomping on the ground. When all of us unbutton what we've got pinned to us, and dance until we melt. Melt into to me.

Wipe the sweat from your chest, brush the hair from out of my eyes. Can't hide much longer.

There's a million forts, my brother dear, that we did make. And now we create. Every Buddhist tear I should be reading, every word you wrote I haven't been able to finish.

Cause sometimes there isn't enough room to ever.....go down into that Loop street, and watch the forts resurrect.

They're all falling down.

I use to fall, and scrape my knees--but now they're just scars to trace (and face).

Watch all of us waving goodbye to what "had to go right" because it "had to save us" from that final giving up that almost gave us up.

So close to every edge; I've romanced every dirty one, every fake one. The dirtiest emptyness that really, never ever, did bring anything along.

And now there's stories in every corner of that bohemian drag Temple, and every fabric that touches skin. And it seems to just keep us on. Keep us waking, keep us snoozing.

We seem to self-proclaim and prophesize, and still it goes.

And still, it's really all almost over.

Almost all new.

A little "verrry cute" thinking alone of someplace to be, now somehow, where we trace a million circles...

Daily headphones: David Gray's "This Years Love", Regina Spektor's "Samson", and Micheal Jackson's "Billie Jean"

Windy City

There's jets and there's trains--and there's just too much in any "us" that I have created...

So what's been going on? And downfall baby, where could you ever come from?

I'm a thousand miles high, and now I'm high; Up in the clouds-can't you see-that curl like waves and soothe like white sheets, and down....down in those fields, of anyone else's whole entire space. --------Invade mine and sometimes it'll lean in, and melt in...to a laugh. And we'll smile on either end of each other. Best that we can hope. I'm far from home. You've got a growing home.

So we dance with other people. Either side of candlelight. End of other people.

"Nice spending time with you two". And Both of us go back. 

Goodnight. We'll never meet again like this they guess. 

It's only ever a guess. A daydream. A total lie.

They said I kept up, but I've kept up before. Older years and darker corners. Another moment ends.

So its ending, sitting in a cafe by the street--watching the revelers pass, and the minutes tick, and my stomach growls.

But maybe this time it's really right. There's really something that knows more; in the lake wind that's so cooling, as if its been known. As if it's really right, that it's really something HERE, er-there. 

So I hate to leave. Damn. I hate to leave without......well, it's just "time to leave" she says with a warm sigh. And for the first time I don't say "yeah". Can't move easily, so I don't say anything awhile.

All the keepsakes in a bag, all the pictures in a folder.

Listen as it turns my head to ache.

                Who now, what now, should be home?--cause "next year" and "sometime soon" is too long to ever tell...

Daily headphones: Loud Reed's "Take a Walk on the Wild Side", and Regina Spektor's "Samson"

(Link Break #6_Pour a Little Salt trailer)

Ok. so I admit it - I missed Artscape, AGAIN. But, did get a chance to swing by the Recher CD release show for Everlove & Brighter Shades-and drove up to Chambersburg, PA in my dad's Stingray Vette for "Queen of Bingo" performed in drag.

BUUUUT this link break is a spectacular trailer for an independent short film that I have been working on alongside an amazing crew+cast. We all truly believe in this project and have risked bank accounts, burned fingers, sleep, and sanity in order to find something to believe in.

It's set to be entered into Sundance Film Festival, and numerous others. We are in post-production through till the end of summer, as well as working on ownership contracts and other technicalities.

"Pour a Little Salt" http://www.vimeo.com/5636165

__Directed+edited by Francis Cabatac. Produced by Bobby Harris. Written by Nick Bateman. Director of photography Julian Spath. Technical assistant Alex Kafarakis. On-set photographer Kate Bateman.

__Original Score by Aaron Boudreaux.

__Starring Sallie Eskins and Nick Bateman

..

DO NOT copy+paste/crop/reuse

Against the Cold Wall

You say that you can't ever sleep, and that he has all the demons. And all the nightmares just won't stop and there's nothing left to love in one that will just keep loving you.

Everyone keeps on loving you.

So tell me do you ever FIGHT? Smack your head against a force that won't ever move? No matter how many times you bribe for love, and steal for love, and chip away at the last reasons for standing up.

It all ends at the same first step.

Don't say you agree like me, cause you feel like he. And something still does come to be.

Cause I think they may have been right, when they said that I was meant for the cold walls of a convent.

I was a sickly green girl, and heard them say words like cancer. Heard grim monologues of all the damage that coulda been done. All right above my little head.

And now I wonder how they were right.

Could they really be right?

Peter Pan's adventures, hiding from spiders in my haunted pink bedroom. And haunted, would stare at the smoke stacks on the water and feel that spark inside. That feeling inside that the night reflections say, when they say that we can all be more. The lie of dreaming further.

Of Prince charming moments, laughing friends, mischievous grin and bitten lip, and splattered paint over lyrics.

Maybe I'm far too easy...............on the character evaluations. Maybe Sal was nothing; besides Neal was who I met. On the Road was a great dream away. So the town will have to call it all back.

Call nothing back after last night. Call no one more.

But who cares--- because we ran across the street and filled the bar's empty spot, and drank and laughed and tossed it all on down throats and tired ends. You washed him away for me, with the summer there outside. Home where we're from.

But it seems I'm out of time to hide from. Ticket already paid for, car with gas.

So tonight I'll reminisce, and tonight I'll just sit and watch the road, and miss everything that's been already lived.

Capsize

Woke up and thought it hurt from him; cause if it can hurt then I can feel....

Tired, despite that long sleep last night. And afraid of ever running home again. Run home sweet thing, run home.

Every single tiny clip that's really supposed to be so great.

But even when you crop (never did look back), oh, the little demons come screeching down the hallway. Tearing their spider-sounding nails against the thick damp office carpeting. Wall to wall caving in on my head and mingled voice, and sneeze, and turn.

Welsh witch, LOOK to soak it all in.

Look, the raindrops that suddenly were bought for ownership, in a little secret steal-away. So many unknown. The onlookers, and your religion. Tightened grip and squeaked feet. The rope cologne and the soaked silk. Begging for sanctuary, while begging for the storm. Singing in the storm, singing with the dim light of only sweetness. With the way it spun and came undone...and neither one had a place to share. Neither one spoke anything truly serious.

But isn't it all just so serious?

Sorry to have slipped.

_____________________

I spent three weekends making myself scratched up by the sand-in the sun. Sailing tack drills two-by-two, two-by-two off Rocky Point State Park.

Weird strangers and athritic teachers.

Up early. Heading to the water's edge.

~~~~~~~~And one day the waves curled with white caps, the ropes kicked, the boat swerved, the tiller slipped....and I no longer wanted to capsize.

The danger wasn't there to be mud-smeared on shoulders anymore.

Saw the ice-cream truck parked on shore, heard the instructor yell, and felt....shocked.

I no longer wanted to capsize.

No. We don't have to believe. We don't have to capsize. We can be sick to our feet with "next time"s and make it all a funny name-less story.

We can sit beside something together--because i lost hope. and well, we lost hope. and he said you're just angry.
So let's pretend to love........the summer, summertime.
....Dream a thousand adventures, and never touch like what we dream...There's a perfect spot, on the floor outside that door...

Goodbye to old and cold. I'll be with the shoreline and the stories.

Keroac leading it all back.

Daily headphones:

Our nothing new

Are we really running out of reasons to be, forgetting how to see? How to see all thats there in the breeze when the rigging clanks, the ropes twirl, and when I beg to know something new.

You see, there's a place I still come home to, that so few do get invited to. 

Where there's so many places that know (if they could only talk), of a decade's worth of friendships. 

All the rules we've mocked, the employees we've befriended, the toys we've had, the islands we've visited, the games-and music-we've seen played...the ones we've cuddled/kissed/ditched/danced with/fought with. Known. 

------We sit at the bar we once stood on tiptoes to order fountain soda at, we safely push the carts we raced & almost drove over the edge, and we watch our replacements making our memories...I still remember how we used to giggle, and wiggle toes, and watch the ground that felt so sacred.

Do the walls remember? 

Do our moments burn the pebbled ground?

Cause it's all there all at once. I think I feel it all. I think I ache for it all...when the sun is minutes from rising; when there's still a dark nighttime on the water, liquor in our tired bodies, and a fabulous legend of tonight...when tomorrow's humidity hovers and there's no one new coming.

                                                     ___________

In the morning after, I was cleaning and scrubbing in the hot late May burn and laughing in the hearty way of children with long lives and empty stomachs. 

                   A thousand footprints beneath my own wet toes, and they're running down the sides...half-drowned remnants of another night of revelry. 

Added to the long list no one else understands. We're proud little pirates about that, 

and we're bad little Brats, and we're Captains' kids/grandkids that can never remember why we love an outdated place. The three philosophers try, to the destiny of never stopping- the mess, the story, the family.

So darlings, think I'll see you'all in a couple weeks for our next holiday weekend! 

                                                                                    And when its dark outside and the band starts a steamy slowsong on the dance floor, I'll think of dancing with that someone new...Cause sometimes you need to remember why we needed to dance as kids. Why it felt like everything all at once could happen. 

We forget to realize that sometimes the timing is just off--not always ready for what's wanted, but the split still hurts.

Climb the fence and join the summertime...

There's nothing new but adventures.

Daily headphones: "I feel Home" by Oar, local friends Railaway's "Unforgettable", "Blame it on the Alcohol", Kings of Leon's "Revelry"...........and "ON A BOAT"

(Poem-"I Saw")

Is it actually summer? Staring out my window @ work like all these new things aren't new-besides the cleaner desk and posted grades. Looking forward to a gorgeous 3day weekend on the water and by the pool (boat to myself), and making up vacations to take time off. Damn, I think we're adults now. Who cares-they say its summer?

AND, here's a new(ish) piece of mine, w/ working title...


" There you were when, when it, it began to bite you,
With the popping bubbles of the vase bottom-
The sticky mortar of every pill and drink and gaping wound.
And each shrunk-muscle convulsed in such a way,
That you tw-twitched against the music.
Reverberated. Detached to the corner of the room.

In the corner of the room-they were already leaving you.
With the anxious questions you kept repeating-
Kept repeating,

Kept repeating, under screeched tones-
The frantic pattern of noiseless begging.
Out of control, they made you;

Just another Frankenstein for no amusement.


And still off to the side he was watching you;
Soaking and salivating the skin of our genes-
Cause everything you did was great,
Every one of your gears were beginning to riot red.

And everyone you loved was lost.

And on, he kept sucking, down, all the view of it, down-
Into the place where they tinkered the wires-
With lines long past straight-
His own broken nightmare staring back.
And he's wanting you to just pretend-

That you can live to have a Dead man's life.

And he's wanting you to just give in-

To what shakes awake in your cold sweats.

And he's wanting you.
Rubbing the fingernails together in his pocket

That still have their traces of, their traces inside of me."

Video/Link break #5

EEK finals are in full tsunami mode for us college kids, except for those lucky jerks already done (grrr). Enjoy a random gathering of things to explore/watch. (And, make sure to check out links, videos and other blogs found on my right column...)

Go to 1.15m, so FUNNY (no sound needed):

• Apparently the Farmer's market downtown has already opened 

[http://www.blogbaltimore.com/?p=293] 

• Corrin Campbell Band is playing the Quarter on Bourbon Street this Friday, stop by!

• Design web blog, love the header layout [http://badassideas.com/designer-interviews/] 

("Leave it Behind" clips)

Segments from an 8page essay originally written for an upper-level english class, sophmore year of college

"....He smoked a cigarette in pants that were just too short, a rumpled leather jacket, and an intellectual twitch. At least, I had always thought it was something of intelligence. More of a way to get someone to agree with him, completely in spite of their own beliefs. It was like giving up, or giving in; it never felt real. Ned and I were constantly at odds, constantly without his knowledge.

And I stalled, stealing a couple more minutes in my car outside Starbucks, before actually starting this awkward encounter.
[...] I imagined we were people with a stronger grip and better stories; different people. It was so typically romantic, and so typically un-relatable. We were always the people outside. I opened the door, and walked into a round of deteriorating memories.

[A week after Halloween...] [...] Curled up on the couch, Ned’s haziness seemed fun. He had a contagious smirk. The other party revelers of our romanced room were submerged in busting Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin through the amps.

                   Ned was an inch away quietly playing “Foxy Lady” in interrupted sections. There was sincerity, and there was anxiousness in the way he half-glanced at me. 

 So nearby, patiently teaching me the “F” cord or something similar. Something part of the dance I didn’t let him in enough to have. 

He said he’d be right back.

Over an hour later I walked outside, after making “friends” deep inside during one of Ned’s regular disappearances; a cheap habit, all his, that I found excuses for. 

             His eyes bloodshot, cigarette in shaking hand, he was going down a list of decorated drug cocktails to a salivating crowd. That was when I hoped for a punch line in that naïve little way. I hoped for an excuse, I hoped for him to live again. 

              There was no punchline. There was reality. And there was that small town, and our small way. Rehab loomed in the future.

              Ned just cackled, with “….that’s all the ones I’ve done. Top that.” I grimaced, and no one ever could.
            “Aww, C’mon Little Girl” he said to only me. He wanted to play a muse’s game. I never did play along. Narcotics medals weren’t funny decoration. Each metallic-tongued one kept me away.

In the Starbucks my knee rested against his. He smelled like his same brand. 

I moved away, sat up straighter, and Focused. 

               He was telling some perverse story, something about boy scouts liaisons, and honestly thought I’d find it all entertaining. He still wanted desperately for me to be listening, with all these months passed....

[...] In Ned’s psychedelic deviant ways, there’s something he just couldn’t find to keep him high enough, or keep others listening enough. Someone said it was something like selfishness and arrogance; like he couldn’t ever love. I once said it was lack of passion.
              Maybe he’s just indifferent. He still smokes and he still drinks and he still loses. I deleted his number, but can always recognize his voice when it says “Hello Kate” from so far away.
             And I still think sometimes of the teacher of a chord I still can’t play.             There’s nothing else to do.
              I never felt engrained into his crowd. Maybe I never wanted to, maybe it was fear, maybe I seriously narrowly missed devastation. I never understood his stories or his addiction. I never understood the boys he’d dated all before me, or the drugs he loved instead... "

*Name has been changed.

Daily headphones: "Wish you were here", by Pink Floyd

That Ghost

I think I've been a ghost for all my life. I feel the doors stay locked, and the walls hold still.....as I pass through. Pass the milestones that would have been there, could have been the leap into one place or the other. Coming alive or sleeping; affirmative. 

An easier account to retell gracefully. Gracefully live, just a little. Commit only to the ease of just a little. Funny little visibility.

Look at the only thing to ever almost love back, the only thing I can still say I love... Lovely lines are dark and scratched. The lovely leaves are heavy enough to drown. The lovely lighting enough to disorient. 

And it grins for me.

And it feels like all the places that my hands skimmed. Dirt under fingernails, the paint, the bruises. 

The click-click-

The debris of what we never understand. Ivan Illyich's one-hand up. We'll greet it too.

And with Purity-all can all dance together-in some place:

                  Overgrown grass capturing the rocks, and swooshing with the waves nearby. A tall-tale time when sand and land almost merge together safely. Almost cross over to the Heaven, or a million Hells, in the rising fog. 

Steaming up from those very grains. Steaming up into the stars just opening and the day just ending. The things just being SMUDGED. The nerves just being touched with moisture. For those that exist. Twilight flickers my holographic pixels. 

Floating barefoot; pretend that the lace skirt edges actually swipe the grass---actually exist. Pretend that we dance right beneath the willow. You smile, I hold on tight...and separate funny fables go on....

But its gone again, (as predicted). I can see my hands outstretched, but they'll never really be there. 

We could never really be remembered. 

All the art burned-we burn it into existence. 

Because the heat-it feels like being alive. 

The art, it feels like we were seen.

Baltimore I've been haunting

Cake outside the cold little cellar where Gudule sits staring at a little pink slipper, in a burlap gown, gnarled speech and matted floor-length tresses....I think I've been that ghost for all my life. 

Daily headphones: Now It's Overhead's "Let Up", Kings of Leon "Where Nobody Knows", and Tracy Chapman's "Give me one reason". 

Sleeping*

I'm falling asleep like its waking up; like its the dreams I'm rushing to. I'm going to bed with it all, making up stories in my eyelids that were never ever there.

Forgetting all at once, something not yet made to exist. Beginning suddenly, like the first two words...and then...stop p i n g. It's unfound, so unbound, when my sore stomach aches and hunched back hurts. 

---------You begin the prose already written-compose nothing fresh-telling yourself the same tired tales already told. Weren't you there anyhow? ....but ah, the difference. The difference is there's lies on top the lines that you made. And they feel so much warmer, and you begin to forget you made up what was never ever there.

I'm not quite anywhere. 

       So Lie to me a little. Lie like the words of the song you drink, when it lurches within the spot beneath the collarbone, and you feel every sense of every note. 

Lie to me a little. For brand new Lies that I can tell myself. I need Lies to create-I'm an Artist. 

                                                                                 -------------------------------------------------------

My fair City seems detached somehow, so I can lose my point tonight. (Funny that when I get the news I'm staying a bit longer, the place looks a bit boring. It leaves my grip.)

Blame it on the sighs everyone is making, as we sit within our piles. Our preparations that make us leave in the morning. Our STUFF. 

          "that's what happens when we lose our poise-we search for a fixed point way off in the distance; in the vague hope that'll keep us from drowning..." ~first you have to row a little boat 

 So I search all the calendars for what's to come in the coming days. The springtime and the flowers that are just barely breaking through. We're just barely making it through.

And suddenly there's everything to come! Dwell in all the dreams of what the nights could hold, cause I still believe in certain nights. I still believe in something good, it's a damning little critter digging into the spot on my neck beneath my curls. The place I'll tattoo. Mark forever on where I felt the words that never existed...

Sleep is waiting; but I'd rather make it a nightmare. I'd rather scar my rest with inspirations. 

I'd rather rush to keep you.    Where do you sleep?

Daily headphones: unknown

weekend events: 

-Fri-Sun "Songs for a New World" at TU, call ahead for free voucher ticket(s)

-Sat 3.28 The Everlove, Dialogue, Fairgreen, Halfway to the Moon, and Dropout Year at St Johns Hamilton 

-Fri 3.27 Towson University's Relay for Life!, Burdick Gym

-Sat 3.28 Loyola University's Relay for Life! ...............................support the ACS!

(art) Link Break #1

In the process of researching for a digital design project, and feeling a little disgruntled with project drafts for my other two design classes...I discovered the website of artist Boris Muller. If you have a chance....click the title of this post and check it out! 

It's amazing how much experimental design is going on out there, and the way technology is becoming a grandfather patron of millennium creation. 

Is there really a marriage between science and art after all? 

....It may not be the destruction of us anymore.

(image courtesy of http://www.esono.com/boris/projects/poetry08/, via the route through visualcomplexity.com)

from 3 great nights

Sitting on the slanted pool table; with $60 gone, in the same clothes from 14 hours earlier, and so reunited. I thumbed the edges of a couple books, a few plays, and a textbook of poetry. And there were seconds where it got quiet, and everyone listened to some literary genius's words being spoken. 

Radiohead playing too loud, and I wanted to curl up-feeling the pressure of so much inspiration that wouldn't BUDGE. 

So many things of greatness; it whispered "wow".
           So I met my same tan carpet for the countless late-night time, motionless and just...chilling out, as they moved about (upstairs). Laid on my back w/ legs propped; parked like a child. I listened to the low twattle of the boys' third guitar and wished the cork ceiling tiles were a moonlit sky, ...I wished I was high; because it felt high-above something all alone. 
Tomorrow I'd be sick. 


Because baby, I met my soulmate a long time ago. And nothing perfect ever happened.
Nothing happened.
I see him every other day, and he says "I love you" to her. And I walk everyday and say nothing at all. (Or, maybe way TOO much....?) Oh, Matchmaker, matchmaker. 

    SO then what next? You move on-and feel so fucking tragic for yourself...like hiding, like screaming, like...loving...Loving the unattainable. It's all lies for someone else's ears. (eh, but we survived).

And at night we realize there's Life still in this suburb city. It keeps surprising me.

I see my friend's faces in all those pictures of theirs; up on stage, with so much talent.

Some nights, those are the people I'm going home with, when no one really knows where each other goes home-and the memory of roaring applause-and amps-makes us awake, and ache, ...even closer to morning. 
I could memorize all your lovely faces and still forget to say hello, ....but its sorta our place. 
With the cake on that table we'd seen broken and repaired. Familiar chuckles in the other room. Tilted cap and bright scarves. Our dark cotton fabrics, and everyone else's tattoos.
           Goodbyes and gossip, and smelly strangers.
           "Floor party" at half past what it starts to feel like; hours before we think to check the time. 
Each guest billowing their space with such an "interesting, interesting", taste for whatever goes on inside those heads. I can't ever reach them all, or ever entirely share my own.

We're friends somehow-off the road, and it keeps us over this scene's decaying vibrance-into one another-missing it ahead of time. Where everyone is a little awkward, a little distant. A little ready to party hard....it's home shows and kept traditions. It repeats too far apart....
so fall too soon away. 

                  Look in every audience. And afterwards we'll all grow weary with reality bites, and take shots---Toast to Life! It'll bite. And I'll sorta wince. Swear under the breathe...everytime we shouldn't have driven, every story that gets repeated, and every text I know comes before doors @ 6:00. 

Another couple weekends in Bmore, where it goes in a rush and looks like a gush...ing smile thatll keep on lingering around the neck of stretch-cotton tshirts.
When Thurs morning makes for desperate and sleepy-when nothing specific makes nothing at all-when my soulmate is dead.

It'll all sorta be there.

I remember all those lovely friends long enough....Long enough to forget-that you and I have been here too long. You and I are moving in this world that someone else can really change. And yet, there's still so much time, and so much more (they say). We feel old too young.Let me just lie with my back on the floor...and imagine that we did everything we're promising. Someday it might be Austin.

Tomorrow it might be 70.

Daily headphones: Radiohead's "Romeo & Juliet", Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" and Alanis Morrisette's "Ironic"