Thursday, July 31, 2008

Emerald City, where everything is made of emerald.

I wrote this last night at four in the morning. It's reactionary, really. It isn't profound by any means, but it is reflective of my emotions last night. Interesting. In retrospect, I mean.

Today I saw the real you-
for the first time
in a long time.
From behind green lenses.
More like bloodied spyglasses.

I screamed-
a silent sound
heard by none-
cloak-and-dagger to the masses.
Besmeared by immorality;
muted by guilt.

Why do you affect me so?
I mustn't affect you.
You draw me towards you-
in flesh,
in spirit.
Magnetized by empathy;
birthed by curiosity:
I want to help you-
however unrequited

I see why
He thinks you His muse.
Perpetually emboldened;
cheerlessly striking.
I know not of your diyad-
only of its profundity.

You are hurting.
Innocence becomes you.
Suddenly broken is my melancholy telescope-
never without the camouflages of night-
often finger-painted green-
stupefied by abundant intellect-
animated by distant stars.

The silver lands heads-up
in the coin-toss of rationale.
The two emeralds tarnish,
rather than supplicate the addiction,
back to their charnel-house receptacle.

Hand-in-hand
my heart doth follow.
'Cross to a new saturnine catacomb;
a sabbatarian valley of condolence.
Therein intellect seesaws
against the imminence of mercy.

It's flickering now,
a lantern formerly agleam,
flitting like a lily-white songbird-
in extremis.
'Tis a slow suicide.

Replenish your incandescence
or let it be snuffed-
by the heel of oppression,
by the blanket of society!

Aggrieve you? I won't.
I mustn't.
Instead I'll attend to your afflictions.
Because you are beautiful-
especially through emerald-smeared optics.

My heart yearns at you.
My heart yearns for you.
My heart yearns without you.
I envy you.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Bon Ami: In which the blogger gives a formal introduction.

Dear Friend,

I keep a diary of random reflections/inspirational things. Just a collection of random thoughts, really. I'm feeling artsy today. Accordingly, for no meaningful reason, I'm offering you the gift of a single written musing of my personage:


"---You push me for the extravagant, for detail, for the 'nitty-gritty;' you ask so much from so little. You ask a the-glass-is-half-full cup that is quite damp from its last outpouring to spill on you so that you can justify your need to manifest the light within yourself. Don't you realize that for all the rational and optimism that I claim to subscribe to, I am first and foremost an artist? I'm a creature driven by demons. I don't know why they chose me, and I'm usually too busy to care. I've an elevated sense of spirituality; yet I continue to live amorally for my craft; I will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done. I'm a living and breathing contradiction-- I represent a single vagabond who is forever appraising, ascertaining, evaluating whether to escape the game of life via wonderfully-aesthetic sewer or lofty-but-benevolent bridleway in a spiritual tug-o-war---"

~July 27th, 2008


The rest of this post is from the second half of my journal. The quotations are excerpts from a memoir-ish narrative that I've been free-writing since June:

"In case you were wondering, my place of birth is Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the second largest town in the state and the so-called "city of seven smells." Beautiful panoramas, aromatic factories, and inquisitive livestock were customary happenings of my childhood. Born in 1986, a time where Micheal Jackson was king, and "girls just wanted to have fun," I was predetermined to be an eclectic, rash, and intuitive young woman full of imagination and ready to break rules. And break rules I did... but I'd rather not share."


"Out of two children, I am the youngest. My older brother Anthony and I were close in age, and therefore grew up together with a particular closeness that we still share to this day.

Pity, to be raised in a tremulous environment where the gold and silver moments of a fiscal comfort were hidden beneath the tarnish of being lower-middle class."


"I'm my father's daughter, which is disadvantageous for me, seeing as how I was raised by my mother. I subscribe to my father's rational after observing years of my mother's lack-there-of. It scared away my desire to explore my emotions. My emotions are thusly raw and underdeveloped. I'm irrationally scared of rejection and I'm flighty with my identity. I'm indecisive, to say the least, but strangely I possess a refined ability to understand and empathize with all that I encounter (often to a fault).

Despite the aforementioned, I shouldn't complain-- I
was born into a congenial home. My mother was self-sacrificing; she gave every penny she made to her children. There was never a time when my family didn't have the basic necessities of life. And for that I am truly grateful.

I lost contact with my father after my parents divorced, aside from the requisite Birthday card. I still have the last card he sent me (for my tenth birthday,) inside my journal. After that, I didn't receive any contact from him for eight years."


"The neighborhood that I was born into was one which was predominantly middle-class and quite ordinary in terms of social standings. There were a few wealthy families, but for the most part, the townsfolk shared a certain sense of camaraderie and community that made the town a very pleasant place to be raised in. Families in this neighborhood had a tendency to be highly moral and religious, and any wrongdoing on the part of my brother or I would be reason for our neighbors to promptly notify our mother. I give a warm-hearted laugh when I think of how the town used to thrive upon gossip and tittle-tattle of its townsfolk's imperfections.

Crime was few and far between, and most of my childhood friends were my neighbors. Who were also my Sunday School classmates.

It wasn't that I had a particular affinity for them, they were just the only children of my age that were ever around to play with."


"My education was always the best that the city could provide: I was enrolled in fourteen years in the same school district (with two years of pre-school), and my studies were quite typical during those years. After the advent three years in high-school, I expended any and all efforts that I had attempting to be accepted into the University of Chicago Graham School of General Studies as an 'Anthropology/Near Eastern Civilization-Language Egyptian major.'

Studying there would have been the manifestation of my biggest dream come to life. But that dream is over now.

I currently study communication and theatre at Truman State University, but only because the college is my financial benefactor. Kirksville, Missouri is the location of my current humble abode-- a small apartment, of which I am certain is miles away from the curtained place in my dreams ,which-- under the assertion that all dreams are self-fulfilling prophesies -- has a legitimate and supposed obligation to demand its rightful due as my true asylum."


"In some sort of a tribute to my mother's abundant compassion, I have (since the advent of my youth) made a point of excelling in every challenge placed before me. I'm a perfectionist to the core. I have always been more-than-somewhat intellectual, and I once had the gall to take an online test which confirmed that my I.Q. was "above average" (I took it to reassure my insecurities more than to prove a point, I think.)"


"When I was fourteen, I read this quote by Albert Einstein and it legitimately changed my life: 'the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.'

Ergo, I've tenaciously spent the latter half of my years attempting to develop my sense of intuition (via perception); it was, in fact, the catalyst for my love of the study of communication. Now I can say that I am silver-tongued and knowledgeable about the art of cryptesthesia, so there!

For these gifts, I'm not sure whom to credit: my ancestors (whose genetic code seemed to have spawned intelligent offspring), my mother's domineering influence, or some sort of a Divine Presence which transcending into my being."


"To transition into a more detailed chapter of my spiritual advancement, let me first begin by saying that my religious journey started before my physical birth. Contrary to the normal, I wasn't introduced into the church by means of a "spiritual revelation," as it is sometimes called, but rather, religion was something that I was raised with. My mother loved me; she love the church. I loved my mother, so I loved the church.

From this it seems quite clear that I joined the church not out of any self-motivated principal, but out of a desire to prove my enduring love of my mother. I suppose that's why it's easy for me to see (sometimes contrary to my experience) the world as affable and hospitable: because of the idealogical undertone of my white-picket-fence Christian upbringing.

What am I now, religiously? I have absolutely no idea. I know that it is unrealistic to try and discover the origin of one's spiritual state of mind without taking into account the psychosomatic and educational dynamics that fashioned one's character, but I still lack insight into my beliefs on the matter--despite understanding the historical chronology that is an absolute prerequisite in determining my religious outlook. I'm in theological limbo?

I do, however, still feel the affects of the righteous moral and ethical ideals that I grew up under. And they have been genuine and important to me. And even in times of theological uncertainty, such as now, I have never turned away from those ideals. Because of that, the search for my religion is a worthy pursuit that is closely knitted to the fabric of my life."


"Anyways: I've only traveled to four of the fifty states, and I've never been out of the country. Of those four states, I've been to so many places that I can hardly keep them all straight. And yet that's not the boldest lie I'll probably tell you before we're done here.

I know exactly where I've been down to the color of the buds on the local foliage. I've learned in my brief swarees with traveling how to properly commune with the earth-- to understand the appeal of feeling that a home is a place that invites you there."


"I think of my past in moments of tedium now. And to my own disadvantage I sometimes analyze the last four years in every way possible (often while simultaneously choking in a huff of smog caused by the pollutant that is my friend.) I'm lofty, spiritual, and idealistic. I'm also indecisive; I change my mind about everything on a daily basis. I am comforted, however, because I feel that the cerebral
hand of cards that was dealt to me for the most part has not changed. I'm helplessly allotted to my spiritual phylum, appointed in ages long gone, laid unchanged for eons and countless snuffings of souls. I've often thought that I am one in a line of many malaise souls, but I think I'll be alright. It has to pass soon."


"I'm a portrait of my father, physically and mentally. Secretly I'm dejected that I hardly know him. But there is always time for that sort of a thing, right?"


"Sexually I'm a child of John Lenon; forever experimental, yet strictly raw and somewhat undeveloped because of my life's oppressions. I haven't experimented with this side of myself as much as I'd like to because I have simply lacked the time. This fact has never failed to precede my rational thought on the matter and henceforth has given me a itch-you-can't-quite--yet scratch feeling of injustice my whole life. I feel slighted by Mother Earth at not having the ability to develop emotional breadth. It's as though I have been robbed by existence, insofar that I am not afforded a single moment of reprieve from knowing exactly what I am. There is no moment, no shade of me, that still dwells with any sense of ignorance or even kind indifference towards what I want, what I desire, and what that makes me."


"I try to be what I think is the best woman I can be, and all I end up feeling is phony, like my pursuit of perfection is grounded in something that isn't real or that is fruitless. Sometimes I feel as though I don't simply live my life. But that's the real never-ending-story, so I'll spare you."


"...I'm perpetually exhausted, for more reason than one (several of which I have sworn to myself never to reveal.) I'm nervous and anxious in most social situations. Despite that people tell me I'm actually really easy to be around, and that I'm a social butterfly. Whatever. I write that completely off."


"I think far too much, by the way, if that wasn't already terribly evident."


"I haven't learned quite yet how to balance my heart and my intellect... or how to ignore my thoughts when necessary. I just realized--
in this moment-- that I talk and talk about myself, but actually feel a fool when I listen to even the smallest bit of another's problems. Their problems feel more real than mine, more worthy of my pursuits than anything I could ever need."


"I really don't need your help. I'll be okay... but I'll love and nurture you if you want mine. I've never been without an abundance of bravery in that respect. And no, it's not me being noble or gallant or try to put up a defense. I am simply at ease with that portion of myself.

Funny thing.

It took years of solemn reflection and a life-threatening illness to come to grips with. Now I know that all I want is someone to be kind to. I truly believe that is all it will take to keep me young at heart and able to carry on. If you're only willing to trust that I'm sincere..."


"My biggest insecurity is rejection. When I look in the mirror, I try to see what others may see and all I can think is creepy-- because I talk too much; I am too much of a presence."


"I wish that I was raised in a society that appreciated the beauty of silence. There's no escaping the voices of so many people not understanding that what they really need is inarticulation in order to heal. Our society hungers for it, yet we starve ourselves? It's an anorexia of tranquility."


"If I could exist in a world where my mind was perpetually free for expansion, I would. I could talk, talk, talk for so long. Its how I experience the world, how I solve my problems: through intellect. If you let me, I will go on forever (and it won't even do any good--like talking about your problems might.) It only strengthens the resolve of encroaching despair (which will be an adventure, to say the least.)"


" So I will take the hint of this ever-lengthening page and shut the fuck up."

Thank you and goodnight.
-E.

Proof positive that he deserved the 1850 poet laureate.

To a Stranger
by Walt Whitman

Passing stranger! you do not know
How longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking,
(It comes to me as a dream)

I have somewhere surely
Lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other,
Fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,

You grew up with me,
Were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become
not yours only nor left my body mine only,

You give me the pleasure of your eyes,
face, flesh as we pass,
You take of my beard, breast, hands,
in return,

I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you
when I sit alone or wake at night, alone
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.



Nothing else worthy of mention today.

-E.

Monday, July 14, 2008

To Opulent Beginnings

Dear Me,

Why did you stop writing a blog? It was good for you.
You're right... I'll start again.
I like it when I'm right.

-E.

In which a shadowy freedom fighter known only as "E" uses intellectual terrorist tactics to fight against her totalitarian society.


About Me

Followers