Posted on May 7, 2013
I have a very strict policy on not stealing things that can be bought, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have kleptomaniacal tendencies. I wouldn’t seem sane if I were to offer compensation for the glass pebble I pocketed from the banker’s desk or the eraser abandoned from the preceding tenant of this desk. But these things are worth something. I think that when I take them, I let those items and the world know that they are worth something. I guess animism is a little outdated, and I’m a bit too smart for that. But I cannot help but feel bad, because someone probably made that after all. Is it not the highest compliment to a cutlery designer that I just can’t leave a restaurant without that fork, perhaps their magnum opus, in my purse? But I take the plain ones, too. I have written about my thievery before, but I think I packaged in a practice to my own advantage. And it is sometimes when I eat cereal out of the spoon I took from a restaurant I’ve long forgotten. I say it’s so I won’t have to buy silverware when I am grown. (I sort of want to elope, and that means no wedding presents. It also means not having to invite every twig on my mangled family tree.) I just like to have things. I like to own them and keep them and put them in boxes. Some call that hoarding, but I ascribe meaning to the quirks that inhabit my bedroom. I keep old pens, and I was once ridiculed for it. And then one night I broke them all open and used the ink on a page in my sketchbook. I am also a saver of everything but money. This has been cause for criticism and frustration alike. I need that happy meal now, but I might use that glow-in-the-dark glitter later for something better. It makes me sad to see all those art supplies still wrapped up tight so neatly, but it’s like looking at raw potential. I hope that’s what they think when they see me. Everyone looks at everyone here. It’s like dinner theater in the dining hall. It makes me hypersensitive about my own performance, and maybe I’m just crazy. I still think that I walk around like a time bomb, my novels and poems and pictures putting pressure against the inside of my skin. I do not know how much longer they will wait.
Posted on May 7, 2013
Maybe I am a bandwagoner, a sucker for popular poetry, a hopeless romantic. Andrew Marvell, I adore you. Maybe you were a sick perv, but you sure had a way with words. You run circles around George Herbert. Donne is too proud. If you were alive today, you would be the boy downtown I know I shouldn’t sleep with but do anyway. I would have fallen for “To His Coy Mistress” without shame. Okay, I might have been ashamed. They say it’s all smoke and mirrors with you pretty words and bouncing rhymes. I don’t believe it. There is beauty in people who make beautiful things.
Posted on May 1, 2013
I’ll never take an IQ test, because I much prefer to believe I am a genius. Or I might. Could it be that I could settle for mediocrity and a quiet death if I knew that I was not of greater intellect than the masses? I might have to swallow my pride and superiority complex, though I do my best to enrobe in humor and an attempt to be personable. I think I might come on too strong. I guess most people have given up the dream of being famous by now, and it’s more alive in me now than ever. Every book and blog post I read that drips with talent and honesty blows cool airs on the embers that are my dreams of greatness. And it hurts to read pieces that linger in the stratosphere of beauty I fear I can never reach. I made a D on a paper for community college I wrote for a girl I know. I made every edit that was suggested, and resubmitted to my client a far less inspired essay. I write more quickly than my peers, and have made quite a sum of money writing the papers no one wanted to write. It’s long spent now. I write for free for my boyfriend, because my love manifests itself in gifts. He loves to do well in school, and what better present than a shot at success if only by saving him time he then uses to study for his other courses? And they are my words. I give them, and I sell them. And people still won’t read the paper I crafted hoping that one day one of my friends will be a narc for cheaters, identifying me as the great paper writer of the University of Georgia. And instead of crucifying me as Maggie, “Queen of the Construes,” I am sent by the investigator to Random House Publishers. They give me a book deal. Yet I suppose I might be like Hannah of Girls, cracking under the pressure of a check I cashed and spent without cranking out a word of my Great American Novel. I like to think that I could be Lena Dunham if my parents were famous. I’ve never had a panic attack, but I guess I could just for subject material. These are the words of a college freshman with a final in five hours, tweaking on modern medicine’s greatest attempt at chemical intelligence. I have even misplaced this artificial focus, but there is nothing fake about my name on the Dean’s List. This post is likely a rambling mess, and I am only willing it into value in my mind, blinded by the desire to create something worthwhile. I do not even know that anyone will still read books when and if I ever get around to writing one. I fear that the flattery and affirmation are things that I have fished for, fallacies I formed from the gratitude of those too lazy or too busy or too disheartened to make the grades I can when I whip up a page or two. Is it that I have read so many books that I can place a mask of impressive diction on a piece of average work? I have taken her entire English class. I read about the authors that I have loved, love, and will love. It seems as though they had been to the moon and back by the time they were where I am. I am not at the right school, not from the right place. If nothing else, I will let the words come from me, sometimes erupting and more often being forced out like the last smidgeon of toothpaste. I guess that’s what I get for squeezing from the middle. Momentum is a reality even outside of the physical world, though, and I must always be writing. This length of uncertainty and frivolousness is naught but for perhaps settling my sleepless mind for a moment, stepping away from the studies I must nonetheless return to. I will make every effort to be brilliant.
3 notes
Posted on April 24, 2013
When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Albert Camus
6 notes
Posted on April 23, 2013
You sleep carelessly under a quilt of all the success you’ve found. I want to cover you in gold leaf and wrap you in Christmas lights. Everyone deserves to see how you shine for me.
Posted on April 17, 2013
I myself tend to dwell on the stupidity of pacing a cemetery while she sat, frightened and alone, staring at the tip of her cigarette and envisioning herself, clearly now, in ashes.
David Sedaris, Naked
9 notes
Posted on April 14, 2013
You live two lives when you dream like this. It used to be that I lived one life in reality, and lived one as I wished reality was. Today I woke relieved to rejoin the world I know, not the one I made.
Posted on April 14, 2013
I like to listen to the songs I used to listen to back when I was sad. I feel a little bit nostalgic for that pain. I have a few reminders of that era, just learn my body. This is a love note. This is a love note for my new home, for my new life. This is me fawning over eating out on Sunday nights and leaving that hole behind. This is how it feels to cut the bad out of your life. This is what I mean when I say I don’t need you. And I never did. But I wanted you. I don’t need permission anymore, but you still seek my asking for it. I gave you a lot of years, and there are nights when I get a little too liberal pouring and fall down just a little again. I truly don’t blame you. I could harbor a lot of hate, and carry around a lot of blame. I grew because and in spite of you. You can continue to suck down your fears and suffering glass after glass and can after can, but I am done watching. This is a love note for saying my peace and it having little effect. This is a love note for letting go of how I wished you were.
Posted on April 8, 2013
The vicar in a tutu, he’s not strange. He just wants to live his life this way.
The Smiths
1 note
Posted on April 8, 2013
I found you, and I thought I had discovered something wild. Never thought I’d be there for the final show. I’ll be missing you, Perpetual Groove.
1 note
Posted on April 8, 2013
Your eyelids are flower petals. I see that you are delicate only when you sleep, but I try to remind myself of this in your waking hours, too. Something made you beautiful, and I’ve sworn against magic and fairytales. But I swear you cannot be just a work of coincidence. I feel as though you’ve taken something from me. I’m not as me as I was before, riddled with sadness and guilt, ashamed and comforting my demons with tomorrow morning’s regret. I have so many fewer words, so much less to say. I gave up my beautiful prose for you. I sit down to write now, and I strain to squeeze out a few sentences. They don’t sing like they used to. I always wanted to be an artist, to make words and clothes and canvases all day. You’d think happiness wouldn’t hurt a dress, but maybe there’s room for emptiness in everyone’s wardrobe. I am inspired. I am inspired to walk about with a grin, made stupid by love. But my fingers were once full. You pull those sketches and poems from them with your skin, taking them with you and wearing them. Sometimes after a long night, I feel the hole gaping wide. I turn from it, hastily stitching it shut, begging it not to gape like that, so tacky and rude. You weren’t invited. But what if I peered in? Would I be drawn to climb down just a little, to see what this abyss holds for me? To rejoin my ideas and passions and brainchildren? Could I find my magnum opus? I am not sure I could get back out. What is brilliance worth anymore, when I am not even sure that I could get there? I fear that they will always discuss my potential with disappointment.
3 notes
Posted on April 3, 2013
I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.
John Burroughs
Posted on April 2, 2013
My skin is so white, a lie would shine through it. That’s how you know I’ll always tell the truth.
Posted on March 30, 2013
I keep waiting until I can write something beautiful, but maybe my words will be like tinder. They can be frail and brittle, and they will catch fire. Perhaps a phoenix will rise from the ashes, and I will create out of nothingness.
1 note
Posted on March 21, 2013
I’ll read you e.e. cummings
And always let you sleep
I’ll wash you in the shower
And spend time on my knees
