All Things Wound Together

A question:
Am I the creator of the world around me?
Or is the world around me the creator of me?

-(It would seem that this sounds awkward and unmusical and a little bit muddy no matter how I write it.)-

A winding-gliding answer:
I think it goes both ways, I create and am created. The path I take is drawn, but also chosen.

I seem to be a woman of few words today...

This is something I did not choose *grins*


I was reading this blog on a college website the other day, and marveling to myself at the craftsmanship of the writing. It's a little bit intricate, but in a way that pretty well covers the entirety of the subject at hand, I think. It's fairly descriptive and it doesn't float off into the air like almost everything I write, it's solid and occupies its space.

So I am doing my best to pare myself down as a person and reach the very heart of me which I guess also translates to my writing, but it feels like a sort of simplicity and spareness of words that's boring rather than refreshing? *shrugs*
I have no idea, but I do think it links somehow.
I have to try, kinda really hard, to wax lengthy and delve deep into any matter. But I guess that's just how it is with such things, no matter who you are. It all takes focus and determination.
That's not something that seems to come easily to me most of the time, determination. I act like I'm good at it, but I'm not so sure anymore. What have I really seen through to the end?
Mostly I feel flighty and like a shallow dipper, hummingbird drinking from the surface of a small pool.

Musing, not intellectually plotting out and methodically sifting every rock from the sand from the dust. They're all full of universes anyhow...

Understanding all of this, though, allows me to consciously choose instead of merely following a path drawn or dug, I don't have to fall into the ruts of my own mind and experience, I can forge a new path for myself.
(For a minute it looked like that was going to draw itself to a close, but the thread of thought continued and I watched it split once again into ten different branches, all a different color and voice.)
I suppose I enjoy following every little path, either physically or metaphorically, and that is why I don't often like sifting the soil to fine treasures. It all looks like treasure, it's all breath-takingly beautiful and fascinating. So either I want to hold and see every treasure, or forget it all and continue on forward with blinders. A horse and carriage in London, don't you know... That's not fun for long though, so then, I suppose, I enter supernova.

You wouldn't believe how analytical I can be, but that's not all there is. That would be why I try to refrain from "I am" statements. It's all good, it's all me, and it changes so quickly. I've said I'm contradictory before, but it's funny how much more even that means now.
Creator and created, so it goes with god? Perhaps, perhaps.
After all, if we are god, if god is within, all around us, wouldn't god look so strangely opposite, though yin and yang are inseparable? God being inseparable from anything, everything, and Good/ Bad, separated by the human mind with the imposing forward slash, really being more gad, or bood than anything else. Black and white, spaced apart and brought together by the word "and", being more of a beautiful swirl and swoop or gray than the harsh straight line between them.

I'm not entirely sure any of this is following, or rather, leading whatever came before it, because the longer I sit here and type, the more my mind becomes a mess of color and static and my eyes light up with the glow from this strange tapestry that seems to be weaving itself from the movement of my fingers, the dance of my thoughts.
The longer I meditate, or think, for that matter, the more my language dissolves into something purely from that space in my heart that isn't entirely of me but is also the purest me there could possibly be. The more parallel universes and strange dimensions open up into milky galaxies and colors unknown by any psychedelic experience.
I can barely follow myself, so how should I expect another being to? I wouldn't personally know if this is a quandary experienced by all or none. I tend to relate my philosophies to all of the world and human race, and sometimes I don't seem far off, but at others I am quite sure I have missed the mark altogether.


To wrap this whole thing up finally:
As with many of the questions I ask, there are two answers, or an answer disguised as two, when really it is one thing of two colors wound together. Perhaps the question should not have been separated into two itself in the first place.
I would say that I am created by my world as I create the world around me; It is a dance, no one partner doing all of the leading or following.

Every Once In a While (This is Supernova)

Can't apply myself to writing today,
Though the pen scratches at my ribcage,
The birds are making an enormous racket--
And I would throw stones at them--
But I'm a content sort of restless.

Every once in a while I become sick of metaphor
Weightlessness,
But I'm trying to fly,
Alternately floating off and crashing to the ground.

Creativity, today, is an itch I can't scratch,
A rope thrown over a tree branch that won't catch.
Would anybody like to hold these things?
Take them from me and explore them
And give me your own things in return.

How much does the song in your heart vary?
Every once in a while mine becomes this elemental,
Orchestral movie score, and I have no idea what to do with it 

Or how to sing it anymore.
That is the itch that begs to be scratched,
Scales hanging just so,
Ready to be shed at the slightest touch,
But it is an art.

The dance of the girl in supernova,
Brighter than she can stand,
A whirl of color and light;
Singing and drawing and playing the guitar--
And wondering what to do with it all,
Everything begging for another shoulder to alight on.

Did you know that the universe is underneath our feet?
This planet is round,
But it is no wonder we once thought it was flat,
And every once in a while we forget
that the universe isn't just above our heads;
We stand upon the stars.

Ben Howard: About Still Waters, what his music is to me

This is actually something I'd planned before that whole Kesang Marstrand

 post from a while ago. But now the two have inspired and collided and spun off from each other. Anyway, I rather enjoy documenting some of my music discoveries on here, lengthy or otherwise, and it creates an interesting sort of stream-of-consciousness commentary, which is something I feel like writing at the moment, but can't really figure out how to begin. 

Ben Howard - Oats in the Water
To begin with the first, found by my best friend, shared between and then adopted, a thing not my own enfolded into my being, by me.
Probably the one many of his fans heard first, for whatever reason, lately as a result of the song playing in a Walking Dead episode.
Absolutely beautiful, my love. Heart aching in a way, and the music has a lovely rhythm to it.
I love Ben's intonation and inflection, it sounds like he's singing it for the first time, with all of the thoughts and emotions fresh in his own mind. Reflective and darkly tranquil.

Ben Howard - Esmerelda
Lordy this video is lovely, black and white, the stormy skies, the waves crashing backwards, like time is rewinding underneath everything being said. It very much evokes a feeling of looking back to something long past and deeply missed.
All of Ben's music makes me just a little sad and rather meditative. It's fun to pray along to as well.
That all probably sounds pretty weird, and it's hard to explain, but that's as close as I'm getting at the present.

Ben Howard - Depth Over Distance
This is one of my very favorites, I first discovered a fantastic layered version on Tumblr, which was haunting and beautifully rainy. I adore both versions, though; this one's warmer, the other very still. Here's a link to the layered version, Layered Depth Over Distance

Ben Howard - Black Flies
Terribly lovely, and it seems like it was serendipitous the day I heard it, though I'm not sure. I think I wrote the October Fly poem the afternoon before I first heard Ben Howard, the first three of which were Oats in the Water, Esmerelda and Black Flies.
I remember walking in the dark, speaking about Ben's music, and having simultaneous thoughts, speaking at the same time, weaving bright threads of gold in the dark of the night, the winter not yet cold enough to draw our breath upon the air.

Ben Howard - Old Pine
He makes want so dearly to learn to really, truly play guitar.
All of his songs sound so different, and have such different subjects, but still they have a blue thread wound through, a life all their own shared throughout.

Ben Howard - To Be Alone
It sounds like he puts a lot into everything he writes and sings. Seriously, the emotion of it all, every one of his songs sounds like it's being made up as he sings it, every feeling felt in the deepest way. Reflective, Introspective... Do you suppose every artist, musician, public figure is a mirror whether they mean to be or not?
I act like I'm a mirror, though I'm not entirely sure I actually am. Or maybe I am too much a mirror.
Watching "Rise of the Guardians" last night, you wouldn't expect it to, I didn't expect it to, but it raised some rather deep questions within me. What is my core? I don't think I really know, and that's why I'm kinda lost. But I guess I also don't really want to look.

Ben Howard - Promise
"I think," he said, "that it's a good thing to get out of your usual, you know, surroundings. Because you did things out about yourself that you didn't know, or you forgot. And then you go back to your regular life and you're changed, you're a little bit different because you take those new things with you. Like a Hindu, except all in one life: you sort of get reincarnated depending on what happened and what you figure out. And any one place can make you go forward, or backward, or neither, but gradually you find all your pieces, your important pieces, and they stay with you, so that you're your whole self no matter where you go. Your Buddha self. That's my theory, anyway." 
-From "Criss Cross" by Lynne Rae Perkins 

Ben Howard - Keep Your Head Up
That looks like so much fun, can you imagine doing that? The grandeur of building and then using that magnificent slide? Can you imagine thinking of that and then actually sharing that dream with others and acting on it? :D It's absolutely beautiful, and yeah, it's a music video, so it's terribly idealistic and it's taken for granted that it was edited and a little contrived, but that's still cool, and from watching the behind the scenes video, it looks like it was a ton of fun. 


What does his music mean to you? How does it make you feel? What does it make you remember?

Kesang Marstrand: clear-sighted giddiness awoken within me

I think this is one of the days I've been waiting for to come to pass.
I've made a choice, and I've rediscovered something that once struck me as so beautiful, but I didn't investigate further, maybe because it just wasn't time. I took note, however, and that has enabled me to find it again.


Kesang Marstrand - The Spell I'm Under
I don't actually remember hearing this the first time, but I wrote
Kesang Marstrand 
"The spell I'm under" 
(Incredible voice, that one...) 
on a piece of paper taped to the side of my dresser. Today I glanced at it and thought it might be interesting to look the song up and listen to it again, and so began my plunge into a world I didn't know I already knew so well.
(The man in the video? The one with the baggy eyes? There is a lot of beauty in him, he just is.)

Kesang Marstrand - Colorless Farewell
Oh love, this video, this song, this may sound silly, but this is almost exactly what I would film and sing, maybe that's a little presumptive, but I feel this whole thing so deeply in my heart.
This is the music I've been looking for, the girl I thought I'd never find outside of myself.

Kesang Marstrand - Grow a Garden
This song makes me smile, this video looks so much like how I see the world, I understand it so much, I think, though that may be presumptive too, I don't care anymore, though, all that is beautiful in her I see in me, so I will try to stop being so critical of my own heart.
Everything is so profoundly beautiful lately, I thought I'd lost that, but it's been with me all along, I've just grown accustomed to everything being so beautiful, and my heart's already broken, so it doesn't break all the time every time anymore. Everything is beautiful, always.

Kesang Marstrand - Endless Skies
Different sound from a lot of her other songs. This one I don't really know how to say a lot of what it means to me. I guess I feel like hiding today, I feel like living in prayer and meditation and quiet today. Endless skies inside, you know. Reflection and introspection. Ohm.
It feels like she so freely writes the things I hold myself back from. Why?
I'm still so self-conscious of myself, of the things I like and want and discover and want to share.
You see this? What I'm doing right now? Maybe it looks uninhibited in a way, but also it's not. I choose to stop being so self-critical all the time, but I've chosen it before, and that voice is getting weaker, but it's still hanging around my neck, guarding my heart.
Today is supernova, though, a quieter sort of supernova, but supernova all the same, my heart burning pretty clear and bright. Can you see it?
My heart as the sun, dark spots here and there, but less than the light and shrinking as I see them and light them on fire again.

Kesang Marstrand - Bodega Rose
The second of her videos I watched today, right after The Spell I'm Under.

It is funny, this feeling like I know a person so well even though there's no way that's possible. Kinda naive and silly, but hey, interesante. Something to think about.
I wonder who she has loved? She sounds so earnest.
I may be supernova, but I am also eclipse and must remember to relax over and over again so the curtain may fall away.

Kesang Marstrand - Stand By Me
I think it's really cool that it looks like she just sat down and recorded this in her home one day, maybe with a phone or some sort of low-grade camera.
I guess I hold myself back in some things because I have this wish to share, but I don't think anybody wants to hear all that's in my head. Kinda the problem with my poetry lately, I write stuff and I don't like it and I figure it's not worth anything anyway. But it's still something close to my heart, things that mean a lot to me. How can one disregard and devalue the things one cares about? I guess I don't really take myself seriously, and I've noticed that in some strange, small way, I'm afraid that others will take me seriously.


I'm not sad today, I've acknowledged sadness in myself, and I've chosen to stop dwelling on that so very much, because it seems like I've become slightly bitter, and I don't want to be that. I'm still kinda snarky about myself, but hey, if I can write all of this on here, with a clear voice and steady eyes, I think I'll be ok.
Namaste

Seasonal Affective Disorder maybe? But that too would feel like theft and misalignment. None of it matters anyway.

So basically, it feels like almost nothing I'm doing with my life lately is actually getting me anywhere. Don't know where it is I hope to go, exactly, but I'm feeling terribly stagnant and impotent.
I don't feel like I'm really learning anything well.

What do I have to give to people? Life as connection and network; but I don't know how to do that really. I'm not really woven into life, I don't really feel like I fit; I am jangling, dissonant.
I keep skipping days, or rather, living through them as through a dream, something to get me somewhere else I already am. I don't know... Can't really explain. And I guess that's what I figure my purpose is, explain the unexplainable, but does it even matter? Even if it matters not to anyone else, is it enough that it seems to matter to me?
I'm getting nowhere, and yeah, it feels like I ought to be getting somewhere, but I don't know how. I've got suspicions, but not much more than that, and I don't want to look at them too hard.
Trapped and stuck in all of these things I thought I didn't have to deal with anymore, or even yet. Somebody keeps saying that it is so easy to get out of it all, to move past it all, but here I am, futile and strung up.
Maybe I keep looking outside of myself too much, but I learn from the patterns of others. I'm kinda lost, and maybe it's just the weather, but I don't know. I'm so quick to adopt the things in others that I think fit in me, but I still feel like that's a little invalid, a little untrue. I'm so colorless, it seems, but that doesn't sound true either. Looks like I'm looking for truth, even though I thought I'd decided against that long ago. I decided to search for love and compassion rather than truth. Truth is so subjective.
Chasing my own tail and spinning off after the tails of others.
I don't really believe in this world, I guess that's why I don't fit. Where do I fit? It doesn't seem like I really fit here anymore, but even that is transitory.
Nothing's the right color. But that doesn't seem to matter either. I feel so autistic. But nobody believes that either, and probably they're right. Yeah, still stuck halfway between my feelings and others' sayings. So many dang directions...
Isn't it weird that you can live in your own body and head 24 hours a day, and still you don't understand yourself entirely? You don't know where everything inside you comes from or why? But it never works for me to just surf over it all, I have to experience it, dips and crescendos. I'm so torn still, still don't know why. Still don't know why. Thought I was getting closer, and maybe I am, but I really don't know. It's like nothing I do matters, and in one way, I don't care, but in another, it's driving me nuts. Sometimes I wonder if I'm one of those nineteen to twenty-one year olds who's going to spiral off into nothing in a fantastic display of insanity, but even that is nothing but idle curiosity, though I admit I have a morbid and self-effacing side I don't like to indulge often but still it comes up, all self-satisfied and smug every once in a while. Sometimes it's kinda perversely pleasurable to stare into the void, eyes wide and glittering.
Is it possible to be objective about oneself? I guess that's something I'm trying to figure out, but even that annoys my sometimes. I don't like being removed from myself and my feelings. I kinda have a tendency, it seems, to run away from that which makes me uncomfortable, but something always yanks me back, and now I am tiredly resigned to just going through whatever it is I have to. 

Voice

Man, nothing will come to me today. Can't seem to write anything well, neither poetry, essay, nor stream-of-consciousness. Nothing will really fit together, and I'm dissatisfied with all of my drafts and writing ideas at the moment. I want to write, but it doesn't come out very well, I'm still not complete or clear, I've got shallow-digging dis-ease (as our friend G would call it) and ADD in some form today. Don't know what to do, and what I want to do, I think I should do something else instead. At least I finally practiced guitar today -I want to learn; I want to learn how play guitar, drive, write, be with people, and just generally apply myself. I can be fierce and focussed, but I guess I don't fixate much. --Even that isn't true though, I like to think I'm not obsessive, but when I really look into and at myself, I am totally obsessed. I am so so so redundant, but, balance. It's hard to talk of balance, though, it's so easy to fall into duality and polar opposites and untruths. Juggling differently colored balls from hand to hand and back again. Why keep them moving though? Can't they just be? I'd like to think they're not even separate; the yin and yang symbol, though overused, is beautifully fitting; two things as inseparable, interconnected one. -That's pretty cool, and in some ways it simplifies things, and in others, complicates. But you know, this world is more than one dimension, and to look at any one thing differently, the whole web shifts. Nothing is just surface, or just depth; no one is only one thing. I dislike referring to people as occupations because it seems to dehumanize them. I'm not even a "writer", I'm Amoniel, but that doesn't quite cover it either, I'm this thing that takes form around, I'm this that changes shape constantly, that never fits into the world the same way for longer than right now. Yes, I fall into shallow-digging dis-ease every once in a while, but even that is not how I work always. --I want to dive deep deep into the world, life, the universe, -it sounds silly, and I don't always want that, but -everything. I love stained fingers and dirt and all of the marks life and time leaves on us, scars are beautiful; wrinkles, freckles, and moles, absolutely lovely. I love to get paint on my hands and graphite all over my fingertips and face. I love calluses and rough hands, tough feet. I don't want to be perfect, I want to be alive. I am life's canvas, my own canvas, the canvas and paper of others, mirror and imprint. When I get firewood with my family, I like to see the scratches on my arms from the hard work of loading and carrying and unloading, and I like to watch all of the marks fade away. All of these things that fix and flow us in time, now then tomorrow. I want to dig deep into my own soul and examine it intently, and I want to do the same with others. I'm looking looking finding the thread that ties and unwinds all things. Maybe it has a name, maybe it doesn't, but I seem to be able to find and talk with and about it just fine without a name, and even with an imperfect name. The imperfect name reminds me that it won't fit forever, I think; that I know it all and I know nothing, and everything fits perfectly. 

I said I couldn't write today, but perhaps I was trying too hard. And now I have found my flow, my track; my voice. 

Liebster Award

A while back I got a lovely comment from from Mary at Cogitational Counterpoints nominating me for the Liebster award, which is kinda fun and totally unexpected :) Thank you Mary, for reading and the nomination :)
If you've been nominated or would like to nominate somebody, all you have to do is follow the below set of rules:

1. Link back to the blogger who nominated you.
2. Give 11 random facts about yourself.
3. Answer the 11 questions set by the person who nominated you.
4. Nominate 11 other bloggers who have a small following.
5. Create 11 questions for your nominees to answer.
6. Tell your nominees, on their own blog, that you have nominated them.

11 Random Facts About Me:

1. I dislike long sleeves, and nearly always roll or push them up.
2. I miss my dog terribly since he died last January.
3. Lately, I enjoy doing things that terrify me, I've been able to push past fear in the past couple of years, and I've found that I enjoy the things that are difficult for me all the more fiercely once I've somewhat mastered them. Take guitar tuning, for example, once a vast unknowable unknown, now one of my favorite things about practicing the guitar. 
4. I love writing and receiving letters, though I'm not very good at actually writing and sending them in a timely manner. 
5. The San Rafael Swell is my happy place.
6. I have no idea how to go about getting ready for Christmas this year, I haven't got a thing done and it's not much longer until December arrives.
7. The movie Inception was quite the spiritual and enlightening experience for me.
8. Right now I'm wearing my favorite blue sweater which will quite soon probably fall apart, as it is getting fairly threadbare in places. 
9. I say I have no expectations, I think I have no expectations, but I'm quite open to the possibility that I might. I still maintain that relationship is organic and a thing of space rather than just bonds. 
10. I love deep and thoughtful documentaries like Kumare, I Am, and The Nature Of Existence. 
11. Life is terribly interesting to me, adventure, people, discovery. This outlook does tend to ebb and flow though, as all things do. I'm not sure balance is stillness so much as wave, pattern and resonance.

The 11 Questions That The Person Who Nominated Me Asked:

1. What is your favorite past time?

I don't really have any one favorite past time, I'm kinda scattered all over the place. I love hanging out with my friends and family, reading, writing, playing guitar. Hiking, whatever. I love doing everything, and it is all my favorite :)

        
        2. Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art?

Both, yin and yang. Not opposite, but intertwined.

        3. What's your ultimate goal in life?

Enlightenment and deep relationship.

        4. What is the last thing you bought via online shopping?

Light Martin acoustic guitar strings. I'm awesome because I can break a string tuning down...

        5. How did you get started using blogspot?

I got sick of how much I was on facebook in 2009, so I created this blog with the help of my dad to sort of experiment with for a week of abstinence from fb. 

        6. Do you have a favorite film, and if so, what is it?

Far too many favorites, and perhaps all because I have learned or can learn something from them.

          7. What's your preferred fall outfit?

Jeans and a sweater over a t shirt, maybe a hat.

        8. What's your biggest accomplishment to date?

I don't really believe in that. I just live. 

        

        9. Who inspires you the most?

Yo

        10. The best show on television right now is:

Doctor Who :) (That's basically the only thing I watch right now that's ongoing and current, though.)

I don't think I shall nominate anyone else, if someone wants to nominate themselves from me, that'd be great, haha :) Just let me know and I'll come up with some questions :]

Thanks again Mary, you're a sweetheart.

Cracks of Gold: right now

Where am I right now? I’m not writing about where I want to be, or where I’m headed, but where I am right now. So often I write about where I want to be, but instead of that helping me move forward, I just feel lost and helpless.

Right now, I am lost; right now I can see a tiny light, but I can’t seem to feel a pathway. I’m blindfolded; enough that everything is hazy and unsure, but not so I don’t know I am blindfolded. I am numb; finger and toe and heart-blind. I am deaf; hearing but snatches of sound and song. I am dumb; half-communicating with incomplete words and fluttering hand gestures. I am aware of so many perceived limitations, but I am also aware of what might be, beyond all of this veil and insulation.

All is but impression on me, and I have fractional confidence. I am an imperfect mirror, reflecting wobbly, watery images of others, and myself, but reflecting non-the-less.

I am in a chrysalis, but I can’t tell if I, butterfly, am emerging; or even if this, also, is nothing but a reflection of someone else.

I can sense patterns; but when you’re in the middle of a pattern, yourself, with other people, it is so hard to stick to that pattern sense, and to have confidence in it. It is so hard to sense that pattern truly, objectively, and not reason yourself out of what you do really understand. The pattern of my days lately seems to be the only pattern I can see without having to feel, without becoming lost in emotions and the avoidance thereof. Mornings are lost in melancholy and a certain sort of moping and ennui; afternoons are merely lost; evenings terrifying and stressful (seems like that’s mostly just when I try really hard to wrest back control, though.); and the night finally relaxes into pieces of the puzzle settling in and temporary comfort.

Today, this afternoon, is lost and wandering; raw, drained, and dry. I really don’t feel terrible though, because I finally shook off sentimentality for a time, albeit ennui is not entirely gone. Maybe I am sick in heart.

Still I manage to find puzzle pieces, and still I manage to stick them, if only temporarily, to their places in life.

Why all of this writing of where we’re going, or where we should be? Jonathon Livingston Seagull, how beautiful in its idealism and teaching, but I can hardly see myself there. Did Richard Bach ever reach the point his characters traveled? Did he even mean or strive to? Did he find any of what he was looking for, and did he learn to practice it?

I keep finding small pieces in small places; small answers in short books. We look for answers in other people and their works, but they don’t even seem to be where they say it is possible to go. Maybe all they mean to create is beautiful metaphor and nothing else. I have yet to actually meet anyone who truly loves or flies or heals with their bare hands. Only healing with herbs and heart, loving at all, and flying in mind and spirit. Isn’t any of that, imperfect as it seems to be, still miraculous?

Don’t we find something in the search, don’t we come to understanding as we share? I don’t believe in disregarding wisdom in a great person -or any person- because they’ve done something stupid or bad in their lives. Wisdom is wisdom, and we are all so complex and flawed, beautiful in our imperfection, beautiful in our strife and struggle. We can come to some sort of completion, some sort of wholeness, in sharing.

To finally answer my first question of where I am right now; Estoy pero aqui, curled up writing on my bed, wandering life and my own heart and mind. 

Guitar Lessons and Driver's Ed.

Forget all you thought you knew
in the effort to learn

Empty memory
Empty mind
For you cannot fill a cup that is already full
or can you?

First the golfballs, you know,
Then marbles, sand, and beer.
Can you still fill it?
Or, as with everything,
is there infinite space always within?

Sore fingers
and terror.
Missing days,
but in the future it will all be the same.
Or not.

Too much homework and no money
But I'm preparing for the future, right?

Musings on the facts of life as I can see them presently

This whole growing up thing is really weird. What to do when next year, life will probably not resemble what has been constant over the past eighteen years?
I have no idea where to begin, though I'm planning on taking a driving course with one or two of my other driving-age siblings next month.
Why not this month? The instructor I called doesn't hold a class in August, as most people are finishing up or going on vacations that month.
I've been told that it's crucial to get my GED, so I guess that's my next big step. Everyone says it's easy, but I still harbor small, whispering doubts... I don't have much confidence in myself or my abilities. I guess that's my biggest challenge in becoming a more or less independent adult, the fact that I'm quite self-doubting, at least in the ways of the world.
I'm thinking I can at least get my GED, get a job and save up for the next year after which maybe I can attend college. I don't know, I hate making plans. I've been planning on going to college "next year" since I was fourteen. Baha. Look at me now...

Letters Blog: May 4th, 2011. Wednesday

Another letter to Yo

Dear Yo,

You've become a sort of confidante 

in my mind.
You don't really talk back, and I 

probably wouldn't talk to you in 

real life like
I do in my mind, but who knows? 

Maybe this is just practice.
I've been very open to you in 

our person-to-person correspondence,
I'm generally very closemouthed 

and afraid of what people will think of
what I say.
Perhaps the conversations 

(more like monologues) I have

with you in
my mind will allow me to feel 

comfortable to really talk with 

you, and
perhaps with other people as well.

I wonder what you would think if 

I were ever to tell you all of this, or
if you were to come across this 

letter. Would you even recognize
this as being written to you?

You know, there are all these 

rather abnormal questions I want to
ask people, though I doubt I 

will ask most of them.
I want to ask you what you 

honestly think of me, what 

you think of
what I have to say, and what 

you thought of me when we were
first introduced.
I wonder if there are any questions 

you want to ask me. I would
answer them truthfully, I think I 

generally do.
In a strange way, I trust and 

relate to you as a sort of kindred
spirit from what I know of you, 

and what you have told me.
I won't say that I haven't found 

many kindred spirits in my life,
I've found quite a few, and most 

of them became my best friends,
If only for a time.
the thing about kindred spirits 

is they don't stay that way for long.
Would you remain a sensed 

kindred if I were to get to know 

you more,
or am I just projecting? It 

doesn't seem that way to me, 

but I don't know.

Would you be scared of me, 

or who I am, if you were to 

get to know me
better? I see myself as a very 

strange and abnormal person 

inside and
out. I don't really know if anyone 

else thinks that. But judging from
Sixbillionsecrets, most people 

think they're completely alone in their
fears and insecurities. Everyone 

thinks they're the weirdest person
around.

I had a whole other paragraph 

here, but it digresses from the rest of
the letter, it has no point, so 

I'll just forget about it.

Thank you for all of you've

unconsciously and indirectly taught me.
Thank you for reading this letter, 

and thank you for being you.
love,
Amoniel

Letters Blog: April 9th, 2011. Saturday

Mind wanderings, not a letter.

Sometimes I wonder how many people -
aqquainted or unknown to me- come across
my blogs and don't comment or make
their presence known in any way.
There are probably tons of them, you know.
The Internet is such a vast and complex dimension.

Sometimes I wonder if the people I admire
most know about my blogs, or if they even care.
They certainly don't comment, but honestly, hardly
anybody ever comments on websites like these.
I know that I rarely comment on other blogs,
though I am careful to reply to most, if not all of
the comments on my blog.
Yeah...

A very Finite Piece to an Infinite Puzzle

(Didn't feel right to type it out, but it felt okay to somehow post it here, so I photographed it.)

Stream of Consciousness: A response to personal knots untangled and Amanda Palmer's "The Art of Asking"

I am closed, but all the people I admire are open.
In my happiest, greatest dreams, I am open.

I am masked and cloaked and closely guarded.
I keep then all out, so why do I so badly want them in, why do I hope they'll let me in?

The things I want most to be, I keep in myself, away from others.
My heart is giving, my soul is tender, but I keep them draped in watchful distrust, not the blackest or heaviest of shrouds, but very interfering in the filtering of light from within and without.
I want to give, but to protect myself from potential harshness from others, I beat them to the punch and make myself feel bad first, even though they had no such intent themselves. I was not raised to be anything but my most authentic, honest self, I was never told that anything about me was anything but beautiful or multifaceted, and none of my friends have really stuck around long enough or been the kind of person to tell me anything of the sort. And yet, here it all is; the shroud, cloak and mask, the stinging barbs of "What you are you should not be" and "Nobody should/could/will ever like or love you".

But it is all lies, the voice that said I need all of this, the need for all of this, this in and of itself.
The Art Of Asking: it's okay to ask, it's okay to be open.
By asking, you are at your most vulnerable, your most earnest and authentic; your most open.
It is great, overflowing, boundless joy, and people respond to that on a very deep level, I respond to that on a very deep level.

Something will probably always be there (though I'm not going to over look the possibility that it won't), the worm-tongue whispering to the light of my being, "Hide. That is the only way to safety. Stay closed." But that voice is wrong; we get from others what we give, and I want the world to be as bright as I sometimes feel always.

Quagmire, Quandary, call it what you will.

I find myself wanting to return to facebook two weeks earlier than I had really planned. I've missed it much of the time I've spent away, though it's not like I ever actually went into (haha) withdrawal.

I miss talking with my friends, and being connected with my family. I also have a ton of photos I want to post, and a few I really want to share with certain friends. facebook is such a diverse and expansive world, there's so much I can do with it, so much I haven't been able to do all summer, though I've been able to do other things instead.

I wish to return early, though I also find myself hesitant about doing so, almost like to do so would be to fail a promise I made to myself. Like reactivating my account before school starts would be cheating.
Back and forth, a debate between feelings and reason, ha. We'll see how this goes, maybe I can prolong a decision for so long that before I know it, school will have started and my problem will have been solved!

Why are people so judgmental?

(Edit: The comments below are helpful.)

Redemption Song

How many songs have been written for redemption, or to inspire revolution, a new world, peace, and new ways of thinking? How many artists, writers, and musicians have hoped to inspire millions, perhaps even the whole world, only to have had their works fall flat,  or to have inspired just a few of the hundreds of people who follow them and their works?


Just how do you bring people together? How do you unite a nation, much less the entirety of mankind?


It really shouldn't be all that hard, after all, we all come from the genus homo sapiens, we all live on the same planet, we all live and breathe and eat and reproduce, more or less.

Most of us are taught the same basic truths through our religions; love, compassion, the golden rule. That ought to bring at least a great majority of us together.
And yet religions set themselves far apart from each other, refusing to acknowledge their similarities, refusing to work together for the same end, the end that, really, all of them are looking to achieve.

Once again, we really aren't all that different.

So why hasn't anyone been able to accomplish world peace or unity as of yet?