If I am left to my own devices for too long
The world whirls out of focus,
I lose my balance
My mind
my mind chatters away,
Digging a hole to hide in
No reason why,
Only that I am paranoid,
and a narcissist,
and I'm not entirely sure I am lovable,
deserve to be loved
at the same time that I believe
Everyone should love me.
Hello, it is me, come to visit this place of home.
There is a child hiding in my closet. I have no idea how there is room even for her small form in there, stuffed full as it is, as everything in my room is. I suppose I shall look back on all of this fondly someday, and indeed, I do not hate it terribly right now.
There is another child struggling to hide behind a dresser, but he has been found. The child in the closet is smiling at me from between the folds of a few dark dresses, and the child who was found is back again, hiding under my blankets and rocking my bed.
Apparently this is a game of hide and seek, based upon some sort of prison system.
The closet child has been found, a white arm and mess of hair were visible and the "warden" called her out. The child hiding in my bed has also been recovered and led to the next room, to return to "prison" once again. Now there is no one in here but me, and my sister who is actually in dream land still, so she doesn't really count.
I sit cross-legged amid mountainous folds of purple afghan and floral bed sheet, the corners of my laptop resting on my legs below my knees.
I'm kinda sorta lost. And I don't really know how to find my way back.
Never alone for long, a child darts into my room and onto my sister's bed pursued by the "warden" and is hauled off once again. My sister is sitting up, looking at me blankly, says "I hate getting up". And she lays back down, all yellow shirt and hair, sits up, blinks. I look at her, she looks at me, and says "what? what are you doing? what are you doing? Smiling so sneakysly."
I rather miss my school-time schedule. It's easier to write and remember to nap and exercise. I've given up on all else during vacation, but writing is life and nap-time, haha, makes life easier. I really am quite the four year old.
Never did it occur to me that I would be comforted by schedule and regularly ordered days, but I am, silly girl who thinks she's so very random. But ha, balance... Because yes, I can get very, very bored by too tight of a regimen.
How does this all fit together, I wonder? I followed the thread, but I also wound it. It is my making, so do I have the key to pulling it all tight and tying it neatly, or having been made by me, is there no answer nor key at all?
I have spent today doing the things I enjoy, and yesterday I did the same.
It would seem that I turned nineteen at five in the morning a great many more than 24 hours ago, one more year spanning across the ages in this grand, small life.
That's the age two of my best friends were, nineteen, when we met one of them, and really started hanging out with the other. They made being nineteen look absolutely awesome, and I seem to remember and hang onto weird little things about other people, remembering conversations and idiosyncrasies and outward appearance and small details of lives and being at certain times.
This is a year I've been rather looking forward to, for abstract and intangible reasons. This is an age and birthday that arrived gracefully, fitting and flowing freely. Still, I never really think of myself as just one age. I am many.
I had no expectations, though many hopes for my birthday, however, hope is more flexible than expectation, and doesn't fall as hard when it is not met. Everything was perfect, which I guess is just how life has been lately, perfect as it is, perfect day by day, nothing amiss, though, yeah, there are still things I wish would happen or happen more, and it's not like I'm just blithely happy all of the time.
I am exploring life and being, and rather liking everything I find. There's not much of a concept of good or bad in my head anymore, which in itself, isn't necessarily great or worse. I mean, I do things that don't strike others as kind or safe, but I see no "wrong" with them. Maybe I'm overconfident. Part of the problem with being in the moment, I guess. But I still feel that I straddle past, present and future in my life. I'm getting more and more independent, even though others' still matter, other people still have wisdom and can offer guidance. It's confusing though, because I look at my grandmother, who asks for advice often, and voices her grand dreams, but she doesn't necessarily actually listen to the advice and guidance she gets. I don't really want to do that, because it makes people feel ignored and ill-valued.
I dance around the concepts in my head, as well as the things in outer life, looking carefully at every side of all the dimensions I sense. This can make for confusion, or at least, confusing writing. I look at every side, up and down and in and out, and I can see how I could go spinning off on the tangent, but I hold my core still and continue to observe the thing I am exploring; I want to see it all. Like the blind men and the elephant, except I want to feel every side of the elephant, and I want to know what others feel, what the elephant is to them, and then I can fit it to what I know of the elephant and know the elephant a little better.
I want to choose, not just fly off at the most opportune sound or sight. I guess that's why I don't really get mad anymore, at least not lately, not necessarily never --stretching of into the future-- There are so many sides to everything, and so many sides to every person who, themselves, feel so strongly. And the why for their feelings, oh, that could be explored forever too.
My brother, who reading a piece out loud during the Christmas organ recital, mispronounced a word. This, along with the absolute beauty of his tone and inflection while reading, striking every word in gold and mahogany, sent me and my sister into a strained giggle fit. It wasn't meant to make him uncomfortable, and it wasn't even entirely because of him, but also of the absurd beauty of the entire program, the emotion and setting and remembering there, everyone singing lovely songs off-key but whole heartedly and in easy companionship. Beautiful things can be amusing, you know, and I am elvish, fairy-kind, Gwragged Annwn, seeing the world at odd angles which can elicit strange reactions and emotions from me. It was exhilarating, in a way, and uncontrollable, I knew it wasn't a good idea, but it was nigh unto impossible to stop. I kept bumping up next to and careening off of my sister's giggling. We did eventually get a hold of ourselves, though, when the next carol finally started.
The whole thing was kind of embarrassing, and I apologized profusely to my brother right after and multiple times over the course of the evening.
Somebody asked that evening, after the program was over, whether I felt more mature, it being my birthday and all, and I said yes, though inside I was remembering the giggle fit and how childish that was. It was embarrassing, but it doesn't actually bother me a lot, it was what it is and will be. I am forty and four and nineteen, you know; I'm not sure how it all meshes together, but somehow it does.
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
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.
Isn't it weird? This year is almost over, I have less than a month left to be eighteen, even though I'm still seventeen and mostly four and seven and sometimes forty. But this year, this strange, interesting, beautiful, bounteous, change-filled and growth-laden year, it's almost all over, vapor slipping through my fingers once again. The years are getting shorter, the ratio of year to years lived becoming more and more unequal.
Four years upon this blog, sculpted and shaped and forgotten and remembered...
Did you know that words don't stick? It seems like they used to, but now they often don't, and I can't figure out why. Perpetually perplexed, haha. (She smiles wryly) We'll pretend that we are perfectly comfortable in ourselves in this world, shoved against everything far too tightly. But there's space, right?
There's space inside. and sometimes, far too much space outside, a different angle on everything. Too many questions and not enough answers.
Re-pacing every fixed point in my past life, re-treading the old dirt paths of experience. Oh I am here again, and this is what I did then. This is now, here I am now, again (breath floating off into the spiral extended from heart). The ghosts of the past sliding by, more translucent every go around, but still there, ethereal as they are. Now is nothing but an old sheet thrown over an invisible shape, though. But whenever I say "so it is", never again will it be. That's why words won't stick; in their way, they are solid, implastic; strange as that sounds, but the way words are formed-- casting butterflies in concrete so that movement and flight crash dead to the ground.
To say that I am contradiction is to give out only a small amount of information, but if someone caught that and held it and looked at it long and hard, they would see the universe swirling in every hole, and they would, I think, understand at some point.
Woven tightly around self and time and every discovery in people and other nouns. Wound tightly and loosely around the years, even as they slip by, evading every grasp. Grasp loosely, I suppose, and they will comply, tattooing my skin and heart as they wave farewell from the edge of void and eternity.
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.
Oh gordy, with people like Malala Yousafzi on this Earth, why does it not seem like anything is getting better?
Or more to the point, how the heck does one decide to be that outspoken in spite of possible consequences?
It feels like there is a need for more people like that, it feels like that is what would turn things around. We are headed in such a terrible direction, and yeah, I can't see the future, but I've learned a little of the past, however misrepresented that may be, but I don't know enough to see if it'll all be okay or if we're just building the world of 1984. That is somewhere I do not want to be, somewhere I don't want anyone to be, friends, relatives, strangers, the birds and bugs and trees.
But what is one to do? I am a person who is extremely intimidated by possible consequences. And I don't really know how or if not to be.
(Link, if'n you want to know what the heck I'm talking about:">Malala Yousafzi on the Daily ShowIt is not that I am in awe of her, for she is doing what every human being can and ought to do, it is that I wonder why on Earth more do not)
School teaches an oxymoronic double standard of accomplishing things through luck and really hard work.
Some people mature, go out into the world, and choose to follow one of two or more paths. They work really hard, pull themselves up by the boot straps, and blame a lack of luck when something doesn't work out the way they wanted or expected it to. But the thing is, almost nothing that used to be guaranteed through hard work or discipline works anymore. For a few decades, you graduated high school, persisted through college and obtained a degree, and then you gained an entry level job with pretty good benefits and security that you could pretty much depend upon eventually retiring from at a pretty high level. None of these are a a given anymore, though, and hard work all of your life with no, how shall I say this... just allowing things to happen or trusting that things will work out and allowing yourself to be flexible is not a good balance.
On the other hand, there are the people who just wait for everything to come to them, who rely only on luck and conversely, never get anything done, whether it's hard work, or just something a little out of the ordinary that is a dream of theirs, but would take a little pushing and shoving to get done, such as world travel or learning how to fly an airplane and becoming licensed for such. This is the side I am learning to balance with hard work and perseverance.
I have also noticed that sometimes people who choose one path or the other tend to blame their lack of the opposite when things don't work out; a really hard worker who never quite made it lamenting the fact they didn't have the right connections, or even that they just didn't work hard enough, though they're worn to the bone, and honestly don't have that bad of a life, but they are not successful in society's eyes. Or, for example, a person who just went with the flow their whole life, going in whatever direction life took them, only to find themselves stuck, seemingly with no new direction or way out, and getting frustrated with themselves for not working harder.
Perhaps both of these examples feature a "character" that has come to a hard place, a down direction in the wavelength or life, and has forgotten that things are always in transformation and change, through outside as well as internal forces, and when things are looking down, they will inevitably make their way back up and vice versa.
There's a balance to be had between the two life philosophies, Faith with direction, diligent labor with an eye toward flexibility and openness. Sometimes one side works better than the other during a different time in life. During childhood, you go where you parents take you, do what your parents tell you, learn what they teach you. But in adulthood, self-sufficiency and responsibility is required, your own momentum will get you somewhere worthwhile, so one side of the spectrum dominates at different times. The key is knowing when to let one take precedence over the other.
It was a clear, bright day at the
height of Summer. In the middle of a large, sprawling park, where tall, lush
green trees grew among expanses of well-tended grass and along winding, lazy
sidewalks, people sat on picnic blankets conversing, or chased dogs and
children through the grass and around trees, laughter floating in a slight
breeze.
I walked, hands in pockets, sometimes along a pathway, sometimes on the grass;
mostly alone with my thoughts, but sometimes watching the people talking, playing
or running as I passed them by.
Ahead of me, I noticed another pedestrian walking along the sidewalk, a man
looking to be somewhere around twenty-five years old, turning as he walked as
though he was searching for something; a dog, or a friend he was meeting in the
park perhaps? He strode confidently, and wasn’t remarkable in any way save one;
above his shoulders, where you would expect his head to be, there was nothing
but air.
Startled, I stopped walking.
“Miss,” The word was obviously coming from the emptiness where his head was,
in a middling depth, clear voice, “Excuse me miss, but I seem to have
misplaced my body, have you seen it hereabouts?”
Yes, he was speaking to me; that was apparent. Though he had no head; therefore
no face or eyes (the usual indicators of address), he had undeniably stopped
directly in front of me, and his body was arranged in my direction, shoulders
straight, feet pointed towards me.
“Um,” I sputtered, unsure how to handle this strange situation, “You have a
body, it looks to me like it’s your head that’s missing.” Well, that sounded a
bit rude, I thought, and internally winced.
“Oh. Hmm. That’s getting somewhere, at least.” Apparently that hadn’t sounded
rude to him, good. “Do you have any idea what dimension you’re in, or rather,
which dimension my body seems to be in?”
I laughed nervously.
“Welll, we call the world we move about in, with shadows and light and depth of
perception the ‘Third Dimension’…”
“Aha! But of course, that isn’t quite the name I know it by; you call it the
third dimension, and this is still the planet called Gaia, or Monos, or maybe
you know it by the name of Earth, right?”
“Yeah, Earth, that’s it.”
“Okay, so that would make it, by my reckoning… the 59th dimension!”
With that exclamation, a fizzing noise grew louder, and with a violent pop, the
man suddenly sprouted a head above his shoulders.
“There we go,” He said, a mouth finally accompanying his words.
He looked down at his feet. I followed his gaze, a little stunned by the sudden
appearance of what should have been at the top of his body all along, and
noticed that he was wearing sandals. Once again, there was nothing terribly
peculiar about that, however; nothing occupied his shoes just where his toes
should have been.
“Well, I’m off to find the ends of my feet,” He grinned at me, his eyes
sparkling, all good humor and no bewilderment at his missing toes, “Thanks for
you help!”
With a quick wave and a short leap into the air, he was gone. Disappeared,
though he left behind one thing that shortly disappeared with him as well; a
delighted and exhilarated laugh that lingered upon the Summer breeze for half a
minute, before breaking up and skipping about, like the laugh that was said to
have created fairies.
I let out a short laugh that almost, but not quite matched his and shrugged,
“He seems to be having a good time.” I said to myself, and continued along the
sidewalk once again, wrapped up in thinking of my strange encounter with what
seemed to be an inter-dimensional traveler.
(So I'm thinking that maybe this might be a tad more interesting with an old guy, or perhaps a young boy? If he was a boy, then maybe his inter-dimensional traveling might seem like a game played with himself or among friends?)
