Revitalization's Weblog
For the curious, questioning, and wandering soulArchive for Air
Where’s my mind at?
this is where my mind lingers:
The aqua blue water whirled, bubbles rising towards the surface. The water is clear, with little specs glimmering as they sink to the sand. There’s no life here, only brown-white sand, that stretches for miles. Somehow I can stay below, eyes open and no breath needed. I look all around, but there’s only soft sand and the movement of the soft waves.
I push off the ground, my toes dig into the sand. As my head breaks the water, I peer up at cloudy skies. White billowing clouds stream across the sky. As I face the horizon, there’s nothing but water in every direction. It’s perfectly calm.
I blink, and it changed. From light to dark. From day to night- but it is not night, not really. Dark chaotic clouds rise, rumbling. The atmosphere is electric, the darkness romantic. These heavenly beings surging with power. I feel it coming: the first strike. With a loud crack, light fills every inch of space and mind.
Living Like Weasels
I’ve always loved Annie Dillard’s language. It’s so powerful, and Living Like Weasels truly a beautiful piece of literature. Here are my favorite excerpts:
“Weasel! I’d never seen one wild before. He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard’s; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairs’ worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I didn’t see, any more than you see a window.
The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key.
Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don’t. We keep our skulls. So.
He disappeared. This was only last week, and already I don’t remember what shattered the enchantment. I think I blinked, I think I retrieved my brain from the weasel’s brain, and tried to memorize what I was seeing, and the weasel felt the yank of separation, the careening splash-down into real life and the urgent current of instinct. He vanished under the wild rose. I waited motionless, my mind suddenly full of data and my spirit with pleadings, but he didn’t return.”
And later she writes….
“We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience–even of silence–by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn’t “attack” anything; a weasel lives as he’s meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.
I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you’re going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.”
If you love this as much as I do, google it and read the whole thing.
I dream of a love…
“Sometimes I feel like there’s a hole inside of me, an emptiness that at times seems to burn. I think if you lifted my heart to your ear, you could probably hear the ocean. The moon tonight, there’s a circle around it. Sign of trouble not far behind. I have this dream of being whole. Of not going to sleep each night, wanting. But still sometimes, when the wind is warm or the crickets sing… I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for. I just want someone to love me. I want to be seen. I don’t know. Maybe I had my happiness. I don’t want to believe it but, there is no man…”
-Sandra Bullock, Practical Magic
hair streaming behind
bullet in a track. zoom zoom, coming towards her. no turning back. clap clap. she killed it with kisses. walk away, wash it away, let’s go. bye bye, high notes. Come on, come run. Run for your children, and leave your loving behind. Hear the beat, hear the drums, hard sticks smack smack. Angels singing, high notes. dramatic. what was left? after that, well. happiness. my heart, your…. hmm…. Dance dance, let’s forget, let’s dancing let’s ride away, clap clap. Run fast. just run, hair streaming behind, carry me with you, unbuttoned shirt. run run. horses run. OH. i’m behind you, bare-foot and all. Dress streaming in the wind, green pastures.
Fade Into You
it’s sprinkling outside. i’m smiling on the inside.
“I want to hold the hand inside you
I want to take a breath that’s true
I look to you and I see nothing
I look to you to see the truth
You live your life
You go in shadows
You’ll come apart and you’ll go blind
Some kind of light into your darkness
Colors your eyes with what’s not there.
Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it’s strange you never knew
A stranger’s light comes on slowly
A stranger’s heart without a home
You put your hands into your head
And then smiles cover your heart…”
-Mazzy Star
I am a life, and I am alive. Breathing and animated.
Just a moment ago, I stared at myself in the mirror, blankly, and tried to peer deep into my eyes, looking for something, anything at all. I just stared and stared, and then the thoughts began to flood my mind, as if the iron gates opened up. I was amazed. Now, don’t take this in a narcissistic way, I was just struck by the amazement. My eyes, they are big deep pools of brown and black ink; they tell a story. They speak of life forever evolving, they speak of change and of aging, they speak of every single thing they’ve seen since birth: people, sunlight, emotion…. they speak of their origins. My eyes talk a lot, apparently.
You know, we, as humans, tirelessly search for something unique, special, and amazing. Something out of the ordinary, something that defines a moment, and don’t we all crave to know those moments. We look for them constantly, chasing high after high, trying to greedily take the most spectacular experiences and hoard them for ourselves, hoping that doing so would make all of this mean something.
But, I am realizing more and more that this spectacular thing, this unique moment, this unattainable idea… it may be buried deep down past all the veins, arteries, and tissues. Somewhere, deep, in between a beating heart and expanding lungs. Within ourselves. I sat there awestruck at what I am:
a life
A breathing, animated life full of thoughts, moving across this earth in search for anything that will help me grapple with what being human means. It’s truly stupefying. Sometimes I can hardly believe it.
Five, singular, solid, waxy minutes
I just had five minutes. One of those five minutes that reminds of what I already know, but seem to forget in the present. I seem to get lost in the current world that surrounds, I seem to forget where I truly stand. I seem to see what is placed in front of my face, what commotion enters my ears, what I am told to know.
I am being vague. What do I want to say to you? Why do I want to say this to YOU? I am not entirely sure, and I am almost certain that I am not entirely sure of anything. It’s part of the problem. How can you be, really, sure? When everything you know is what you are told, what is put upon you. From birth, you enter this world, screaming and raging that someone stole you away from serenity. You are pulled into a world of chaos, dumped into this manic life without so much as an instruction manual. But you pick yourself up, and you pick you head up, looking up. You look up at people, follow, and do what they say. After all, they probably know…. They’ve been here longer, they’ve experienced more of the “life” that is so new and so painful. They will steer me right. Right?
I think we steer ourselves, somehow, figuring that we should divide this world into what’s right and what’s wrong. What’s up and what’s down, what’s true and what’s not true. Well, what’s true is a truth I am trying to realize. I am trying to realize, I am trying to convince myself that those five minutes is all that is true.
Five, singular, solid, waxy minutes. They stood still. Individually. Like candles, solid and sound, dripping sound into my echoing eardrums, drumming about what I already know. It’s simple in a completely ungrounded, perhaps lunatic sort of reasoning: It’s hard for me to grip this tangibility, but it’s really the only tangible thing we have. I accept that I am here, in present moment, but that’s about the only thing I can accept. I.. I feel like I am making a mess of my words, of my thoughts, they are spilling everywhere…
Ok. All I wanted to say is that I had five minutes. Five minutes of realization, panic, and concern. Five minutes of red fear that life is ending for me, and everyone. Five minutes of doubt that anyone in this entire world knows anything at all about living, about life, about death, about…. What…we….are. Five minutes of melancholy. Five minutes of heart-wrenching agony. Five minutes of a furrowed brow. Five minutes considering the possibility that I may never figure it out….whatever it is.
this is me, upbeat. boop boop.
you, twinkle, starry bright. bright eyes. who are you? what do you see? dancing? follow me. follow me here, dancing. under starry nights and gazebos. prom nights and magical lights. what do you see? do you see me? what do you feel? kaleidoscope. Forever? forever. ding dong ding dong. kick off your heels, jump into the water. soft paded feet, running across the sand. feel something. remember me? six years ago. I don’t mind. lift me up, swing me around. I feel you. This could last forever. salty sea things. your hair, dark and gorgeous, my hand. hazy sky, misty fog.
upbeat. this is me, upbeat. boop boop. smiles, white teeth. feet so light. warm nights, pink skies, pink flamingoes. you don’t mind. we felt something. follow me, quick quick. round and round. memories, photographs, moonlight night, white light. you hold me, hold my hand in your hand. I feel something. six years. your face. my heart. all we need. dum dee dum.
unravel and plunge
take the guess work out and where does that leave you? empty-handed, someone stole your doubt.
Go as far as the legs of reason will carry you–then leap.
as you dive, unravel and plunge, gain momentum and sink into life
i’ll follow you back with the sun in your eyes
baby doll. you’ll be okay. look up, what do you see? stars.
cut the chatter. let it melt.
Ah. there it is.
it’s crystal clear, really. it’s in front of your beautiful, lovely face. crisp green and bright blue. cold wind.
it’s been there.
it’s there. breathe deep. clear. it’s so clear.
and what do i see? I see leaves, i see the glass surface, i see snow caps, pure white, i see blue mountains, i see spidery roots, i see you
it’s moments like these, when I know that it’s this. this. come into this, come.
it’s vast and it’s pure and it’s all i’ll ever need. it’s real and it’s alive and it’s there. it’s been there. simply.
night drops. dark blue and bright. the sky opens and there’s beauty. such wonder, a blanket of truth
be here.
Where You Stand
“You, from where you are, you cannot see the naked boy
The naked boy holds the camera
You are the naked boy before the camera
Or you are here and you are imagining the naked boy
This is not a dream and this is not a dream relationship
The boy wants to touch you
You are the other boy
The city is far away up in flames.
We’ve come a long way to be here
We said we wanted to get away from it all, but when we arrived in this place, it was all still here
It traveled with us
The histories, the bookmarks are part of your body
So all that you are is where you stand
Naked and getting more naked
A weight without weapons, a body of work
You stand at the edge of the rest of your life. This is what you stand for.
The boy stands with you, beside you, before you. The boy is the life you stand before and you are the boy standing at the edge
Stand by me. Stand by me.”
-Chris Goode
my mind forgets, like a sepia photograph slowly turning white
Memory: intangibly forever. It’s really all we have in this life. When time speeds up and our lives slow down, all we are left with is a shallow collection of memories—it’s all we have, it’s the only proof of a life lived that counts. While the ability to trap time and space within our minds is utterly glorious, it is undeniably frustrating.
As I grow, as I age, I find that my memories from yesteryear are riddled with gaping holes, leaving shreds of random recollections. While they may not be random, while there may be some subconscious grave importance to the memories I still keep, I cannot help feeling disappointed in the inability to remember every single solitary moment.
My memories are sliced into pieces, spliced together, and strung along a string. Like a kindergarten art project, my memories are hole-punched. Euphoric memories are salvaged, while dull and negative memories are excised. They are snipped from the stream of remembrance, and discarded so carelessly. They fade away, like a sepia photograph slowly turning white.
My mind buries the bad. My mind forgets, consciously concealing.
I find myself remembering only certain things; I tie these recollections down with double knots, and think about them for weeks, months, and years. I never fatigue from grasping onto these memories with clenched fists, constantly dissecting them, mulling them over, trying to dive deeper, searching for… something true.
I hold on tightly, perhaps TOO tightly. And while I desperately cling to certain events, others are forgotten. They are shoved out, dumped like trash in a gutter. I find myself disappointed in the limitations of my mind. It is devastating to know that those memories are gone—those first memories of light and sound as a newborn, the memories of walking and talking for the first time, memories of a childhood—they are all slipping away. WHY! I want to hold onto my humanity. I want to remember and reflect and ponder and know EACH day of my life. Each and every single day that I lived, that I was in existence. WHY should I have to forget.
I don’t want to forget this life. I don’t want to forget what it meant to live, what it meant to grow and evolve. I don’t want to forget the progression. I don’t want to forget myself.
Quelqu’un m’a dit
- the night is warm and im awake
- my skin feels clean and smells of sweet mangos
- thoughts of the wide universe expanding above calms me
sweep away
there’s a spark
to start something new
something stirring inside
release, release
walk forward, barefoot
let the wind sweep past
open hands drop everything old
start anew. now.
tonight, tonight
Let’s be totally honest right now. RIGHT NOW I’m going to be totally honest with what I want. What I desperately want this year, in 2010, is… I mean how do I even verbalize it, how do I quantify it, how do I explain the inner tumultuous state of my mind. My mind tumbles and thunders, and spins and whirls. It flips and dives, it hopes and prays. My mind reaches, reaches, reaches, searching to grasp onto anything tangible, anything real, anything true. My mind reaches for truth. My mind.
I find myself looking at myself. In the mirror. I see that I’m now no longer that young child with bright eyes. I see life wearing on me, my physical self. I hate that this life, THIS life is wearing me down, slowly, slowly wearing me down- and for what? WHY? why should I be picked apart, and broken down, atom by atom. I shouldn’t, I won’t! I’ll resist, and I’ll struggle, and I’ll try to keep myself on point, I try to keep myself moving up, striding only up.
My mind reaches for an answer. My mind searches for what’s right, for what’s good. Actually. That’s false. My mind doesn’t reach for what’s right and what’s good, I mind reaches for what is. Oh what I’d give to know what is. What IS , right now, right here, in this very sentence, in this very line, in this very WORD, what IS. Maybe this doesn’t make any sense… I feel myself getting off track- I wanted to write about what I want, what my goals are, and who I plan to become in this year, THIS year of 2010.
I love 2010. I love saying it, I love writing it, I love the symmetry, I love it’s evenness, I love how it represents a new decade of life and time that has never graced the oceans and deserts, never touched this universe before. I love how 2010 is completely new and fresh. And in some odd way, I feel that with 2010, twenty-ten, (ahh that feels so good!) I can start afresh and anew too. Perhaps this is naive and sophomoric. After all, it’s just a number, it’s just a representation of this period in our lives, this moment. It’s just category, just a number that allows us to believe that we are somehow and someway moving forward. As if time is dragging us forward, whether we’d like it or not. Time tugs on, while we dig our boots into the mud, struggling to slow it down, desperately trying to hold on to what is familiar, to what we know.
I’d like to pick my feet up out of the mud and allow 2010 to fling me forward. Like a rag doll flung from a slingshot, whooshing past nonbelievers who can’t seem to unclench their hand from the rungs of past days, and past ways. I’d like to fling forward. Where I end up, I’m not so sure.
“Time is never time at all
You can never ever leave, without leaving a piece of youth
And our lives are forever changed
We will never be the same
The more you change the less you feel
Believe, believe in me, believe, believe!
That life can change, that you’re not stuck in vain
We’re not the same, we’re different.
Tonight, tonight, tonight
So bright
Tonight, tonight”
-Smashing Pumpkins
Dark. Black. Possibility.
Sometimes I wrap my hands across my eyes and peer into the black. I see abyss. Dark. Black. Possibility.
I see what I could be. I envision something… different.
I see a little girl, frolicking on the dusty street in her faded dress and bare feet. I see a newborn baby, with soft pink eyes shut tight, dreaming of light and sound. I see a young man dropped to the ground with his head in his palms, broken. I see a child peeking around the corner, only to catch a glimpse of golden light pouring through glass windows. I see a woman running along the tides, thunder rumbles behind as her hair whips back in the wind.
I envision something… desperate, something forgotten
And what do I want?
I think I’m more hopeful. I think this summer has been great. Some flirtations, some adventures, some great conversations. I think there’s a lot that the future holds. I think that I’m beginning to know not only who I am, but what I can do. What I can achieve. What I want.
And what do I want?
I’ve said this before. I’ll say it again. I want love, I want life, I want a pure and sincere happiness that runs deep. I want adventure and surprise, I want to be better. I want to be STRONG, confident, powerful, and able. Able to choose, able to believe, able to aspire, able to achieve, able to reach, and able to grab.
I think I’ll get there. I think I’m getting there. To that point where I can finally be the best version of me, and offer that person to a world where acceptance is abundant and ambition flows.
I think I’m getting there. And while my road has had bumps, grooves, obstacles and u-turns, I’m getting somewhere. There are two directions, there has always been two directions: up and down.
I choose up.
For a moment the earth has slowed down, the mind settles, and all that matters are deep breaths of pure, cold air.
I imagine I’m sitting at a cafe, under an awning. It’s raining. It’s night. I’m just sitting there, breathing in that clean, crisp smell. The water falls on cobblestone roads, as the yellow streetlights reflect across the pavement.
It’s a quiet rain. A heavy mist.
It seems like everything is calm, for a moment. For a moment the earth has slowed down, the mind settles, and all that matters are deep breaths of pure, cold air.
blind yourself
life is about distracting yourself. Blinding yourself. Making yourself look away from the harsh truth that death is.
Death is
harsh
blunt
lonely
cold
eye-OPENing
you are the only you that the world will ever see
so be amazing
there are people out there waiting for you to be amazing
finding love isn’t easy, you have to be ready for it
Some people are open to love. Some people live with open hearts and those kinds of people find each other- at the supermarket, book store, coffee shop, or what have you. Those kinds of people will love often, and grow frequently.
I’m not sure if I’m like that- for some reason, maybe life experience or maybe genetics, I’m not someone who is open and free with love. I hate that. I wish I was open, honest, and forward.
hmm… some people have it…. some people know what love is, how to attract it, how to find it… some people are in touch with that… that innate human intuition…
dusty footprints are swept away
I think about those common people, who have been swept away with the wind. Those who have died, those who have loved, those who have lived greatly, those who were. I think about those people who used to be living, and now exist only in the wind. While they tried, desperately, to put their footprints on early terrain, while they tried to create lasting impressions, to make differences, to be remembered.. they were forgotten. And to no one’s fault… they were forgotten because that’s what happens…….and that’s what always will happen… people forget, memories fade fast, and dusty footprints are swept away by the breeze.
I wonder if that’ll happen to me. I know inevitably it will. I know that everyone I know and everyone I will ever know will fade away with me, when I’m gone. I know it will happen. It’s an eerie feeling, and a spooky thought. While I have lived, and while I am trying to do good and great things…I will fade… along with all that I know, and all that I’ve done. In some sense, one must ponder, then what’s the point. Why even try? Because in the end, everything breaks, and people forget… but I think it matters. If not to anyone else, actually… to no one else, it still matters. To you. You will remember, and you will have lived, and loved, and done grand things… you will remember… even after being swept away… I hope………. I hope I will remember
I am not alone. and I love that.
I feel BRIGHT and WARM. Inside my smile, inside my chest. I love this feeling of closeness, of connection, of relating. I feel like this, right HERE, this is reaching out.. what we do here is reaching out.. trying to grapple and grasp onto anything that we can relate to. WordPress- it allows us to attempt… attempt to find someone who we can relate to, people who we can feel with and feel close to. It’s about trying to reach out, and see how similar humanity truly is. And while we’re going through our own lives, and it may seem near impossible that there are others who are experiencing the same thing, I think this helps us see that it is near possible that there are. There are people just like me, just like you, just like them, who are having the same thoughts, same feelings, same emotions, same ideas, and while, in this ever-lonely world where human contact is dwindling, we are still reaching out- across oceans, trying to grapple and grasp someone who is the same. I love that.
You have yourself. So have yourself. Be yourself.
you know… it’s about a lot. and this might just be bullshit, but hey who knows, it might be true…
today, i just feel like writing, and i just feel like there might be someone listening. I feel like, if anything, I could be listening! I will listen. listen up self.
it’s about a lot. life, i mean. life’s about a lot, and it’s about realizing that life’s not short. LIFE IS LONG. Life is long, and hard, and beautiful, and tough, and crazy, and at the end, we may want more. I mean, quenching a thirst for life, I don’t think that even exists- you gotta want more and more, and at the end, you feel like wow, it’s done. life’s done? i mean…. really? how can that be? And i hope that once i get to that point, when I’m saying Wow, life’s done, and this is done, i hope that… well i hope that i had a great one. One that i can be happy with, and feel fulfilled. Not financially, or professionally, or superficially… but internally, and simply happy. content with what i’ve become. content with what has happened.
Life is long. and… while i fear a lot… i fear that everything won’t happen for me… i fear that i made mistakes.. i fear that i won’t have enough time… i have to believe that it will happen for me, and that while i have made mistakes, there is time and it will happen. it will come.
It will come. Will it come? I think we have to believe that it will. I think there is no other way to live. Because to live in fear, doubt, and frustration… well that’s no way to live. Oh sure, fleeting doubt and fear, it comes, but it should go. let it go.
Let it go. And hold onto hope, and believe that it will come. Because, if anything, trust in the fact that you have yourself, if nothing else, and if no one else, you have yourself. And that’s special. That’s unique, and undeniable. That’s remarkable, and no one can take that away from you, even after it’s all over. Even after death, you have yourself.
You have yourself. So have yourself. Be yourself. Be honest with yourself. Because in the end, things break, people leave, and the world turns- and if there is nothing left, nothing at all, you have you. You have you, and that’s remarkable. So trust in yourself, trust in life, trust in promise, trust in the human condition, trust in you that: it’s about a lot, and while life is long, it will come. So let it go because you have yourself. Undeniably.
Revitalization's Weblog 