candour ends paranoia

my dad used to stay up all night, taking things apart and putting them together again. i would wake up and hear the faint reverberation of the hammer through the air vents or the door to the garage opening slowly and with a conscious effort to not wake us up. i'd hear the toaster pop up two, three, sometimes four times a night depending on how much he had smoked to try to calm himself from the uppers he was on. it never worried me though; it was just typical and expected.
tonight i stayed awake all night, the way i have been for weeks. instead of building walls and shelves like my dad would i made hair pins, collages, and a brooch out of this rose petal that i took from the flower i laid on my grandfather's casket just before he was buried. (I KNOW it may sound a little morbid but i wanted to make it into something beautiful i can wear everyday instead of keeping it in the little air tight contraption i built for it to go in originally) i kept making things compulsively, painting gold shimmer over everything. it's because i'm not stifling myself anymore and a torrent of me make things now motivation kept me going. i was shivering and starving but i didn't care because i was so comfortable despite the ikea chair that i was sitting on was as plush as a scandinavian rock. thoughts of my dad floated in and out. if he had been awake with me he would have come into the kitchen to make some toast and a joke about how "goofy" my dangly stone ribcage hair thing was. i realized i was thinking about him as he was,a real person; not the glazed eye doppelganger i have been remembering him as, even though that is what he is, now at least. i thought of the job i want and need and school and other important teenage things. but clearly, unlike the sordid things i've been thinking about and obsessing over for the last year or so.
there were times when i thought i felt normal; my sense of it which is really different from what's generally accepted as normal. but it would last for a car ride maybe or just one of those transcendent nights. then it would fade rapidly and mental catatonia would take over again. i was genuinely lost. i was a puppeteer propping up the carcass that used to house my soul. i would actually look at myself and not feel any connection to the reflection i saw. but tonight, when i tried my bridal pearl head wreath on for size, and i saw myself i didn't have to stop and check if it was me because i knew innately that it was.
there are obvious side effects of the complete detachment i was under the curse of. lying is one that i absolutely hated. i felt false and constantly had to reassure myself that i had pure intentions. another is relationships being grinded down to nothing but silence, because no matter how great of a pretender anyone is, including me, human perception sees past the imitation of emotions because they can't be faked.most people knew there was something wrong with me. i made people uncomfortable and that made me uncomfortable and the whole situation was unnerving. my best friend is the only one who i felt completely comfortable talking to about anything, but only after the fact. and she lives so far away in a small little town i'm afraid i'll never get to visit but again, it doesn't matter. knowing she exists is enough.
"enough" right now is just enough to make me content. except words and thoughts and ideas which i want to keep expanding and growing. my homemade hair accessory collection is also going to keep growing if i keep this up and now without resorting to light at the end of the tunnel type sentiments i'm going to try to spell out what's going on in my head in as syllables as few possible...i am finally fucking happy. and it's so so glorious.

blood n guts

she wants to skin you,
pick and pick and then peel.
all the tendons and all the framework
that keep you together,
she will rip away with grimacing grit.
then she will take you,
place you on a rotating show stage
with a follow spot and no curtain to hide behind
and watch from her distant seat
with crossed legs and a crooked head
her clean pink dress will fool the crowd,
they won't know she's your butcher.

perfection

i love you. that is all.

in a place of beauty, no one cares what you say

the incarnation of my pastel dreams didn't come as imagined. instead, yesterday i went with my eager grandma to the asian american beauty college and had my nails painted a pearlescent muted blue. now i just sit and stare at my hands like the passive student had while she lightly fondled them and dipped them into a cold bath of mystery chemicals. the only word she spoke the entire time was a hesitant, "good"? with a raised brow and shy smile. "yes, yes good," i assured with an exaggerated nod and an expression of acceptance that probably looked as plastered on as the mask the girl with no pants and hooker heels was wearing two stations over. as a woman who looked of importance and teacher material walked over i added a "good job" and another gilded smile. my manicurist was probably twice my age so i was afraid she thought i was patronizing her so i stopped my praise even though i did love the delicate work she had done and the imagined life story she had supplied me with. i thought of her mother's heirloom recipes, banana leaves,how different things in the good usa must seem her, and how strange she thought i looked compared to the wiry haired old women that she typically saw come in during business hours. but she didn't even let one edge of her mouth curve up when i poured out my admiration for my new glimmering wet digits. she was done with me so she packed her supplies back into her kit and handed off the basket of nail colors. i looked up and she had disappeared. gone, without a perceivable shuffle. i sat in the folding chair till my nails were slick to the touch and i got up to sit under a hair dryer next to my mousse covered grandma. "didn't she do a good job?" i questioned as i fanned them out in front of her face. "what did you say?" she shouted back.

i have no fun

it's a simple equation
with no one at the station
how did i expect to go?
stuck in the turnstile
like a scared little child
sticking your tongue out
just makes em go wild

i used to do this thing where i would put unnecessary and egotistical quotation marks around things i had written so people would think i hadn't written them and say "oh wow, where did you find that amazing, insightful bit of words?" and then i would act bashful and "humble" and say "actually, i wrote that." and then the mandatory, "NO!" would follow. it was a silly charade and it reminds me of the little asshole i was when i was twelve and thirteen. i see kids doing similar things today even though they are the same age or older than me and it makes me reflect back so of course i cannot stand their snide visages and self affirmation but it also makes me feel hopeless for the future of any kind of expression because it reduces it to vanity. i'm aware that i am just as shallow as the next fringed vintage barbie at times but when it comes to the true filtration and purification of my soul by way of words or beautiful photographs it is a real and always has been. sometimes that bastard fear just gets in the way.

dreamy

paolo roversi for w and i-d magazine

in my dream world right now my closet would be full of pale blues and heavenly lace mixed with other pastels and i would wear a white veil every day due to an ancient family custom dating back to our days when we lived in a moss covered cottage in an unnamed and untamed forest. instead i will look at these and wear tulle as much as possible this week and go shopping for some dainty lacey fabrics next weekend.

assignment: find the symbolism* it's kinda funny how obvious it is. and, i don't care.

i went to sleep just before the sun came up and my feet didn't touch the ground again till it was well past dark. i feel light headed and shrivelly because i haven't eaten or drank anything since the dinner i made 24 hours ago. but my numbing lethargy and weakened mind are an equal trade for the dream i got to have. every time i exited deep sleep into some kind of hazy twilight i forced myself back into slumber just so it would keep going.
it started with a trek across a rickety and splintered bridge, but i felt secure the entire time. then once we got to a mass of land a steady incline turned into an almost vertical mountain face that we/i had to scale. i turned around and announced no, i can't and i won't. i was embarassed. but i turned around and saw people i knew, people i respected climbing with difficulty but with effort. so i braced myself with the chain railing and climbed. but once we got to the top everything disappeared and i felt a little defeated that i couldn't look down at the surface i had conquered. but i remembered why we had climbed. we were all going to a sort of scientific gathering. and by the word "we", i mean every single person i have ever met in my life. to get to the community of barracks and mess halls there was a right of passage which was a miniature house where i had to scoot on my stomach like a slug past the tiny doors. i felt so cramped and i wondered what it would be like to live in a place like this for all of eternity, never being able to really touch another person or roll over onto my back. i saw my laptop on a shelf but i decided it would be too much effort to get out of the house with it so i abandoned it. there was a wooden door at the end of the hall but i was sick of the impossibly tiny width and with luck, a new larger one materialized to my right. i knew it wasn't the "right" door but i felt a brief burst of fuck-the-rules-and-the-man-and-this-dwarf-house-mentality and i felt liberated when i opened it and wormed my way out onto grass and mud in a courtyard with black and white clad servers. i stood up and stretched my spine up to the sky and looked for a way back to the correct path. i opened a gate but i only got to a bar where bartenders were mixing up potent libations for a mystery party. "oops" i said out loud and smiled at the lot of them. i found the gate's twin and found myself back with civilization, in it's roughest sense. i thought there was supposed to be an orientation or something but instead there was a parking lot set up like the drive in of the outsiders but with no movie playing. people were in their cars eating and laughing and i found one with my friends in it. but i realized i couldn't sit with them, i didn't want to face her. i walked away, but i heard her make a catty comment so i turned around and forced myself into the car which was already at capacity. i yelled and i insulted until i saw tears come to her eyes which was what i wanted. i wanted to make sure she was a human being. with her tears, my mouth started to quiver and we both agreed to change the desolate future we had manufactured. free, again i thought. then we were all inside a massive white room where food was being served but all i wanted was a cardboard cup filled with murky fruit juice. i knew they would ask why i wasn't eating but the food looked sloppy and bland and i couldn't, just couldn't. so i got up to look at the buffet with no intention of filling a plate but to feign the actions of the normal people around me. then i saw someone i knew, and i said hello. i thought she might like my ethereal look for the day, maybe compliment me but she said nothing. she is one of them i thought, one of the scared people like the rest of us. i felt free for the countless time from my own petty conventions. i went back to our table and said the things i was actually thinking and it was so nice. that's all i remember.

*disclaimer: i watched holy mountain a few days ago. may have led to this dream.

all used up

think, think. think of some other girl some other place listening to the the same tic tic tic of another ugly clock with painfully fake flowers loaded into its glass bowels. think of the top of your head, divided right down the middle to your white, white scalp. now zoom up and out of the house till the roof is another black lego piece on a checkerboard landscape. okay good. now just scan the ground for a promising abode. zoom back in until you've reached another crown of hair. oh no, i think you missed the point. you focused back in on your own house with you still sitting pecking away slumped in your bleached stained prison uniform turtleneck. no one will want to read about you. try again. there you go, up and out and up some more. good. okay..wait..no, go somewhere else. even to your wild boar hunting neighbor's house. try..okay..no. you did it again. you landed back in the same room with the same tic tic tic. you see that couch all defeated and slouchy looking to your right? that would never make for good setting. neither would that bizarre bouquet of flowers that looks like an amateur florist slapped together. it would bore anyone. so try again. please, for the sake of the written word, get your mind out of your house and into another. okay, you know what?
why don't you just try tomorrow and get some sleep now. i will wait.

current events

am i nothing more than a relic now?
a dusty out of date reminder of a glittering age?
a shadow of swaying, prodigal, incoherence?
a Smithsonian mannequin cloaked in historic garb?
a sinewy old hag humming youthful forgotten tunes?
am i to be re-birthed, like you've been?
into a die cut haphazard product of regression?
into a falsely assured modern girl?
into a surface gliding past dweller?
into a conveniently forgetful sapless void?

no, no i am not.

raw eggs, raw meat

hungry days have passed by without letting me know they were leaving, let alone dropping in. i can't tell if the rain lulled me into a false sense of solitude or if i've finally reached the eye of chaos. simple things like the cool air and the greasy sound of sizzling onions have made me infinitely content. i am finally able to read again and i began to feed my voracious appetite by stuffing myself with two books in a matter of days. i did read the bell jar again. i actually finished two hours ago. sylvia plath's words are a distorted and more elegant version of my own and i every time i read them i feel like i've absorbed some more of her fraternal spirit. i kissed the cover when i closed it over those two hundred odd pages.