I'm starting to think that lies to the self would be better if they were true. I lied to myself for months and now I'm mad that I did so.

My mother isn't there for me. I'm not there for my mother. It's difficult to put a lot of effort into a relationship with someone who sleeps for two weeks straight.

On the bus ride home I decided I'm an idealist. Life is only disappointing because I expect so much out of it. I am going to keep living this way. At least for a little while.

I like the State Fair a lot. I am too tired to type.

Right now my mind is saying, "You have lots of emotions right now, but I don't know what any of them are."

Interesting. None of them seem particularily unhappy though, so it's alright.

I should always have a job. This is my fourth day of not having one. So far I have:
1. Watched hours and hours of bad television.
2. Gone to Ikea.
3. Painted.
4. Ate tacos.
5. Went to my bosses house with some of my coworkers.
6. Saw District 9. Who knew alien movies could be so sad?
7. Watched more bad television before falling asleep.
8. Woke up and watched more bad television.
9. Finally decided to do my laundry after running out of underwear. I have atleast three weeks worth of underwear if not more.
Next I will
1. Go to Ikea again.
2. Go for coffee.
3. Inevitably watch more bad television.
4. Go to the State Fair and stuff my face.

Inaction kills me.

On shows about animals, the calming
yet authoratative voices like to tell us
about lack of language as if their words
can hold superiority over a bark or a growl.

I would rather be on a nature show.
Where they can tell me what my movements mean,
the significance of freckles on my face,
and the purpose of the stance of others
as they approach me.

I don't think I'd like to be a brand.

Once a very long time ago a boy told me that, "No boys will like me if I'm sad." I'm kind of sad right now. Not depressed sort of sad, not even a confused sort of sad (well sort of a confused sad). It's another feeling that is manifesting itself in sadness. I'm not a subtle person. When I am sad, it's obvious or it's obvious to me. But I feel like no one will like me when I'm sad. Not just boys, no one. I try to tell myself that I still like people when they are sad. Sometimes I like people more when they are sad, as awful as that sounds. This doesn't necessarily help though. I read "Catcher in the Rye" and say that I want to date Holden Caulfield. I assume other people don't work the sameway. I don't ask for what I need. I think I need to learn to give myself entirely what I need. It's just hard, when you need something, and someone says no and either you can't communicate how direly you need it or it doesn't matter. Like tonight, we were choosing music and I said "not classical." I said not classical because I wanted something to lift my mood and classical music doesn't. I argued and later got chastised for arguing, but I really wanted something that would make me happy. I want to be happy. I am trying hard to be happy. It's so frustrating, because I am feeling things that are natural, I keep telling myself they are natural, but I keep making myself feel bad for it. I need to stop making myself feel bad.

Sometimes I make the assumption that everyone in the world is sad. Sometimes I make the assumption that everyone in the world is happy. Right now I think everyone is in this weird floaty place that I am in.

The real sixth sense
comes from what is not there.

Yours is highly undeveloped.
I told you about this sense
and how you don't have it
and you said
Well atleast you're prepared.

It's like that hidden piece of pepper in a salad.
A taste more than anything.

What I lack in vision
I make up for
with the imaginary.

Taking the news metaphorically

Bill swept a girl off her feet
and into the ocean.
It has happened before.

Side note: It just doesn't make sense, my head. It's like being tickled. It feels the sensation and then before anything touches it, it overreacts.

Geeze.

Where do feelings come from?
The feeling stork.
Geeze.

I went to Ikea with my dad today. He was stressed out. I was excited to buy picture frames and whatever else would end up in my giant yellow bag. By the end of the trip I was stressed out for no reason. Except not really for no reason. It was mostly because my dad was stressed out. I wonder how many of my emotions come from me and how many come from the people around me. I feel freaked out. And okay. I feel okay because other people feel okay. The freaked out must be mine.

Watching bad tv and eating worse foods

She is falling into a pile of women
Desperate this lot,
with their painted lips and french nails,
they take men on lunch dates like it's dinner.

They are sensible, you see.
They understand the world
with an open legged logic of love
that cannot be beaten
by her irrational sense
of feeling.

Upon looking in the mirror
she suddenly discovers
that she is an entirely
different person from what
she thought.

It occurs to her
that she is missing other
things as well.

I think I've posted about this before, but I'm going to post about it again. I have really vivid dreams almost every night. A lot of the time they are nightmares. I have two types of nightmares. I have scary-movie nightmares and real-life nightmares. Scary movie nightmares are usually where I'm being chased by something or the world is ending and I generally wake up slightly disturbed. A lot of these are reoccurring. I have lots of zombie dreams. Real life nightmares are when something happens that could happen in real life. It's usually something I'm afraid of happening. Waking up from these is awful, because I feel terrible the whole day. Part of me gets scared that it's real, even though it's illogical.

The worst dream I ever had happened years ago. I was on a boat with all of my friends and they all decided to kill themselves by jumping into the water. The captain said it was my fault and I had to go into an ocean full of bodies picking the right ones out.

That being said, I had a dream that I ate taco bell last night and now my stomach hurts.

I've been thinking about fate a lot lately, mostly because it keeps coming up. Maybe it's fate that fate makes a reoccurring appearance in my life. I've never really believed in fate. I'm a strong believer in free will and the human ability to make mistakes and the knowledge that not all mistakes are meant to happen. But this spring a lot of bad things happened. Bad things happened to the point where I couldn't take it anymore and just shut down emotionally. Then this summer things turned around completely. There are times that I've been upset, but I've only been upset because I'm emotionally awake and I am not one to do things subtly. When I do feel things, I really feel them. I can't help but think that if the spring had turned out differently, this summer wouldn't have been the way it was and I really liked the way it was. It made me change in ways that were necessary.

Last weekend I saw a movie. I really liked it. I said it was perfect. But it wasn't perfect. There were things I didn't like about it, things I disagreed with, but it was perfect, because at the time I felt so good about the movie. But if I had seen it at a different time with a different person, I probably wouldn't have liked it much.

This goes back to a prior post I wrote about the flow. What is the flow exactly? Is it fate? To go with the flow, a person has to let go of any preconceived notions of the future and just let things happen and trust that it will be okay. If I trust that does that mean that I believe in fate?

Here it gets really complicated because if I believe in fate, I would have to think about where fate comes from and I don't have the time to write/think/talk about it now.

Passion

As a boy in Italy
Fabio was sent to the neighbors
to borrow some olive oil,
but he couldn't even wait to return
and swallowed it clean on the walk.

This, Fabio explains,
is passion.

Like that one night
after fermenting
we drank each other down.

You have made me
lose my language.
The gift that the others gave
when they left.
I don't have them,
but I had words
and that useful set of pondering.

I pondered everywhere.
Each sidewalk more pondered then the next.
Don't mention the bar- I pondered there
until I got home and lay in the mush
of pondering that the air turned into.
I could feel the thoughts on my lips,
sticky like maple syrup
and I could breathe them out like onion.

Once in elementary school we measured
how long a whale would be
if we put it in the gym and it stretched
from outside one door to outside of the other
and this is how large it would be
if it had a shape.
But a shape is too much for something
that doesn't even have a language.

We tried measuring with our fingers
what it is.
First there were two fingers together
and then several inches between us
where you could see the wire table
our feet on the ground
our legs touching.
Then there were two fingers closer
and you couldn't see anything,
but it was there again.
My teeth clenched from the weight of it.

We need a new language.
We're more like bats than whales.

Disclaimer

I have not been writing good poetry lately.

I've been writing "I have things in my head that want to leave" poetry.

All I can think in, is abstraction. In a good way. But good abstraction is even more difficult to figure out than bad abstraction.

What did you do to me?
My rage has cooled
and been placated
until I think of things like
-I really appreciate the hair in my cats ears.
-I can stay in this half dream state
-thinking
-lucid, but not enough.
-The cloudy day is all right.

Calm is not something I feel often.
It is on there on the list
right underneath satisfied,
but I feel that too.

This is indicative of something.

Why is it that I always get ready at the last possible minute? I've been awake for an hour and a half. I'm equally bad at getting ready by 1:30 as I am getting ready by 9:00.

I want to do something fun tonight. Also, every night.

Life this past week:

Monday: Bonfire. Parks and rec kicked us out at midnight. It was a small crowd, but good. The bathrooms close too early in the park. Refused to pull a woodsy and took a bathroom break at my house.
Tuesday: Went to Paint your Plate with Jamie and then Danny joined us at Shish and we smoked hookah. Learned a lot about a lot of things. Tried to figure out what kind of girl I am.
Wednesday: 17 mile bike ride to Uptown. Shrimp curry at Catmandu with Danny.
Thursday: Minnesota is on my foot. Really excellent everything.
Friday: Hung out with Martin and Meghan. Slightly anti-climatic.
Saturday: Beat my dad and brother in hearts. Watched half of "Slumdog Millionaire." Went to Grand. Saw "500 Days of Summer." It was really fantastic.
Sunday: Bought a new laptop.

Life is just surprising and really good. I know that soon things will be more difficult, but momentarily I am going to enjoy it.

At some point in the story
He cries or she cries
at the climax
or in women's literature at intervals
as if our emotions were shaped like our bodies.

But to have someone cry
is a worthless gesture.
The equivalent of trying to describe
the color orange.

It doesn't express anything any ways.
The reader will assume the wrong things.
Upset is the wrong word, sadness even worse.
Really though, if I were to say that I was crying
because I liked it so much
it would be less believable.

In retrospect nothing looks like anger,
but just happiness, pure tears of happiness.

Speaking of judgement

People love and are attracted to different people. If we were all attracted to the same people, things just wouldn't work out. Therefore I should probably judge people less (like when you see a picture and you go, HIM? She was pining that badly for HIM?).

I've spent a lot of time over the last year thinking about what type of girl I am. Because classification is obviously necessary, right? I also spent a lot of time today thinking about it. I used to think I was relationship girl. I like stable things. I like to have a routine and a schedule and to know what I am doing later in the day. But I'm not relationship girl. I always feel trapped once I'm actually in a relationship and I like to flirt and I like the excitement and relationships have excitement for awhile and then it dies and when it dies it kills me. I want to be open relationship girl. I like having someone that I know cares about me and will be there for me, but I need to not feel trapped. I am not open relationship girl. I tend to (not like to) care about one person or a few people intensely.

I wonder if there are people who don't get crushed by things. I realize other people often get less crushed by things than I do, but are there people who simply don't care? Who say, "A body is just a body and there's not a person attached to it?" I have a hard time defining my own attachment. Do I get attached to a body and then think that there's something more? Or is it the reverse: do I get attached to a person and then make it about the body?

This isn't a pressing issue really. I don't have to figure it out right now. Part of the problem is that there hasn't really been anyone that I've wanted a relationship with. There are people that I have had feelings for or attraction to on that level, but it would be a relationship based off the wrong things and that would be unnecessarily hurtful. But at the same time, I feel like it's a pressing issue because I'm trying to figure out how I feel about myself and my life and my mind isn't giving me any clues.

Except I feel good about myself. I feel confident. I guess I'm just trying to figure out how I feel about other things. I am really not sure. Usually when I say I am not sure about something I am lying, but I am being completely honest right now.

I am just going to keep going with the flow.

Let's take the flow literally: It's a little stream, it gains fast current and water, there are white water rapids! Oh no! And then there's a waterfall. And then it is a little stream again after getting away from the waterfall.

I'm experiencing the mid-August pre-miss where I miss people that I can still see. That being said, I think it makes me appreciate people more, having to lose them every few months.

Nevermind.

Things are good.

Your lack of enthusiasm is killing me.

Update

My head will not sleep (my head being a separate, non-controllable entity)

But my body and mind want to and will.

An inner fragmentation of sorts is taking place.

Dear head,
Please be quiet. I thought we had made peace or were working on making peace, but you rage and ponder as if there is an answer somewhere.

Why I like Bodies so much

It seems to me that man-hating is the same thing as man-
loving and the real power would come from man-indifference.
My favorite part of almost any man's body is the soft part
of his cheek between the nose and the bottom of the eyelid
and thumbs for the opposite reason, because they are large
and jointed and nothing says, "this body is not like my
body," as much as the big thumb wrapped around my little thumb.

It seems to me that I am in love with man's body rather than man
himself. When you are gone it is not your voice that I miss
(we've invented things for that: the letter, the telephone)
or even the appearance of your face (if that were it,
the hundreds of pictures would suffice). But this loss of your body,
this distinct loss of you, causes an emptiness so great,
it starts to collapse upon itself, sucking other things inside with it.

But no, I pride myself on caring about more. Maybe if you could make
your personality more textual. Like if I could touch the nice things
that you've said to me. As if people could subsist on compliments alone.
Put some of the bad things you've said in there too, along with a face
in a picture (those things that aren't good enough). The magic word becomes your body, what is more powerful than the word sorry (but that doesn't mean anything anyways).

Perhaps it isn't the body at all, but man's cycles and his shifts
and I think I like him best both ways and I hate him most all the time.
We've made bodies too fluid and relationships too solid and I want it
the opposite way.

I was reading poetry in the bookstore today and it was just painful how much I liked it. But it made me feel better, because I realized that it's painful whenever I like anything a lot. In a good sort of way.

Also: the transparency is scary. Whenever a song is perfect, a poem is perfect, whenever a person can see through me entirely, it's just horrible. In a good sort of way.

You know how when you look at a word too long, it starts looking fake, like it's not a real word at all? Everything starts to lose meaning when you think about it too long.

I don't want mediocre. I want something amazing. Why are people satisfied with nothing? I need more than that.

Who wants to do something amazing with me?

Today at work I was thinking

People who place their faith in religion, in god, or Jesus, or any sort of savior that can only appear after death have the right sort of idea. If he lets you down, who's to know?

But I like things that are real.

When things make me happy I have a hard time articulating it.

Things I'd like to do before the summer ends:
1. Go to the zoo (both of them)
2. Go swimming in Lake Calhoun.
3. Go to the Walker.
4. Have a picnic at the Sculpture Garden.
5. Paint something at Paint your Plate
6. Have a taco party
7. Have a dance party.
8. Really enjoy everybody that I'm around.
9. Complete at least two more hats.
10. Get a Minnesota tattoo.
11. Buy a laptop.
12. Feel really happy.

If you would like to participate in any of these, let me know.

It's like meeting a dog at the humane society.
He might be the ugliest thing you've ever seen
with flies and a bad temperament
and when you try to take him for a walk
he pulls on the leash.

But you meet him and there's just something
And you can't really place it
in the eyes or in the ragged fur

You take him home
and even though he likes to chew on your fingers
he feels soft and his appreciation is articulated
wordlessly.

I went downstairs this morning to brush my teeth and wash my face as I always do, but I knew that Larry was downstairs, probably in the kitchen so I went through the living room and the family room to get to the bathroom. I open the family room door and Larry is in the bathroom, door open, on the toilet. He said, "Excuse me," and closed the door.

This is why I don't like to live at my mother's house anymore.

I feel a lot better.

Things were only awful because they matter and if they didn't matter they wouldn't be awful and they wouldn't be good.

It balances out to be worth it. Definitely worth it.

I woke up at 5:30AM and couldn't get back to sleep after going to bed around 2:00AM. It's now 11:19PM and I just got back from a bike ride (I was riding home from watching a movie at Martin's with Johanna, Ben Corner, and Dylan and I was having such fun on my bicycle that I decided to keep going and I rode around Grand Avenue for awhile).

I've been having insomnia for at least a week now. At first it was because I was thinking too much, but I've stopped thinking as much. The things that were bothering me are quickly becoming resolved and resolved well, but I still can't sleep.

I am waiting for my body to collapse from pure exhaustion. Tomorrow and Friday would be excellent days for this to happen as a lot of people are out of town.

I don't even feel that tired.

You know those moments where everything just feels okay even though it's not okay?

I haven't been able to sleep in days. I wake up early in the morning, still thinking the same thoughts I was thinking when I went to sleep.

But it's okay. It's really okay. I'm not lying. Sometimes I lie and say things are okay when they are absolutely not, but they are right now.

They might not be in twenty minutes, but it doesn't fucking matter, because I feel good right now.

That's all. Shower time. Bedtime.

Fine.

I am a doormat.

I just get angry and then forgive people right away.

I'm the doormat inside the door.

I'm not actually a doormat.

It just seems like I'm one.

This sounds so stupid, but all I want right now, more than anything else is the whole world, is someone to hold me.

It's Margaret Atwood day

Margaret Atwood is one of the many loves of my life. She wrote my favorite book, "The Edible Woman," as well as many of my favorite poems.

Here are some of them:

"I watch you
watching my face
indifferently
yet with the same taut curiosity
with which you might regard
a suddenly discovered part
of your own body:
a wart perhaps"

This is how I feel about sleeping with people

"Only a starved dogs logic about bones."

I can't find a lot of the ones that I really love.

In other news:
Okay, no, I need to write a poem instead.

When I lie
it is like checking the weather
instead of looking out the window.
I like the weather men
in their finely pressed suits
pointing at swarms of bright color
as if they were clouds in the sky.

It's moving east!
It's moving east!

I said once that the clouds collided
into each other as if this were an impossibility.

But it's raining.

You're moving west.
I think you've dissipated.

And I.
I am out the window.
The weathermen keep telling their lies.

Go read PostSecret this week.

Oh my goodness.

I am in love with people that don't exist. I'm not sure anyone I'm in love with exists.

It's John Berryman day! Because I'm in love with John Berryman and I believe he would get drunk and run around the woods with me and that's what I want to do right now. I need to be someplace large and open and I want to be drunk and happy and with people I like a lot.

Here are some excellent poems:
A poem about a pretty girl

Life, friends, are boring

Henry hates the world

He loves everybody, but especially you

I added another one because I love John Berryman so much.

I love John Berryman and Holden Caulfield. I want to date Holden, except the best part about him is that he would love me a lot and at the same time I wouldn't be enough.

I meant to write a poem yesterday, but I have been having difficulty with language lately. I have all these things to say, but it's like the words are wrong and we formed speech improperly. Instead I will you a poem by someone who uses language quite well. My favorite part is:

"...I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free ----
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing..."

I realize coming from Plath, it sounds like suicide, but Plath understands far more than just death.