À Une Passant

"Moi, je buvais, crispé comme un extravagant,
[As for myself, clenched like a madman, I drank] 
Dans son oeil, ciel livide où germe l'ouragan,
[From her eyes - pale sky giving birth to the hurricane]
La douceur qui fascine et le plaisir qui tue
[Sweetness that mesmerizes and pleasure that kills]"

- XCIII: À Une Passant, Fleurs du Mal, Baudelaire

love

"'It's a... human emotion'
'No, it is a word. What matters is the connection the word implies'"
-  The Matrix: Revolutions

Don't think you are.


Know you are.

Les Chats

C'est tout ce que je peux esperer, a etre autorise a resider dans votre maison, le partage de votre espace, comme un chat.

"Les amoureux fervents et les savants austères
Aiment également, dans leur mure saison,
Les chats puissants et doux, orgueil de la maison,
Qui comme eux sont frileux et comme eux sédentaires

Amis de la science et de la volupté,
Ils cherchent le silence et l'horreur des ténèbres;
L'Érèbe les eût pris pour ses coursiers funèbres,
S'ils pouvaient au servage incliner leur fierté.

Ils prennent en songeant les nobles attitudes
Des grands sphinx allongés au fond des solitudes,
Qui semblent s'endormir dans un rêve sans fin;


Leurs reins féconds sont pleins d'etincelles magiques,
Et des parcelles d'or, ainsi qu'un sable fin,
Étoilent vaguement leurs prunelles mystiques"


- Les Fleurs du Mal, Baudelaire

I talk about myself
because
that's what I know best


secretly hoping that
one day
someone will outsmart me.

They say that everyone comes into your life for a reason, and I'm beginning to think that your reason is to remind me of how volatile my emotions are, and how quickly they can change. How I can go from being completely in love you to absolutely detesting everything about you, all in a matter of minutes.

"my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face"
- Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf

desire

I want nothing more than the pleasure of knowing that the only thing more far gone than my self control around is yours around me.

"'Haven't I?' - He thought. 'Haven't I thought of it since the first time I saw you? Haven't I thought of nothing else for two years? ... He sat motionless, looking at her. He heard the words he had never allowed himself to form, the words he had felt, known, yet had not faced, had hoped to destroy by never letting them be said within his own mind. Now it was as sudden and shocking as if he were saying it to her ... Since the first time I saw you ... nothing but your body, that mouth of yours, and the way your eyes would look at me, if ... through every sentence I ever said to you; through every conference you thought so safe, through the importance of all the issues we discussed ... You trusted me, didn't you? To recognize your greatness? To think of you as you deserved - as if you were a man? ... Don't you suppose I know how much I've betrayed? The only bright encounter of my life - the only person I respected - the best businessman I know - my ally - my partner in a desperate battle ... The lowest of all desires - as my answer to the highest I've met ... Do you know what I am? I thought of it, because it should have been unthinkable. For that degrading need, which should never touch you, I have never wanted anyone but you ... I hadn't known what it was like, to want it, until I saw you for the first time. I had thought: Not I, I couldn't be broken by it .. since then ... for two years ... with not a moment's respite ... Do you know what it's like, to want it? Would you wish to hear what I thought when I looked at you ... when I lay awake at night ... when I heard your voice over a telephone wire ... when I worked, but could not drive it away? ... To bring you down to things you can't conceive - and to know that it's I who have done it. To reduce you to a body, to teach you an animal's pleasure, to see you need it, to see you asking me for it, to see your wonderful spirit dependent upon the obscenity of your need. To watch you as you are, as you face the world with your clean, proud strength  - then to see you, in my bed, submitting to any infamous whim I may devise, to any act which I'll perform for the sole purpose of watching your dishonor and to which you'll submit for the sake of an unspeakable sensation ... I want you - and may I be damned for it!"

- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.

I don't like spending time with you in public. Not because of shame, but because the space between us always feels so charged, so full, so intimate, it seems indecent to expose others to such indecency.


"They kept their secret from the knowledge of others, not as a shameful guilt, but as a thing that was immaculately theirs, beyond anyone's right of debate of appraisal. She knew the general doctrine on sex, held by people in one form or another, the doctrine that sex was an ugly weakness of man's lower nature, to be condoned regretfully. She experienced an emotion of chastity that made her shrink not from the desires of her body, but from any contact with the minds who held this doctrine.

...

In the many months of his absence, she never wondered whether he was true to her or not; she knew he was. She knew, even though she was too young to know the reason, that indiscriminate desire and unselective indulgence were possible only to those who regarded sex and themselves as evil."

- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.

"The privileges of knowledge have to be bought at the cost of the consolations of ignorance."

- Claire de Duras, Ourika

I remember.

I remember it all.

Too well, in fact. I remember my little cousins calling me off of the volleyball court, saying that our aunt was about to pick me up. I remember being afraid to leave them there by themselves with only my cell phone to call their mom. I remember getting into the backseat of my aunt’s car, looking over at my other cousin in the backseat, face covered in tears. Uncontrollable tears of my own before I had even heard anything specific. Rushing into the hospital. Wandering halls that smelled wrong; too sterile. Stumbling upon a crowd of people in the hall, signaling that we had found your room. Everyone was taking turns, because there was a limit on how many people were allowed in the room, or there just wasn’t enough space, or they just couldn’t bear to be there and see you that way for too long. We were all so scared. But it wasn’t so bad, because even though you looked scarily small and pale, the nurse told us that your recent coma was a “restorative sleep”.

I should have know better.

Shuffling in and out, between your room and the nearby lounge with small tables and cartoons on the television and coloring books, because it was the kids’ ward, after all. Someone thought to get a bunch of stuff from KFC, because there were a lot of people, and none of us were leaving anytime soon. We were in it for the long haul.

So we thought.

A door slamming open and a scream. That was all that I needed to hear. I couldn’t. I knew what had happened. Wandering hallways, lost. I stumbled upon a deserted nurses’ station, but decided that the floor opposite it, next to the gurney, was more appropriate.

Down.

Hugging knees, because that was all I had left.

Because you were gone, in a heartbeat.

Or lack thereof.

And then I heard someone else sniffling. It’s a wonder that I heard anything over the sounds in my head. Internally screaming, pleading, rationalizing, hoping. Nose dripping sniffles and body shaking sobs. I looked up and saw my cousin. My cousins, who I love with all my heart. My cousins, who I never expected to see cry in this lifetime, who I never expected to see me cry. No words. Just sitting at the nurses’ station like three misfits, hugging each other, trying to stop.

It took a long time.

And then we wandered, because seeing any other sick person would be better than going back and seeing the sick person who we had originally come here for. We saw the newborns, distorted by my tears. She told me that they had jaundice, but I didn’t notice. I was beyond seeing.

We went back, because we didn’t want to worry anyone. We were gone for a while. The hallway was still and quiet. And then your sister found us. She told us to come with her. To say our last goodbyes. I would have only went for her. We went in, and everyone was so calm. Rational. Reasonable. Kissed you on the forehead, told you how much they loved you, said goodbye. Commented on how cold you already felt. 

I couldn’t. I couldn’t get past the doorway. I stood and watched silently. I didn’t trust my voice. All I could do was apologize over and over in my head that I couldn’t be as strong as everyone else was.

i can't stand seeing people that i love suffer

i wish that i could take the pain for them
until i knew they were strong enough to handle it.

I have never understood why so many people enjoy Shakespeare, because I have certainly tried and failed, but, "These violent delights have violent ends", perfectly describes every love affair that I have ever been engaged in, because passion ignites my soul like a match, with all consuming flame, and like a match, just as suddenly as it is lit, all is consumed, and just as soon as it begins, it ends, with nothing but the blinding emptiness where the bright light once lived.

"One can, indeed one must, know all that is necessary to write correctly because, in my view, it is intolerable for women anyone to wish to speak well but write badly"

- The Story of Sapho, by Madeleine de Scudery

it's a good thing i can't seem to get you out of my life, because then i'd be emotionally stable

and then what would i write about?


surely nothing interesting.

"I am a love without a lover. I am lovely and lonely and I belong deeply to myself"
- Warsan Shire

self improvement.

i thought my love for you
would somehow make you better

but it's only made me worse

fool me once, shame on you.
fool me for five years, ...

fuck. who's the bigger asshole, me or you?

the headlights behind me on the highway at night
aren't lights at all
but eyes
of formless, faceless demons
chasing me
racing
trying to capture me in their unbreakable grasp

it is all that I can do to stay out of their reach

belittle me.

make me feel small in all the best ways.

faites attention

I need to restrain myself a bit more. I am so comfortable around you. Too comfortable. You ask me a question that should have a simple response, but once I start, I can't stop. It's not word vomit, because even then you eventually wretch, and then there's nothing left to come up. It's like my words are a waterfall, or an avalanche, and I'm afraid of smothering you with them, to the point where you avoid my mouth, in fear that it will bring on another suffocation onslaught.

And then you're not comfortable anymore.


"My mouth is a fire escape. The words coming out cannot care that they are naked."
- Andrea Gibson

I imagine that this is what it would be like to try to restrain a struggling porcupine with bare hands. The harder I try to hold on, the more you struggle, and the more I'm hurt. It's best to just let go and move on, for both of our sakes. You clearly don't care enough to want to stay around, and frankly, I'm tired of fighting to keep you around. No sense keeping you if you don't want to be kept.

"To do anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift"

chemistry.

Break ups suck. They're even worse when you weren't even dating to begin with. 

But in the chemistry known as us, our equation just couldn't be balanced. I initiated, but your reactions didn't yield the desired product. And so we are back to being separate elements, back to wandering in a sea of people, as if we had never collided.

"Yes, I was infatuated with you: I am, still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren't having any of those."

- Sylvia Plath

parental advisory.

I guess I should have told you at the outset that I have no couth. Or filter. Or consideration for emotions.

Whoops.


"My mouth is a fire escape. The words coming out cannot care that they are naked."
- Andrea Gibson

True love is finding that perfect combination of pen and page, of ink and paper, that flows and scratches so perfectly and effortlessly and harmoniously that you can't help but pour out your soul, because that connection from hand to pen to page is more like heart to words to the universe, where there is no fear of being mistreated or misunderstood, because they just "get it".

I must constantly remind myself that not every passing thought is a gem. Not everything is worth sharing with the internet.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes the ironic segment of today.

Just because you can, doesn't mean that you should.

"There was an air of luxury about the room, but it was the luxury of expert simplicity. This was his concept of wealth - the wealth of selection, not of accumulation."
- Excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

what i want more than anything, is not that you should be mine, but that i be yours. my self worth inexplicably hinges on your approximation of me. i wish that i felt differently, but i can't remember being any other way.

Reading a stranger's writing that completely encompasses the most complicated emotions that you have ever felt, that you thought were unique to you, is the most treacherous and comforting feeling, all at the same time. It intensifies everything, almost to the point of being unbearable, because now you're not only living your struggle, but someone else's as well, because it is just the same as yours. And because you relate to it, and you know it so well, it hurts infinitely more than any other type of foreign pain that you would try to sympathize with.

Trying to come to terms with the fact that the things that I want and the things that I need are mutually exclusive.

I hate maturity. And epiphanies. And growing up.


Dash all of it to hell.

night terrors

I woke up terrified, in tears, trying to run and gasping when I realized that I was frozen. For the brief moments between sleep and consciousness, I was petrified, laboring under the belief that I was still being chased. I looked around wildly, trying to make sense of my surroundings, but couldn't. And then, slowly, I came back.

This is not the first time that this has happened. While the details are different, the mood is the same. Unresolved issues that I try to ignore come to me at night, demanding my attention, making themselves known. With no solution visible in the foreseeable future, my only choice is to endure the suffering.

"I put it down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so much"
- Excerpt from The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros

The more I try to remember, the harder I cling to memories of you, the faster they leave. It's like trying to grip water. I knew it would happen this way, but I don't want to believe that it's actually happening. It scares me to think that there might come a day where I won't be able to remember what your face looks looked like. It scares me that you went from a major concern to a passing thought. I don't want to forget. But I can't help it.

Please forgive me.

"I wondered if there would ever be a day when I didn't think about Alaska, wondered whether I should hope for a time when she would be a distant memory - recalled only on the anniversary of her death, or maybe a couple of weeks after, remembering only after having forgotten."
- Excerpt from Looking for Alaska, by John Green

I work in solitude, producing, producing, producing, until I have too much. Then I weed out the crap, leave the little that I think is good, the moderate amount that I think is kind of okay, and hope that I come across as experienced. I have never been a good judge of my own work. I can never tell the difference between mediocrity to me and brilliance to others. I can't tell if it's because I don't believe myself capable of greatness, or if it's been sitting in my thoughts for so long that I no longer recognize its greatness.

"By writing much, one learns to write well"
- Robert Southey

Reality killed the dreamer

I have realized that when I sit and think and reminisce about us (together), I am actually remembering who I imagined you to be, not who you truly were. So I guess this is my fault.

Yeah. I'll take responsibility for it this time.

"For 36 minutes I only looked at you when I had to. Because I knew that all it would take is three seconds out of those 36 minutes of us making eye contact for me to see...what I saw before, what I wanted to see - the potential in YOU. The potential in US. Then another three seconds for me to see what you really were. And probably what you still are."
- Excerpt from 36 Minutes, by Abi

Why?

Because, fuck you, that's why.

"Cussing doesn't come from a lack of vocabulary - I know all the other words. None of them speak the same language that my fucking heart does"
- Anis Mojgani

In retrospect...

No one cares until they discover how they can use you.

"Make everybody fall out of the plane first, and then explain who they were and why they were in the plane to begin with"
- Nancy Ann Dibble

Sitting, staring, trying to sort everything out. I could talk, but it would be senseless rambling. Incomplete thoughts. Incoherency. Maybe I can try to write and make sense of it all.

No. I can't. No sense. No rhyme, or reason. Just words, and sentences. They made sense in my head, but have no form outside of it. Like a jellyfish washed up on a beach. No structural integrity. They're not meant to be out of their natural environment. But they're poisonous. They have to be removed before they infect the whole. I must get rid of them. And keep them from everyone.

Except myself. I have to remember the bedlam from which I escaped. I must always remember. Keep it in an unused corner, and only bring it out in my darkest of moments.

There is no worse place to be than this bleak mental space.

"Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself"
- Franz Kafka

I talk a good game, but really, I miss being in your space, no matter how limited the time was. And now there's no time at all, because you've left.


"I wish you were here. But you're not here, you're there. And there doesn't know how lucky it is."
- Unknown

I don't know which is worse: that you so freely take advantage of me, or that I allow you to.

"Shouldn't let you torture me so sweetly"

Me, myself and I

Everything I write, even when it's not about me, is about me. The words that I choose, the perspective from which I speak, the flow of the language. All of it is uniquely me. Maybe one day there might be one person who could begin to read something and immediately think, "Yes, I know this. I recognize their writing," and they would be talking about me. And they would be impressed, and excited, because they would know, based on my body of work, that the things they were in the process of reading would be nothing but exceptional, because they had become accustomed to my style and decided that they like the things that I produce, no matter how strongly tinged with "me" they are. That maybe, they would appreciate the "me" injected into each piece.

"Every writer is a narcissist. This does not meant that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed."
- Leo Rosten

I want someone to notice. I want someone to be so enthralled in my entire being that they notice things about me that I've never seen. I want you to acknowledge the things that I like about myself, and then point out things that I had never thought to like. Show me that you appreciate me, and every ounce and inch of my being. Be nicer to me than I am to myself, and call me out when I'm not treating myself as well as I should. I want someone to feel all of these things about me and be honest about it.

Please, care.

"blemish, n.
The slight acne scars. The penny-sized, penny-shaped birthmark right above your knee. The dot below your shoulder that must have been from when you had chicken pox in third grade. The scratch on your neck - did I do that?


This brief transcript of moments, written on the body, is so deeply satisfying to read"
- Excerpt from The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan

There are times when you can sit in front of a blank page for hours, reading and rereading the prompt, hoping to be stricken by a thought good enough to be immortalized on a page. I find that these are the times when it is most necessary to let the nonsense flow from brain to hand to page, if only to get the spring of ideas flowing. I usually allot the first page or two to gibberish, so that by the time I arrive upon the third page, I am producing things worth keeping.


"There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know 'til he takes up the pen and writes"
- William Makepeace Thackeray

The art of celebration

The celebration of nothing is something that continues to baffle me. People get together, dance, get drunk, have sex with strangers, do drugs, all because they made it to the end of the week. Because these are the things that are "fun" and signal to others that the people celebrating know how to have a good time, and are the epitome of class and luxury and should be admired for their enjoyment of "the finer things". While it seems like many young people enjoy these activities, I have never understood why, because most of them have done nothing and accomplished nothing that would warrant such extreme debauchery. I exist under the impression that only those who have accomplished something are worthy of luxe celebrations. Part of the discord between my understanding of enjoyment and other peoples' is that I have a different idea of what "celebration" and "luxury" are, and I believe that excess involves more than just spending too much money.






"They remained silent, letting the room be filled by the sounds which centuries of men and of struggle had established as the symbol of joyous attainment: the blast of the cork, the laughing tinkle of a pale gold liquid running into two broad cups filled with the weaving reflections of candles, the whisper of bubbles rising through two crystal stems, almost demanding that everything in sight rise, too, in the same aspiration."


- Excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

For those with writer's block...

"If you're afraid you can't write, the answer is to write. Every sentence you construct adds weight to the balance pan. If you're afraid of what other people will think of your efforts, don't show them until you write your way beyond your fear. If writing a book is impossible, write a chapter. If writing a chapter is impossible, write a page. If writing a page is impossible, write a paragraph. If writing a paragraph is impossible, write a sentence. If writing even a sentence is impossible, write a word and teach yourself everything there is to know about that word and then write another, connected word and see where their connection leads."

- Richard Rhodes