"I've got a nomadic head"

It's a horrible feeling to know that you've become everything that you hate. Where do we make the distinction between strong and stubborn? Mostly, it's just wounded pride but these days it's all I have left.

"I think your bruise was understated"

I am four days into my summer vacation and I've attended two parties, finished 2 books, gone to a show, and played catch in the park. Before the night is over I will also have watched two films. Not a bad start, if I may say so.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about a lot of things. There is one matter that I need to attend to before I'll be able to focus on anything else.

I'm a couple paychecks away from a new camera. The sky is breathtaking tonight. I can't wait to take photos again.

I think I'll spend the day exploring tomorrow. 77. Skirts, finally.

There is no place safe.

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.

Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.

Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.

Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.

You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.

You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.

You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax.

Don't bother remembering any of it.

Let's stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

- 'Antilamentation', Dorianne Laux

Sometimes you have to be your own hero.

It's been a quiet couple of days (mostly because I'm keeping my mouth shut). It's a hard thing to love people, to give yourself to them, because when they leave they take part of you with them. I'm horrible at goodbyes and these will be some of the hardest I've ever had to make.

I never want to forget a minute of this.

All my work for the semester is finished.

Some things that are keeping me from falling off the earth:
folk-pop piano rock, Blankets, the city in bloom.

The best of me is hidden somewhere that you'll never find.


Mostly because you don't want to look.

scraped knees

I can't be good all the time.
Lately it's been tough being good at all.

Sometimes I want to say or do or know something so badly that it makes me uneasy. I want it so intensely that it makes me afraid to get it. This is the opposite of a goal. It's a shameful addiction.
I've been lazy. I've let hate and frustration and jealousy overpower the love in my life and that's not the person that I want to be. I made a commitment to myself not to succumb to the weight of the world.

Time to let go of this negativity that's been clouding my head and heart for the past few months. It's time to find my center again.