what are the limits of this?
(and who has to get hurt in order for me to find out?)
28 March 2008
23 March 2008
mix tape iii
a going-away present.
1) Better - Regina Spektor
2) The Origin of Love - Rufus Wainwright
3) Blackbird - the Beatles
4) Fade Into You - Mazzy Star
5) Unfinished Art - Amber Rubarth
6) Made of Steel - Our Lady Peace
7) Little Star - Stina Nordenstam
8) Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town - Pearl Jam
9) Glass Vase Cello Case - Tattle Tale
10) Transatlanticism - Death Cab for Cutie
11) Kids Will Be Skeletons - Mogwai
12) Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect - the Decemberists
13) Another Little Hole - Aqualung
14) I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You - Colin Hay
15) Your Wrists - Julie Sokolow
16) Name - Goo Goo Dolls
17) I'm Lost Without You - Blink-182
happy Easter to those of you who celebrate it. for the rest of us, happy spring! maybe it will get warm soon.
1) Better - Regina Spektor
2) The Origin of Love - Rufus Wainwright
3) Blackbird - the Beatles
4) Fade Into You - Mazzy Star
5) Unfinished Art - Amber Rubarth
6) Made of Steel - Our Lady Peace
7) Little Star - Stina Nordenstam
8) Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town - Pearl Jam
9) Glass Vase Cello Case - Tattle Tale
10) Transatlanticism - Death Cab for Cutie
11) Kids Will Be Skeletons - Mogwai
12) Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect - the Decemberists
13) Another Little Hole - Aqualung
14) I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You - Colin Hay
15) Your Wrists - Julie Sokolow
16) Name - Goo Goo Dolls
17) I'm Lost Without You - Blink-182
happy Easter to those of you who celebrate it. for the rest of us, happy spring! maybe it will get warm soon.
20 March 2008
stream-of-consciousness XIII
it's one a.m.
it's been a week, so i have to post something, right?
she read it =)
i started writing a sonnet today, but i didn't finish it in time, and nothing rhymes with the words i want to use. also i don't know if i'll have the same motivation to write it now. things seem much less....dramatic? that's not the right word. "hurty" comes to mind.
new mix tape will be posted after you tell me you've listened to it.
i ought to be asleep. roommate things. lease things. nonsense. drama. words.
see? sometimes silence is best.
this belongs to a paper journal, but i can't get there from here....i can't reach it. i ought to be asleep. at least i finished my homework....i think. i hope. it better be done. and it better be better than the last one.....why is it the class i'm most interested in is the one i'm doing worst in? i'm lazy. the end. i could write a more eloquent explanation but it would probably all be a bunch of bullshit.
does this even have a place being published? (does that even make sense?) honestly, what is artistic about stream-of-consciousness? unless you're talking about something like James Joyce, but that was constructed; it was made to look like stream-of-consciousness but it wasn't just the discharge of someone's brain. he tried to make it look like that.
i've never actually read any Joyce.
it's been a week, so i have to post something, right?
she read it =)
i started writing a sonnet today, but i didn't finish it in time, and nothing rhymes with the words i want to use. also i don't know if i'll have the same motivation to write it now. things seem much less....dramatic? that's not the right word. "hurty" comes to mind.
new mix tape will be posted after you tell me you've listened to it.
i ought to be asleep. roommate things. lease things. nonsense. drama. words.
see? sometimes silence is best.
this belongs to a paper journal, but i can't get there from here....i can't reach it. i ought to be asleep. at least i finished my homework....i think. i hope. it better be done. and it better be better than the last one.....why is it the class i'm most interested in is the one i'm doing worst in? i'm lazy. the end. i could write a more eloquent explanation but it would probably all be a bunch of bullshit.
does this even have a place being published? (does that even make sense?) honestly, what is artistic about stream-of-consciousness? unless you're talking about something like James Joyce, but that was constructed; it was made to look like stream-of-consciousness but it wasn't just the discharge of someone's brain. he tried to make it look like that.
i've never actually read any Joyce.
12 March 2008
notes on "the memory of hands"
written december 11-12, 2007
revived march 7, 2008,
when it suddenly became strikingly relevant again.
this was originally intended as a gift for someone i can't explain things to.
i never gave it to her.
i kind of hope she reads it here.
the piece is what i'd like to call "semi-fiction":
the fictionalization of actual events,
with many of the details maintained,
in order to make them easier to contend with
(and in order for the author to explore other possibilities).
the artist quoted in part i is
amber rubarth
revived march 7, 2008,
when it suddenly became strikingly relevant again.
this was originally intended as a gift for someone i can't explain things to.
i never gave it to her.
i kind of hope she reads it here.
the piece is what i'd like to call "semi-fiction":
the fictionalization of actual events,
with many of the details maintained,
in order to make them easier to contend with
(and in order for the author to explore other possibilities).
the artist quoted in part i is
amber rubarth
the memory of hands, part iii
as she lay on the floor, fingers slowly entwining and untwining, it suddenly became altogether too much. "it's six a.m.," she said. "we need to go to bed."
they slowly stood and walked, half-asleep, into the other room. as soon as they were both under covers, she could have sworn she'd never been more awake. sleep...come on, sleep!...
...is she awake, too? four eyes open, seeing more than it seemed like the darkness should allow. but who had been caught looking at whom?
each breath was heavy, and yet each somehow managed to hang suspended in the air between them. it was the kind of tension you could cut with a knife if you had a penchant for cliches.
the only thing to do was to break it, or there would be no rest for either of them, and there was only one way to do it--
--and she kissed her--
--and in some parallel universe, unbearably far away, their hands were suddenly again all that mattered, all there was, no longer searching each other but now exploring the sweet velvet heat of something which was not love but which might have been easily mistaken for it.
the next afternoon in both universes, they woke up next to each other and spurned the advances of an overeager sun. the same question weighed heavy on all of them: what happens next?
they slowly stood and walked, half-asleep, into the other room. as soon as they were both under covers, she could have sworn she'd never been more awake. sleep...come on, sleep!...
...is she awake, too? four eyes open, seeing more than it seemed like the darkness should allow. but who had been caught looking at whom?
each breath was heavy, and yet each somehow managed to hang suspended in the air between them. it was the kind of tension you could cut with a knife if you had a penchant for cliches.
the only thing to do was to break it, or there would be no rest for either of them, and there was only one way to do it--
--and she kissed her--
--and in some parallel universe, unbearably far away, their hands were suddenly again all that mattered, all there was, no longer searching each other but now exploring the sweet velvet heat of something which was not love but which might have been easily mistaken for it.
the next afternoon in both universes, they woke up next to each other and spurned the advances of an overeager sun. the same question weighed heavy on all of them: what happens next?
09 March 2008
the memory of hands, part ii
everything else aside, she thought, this is about you and me. we are the only two who matter. regardless of what relationships may or may not exist, or are supposed to exist, what do we want from each other? forget that it's not really that simple...
she shuffled into her bedroom and reached for the journal she kept next to her bed, searching for a pen that still had ink in it. her journal fell open to a page that said only, "i fall asleep next to him and i feel safe, like i've found that place i'm supposed to call Home." it was dated two weeks earlier. she took a deep breath and flipped to the next empty page, uncapped her pen, wrote the date and time in meticulous print, and stared at the blank page before her.
the words would not come.
her thoughts spun so fast that they wouldn't allow words to catch up, and she was left with no explanation.
she slammed the book shut and threw it to the floor, ready to give up and descending again into the memory of her hands...her hands, so soft in her own and so tempted but so hesitant; that was what she wanted, an end to that hesitation...wasn't it?
any new situation that might arise would be so artificial that it would be impossible to tell what was really happening.
she shuffled into her bedroom and reached for the journal she kept next to her bed, searching for a pen that still had ink in it. her journal fell open to a page that said only, "i fall asleep next to him and i feel safe, like i've found that place i'm supposed to call Home." it was dated two weeks earlier. she took a deep breath and flipped to the next empty page, uncapped her pen, wrote the date and time in meticulous print, and stared at the blank page before her.
the words would not come.
her thoughts spun so fast that they wouldn't allow words to catch up, and she was left with no explanation.
she slammed the book shut and threw it to the floor, ready to give up and descending again into the memory of her hands...her hands, so soft in her own and so tempted but so hesitant; that was what she wanted, an end to that hesitation...wasn't it?
any new situation that might arise would be so artificial that it would be impossible to tell what was really happening.
07 March 2008
the memory of hands, part i
she rinsed the last plate and put it in the dish drain next to the sink, washed her hands free of their dishsoap softness, and brushed a stray piece of hair out of her face with the back of her wrist before reaching for the towel. she liked to sing while she washed the dishes, especially when her roommate wasn't home, but tonight her mind had been too busy. if there's really nothing there, why won't you get out of my head?
she sank into the sofa, finals over, nothing to do for almost a month, but preferring to spend her boredom here rather than in that uncomfortable place she could no longer call home. the clock on her roommate's stereo blinked unforgivingly, every second accusing them of being too lazy to reset it. the little LED light for "CD1" reminded her that it still wanted to play the album she had put in on a drunken impulse the other night. she wouldn't reset the clock, but she supposed she could give in to that much.
"bouncy-ball lovers exploding in colors as they lean down over the pier"...this artist was going to be big someday, or deserved it at least. nevermind that she'd unwittingly become the soundtrack to a bad lesbian movie, acted out in a sparsely-furnished college apartment with no cameras or production crew.
you were so impressed by my own voice, then, she remembered, although she would never understand its appeal, summoned in wide-awake exhaustion at an hour at which she was usually afraid to use it. that wasn't the only thing she couldn't understand...
head on hands, elbows on knees, she tried to replay the events of saturday night...a brilliant plan, thwarted by sobriety...what had or hadn't happened mattered less than how soft her hands had been in the moments between speaking...
...and was that all that was left of it? a memory of hands that had twined with her own, fingertips brushing palms in a ritual of hopeful reluctance that needed no rehearsal? more communicated in one instant of skin-on-skin than in three hours of uncertain words and silent hesitation?
and what would come of it now? if there had really been nothing, then nothing would change...but she couldn't help feeling like she'd lost a bet. the big one that could let you buy a new house and retire early, if only you didn't blow everything you've already won.
she had been convinced that she had done nothing wrong; she had tried so hard to do nothing wrong...
maybe, when you know without a doubt that something is right but you find yourself incapable of doing it anyway, it isn't really the right thing after all.
she turned off the stereo.
she sank into the sofa, finals over, nothing to do for almost a month, but preferring to spend her boredom here rather than in that uncomfortable place she could no longer call home. the clock on her roommate's stereo blinked unforgivingly, every second accusing them of being too lazy to reset it. the little LED light for "CD1" reminded her that it still wanted to play the album she had put in on a drunken impulse the other night. she wouldn't reset the clock, but she supposed she could give in to that much.
"bouncy-ball lovers exploding in colors as they lean down over the pier"...this artist was going to be big someday, or deserved it at least. nevermind that she'd unwittingly become the soundtrack to a bad lesbian movie, acted out in a sparsely-furnished college apartment with no cameras or production crew.
you were so impressed by my own voice, then, she remembered, although she would never understand its appeal, summoned in wide-awake exhaustion at an hour at which she was usually afraid to use it. that wasn't the only thing she couldn't understand...
head on hands, elbows on knees, she tried to replay the events of saturday night...a brilliant plan, thwarted by sobriety...what had or hadn't happened mattered less than how soft her hands had been in the moments between speaking...
...and was that all that was left of it? a memory of hands that had twined with her own, fingertips brushing palms in a ritual of hopeful reluctance that needed no rehearsal? more communicated in one instant of skin-on-skin than in three hours of uncertain words and silent hesitation?
and what would come of it now? if there had really been nothing, then nothing would change...but she couldn't help feeling like she'd lost a bet. the big one that could let you buy a new house and retire early, if only you didn't blow everything you've already won.
she had been convinced that she had done nothing wrong; she had tried so hard to do nothing wrong...
maybe, when you know without a doubt that something is right but you find yourself incapable of doing it anyway, it isn't really the right thing after all.
she turned off the stereo.
03 March 2008
02 March 2008
it's been a while
it seems i always want what i can't have. i think this happens to a lot of people, most people even, but it doesn't make it any easier.
while in the past it has seemed that as soon as i get something i want, it no longer interests me, i think i'm getting better about this. i hope i am.
this is the abridged version of "i need to sort out my life because i have no fucking clue what's going on." except that i need to take a weekend off to travel. and i'm not even really sure if that will help, but i know i need to find out.
"chop suey" just came up on shuffle. there's a song that used to mean a lot. i still remember when and why i started listening to WHFS, and nights in the dark with headphones and the 9 at 9. this is still an awesome song.
cryptic entries don't belong here. i wish i had something better to post. i've been doing sudoku in class more often than i've been writing sonnets. one week til spring break--maybe i'll write something then. (mostly it's that any energy i put into writing really ought to be put towards sorting things out.)
the circumstances are not as dire as i wish to make them appear.
while in the past it has seemed that as soon as i get something i want, it no longer interests me, i think i'm getting better about this. i hope i am.
this is the abridged version of "i need to sort out my life because i have no fucking clue what's going on." except that i need to take a weekend off to travel. and i'm not even really sure if that will help, but i know i need to find out.
"chop suey" just came up on shuffle. there's a song that used to mean a lot. i still remember when and why i started listening to WHFS, and nights in the dark with headphones and the 9 at 9. this is still an awesome song.
cryptic entries don't belong here. i wish i had something better to post. i've been doing sudoku in class more often than i've been writing sonnets. one week til spring break--maybe i'll write something then. (mostly it's that any energy i put into writing really ought to be put towards sorting things out.)
the circumstances are not as dire as i wish to make them appear.
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