Dribble in my head

You belong to a place inside my head

Where love is dead

And only a carcass now lives

Of something once beautiful

Dig it up, love

Check the rotting flesh

For fresh sutures

Maybe there’s life still in those weary bones

Run your hands along the spine

Of a broken back

Missing vertebras

Is where our future now lies

Every time you fuck me

I hope you ask yourself

How it feels to fuck the dead

Never Not Broken

"Every act of love should be cause for joy in

every person who is aware of it.

To be angered by the fact of love

is to be afraid of life. "

-Das Energi

I think I originally intended this to be a "writing" blog (the word "writing" implying I was doing it artistically in some fashion). However, I think after quite sometime in hibernation, it is now just going to be a "me" blog.

This will hopefully be the first post in a string of posts. I have some recipes I'd like to post (as I have recently realized that I'm exceptionally good at gourmet, vegan, junk-food. I mean seriously, you haven't had a quesadilla until you've had one of my vegan quesadillas). It will be random thoughts that I want to put out into the world (like bellow). There may be some "writing", and with any luck there will be other artistic endeavors. Either way, this is my little "outside of grad school contribution to the world". If you enjoy my dribble, fantastic! If you don't, no hard feelings.

I've been thinking a lot on the subject of heart break. Mostly, because I am currently heart broken. I wasn't actually aware that I could cry as much as I have recently. It's not just the crying, though. It's the pain. It's the type of pain that convinces me that, even if it ends, I might not be a whole person once it's gone. It's so much pain that I am confused as to who I am at all these days. It's shattering pain.

All of my friends have been telling me that "he's not worth it." They tell me how wonderful I am, and how lousy he is. Which is funny, because I think it's the very same friends that were telling me that he's worth fighting for when I was talking about giving up before we broke up. They tell me that I'm better than "this". Stronger than "this". Stronger than him. Because that's what friends are for. To tell you you're awesome when you feel like shit. But really, that kind of talk just made me feel ashamed and weak.

Putting value on him or our relationship is a futile process anyway. If he is not worth it, if our relationship is not worth it, am I worth it? I could rationalize and come up with reasons about why I am so much better and stronger, but at the end of the day, lying in bed alone, all of that pompousness and pretension falls apart. If I am going to think like that I might as well hand the keys of my mind over to disappointment and bitterness. Thinking like that is a road to nowhere good.

What I failed to realize in my struggle to be "better" and "stronger," is that the real strength isn't in not feeling. It's in owning the pain. It's in saying "Yeah, I'm hurting. I love him, and I'm grieving because I have lost something dear to me, and I feel weak right now" and being truly okay with it. My strength is not in being super-human, it's in being hyper-human. It's in being okay with being curled up sobbing, because it is a lot harder to accept who you are being, than it is who you are trying to be. I can cry in the shower this morning and every other morning, but I am alive. I am contributing. I am growing in the face of sadness. I am carrying on, even though I am wounded. My strength is not in denying my pain and suffering - and it is certainly not in feeling above it - it is in allowing it to change me. Allowing this process to be transformative.

Love - love in what I believe is it's purest form - is about letting go of ones preconceived notions of self and letting in another human being. Denying that just because you lost it, is denying what that love was in the first place. And it was beautiful. Really beautiful.

My strength? It's in being grateful even with the misery. It's about letting go and nurturing the pain so that one day it can become something different. Otherwise, you're just allowing it to live inside of you forever, not giving it permission to be and to change. Not giving yourself permission to be and to change.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go have a good cry and then fall asleep smiling.

Feeling Pretty Good

I've had what I've now accepted as a cold for the last few days. I had no idea what it was, because the sinus issues acompanying it have been so bad it's been confusing me (I hardly ever have sinus issues, even when I get sick). Not to mention I feel okay, no fatigue or anything, my head is just conjested and my throat a little sore.

I came into work anyway, which I got scolded for. My boss conceeded to let me stay as long as I didn't get anyone else sick - a promise I can surely keep. I got to work just in time to teach the porition of the "New Patient Orientation Class" that I usually do, which is overdose prevention.

"Have you ever seen an overdose?"

"What does it look like?"

"Why do people overdose?"

"What are some common myths about bringing someone out of an overdose?"

"How to bring someone out of an overdose."

There is always one person in these classes that feels the need to make it very clear that they are experienced in these things, have been using for years, and they know what I'm talking about and then some. I respectfully shut these people down pretty quickly (especially when they're being condescending to other patients), but they make teaching very difficult. Funny thing is though, there's one of those people in any class room setting. The 8th grader who knows more than their teacher, the snooty college student who took one philosophy class so they clearly know Marx better than anyone else does, etc.

This is one of my favorite parts of the week regardless, and as I was walking out of the class room today the woman who knew so much more than I did said, "Thank you so much for coming in even when you don't feel well."

"Well honestly," I said, "I hate missing work. When I get sick it's not like, 'Well, at least I get to miss work today!' because I really would rather be here. I love my job and I love meeting you guys," and the funny thing was I realized I really meant it, and how novel that is.

"God bless you," she said.

"Take care," I replied.

While many admirable people have died in recent years, this was actually the first one that has moved tears to my eyes.

If someone were to ask me about people who have inspired me, Howard Zinn would have been within the top three. Some people are destined for greatness and adversity. The John Lennon's and Martin Luther King Jr.'s of the past are people who seemed fated to be leaders - for better or for worse. It's not to say that fact takes away from their greatness or their accomplishments, at all. It's more to say, that Howard Zinn was the type of person that made me believe anyone can be great, and that destiny has nothing to do with it.

Howard Zinn was not a leader, but his work was followed and criticized by colleges and fans alike. Howard Zinn was a man who taught at an african american all-girls-school during segregation. Who taught history at many universities and was fired for "insubordination". A man who was arrested time and again for civil disobedience, in attempts to preach peace based on history and reason. A man who "retired" on the picket lines with his students, and continued on to keep speaking out. To speak out against the indoctrination of our minds with war rhetoric and the belief that we are inherently destructive and weak as a people. A man who refused to give up on a country by us and for us, even when only few would listen.

Howard Zinn lived a long and fruitful life, yet I still grieve. For a world without people like Howard Zinn is a much quieter one - a world where we're only getting closer to going out with a whimper.

Magic Does Exist

Most mornings I wake up and I think, “it’d be really nice if I had this thing.” I don’t usually buy this thing, let alone does it randomly show up on my doorstep.

With my current, “could I be a non-fiction writer?” fantasy/pursuit underway I’ve been really jonesing for the anthology Ira Glass just put out The New Kings of Non-Fiction; This American Life, and reading interviews with Ira Glass obsessively for days on end, is really what made me realize that non-fiction was what I write, am good at writing, and is even an up-and-coming creative market right now. It only seemed right that this book be in my possession.

This morning, as I talked at Matt about what I should be doing right now to pursue these writerly dreams of mine I said, “You know what I really want? That book Ira Glass published recently.” Honestly, I haven’t mentioned this book since I found out about it a month or so ago, so this wasn’t something I’ve been talking about every day or anything.

Our day was lovely, if not similar to most days. After breakfast we did some light “yoga” in the morning (okay, so by yoga, I really mean stretches similar to what we did in gym class). We went to Best Buy to exchange some games my mom bought me for games I really want (namely, the new Super Mario Brothers.Wii game, which looks even crazier and all over the place than it’s predecessors). Then we came home to make some gourmet veggie dogs for lunch.

As we walked in, Matt suggested I go check the mail. Bills, bills, a credit card offer, and a bulk envelope from This American Life in Chicago …

I opened it, and it was the exact book I wanted plus an illustrated comic on “how to produce your own radio show.” I looked for an invoice, or a packing slip. Nothing. I stood there, looking at it in smiling awe, held it up and said, “Matt, look …”

He looked at it as baffled as I was. “How did this happen?” he asked, “Did you enter a contest of any sort?”

“No!” I exclaimed excitedly, realizing what was happening, “It’s magic, that’s all there is to it. Either that, or my mom got it for me. I did tell her I wanted it, but she sounded very put off that she had to go to a website that wasn’t Amazon to buy it.”

“It must have been your Mom.”

“Yeah," I said, "It must have.”

I called my mom, and left a message, by then convinced that it was she and we sat down to lunch. Just as we sat down, of course, my mom called back. She informed me that, she doesn’t like her new camera because everyone looks good in the pictures except her, and oh no, she didn’t buy me that book.

Okay, okay, magic isn’t real there is a logical explanation for this. Matt and I checked my bank and credit card statements, maybe I sleep/drunk bought it. Nothing. I checked my email. Maybe I won some contest I didn’t know about, and the email ended up in my junk folder. Nothing.

I’ve decided this is a sign, a magical sign that I must pursue this writing thing. Maybe it’s not a super natural sign; maybe it’s a sign from a shipping clerk that screwed up and went into the “people who have made contributions” list on the computer instead of the “people who bought things from us” list. Whatever this is, the world we live in rarely feels magical when you’re this sober and I’m taking what I can get.

(Im)Perfection

Why do people make art?

Not too long ago, I felt like I could have answered that question, but over the last few years the feelings of being an "artist" have eluded me. I still would talk, here and there, about wanting to get back into "this" or start to get into "that", but the ugly truth is that I haven't known why. Like anyone who stays in a relationship long after it should have ended, I suspected it was because I didn't want to admit that passion had left me.

This evening, however, while methodically arranging my bookshelf, emotion hit me in the same way a cold wind will bite at your insides: I had become content. I was no longer restless, and so I lost what every artist posses: the entirely unattainable drive for perfection. Not the drive to make everything around you perfect, no good artist sees perfection in the world. They see beauty and pain in the imperfection all around them, and have the insatiable urge to express that imperfection as perfectly as they can - in a way that will make people feel engulfed in familiarity and fantasy all at once.

I no longer want to be merely satisfied by my life, there is always something lying underneath the surface, and I intend to uncover it, the way no one else can.

10,000 words ain't nothin' to be ashamed of ...

At least that's what I keep telling myself. I did not finish NaNoWriMo (a fact that I'm sure none of you are shocked by) but I'm surprisingly okay with it. I stopped because my main protagonist had the likeness of a woman, but she had no past, and therefore, no story. I realized if I wanted to write this novel (which is a character heavy novel), I have to write some background on her. I don't know why she does the things she does, and that's kind of making her feel like a character from a sitcom.

I think the reason I'm okay with this, is because it got me writing again, and that's the point of NaNoWriMo. 10,000 words is more than I have ever written on one project that wasn't intended for scholastic purposes. Far more in fact, and that's really the whole point of NaNoWriMo, to get people writing fearlessly. I am dead set on finishing this novel. It will probably be a short novel, and it's a baby step in terms of creative fiction on my behalf, but it will happen. I've put too much thought and energy into it to never see it happen. Also, I will be participating again, and hopefully around the same time next year you will see not just a "2010 NaNoWriMo Particpant" badge, but a "winner!" badge as well.

Additionally, I re-realized I my love of poetry. There's no future in poetry, except to become a teacher, and teach other students with no monetary future in the craft how to write it, and then they will teach the next generation, and so on and so forth ... but I love doing it. I also find I hate most contemporary poetry, which is kind of okay, because I think there are poets who follow in the more traditional styles and still convey a modern voice.

Back to fiction ...

I was thinking for a while that I don't want to write anymore fiction after this current project. My best prose is when I'm just writing blog like things, and while there is a market for that, I like the idea of challenging myself to find a story within all of the emototing and thoughtful phrase turning I do, which will be part of the challenge in writing Grasp (the tittle of Sonya's story).