May 2012
46 posts
“My quarrel comes when I turn back to the preface and read this, ‘Vincent van...”
– H.D., “Vincent van Gogh” (review of Dear Theo, An Autobiography from His Letters, ed. Irving Stone)
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Vietnam War Memorial
It’s raining lightly, and I feel A sudden desire to hold my breath, Like I’m a child again, can only pass through a graveyard With my cheeks bulging. (But I’m not in a graveyard.)
The heat is oppressive. The t-shirt of the man in front of me is soaked In a V down his chest. His hair is matted strangely, cowlicking in the dampness. He smells of stale beer. We both drink in the rain; And I am...
I feel really ugly today, and not just in body. I feel like I weigh more than all the love poems and blue whales in the world. I feel like my face is scarred and battered like an old book at a yard sale. I feel like my soul has no direction, no passion, no talent. I feel like the entire world sending me roses won’t help. I feel like I just want to break all the dishes in the house.
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“The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains
of my gab and my...”
– Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” (Section 52)
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Sunflower Seeds
In 1989, she moved here from San Francisco. That alone was exotic and, therefore, fascinating to us. Most of us had never traveled any further than Milwaukee.
It didn’t matter where she’d lived, though, because even if it wasn’t some place glamorous and colorful and unknown, she would still be all those things. We were in raptures. (How could you not be?)
We can try to describe her, but in our...
sonder
n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once,...
My sleep habits are so fucked up…
“Why am I always the neighbor of those
who force you to sing out of fear
and...”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, from “The Neighbor” (trans. Edward Snow)
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I don’t feel things correctly, I just don’t feel things much at all, is the main issue; and I think—often—that I’m some human experiment gone wrong, a scientist’s life’s work that has produced the best, most lifelike robot in history—look at its reading ability, the friendships it has formed, its adaptations to not only trials but...
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She held the shell up to her ear because her whole life the ocean had been the answer…she felt like there was more of herself when she was alone with it, on the beach, too early or too late for other people to find the edge and expanse important or worthwhile…(because most people, she theorized silently, did not like looking for meaning in unlikely places, because it is so unlikely that one will...
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There’s more to life than happiness.
I feel like I can't control the things I want.
I’m not sure if I want to want the things that I want. They scare me, it’s not only that I can’t control my wants it’s that they control me. I’m impulsive, stupid, and really don’t care about anything and anybody else besides what I want. I always thought that it was empowering, that I saw what I wanted and reached out and took it. Now I’m not so sure.
I posted this a year ago. You think you...
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I just want to be famous by the time I graduate high school….
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“For Schwartz this formed the paradox at the heart of baseball, or football, or...”
– Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding
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Deceptions, by Philip Larkin
‘Of course I was drugged, and so heavily I did not regain consciousness until the next morning. I was horrified to discover that I had been ruined, and for some days I was inconsolable, and cried like a child to be killed or sent back to my aunt.’ -Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor Even so distant, I can taste the grief, Bitter and sharp with stalks, he made you gulp. The sun’s occasional...
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I'm sorry (sestina)
I crawl towards sleep, I fall like Alice into it I think I am dying, Mother Papers are too thin to fit people inside But still, I write poetry And try to explain things; I am a thief Standing on a roof, with my arms held wide, I attempt to steal the world
To hold it in my grubby hands. The world— It is not utterly beautiful, or utterly broken, but I want it For myself, all to myself. I am a...
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I am a twitchy person, a nervous person I play with my split ends, the edges of my eyebrows often because I hate when anything is overgrown in my appearance (Because I can control it) The truth about me is that everything I can’t control is overgrown It’s like my stop-growing gene never kicked in in childhood I’ve grown extra arms, hands, and I use them to touch people I...
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I’ve been working on growing a backbone But it hasn’t been going very well It sticks out at the sides and is all scaly and disjointed, Too soft at certain curves (Still, I’m trying)
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Changed my url, it used to be private-transit.
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“I’ll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I’m...”
– David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
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I spend so much time counting down towards all sorts of endings, and then when they actually come, it sucks. Don’t let me grow up.
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Writing is supposed to be the easy thing, the stabilizing thing, the thing that takes the pressure and anxiety and depression away but now it’s causing them and I don’t know what’s wrong, all I know is my life has all the ingredients that are supposed to cook up some sort of solid happiness for me but I’m just not I’m just not and I keep thinking that maybe if I wrote...
(129)
My most vulnerable spot is at the nape of my soul
and your lips hold the power to paralyze me from skin down.
Your biggest secret was that you loved me.
Mine was that I couldn’t tell whether I wanted to kiss you or drown you.
If you write me a sonnet about my elbow on my knee I would write you a Russian novel about the way you walk like you’re holding two bombs in your back pocket.
I’m...
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I’ve fallen out of love with consciousness.
(You know there’s something wrong with you when you read about that British girl with sleeping beauty syndrome that causes her to sleep for weeks at a time, and all you feel is this twinge of jealousy…that people let her. You know you would too, if you had a brain glitch as an excuse.)
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The room is warm; we have no fans or an air conditioner. The curtains seem to sweat slightly, they shimmer, hypnotic; I feel like my vision/consciousness is going in and out, and I’m not sure whether my eyes are open or closed.
Albany is the capital of New York, but I don’t believe it. So it’s not true, because things are only true if people believe them.
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Larry: What do you think?
Alice: It's a lie. It's a bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully, and... all the glittering assholes who appreciate art say it's beautiful 'cause that's what they wanna see. But the people in the photos are sad, and alone... But the pictures make the world seem beautiful, so... the exhibition is reassuring which makes it a lie, and everyone loves a big fat lie.
I’m so…boring.
“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world, but then I thought,...”
– Frida Kahlo
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I painted my toenails blue and thought to myself that maybe emotions aren’t meant to be captured, or even explained, they’re just meant to sort of float around on all sides of you like little fairies, suggesting that you do things that you sometimes do and sometimes don’t do. It’s harder when you don’t understand the whys of your emotions, but it really shouldn’t matter, should it? That’s still...
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Why Afghan Women Risk Death to Write Poetry →
(it’s a link)
Haven’t written in fucking ages. Haven’t written well in even longer. Can’t stand the sound of my own mind.
Here goes nothing.
