STRANGER DANGER

The world is a big, scary place.

There's no denying it. Virtually everyone attests to this fact in one way or another,
at least every once in while.

So why have a blog?
And more specifically, why do I have a blog?

Isn't that making yourself more vulnerable?
Isn't putting your own words on the web
kind of like running naked through
a dirty alleyway in a big city
in the cold deadness of night?
In other words, just plain stupid?

No, it is not.

Words do not amount to contact information,
phone numbers, locations, social security
numbers.
Words cannot wholly define who you,
he, she, it is, or who I am.
Words can only try.

They all think they're beyond their years
when they say
you can't try, you can only succeed.
But here we meet it face-to-face,
and Memory speaks her testament.

How to define a person?
You can know someone your whole life
be their best and closest, dearest friend,
and still, you will not be able to define
exactly who they are.

And neither will they. I guess that's an
assumption - but with these turbulent,
swelling, instinctive feelings that
only make us human, how can
we possibly justify our every
darting thought?

And so the words really do
try.

You can't ever fully know me,
because I don't fully know myself.
Reading a blog only discloses
part of the mind,
and thus part of the person.
But you can try.
It's not as if there is no progress -
it's true
You will get closer and closer
with time
As with anything, really.

You just can't fully figure me out.

But that's a challenge.
Your first step, I assume, would be to
read my blog. ;)

P.S. God forbid you take that winking face the wrong way.
P.P.S. I'm in a churn-out-the-writing mood tonight. Anyone else feel that way? (I ask this to the open air, of course. I mean, shouldn't we refer to the title of this post?) Ahha. Perchance I shall finish my physics in the morning...

I don't need an answer - I just need to ask

Why would you ask me now, after I've already made my decision?
What is there to change except my own mind?
And why is time always so inflexible
       everyone warring for my same two minutes
       which are by goodness sakes already taken three times over
       by three different sets of people?
Why is it impossible to find a compromise?
Does the flock, the herd, always win?
And whyyyyyyy
Why doesn't it matter except to me?
Why does he always win
though he cares only half as much? (if that?)
Why is the last time always the hardest?
But also the most beautiful?
Is that why it irks me so?
Why can't I accept the "If they don't want me,
I don't want them" mentality?

[Why can't it be easy?
Why can't it be doable?
Why do I have to bend over backwards trying to
make something work
that obviously doesn't want to work
in its own nature?]

Why?

Please don't ask me to come up with answers.
I'm not expecting answers from anyone.
I just need to ask the questions.

Fourfold by One

I sit cross-legged at my window, staring through the glass and into the night. The houses are ghosts, eerily lit by the warm glow of the streetlamps. The light overflows from its source, spilling onto the street, giving it a depthless effect. The unforgiving wood of the wall behind me digs into the side of my back. I sense my own shadow in the transparency of the window. The lit-up screen of my monitor is now a bright reflection hanging from the modest leaves of our tree in the front yard.

I follow the light back to my actual monitor with my eyes, then get up and relocate to my battered desk chair. The music, so familiar, soothing, and beautiful, fills my ears. I breathe through my nose and sense the freshness of the air after the rain, although my allergies have completely masked my perception of scent. The fluorescence of the screen gives an electric look to the room.

From the door the lit computer monitor stands out against the cool ocean hues of the walls, and the street lamps’ illumination stands out beyond my bedroom windows. The song is heartbreaking, now, and the lilt of Marketa Irglova’s voice is hauntingly melancholy but still beautiful. The floor is only half-visible under the mess of discarded clothes and papers. My dog lies under the glass desk and rests with her ears perked up. She is in no doubt listening to the music.

I lie sideways on the ground, resting my head gently on my dearest sister dog Penny, her soft fur against my cheek. This perspective is different than all other vantages. The song is now Coldplay, and we are six inches away from the speakers, and it is as if we are inside the music. My head rises and falls with the slight movement of Penny’s chest as she breathes steadily, in and out. The sound of her breathing becomes the beating of her heart. I am on the brink of dreams. The room fades into darkness as my monitor powers off, and the music continues as we fall asleep.

Zzzzzzzzzz

Electric
pulsing
blinking
psychedelic
optics
reflection
light
trippy
waves
cloud
mist
iridescent
caffeinated
haze.

It's there but it's not;
It's not but there

Nowhere
Everywhere

Like the river
racing
across an empty

v o i d.

I must say
today
I don't have a brain.

ring-a-ling

I don't know you,
    and you certainly don't know me
but somehow there's a sense of familiarity
in the crackling of the phone line
over the 500-mile distance.

There's only one thing
that could bring us together on this April evening
only one thing
and as of now it's perhaps more effective
in these circumstances
than I ever could have imagined.

I invite you to extract your guess from
the cool night air - it by no means
will be hard to name.

It's the one word that encapsulates them all;
it is not vague;
and it should never be underestimated.

Music.
I tell you, my friend, it is music.

35mm polaroid

The room is decrepit, the skeleton of what it once was. The walls are crumbling, charred marks running from the ceiling to floor, sheetrock gaping from its burned innards. The floor is covered in a thin sheet of shattered glass which catches the faint light, and there is a fragility to this light so that it could not be called real illumination. The wall is a marred mirror opposite the ruin of the staircase, and in its warped contours an image lingers in perfect clarity: a girl with flaxen hair tucked behind her ears, balanced on her toes, holding her arms both backward and forward with a still precision countered only by the stillness of the room, melting into sateen that discloses the grace of her lithe figure.

She sits in the rubble and watches her own reflection from her wheelchair.

hopefully, the end of a lapse

My dearest Courtney,

Thank you for today - for the few hours in a cramped sunlit space where your laugh made it impossible to actually feel cramped. Thank you for sharing with me the music on the air, plastic-knife batons, psycho, flannel shirts, dresses, shoes, cell-phones, again, your laugh, and dreams, the present abstraction of our very futures. Two o'clock on a Sunday; orchestra rehearsal; such a beautiful day spent in such a simple way.
But in all truthfulness, I would like to thank you for your inquiry on the matter of fact none other than my writing. In doing so you have in all hope set this rusty pendulum back into motion - something much needed and certainly not overlooked.
Pretty sure I've told you before, but you're kind of amazing.

Love
Christine