slumdog

The first time I saw ‘slumdog millionaire’ I wrote this 02/08/09:

He says we can live on love. It’s a dynamic and endless theme – love, love, love without food or water we could live on love. I’ve always thought this, wouldn’t your body confine itself to the knowledge, your brain working to remind your stomach it was full of everything else. Consumed by the power, and overwhelming sensation of it, when you have nothing this notion is so much better than the alternative – having nothing with no one. The problems of our childhood melt away like shadows in the night, monsters ridden and bound together elsewhere in our memories. Sure, we could live on love. Our thirst for anything else would be redefined.



The second time this evening I wrote this:

It occurred to me that few people fight for love. The mere substance of it bounces away into the sheer depth of the night, the darkness swaying only apathy. How can love be such an easy word? Flexible in it’s ground, the way it rolls off the tongue. Some love is destiny, ripped from the headlines of your heart and soul. I could be foolish in saying so but I just do not think so. I would rather fight, with blood stained limbs – and a damaged heart than give up entirely on it altogether. Yes. I have not forgotten for one moment, and the reflection of real love lingers like an extra limb, another heart protruding in my chest.

kings and queens

Some people are born with the ability to be cruel. They may not even be consciously aware of it but it thrives inside of them at the core, like some disrupted volcano about to burst. I cringe inside, battling the war of my own mind and the crippling sense of another. I certainly wish I hadn’t taken that psychology class years ago that began to define my way of dealing with certain personalities, even when I truly once devoured the personality till I was raw with hunger. I let myself believe in the most impossible things, especially when someone gives me hope that it can exist. It is true that we are all separated by the selfish and the unselfish. I had never seen it that way till a friend pointed it out. Sad since him and I seem to be in a boat of self exploration and at times pity. I used to think I was too sensitive, and in ways I may be but the truth is some people are just cruel.

I cannot listen to the reports about Afghanistan as effortlessly as I was this summer because the closer the date comes to Will’s death the more I distance myself. Every soldier that dies reminds me of him. While walking the other day I saw a man in camouflage and I gasped. I wonder when I will stop seeing these men as a reminder of my own scars. I do not mean to look at them that way. It is just that I cannot help it. The only men I’ve loved wore a uniform and once you’ve suffered the mind fuck of wondering if your lover will come home alive, or in a body bag it changes you. My mind is not the same as other women. Awaiting a phone call at three in the morning just so you can hear the persons voice for a second or two. The way I used to cry after every hang up, and muffle my tears in a pillow. This has been on my mind so frequently lately, and I wonder if Luke thinks of me at all. It was only last year that we still wander into each other’s minds and hearts. I suppose in ways every woman I have been with this year was just another way of distancing myself from the all time heartbreaks. Finding love and losing it. Always having love and watching it slip away to a deep dark grave.

In the end Jae, Sal, Dana they were all things to fill me up and let me down but real love is so unforgettable.

There's an emptiness inside her

The curve of the trees bark, the limbs turning into bright yellow leaves reminds me of a scarf tugged around a dark skinned neck. I’m always attracted to the deep crimson colored leaves, the ones as bright as fire. Perhaps it is the phoenix in me. I love the way it balances against a bright blue sky, perched there – popping out as some 3D motion picture. In college I used to walk the paths that held the most leaves, and let them cascade over my boots. Always with my head down, watching their movements I could have cared less about actual interaction with another human being. I’ve never quite fit anywhere, except in the arts. All the education I’ve had has simply prepared me more for life, but not actual work in anything else. I used to drag myself into the bathroom down the hall from a history class and cry on my cell phone to my best friend at the time. I hate those rooms with false lighting, and the girl across from me throwing me a dirty look because her guy friend flirted with me.

Why have I always felt like I’m suffocating? It’s always the walls closing in, the sky wrestling against me. I once wanted to tattoo a bird on my shoulder, but maybe wings would be better. The longer I stay in New York the more stuck I feel. I hate this feeling because I’m not sure where it began, or how to stop it. I wish I could adventure into my brain and pull out the insanity that guides me, the rough spots that mutilate me. I joke that I am an alien awaiting my mother ship but there is an emptiness inside of me that has been there forever. I miss my lover who used to tell me I was like fire but that romance has been long gone, although its misery is so intertwined in my work I can see its absence everywhere. Someone once told me I had too many lovers, although it couldn’t be more untrue. I have slept with many people but loved few. Unfortunately when I love it is permanent. This may not be unfortunate except that love is never forgotten for me even if it is in the sense of friendship. All love easily consumes me, becomes a ribbon connecting my heart and soul together – my physical self only being the vessel to hold it all.

There are many connections in my life I have not completely understood. I hate to say I regret anything but in retrospect I wish I had been more open to my relationship with Christi. It is probably this relationship that has had the most impact on me. Odd to say that it was in fact the one that made me colder since it is the one where I loved the most, and almost perversely unconditionally. She never did quite love me the same way although she professed that she did and there is a certain amount of proof that she loves me, and always will it was not enough. How can a sliver of what I felt have been enough? Four years struck a harder and thicker core with me. My soul is just a bit more evolved than most people I have loved. I am not quite as afraid of falling, or jumping. I figure life is going to hurt you. When I do come off as cold it is only because I am warming up on the inside.

you don't have to wait

I miss the ocean the way it licks the land, reaching for a place on dry land. I used to thrive most by the sea but have not seen it in so long. Months. I’ve contemplated wandering the coney island beach with boots on, mingling on the boardwalk and looking afar over the sand to the deep coral blue ocean in the distance. Perhaps I will make a small journey soon, ride the train out and out till I get there, and write in a marble notebook serenely taking it in. I am not happy with this Fall. It leaves everything to be desired. The weather has been unseasonably cold, and dark.

A tentative lover and I strolled through central park last week on an ugly day. Leafs scattered along the grass, couples walking hand in hand, strange men causing a stir. The clouds awaited to burst open when we lay in bed at night. I laughed myself awkwardly to sleep, a slave to my fears. Once you allow a tiny crack to surface the land you lived in, and inhabited changes. The alarms tick differently, your heart sways to a another beat. Only I am not sure how one recovers from the past, even when the past is presented to you as the now.

forever strange

I pass by his grave by accident Monday and my heart seems to plunge into the cusp of my ovaries, and up to the cave of my chest before I catch my breath. Strange he has been on my mind a lot lately, awakening to nightmares of his death. Sometimes it is as if it just happened. Then there are words, and strange exclamations I’d only briefly crossed in those days following his body’s collapse to a darkened world. Death changes you. It’s subtle at first as if you’ve morphed into a twin, two people in the same body until each side of you is just as a coin. Those who stay unaffected by that of a lover’s death, or a death in general frighten me. I still feel quite fragile in this sense especially since before his death I was considered to be an ice queen (now maybe it is worse). Funny since I’ve never quite felt that way. I thought of that lover today, my mind dragging up the past like a long quilted blanket running through the stitches with my finger tips. I have not loved many men, but those I took in as lovers were special to me. They were delicate. I suppose as humans we cannot help but be attracted to what we see in ourselves in those reflected upon us.

I came across a dress I used to wear in high school, when he was alive and would flag me down in the hallway – calling out my name in that condescending way to drive me crazy. I threw it onto the floor, and gritted my teeth. When does the anger dissipate? I’m afraid his death has ruined me romantically for anyone else. It is anger over the loss, over his obedience to condition. Why didn’t he tell me? He sought me out every day for months, his mind cradling the idea of reuniting in his desperate state. I know partly why he stayed away but it brings me such little comfort, and now the weather is changing – every time this happens I sway to the memories we shared. A cloud of smoke in the air, a triangle of love curved by all of us involved – a rush of my hands on a doorknob to find him in bed with someone he did not love. I was pressed for evidence to make me hate him, so that I could not love him anymore. He really should have hated me for my betrayal was far bigger than his. I was only seventeen but had already lived a life full of complete and utter insanity. I was far older than my age, even if my brain was not fully developed – living with two men who loved me, and each other was a mess.

At least I had his love, maybe I still have it. I do feel sometimes that he is with me, surrounding me. I miss him though, for someone who died at his age will forever be a loss. He should have succeeded in impregnating a woman, having children as wild and tempestuous as him. He was magical. I may attempt to cross his grave again with purple roses but it already feels so cold, and so close to that date I will never forget – and I don’t think I’m strong enough to not fall onto the dirty ground. I wonder how he felt about being buried, if he thought of it at all. Was his death on his mind at the end as I imagine? At fourteen I only knew him as the boy with the house across the street from the school, at fifteen he was mine and for ten years we spun a web.

gone gone gone

(I wrote this in DC)

I disposed of her last night, and it felt good. I don’t know for sure why I use this word dispose but it was as if I were putting out the trash. Why must someone who obviously does not care very much for me cause me so much pain, when there are so many people who love me? It just did not feel right anymore. I have to clean up the mess I made, and deleting her from everything felt like freedom. I do not even desire very much to attend any of the clubs she may linger at. I despise her desire to connect with me when she knows she has been menacing. It is disgusting. I cannot believe I fathomed being with this woman. I feel awakened. That restless feeling does not exist as it did. This trip to DC was exactly what I needed. I love modeling. I had forgotten, wrestled with ideas of never doing it again but now that seems so foolish. All I needed was to touch my spirit again, and see that the real love inside of me is my creative self. Once the creative self is fulfilled everything else beats to it’s rhythm. I have missed you soul. I have missed you heart. I have missed you strength. I want to cry for everything I have been missing, but I feel like me again and for that I am more grateful than anything.