out of sorts

I've been feeling out of sorts, as of late.
I've been wishing I could tear myself into thousands of tiny, insignificant pieces.
Or I wish I could shatter my heart like a china plate and make mosaics with the shards; even if I can't make something beautiful at least it would be different.

I just need something new to look at, that's all.

"I know what you mean about wishing that somebody wasn't there, though. It's usually, it's myself that I wish I could get away from. Seriously, think about this: I have never been anywhere that I haven't been. I've never had a kiss when I wasn't one of the kissers. Y'know, I've never gone to the movies, when I wasn't there in the audience. I've never been out bowling, if I wasn't there, y'know, making some stupid joke. I think that's why so many people hate themselves. Seriously, it's just they are sick to death of being around themselves."

~Jesse, Before Sunrise


My worn out, green-flecked emotions have been flaring up again. Mix in a pinch of apathy, a good dose of loneliness and a tumult of hormones and you have the mess known as me.

While some things have gotten better, some have just gotten worse. Though I'm no longer the unstable mess I was this winter, I've grown complacent. Change is something that needs to be worked at, even after it's already happened. I suspect we never truly finish changing, or growing rather. I need to pay more attention to myself, my emotional and spiritual well-being seems to slip under my radar too often. That needs to stop...


-'It All Got Worse' by Destry-
(my current favourite song)

Sorry, this post is rather moany. But what are blogs for, right? I almost disabled comments on this which is something I've considered doing many times but never actually done. I don't want anyone feel they have to or should respond to my pathetic complaints, but at the same time, I thrive on hearing from my blogging friends. Maybe I'm over-thinking this... (But I just may do a post without comments one of these old days, just you wait and see! :P)

{Picture taken from the text of the book "Home" by Marilynne Robinson.}

a missed connection of minds

He put down the stack of my photographs he'd been flipping through. "I didn't know you were such a good photographer."

I still wouldn't look at him. "That's because you don't know anything about me."

"I know that you are a lonely person."

I look up startled, wondering if my loneliness glistens from my eyes.

He taps the stack of pictures he just put down. "Most of your pictures are of nature. The only photos that contain people are self-portraits or crowd scenes where no one is distinguishable."

Heat sears through me, heat of the indignation that he, of all people, bared the truth so effortlessly.

"You should have been a detective," I snap.

Oh! What makes this way? I never wanted to be a porcupine-heart.

Just leave. I plead in my mind. It's not that I mind his presence so much, though my heart is beating uncomfortably fast, and my limbs feel twice as gangly. I'm just afraid any moment I will burst into tears. I don't want him to see me cry. (Though maybe my heated tears will melt this lump of ice in my throat.)
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She must hate me. She wants me to leave, I can tell.

Her discomfort is practically radiating from her, maybe that's why I feel so warm.

I shouldn't have stayed. I should have left the moment I saw she was the only person in the empty art room. My mother has always said that I don't know when to give up. That may be true sometimes, but I do know I should give up now.

She's right, I don't know her. But I've never wanted to know someone so much, and to be known. Then I could tell her the something that desperately wants to be said:

"Yes, I surround myself with people and parties. Yes, every moment of my life is stretched to the maximum with gaiety and noise made by myself and other people. And I'm not a photographer so there is no evidence to support this, but... I'm lonely too."
----------------------------------------------------------

I can hear him heading for the door.

(I turn the knob and look back at her taciturn figure.)

I can feel his eyes boring a hole through me. Go on - go on with your wonderful life, leave me and my pathetic self alone.

(Her face is obscured by her dark hair. Perhaps I should...? But I'm just a coward and I open the door.)

The shutting of the door sounds like a soft apology, a sigh of lost opportunity.

Goodbye.

mostly true musings on missing

I put my memories of you on the gramophone and played them all night long.
I awoke in the morning, stretched out on the floor like a cadaver.
All I felt was sadness and confusion. Had I awoken from a dream? I don’t remember.
But the sadness and confusion decided to make themselves at home; one nestled in my right pocket, the other in my left.

The rain sang drowsily all morning and dampened the world's colours. I sat at the window and mused how if I should touch any part of the wet world, the colours would come off on my hand.
I contemplated going outside and tracking the grass's green into the worn, grey asphalt. Perhaps I should have run my hands across our blue car and then streaked my fingers across the sky, making it blue again.


I took the poem with the cracked frame off the wall and replaced it with a Monet: vague, colourful, whoami?; it seems to fit my life right now.

Do you know how to say 'I miss you' in French? 'Tu me manques.' That literally translates as 'You are missing to me'. I love that.
The phrase 'I miss you' seems so solitary, as if the missing process only concerned 'I', myself. But 'tu me manques': your presence is evident, you are the subject of the sentence.
Likewise, you do not miss me, I am missing to you. Je te manque. We are a whole that makes no sense apart.

At first, I thought I would be fine. Now I feel as if my subconscious has been dyed the colour of your eyes. Underneath every thought and action it’s there, a wandering, green phantom. I can't wash it out no matter how hard I try. Though perhaps I was hardly trying at all... (It's too wearying to care enough these days.)

It seems to be my fate to miss the times and places that have gone, and the people too. The times and places cannot be helped, but the people... perhaps I am at fault. Maybe there is something I could have said or done, so that I would not be here, feeling lost and dreaming of you. Yet there is a thought that haunts me: I am happier this way, missing you. That I have made you transcendent as an intangible and your reality could never measure up.
For all I know, that could be true. But it has no chance of being proved or amended because... tu me manques (and I fear it will last forever).





{1st picture taken from text of "Miss Bishop" by Bess Streeter Aldrich, 2nd picture taken by me [the painting is, of course, by Monet], 3rd picture is of Paul and Linda McCartney taken from his 'Maybe I'm Amazed' music video.}

White Petals

As I left today
I noted the petals that had
fallen on the path
white and unblemished

It felt symbolic and
I knew what those white petals
stood for

Not hope; not purity;
not loving eternally
But goodbye
The petals told me to say
g o o d b y e
To say, jamais...
nevermore!

Though my tread was heavy above them
the raindrop petals gently
clung to my thoughts
and puddled at the bottom of my heart

Oh, how soft they are!
Oh, how they make me ache.
They've put such sorrow in me
(I know they are right)

With reluctance
and a nuance of inevitability,
I murmur goodbye
Not aloud, but every inch of me feels it
like a bruise forming

Only, the white petals swish around
in my brain, satisfied
But their blankness
can't blot out the picture of you
that I hold, and surely will
pour toujours
Their influence could never be so strong
as to erase completely
you

(No, I don't think anything could make me forget now.)




{This was inspired by something that happened today. I wrote it sitting on my bed, a gossamer sadness woven between my fingers. I cannot elaborate on what it is all about. It's ridiculous, it really is. And it's nothing very serious. Or at least, that's what I keep telling myself.
Actually, these past couple weeks I've been rather happy. But there are moments, sometimes days of sadness. And since I always write when I'm feeling low I probably appear to be constantly depressed. I'm not, don't worry. :)
In other news, I made a formspring because, well, I felt like it. So, go ask me anything you like, safely cloaked in the anonymity of the internet. :P}



{Picture found here.}

running away, not going anywhere

let's not leave the house today…

shall we be rebellious for once?
you laugh at that – i'm serious!
say you'll stay in with me.
we could snuggle into the eiderdown's warm embrace,
open a recipe book at random and make the first thing we see.
proclaim our favourite poems to each other!
waltz to the melodies we sing, forgetting words and tripping over each other.
we could compose a song of love in a minor key
(for of course i love you!
i would not be willing to break the rules with just any old person, you know).
we'll be renegades together!
traitors to the mundane existence!
outcasts of society! i must say it sounds awfully fun…
so please, forget your job. forget your life.
forget everything except me and what we will do today.
we may never want to go back again…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wrote this a couple months ago. But lately I've been wishing I really could run away from life. It's not that I am terribly unhappy it's just... life can just be a drag sometimes, you know?
Also, I've been wishing that I actually had someone that I'd want to "escape reality" with. That person is little more than an illusion I dreamed in the darkness to make loneliness seem less permanent.


{This is a minuscule playlist I made. These two songs reminded me of this post's concept so I thought, why not include them? Especially since they're by two of my most favourite artists. The first is 'Gold in the Air of Summer' by Kings of Convenience and the second is 'Our Day Trip' by Nina Nastasia. The lyrics can be found here and here.}

If you could run away, or rather, retreat from the real world where would you go? What would you do?

{Photo by me and made possible by my typewriter Donovan.}