But it's my theme, really.

Emily's Theme
by Charles Simic

My dear trees, I no longer recognize you
In that wintry light.
You brought me a reminder I can do without:
The world is old, it was always old,
There's nothing new in it this afternoon.
The garden could've been a padlocked window
Of a pawnshop I was studying
With every item in it dust-covered.

Each one of my thoughts was being ghostwritten
By anonymous authors. Each time they hit
A cobwebbed typewriter key, I shudder.
Luckily, dark came quickly today.
Soon the neighbors were burning leaves,
And perhaps a few other things too.
Later, I saw the children run around the fire,
Their faces demonic in its flames.

--------------------------------

Feeling strange & undefinable. Nothing seems important anymore & that scares me. I'm not depressed, or at least it doesn't feel like I am; but strains of November echo back & my dreams feel like they never belonged to me. I don't know what to do now that my hopes, my passions stare at me with the eyes of a stranger. So I devour the printed word & pretend that this ache is negligible & will go away even if I do nothing to try & alleviate it.

I don't know what else to do.

Also, I wasn't going to tell you all this now, but I keep putting it off, though I did wish to get it off my chest, so... The problem between my mother & I that I mentioned a couple of posts ago was this: she found out about my self-harm of last winter. There are no words to describe how it felt to make her so sad & guilty. Because, of course, she blamed herself to a greater extent than she should have. I always knew she would, should she (God forbid) ever discover this secret; still, there was little I could say to assuage her sorrow.

Things are all right now. A little different, but good. Admittedly, I do still feel a little on edge at times...

Of course, this might have come as a surprise to everyone, since I never made more than a couple, vague allusions to my cutting. I want to make it clear I'm not that girl anymore. I haven't been for a while; I had moved on, which is why it was so painful to have all those memories dredged up.
Thank you all for always caring. I don't know where I'd be without my dear blogging friends.

I felt calm today while sitting in church. I am daring to hope that soon my dreams will be mine again, cherished & familiar; they will come back, wagging their tails behind them... :)

{Photo is by Linda McCartney.}

the mental quiet

 
Quiet: the dearest of friends,
not a foe.
Never.

It was perturbing, at first,
to have silence inside and out;
only silence spinning a web in the eaves.

But the absence of a heartbeat,
no more creaking bones became
the most tranquil way of existence.

My mind let out a whir, infrequently:
a sound akin to raindrops
brushing past
the outspread fingers of the trees.

(Sleep on,
sleep on:
never dream aloud.

Bite back those thoughts.
Any sound might
melt this trance.)

Wishes slipping,
visions tripping:
the eventual souring of sleep.
I wake in a soaked, black-scribble bed.

And it haunts me the only reason I pray is
to remember you to God.

For now my soul has been opened, eroded
by the aggression of tears.

But...

How long until
I don't care again?

------------------------------------------

This piece is a strange combination of poetic license and a mélange of reality. I suppose that's hardly atypical, but I felt the need to mention it for some reason. The poem (as I suppose it is) was greatly inspired by the fact I've not been writing for the past... three weeks, I think? At first, I didn't really care; but finally it started eating me up inside, just eating me up. Yet I didn't want to force the issue, and the few thoughts that gleamed in the distance never felt worth pursuing. (The line between laziness and weariness often becomes saddeningly blurred for me. *sigh*) Scary things happened in vulnerable moments; I'd think, "Why do I bother writing?" or "I've had it with struggling with my music." Several mornings in a row, I nearly fell to pieces while trying to decide what to wear that day; I was that tired of having to get up every morning and live. But the Carole King song 'Beautiful' kept getting in my head: "You've got to get up every morning / with a smile on your face / and show the world / all the love in your heart..."
I've kept that song in mind, and, thanks to the fact my writing drought has ended, I'm trying to be more positive. While I haven't got the smile down yet, I get up every morning with a lighter heart, at least. And I'm extensively relieved to finally be writing again. I'm trying to make sure I never lose sight of my dreams again by remembering that, while writing is hard at times, especially as a possible career, ultimately it's what I love most. Haven't felt brave enough to work on songwriting again, but we're getting there.

Now I'm just hoping to be hit by some Christmas spirit... :) Maybe if the warm-ish weather would go away that would help. Please?







{Song is 'Beautiful' by Carole King and the painting is In Bed by Federico Zandomeneghi.}

"Dark, dark is all I find for metaphor..."

Inert, my Muse and I sit on opposite ends of the couch; a marriage gone sour.
Why don't you love me? I want to ask her.
It's not that we've never fought before; we have and reconciliation was always waiting in the wings. But this time, it's different... We haven't made-up, but I haven't stopped writing. That's the problem; the words still flow and I am shocked by their mediocrity.

My words have reached a staleness that perturbs me. For a while now, I've been unable to shake the feeling that my repertoire is 3 songs long and I just sing them over and over, unable to learn a new melody. I'm surprised those around me don't clap their hands over their ears and run out of hearing range.

The only beauty I can find, as of late, is laced in the words of others, famous or otherwise. And then further endeavouring seems so pointless: why bother when everything has already been expressed so eloquently?

I've felt my abilities dwindling the past few months, and I can no longer ignore their vanishings. I look my ramblings squarely in the face and deem them 'passable'.
Oh! I just so desperately want to write something and to feel that deep, tranquil, satisfying feeling that it is good. I haven't felt that way in a distressingly long time.


Please don't think I'm posting this merely to get attention and your assurances to the contrary. I write what I feel... and this is what I'm feeling now.

It is what it is.



I borrowed Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet/The Possibility of Being from the library today. So far, it is full of beauty and wisdom. I don't know if it will help my blue funk, but I think it will offer some solace, at least.




{The title of this post is a line from the poem 'Interim' by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The 1st picture is by and of me, and what I'm leaning against is my poster which is the entire play of 'Hamlet'. The 2nd picture is also by me and is the text of the Rainer Maria Rilke poem, 'Autumn', though I'm not sure who the translation is by.}

October

I miss his voice speaking in the distance as I wandered through the shelves of worlds waiting to be discovered. (As was I.)


I played hide and seek with my heart in the aisles. I hid from confronting what I really wanted: him.

As October approaches again, my thoughts drift like dead leaves into a pile at one place: his feet.

(I wish...
Why didn't I...
It's better...
this way
right?)

Yes.
It's just October sweeping through me with an incisive wind of near-sadness & almost-regret; bringing to the surface all I let drop.
Soon I will be able to let these things fall into the opaque waters again; but first I must remember, I must embrace each recollection: the barbed and the sweet. (Each one has been gilded with a sheen of significance they do not deserve.)
I let the words of old diaries pour over my cheeks, I try on those secret smiles again. (They still fit.) But more often than not they wrinkle into winces and I remove them with a sigh.


These things: I want to remember them because Common Sense is standing nearby and soon she will shake her head, tell me to put them--to put him--out of my mind again.
Bravely, I'll uncurl my fingers, let these cherished things sink and nestle in the arms of the depths. (All the while knowing perfectly well I will fish them out again. Perhaps too soon...)

...Definitely too soon. Already I've retrieved one or two: just my favourites! Please allow me those! I dry them off and place them in a box. A mahogany box that keeps secrets as well as my own heart; they're safe here, yet accessible. I am content.

(I just ignore the arrows Common Sense aims at my head. Their blows have grown as soft as sighs over the years, anyway. For she knows I don't care, and any effort will be wasted. She keeps on trying, though, and I admire that. Still, I will not forget for her; I cannot just yet.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Been feeling nostalgic lately, for it was October last year that signaled the beginning of a strange and horrible year that would turn me into a girl I didn't recognize. (A girl that still sneers at me when I look closely at my reflection.)
Of course, this piece focuses on one of the highlights of the year, though one that caused as much stress as joy (a stranger who happened to be perfect). Here's hoping this next year heals instead of harms...

I am happy, though, for it finally feels and smells like autumn! My mother asked me the other week what autumn smells like. I said the first thing that came to mind: Dead leaves and blooming hopes.
Though it was random at the time, I now realize: my hopes are blooming. All sorts of wonderful things feel possible in the autumn. Which is a sentiment I expressed during spring, I believe. It's true for both seasons, though! No wonder they're my favourites.



{1st image found here, 2nd image is my favourite painting, 'Eleven AM' by Edward Hopper.}

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.}

my dreams

These days I've been waking up with my dreams still tangled in my hair. Every morning I painstakingly comb them out of my curls; being careful not to shatter them for my dreams are brittle things {like dried flowers, tiny bird's nests, and glass tears}.

Once untangled, I slip most of the dreams into my abandoned doll's tea set for safekeeping. I know they will be protected in the small sugar bowl and teapot that once held my girlhood fancies.

But the most cherished dreams I do not store away as I should. Instead, I tuck them in the hollow at the base of my neck.


The forgotten dent we all havethat almost seems like a thumbprint left by some greater being.

Throughout my days, touching the dreams that nestle there brings me content.
Sometimes I give in and let them consume me - they are the only sweetness in my bland days.
It is dangerous, I know. These dreams belong to the night where sunlight can't cause them to fade away.
But as long as I keep a dusting of moonlight in my soul surely they will not perish.
{And perhaps they, in turn, will keep me from perishing as well.}





(Postscript: The words have returned as I knew they would. But they have brought luggage with them... Ah yes - hello insecurities. Why, oh why must you travel with my inspiration? It seems I can't have my words back without you grabbing my ankle with your cold little hands.
So, the good news is - I am writing again! The bad news is - nothing I write sounds very good to me. *sigh* It's a vicious cycle.)

{Pictures found here and here.}