Here's an amazing view of the words I use as a blogger.

I'm preparing for a trip to Sweden that will take me to Uppsala for the course of a semester. I'll be studying Shakespeare and Romantics at the university there while thoroughly rocking out. I'm exploring options for capturing high-quality photographs so I can blog about the space/experience. I'm looking forward to adding more creative entries to the blog while I am away.

There's a beautiful boy curled up on my bed, lost in a world of dreams beyond my fathoming.

Unspoken

The skin on my breast is purple,
the tips of my ears burn,
my arms change from tan to white
as I turn my palms to the sun.

This is the state of me
without space, within myself.

My eyes form a wall between us,
my ears take in bittersweet music,
my heart beats erratic - fast, then slow -
waiting for the end.

This is the state of me
waiting for the words from your lips.

An image in my mind, a haunting thought:
curled in my bed, face pressed into my pillow,
smelling the memory of your scent,
I wish only for one thing.

The waxing moon to bring you to my driveway,
to hear you call my name,
and summon me from depressed sleep,
to hold me, to comfort me, to sooth me with the words.

Love long missed, I've found you here,
no matter what comes, I will stay with you,
we'll hold one another, tenderly
and we'll make this life worth living.

Together.

This is the state of me
lonely in my own skin.

Mondo '77

There's beauty in depth. Sitting in a mostly empty apartment, carpet soft under your toes, talking. The sliding door remains open, the cool breeze of a partly-rainy day wafts in with the calming breezes outside. The conversation shared is one of responsibility - to yourself, and to others. Words of emotional recognition and honesty create a ladder, and the context allows you to climb out of the pit.

The pit has been a dark place. Your fears sleeping in your bed, holding your hand in the car, walking you to work. They kiss you goodnight, they wake you in their embrace, they promise to stay with you always. They whisper in your ear, "You don't deserve this, you don't deserve love or happiness. We'll stay with you, though, always."

And now you watch the sky dance in clouds and rain. You talk it out. You bring the fears to the light, and shed them. The depth of conversation reminds you the most important detail, the one you forgot: you are strong, beautiful, and intelligent. You also have depth, maturity, and charm. If nothing else, you have the merit of your own company, and your many friends. There is no alone as long as you remember you.

Gone with the Sin

My distanced understanding and empathy for people sounds something like this: "Everyone has circumstances in their life beyond our (the observers') understanding."

I am capable of a more intimate empathy, however. I rarely channel it - when I do my eyes tend to fill with tears and my foundation rattles. Sometimes I can access it through the small moments of perfectly directed film, or expertly conceived music, without coming to tears.

The real understanding rocks me to the core though.

It's the acknowledgment that we all live with fears, regrets, and sadness. It's the understanding, not logically, but to my very center of being that the stakes are higher than I like to admit. Sitting with my knees tucked to my chest, watching the sunny day rise through the slats of the blinds, ignoring the urge to call or text. I feel the rising call of my own solitude, and I wonder: why is this desire to retreat so strong?

The shadows of hurts, wounds still healing and shiny scars, somehow avoid my attention. Running my thoughts over the scabs hurts too much. But today, as I sit and acknowledge the connection between us, I recognize the landscape of my own emotional body - I touch the sore spots, momentarily, but without fear. The tears are there. I understand that, like most vulnerable human beings, I am afraid of the loss. I am afraid to say - I saw my dreams, but I could never fully realize them. How horrible to recognize all your desires and never to reach them?

I hug my knees to my chest. I understand - this desire to hide, it is some primitive form of self-defense. After all, my room has always been my escape from reality and dealing with rejection and loss.

And on the larger scale, I see that everyone hides some form of fear, regret, or sadness. Like me - most people can't bring themselves to acknowledge and face it.

S is for Sex

Sex is not bad (evil, wrong, a sin, etc.): Sex is the most natural, beautiful expression of humanity. Art, literature, film, music... all these things are simply reaching for some moment of pure essence of humanity. Sex, if used properly, is the most direct route to that essence.

So why does it scare people?

Even in our liberal times, with sex in the media, alternative explorations of non-patriarchal non-heteronormative sexuality, and more open discourses on the topic, we still manage to ostracize and fear its power.

The key is 'disease:'

A good example of the flaw in thinking about sexually transmitted infections is anti-homosexual rhetoric concerning AIDS as the 'gay disease.' Now, I understand that many closed-minded people still hold this stance, but for the most part I believe it to be an antiquated and obviously bigoted view. AIDS, scientifically, is simply sexually transmitted and happened to come to the US through one gay individual, but that being luck of the draw, makes it non-biased. (Because really, how would the damn disease know if you're straight, gay, or somewhere in the middle? And what counts as gay? Would you get sick for thinking about how nice that person of the same gender's bum looks? Ridiculous.) But a lot of the stigma still exists. It's not a gay-specific stigma, but it's just as rooted in religion.

Don't be a dirty slut. Cause now you can get so dirty you might die.

Fucking sluts. Because genitalia is the most amazing disgusting cradle of everything that happens to be the reason we're all alive. How terrible, that we have to constantly block out images of our parents fucking like rabbits because it's so, so wrong.

But why is it wrong?

Because sex = sickness?

Or is it because sex = power?

Multiple sexual partners don't cause STIs; unsafe sex causes STIs. ... Just sayin'.

Violently

The innocuous voices of birds penetrate this space. Sitting on my familiar chair, wheels so comfortable with my weight they seem to roll as almost an extension of my mind. I hug my knees, I release them, I fidget with the loose papers scattered across my closet desk. I ignore the mirror and my face therein.

Contemplation surges, the waves of an uneasy sea rising upon one another. White caps swallow white caps and threaten the rare buoy. The ocean is not aware of itself, except maybe passively. The edges all touch sand or rock or the toes of passionate lovers, and this the ocean knows. But the lovers stand, they walk away, and the ocean forgets. In the vast waters good and bad lose their meaning. There is only sea.

The innocuous voices of birds remind me of my small form. How can the entire sea fit inside my heart? Violently.

Question #1

How come we never learn about the many uses of the female body exclusive of 'sexiness' and 'out of sight/out of mind'? The only discourse on the uses of the human body comes in one ubiquitous package (that could be a dirty joke): the male body. Sure, us ladies already know we're quietly included (in that men represent humans all together), but there's got to be a better way.

So I ask it again: Where's the discourse on wonderful things to do with our bodies?

LCD

You sit in your chair, still wet from the shower, and you wish it would happen; you watch the light and peer through the slats of the blinds; you pray that an angel will sweep down to the rooftop and peer back in at you; you push your hands into your hair and shudder at the grime; you know this is all you amount to, a long series of sweaty days and cramping calves; they call it a Charlie-horse but you feel it differently; and that’s what pushes you down, your mistaken eyes granted the light from a slat in the ceiling; you cry; you beg; you’re dying in this small space, the darkness is rotting around your feel and it feels like shit; you’re not a fool, though, and you keep searching; optimism takes its toll; you sit in your chair, still wet from the shower, and you wish it would happen; but you start to lose track of what it even is; you scrape your fingers across the wooden surface, across the LCD monitor; you cry in the rhythm of a popular song:

‘you

don’t

need to

….

emerge

from nothing…’

inhale...

There's this pressure that goes
unnoticed.
There's this calling that comes
from nowhere.
Its the inhalation;
a once craved smoke.
Its the late assignment uncared for.
Its teeth against skin.

Glancing

Look up,

And there it is,

Lightning from cheekbones starts,

And down,

To core, gut, base.

It wasn't there before.

I wish it would go away.

This one's simple:

Transient 'hers' overwhelm me. There I am, at the bottom of this well.

The Passion

"I say I'm in love with her. What does that mean?

It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. Like genius, she is ignorant of what she does."

Sometimes Things Get... whatever.

Driving home through the sleet, in the face of my dim headlights and jumpy wipers, the song "Sometimes Things Get, Whatever" by Deadmau5 filtered through my stereo. I'm not a particular fan of the song, the electronic voice sounds too much like Hawking, so I skipped it. But the lyrics got me thinking.

From the time I started this post to today, when I sit here staring at my screen with a slack confused jaw, I have forgotten what I even started to think about. How silly, really? I had a deep intellectual moment, listening to this song, wondering about how things become complicated, and all I can do is speculate. Perhaps I was thinking about entropy and the way emotional, social, and sexual complication is just another aspect of entropy. Or maybe I was thinking about how complicated my own personal life is, and maybe I felt sad, or maybe I felt enthralled. "Wow - it's so complicated, how glorious!"

But I forgot. This is the sad part. I didn't write it down soon enough. Whatever my glimmer of inspiration was, now it's gone.

Forever.

Sad.

Labels

I realize we live in a label-oriented culture... or even world. Labels for foods, labels for any product you could buy, labels for human beings. Gay or Straight? Straight but Metrosexual? Straight but bi-curious? Male or Female? Post or pre-op trans? -sexual or -vestite? And what good do these labels do us? We live in a world of identity politics and who we say we are makes so much difference in the scheme of things. If we get a job, if we make friends, if we find a lover.

I'm especially irate about the "having gay presentation but not being gay" metrosexual term that seems to have popped out of our societies fear of gender presentation, and don't get me started on the sort of but not really bi designation of bi-curious. My response, "Can you not fathom that deep inner part of yourself that is itself attracted to something other than what you think?" But bi is not really the most accurate term. I think before things get clouded by what we learn, humans are indiscriminate. We love everyone and equally. But then hurts and wrongs and social injustices well up, fill our eyes with blood, and we can't let everyone be and care about everyone equally anymore.

And then comes the promiscuity issue. But that's for a whole different post.

Here Comes the Rain Again

Again, again I visualize the sea. It's not the Pacific or the Atlantic. No, this is the sea of my dreams. And it's deeper than any other. It swallows men and women whole. It frightens most people away. There I lie, buttocks lifting off the sandy beach as a gentle wave rolls in and floats me, before gingerly resting me back on the earth and receding into the blue nothing (everything.)

"Here comes the rain again

Raining in my head like a tragedy

Tearing me apart like a new emotion

...

I want to breathe in the open wind

I want to kiss like lovers do

I want to dive into your ocean

Is it raining with you?"

This type of desire can never sustain itself. Do you think that's why Rome fell? But it's not exactly the way you'd describe the Romans. It's the swelling of your heart when the lyrics in a song surprise you, and you wonder, "Maybe love isn't a fairy tale?"

I am looking for the desire that does sustain itself. I'm a scientist with a clip board and a stylish white jacket. I seek out examples, observe them, record them, then repeat. Do you believe in love? Are you settling? What does passion feel like? Pick one: Love or Sex? What happens in a world where you have to pick one and that forces you to forfeit the other?

An arctic blizzard. A frozen heart. Here comes the rain again.

Passion

There's something violent in the reading of a story that evokes passion. The pieces in your ever turning brain slowly coagulate and choke up on each other, one sentence matches a previous sentences and you can't help but imagine your outraged teacher who revealed the ugly truth to his students - and you. Now you see it, in this one text of beautiful proportions, something you never thought to love but for it's tantalizing ambiguity. But now, NOW you see: the economies of oppression (so lovely to ignore,) perhaps unintentional of the author, but you like to think it was on purpose. You love this book, and you like to think the author wrote with quavering hands, fully aware of the horror imbibed in the sentences that match previous sentences.

He runs. Through streets, in the face of his own faults,

Romanticize this:

The pounding of his heart;

Thumping,

Pushing,

Scratching.

He throws his feet before him, he slides.

Then the moment, the anti-touch.

For all the kissing in the world,

this moment is most erotic.

It’s born from one thing: fearless eyes.

And the first real breath from his exhale.

Hands on wrists and the violence,

of my phoenix setting free.

He holds on for dear everything.

He held me down,

Now my fire burns straight through him,

Scalding.

Who could have seen this,

lying beneath the surface?

Only him.

The pounding of his heart;

Singing,

Whispering,

Summoning me -

I’m ready.

From Earth to Sky

This music starts somewhere in my core. My stomach churns, my heart tumbles, and tears or laughter or awe wells in my eyes. Radiating out, the particles of bass, treble, and inspiration clog my veins, traveling with my oddly shaped amino acids and their greater blood vessels to the exotic locations: my cold toes, my small fingers, and the hair follicles that grow my mane.

Ah, this song activates chakras: red and green and purple. I want to moan, but it's too much, too forward. In the silence of my solitary car, driving faster than I should, everything lines up. The easy response of gas to my petal soothes: I have control and I turn this machine on. I wonder, is she an extension of me? Does her electronic core, her elegant beating six cylinders, run on music like me? Could we avoid the gas station together and run on the open road?

A long road in Wyoming comes to mind. A lone droplet explodes onto the windshield, and I notice the behemoth black cumulus that hangs above. I push my car, I make her go, just to know that she can. And so well. The bland vehicles around me pass into the distance and I forget they ever existed. The ghostly Subaru whispers in my mind, and I let go.

This music starts somewhere in my core. Everything lights up, my energy flows, and I wish I had someone to share my passion with.