My life, in this moment, feels very strange

Strange
How the ending comes faster than a freight train
And a ladder descends from the sky
And the helicopter takes me away

Strange
How we get what we need when we just don't want it
And your lives meet up and make no eye contact
And your feet are suddenly so interesting

Strange
How everything is more beautiful flying past a window
And you want to know the view from the steering wheel
But you can't face forward for that long

Strange
How you always want the answers to things you know
But never ask the questions begging to be posed
And it's not blindness if your eyes are closed

Strange
How I want to bury myself under your weight and warmth
But my cloud brows storm above my sunny lips
And I'm cool as moonlight in your presence

I am wasted, but I'm ready...

If you want to move it so, why don't you make it go?
Prove it to everybody who doesn't understand.
All the nights, all the fights, you are out of sight.
Some say more with their hands.
I'm running as fast as I can.

--Wasted & Ready by Ben Kweller

I see your eyes at the end of this tunnel vision we must be getting higher because the sky's reflected in the them and clouds made of cigarette smoke and fingertips of early morning hope are pressing us forward pushing me through you

I move over you like the sun falls from a window--I was bright and obvious and stupid--but you like the way I move you like the way I push you through

One night the start of a long day we talk into the AM and then you make me spin passengers on a one way train and then we enter into tunnels and

I see your eyes at the end of this tunnel vision colorless and shimmering the way we all look when we're intoxicated.

Art: Hands by Y0uiip

Good Things: SYTYCD Season 7

Couldn't embed the following vids but YOU MUST CLICK and EXPERIENCE THEIR GLORY!!!

Billy & Lauren performing to Boogie Shoes

Alex & Twitch performing hip hop routine to Outta My Mind

Lauren & Twitch!!! hip hop routine to My Chick Bad (yessss!)

Billy & Ade perform thought-provoking piece to Mad World

Kathryn & Robert contemporary: watch for the twist at the end!

Pocket
--Matthew Zapruder

I like the word pocket. It sounds a little safely
dangerous. Like knowing you once
bought a headlamp in case the lights go out
in a catastrophe. You will put it on your head
and your hands will still be free. Or
standing in a forest and staring at a picture
in a plant book while eating scary looking wild flowers.
Saying pocket makes me feel potentially
but not yet busy. I am getting ready to have
important thoughts. I am thinking about my pocket.
Which has its own particular geology.
Maybe you know what I mean. I mean
I basically know what's in there and can even
list the items but also there are other bits
and pieces made of stuff that might not
even have a name. Only a scientist could figure
it out. And why would a scientist do that?
He or she should be curing brain diseases
or making sure that asteroid doesn't hit us.
Look out scientists! Today the unemployment rate
is 9.4%. I have no idea what that means. I tried
to think about it harder for a while. Then
tried standing in an actual stance of mystery
and not knowing towards the world.
Which is my job. As is staring at the back yard
and for one second believing I am actually
rising away from myself. Which is maybe
what I have in common right now with you.
And now I am placing my hand on this
very dusty table. And brushing away
the dust. And now I am looking away
and thinking for the last time about my pocket.
But this time I am thinking about its darkness.
Like the bottom of the sea. But without
the blind florescent creatures floating
in a circle around the black box which along
with tremendous thunder and huge shards
of metal from the airplane sank down and settled
here where it rests, cheerfully beeping.

Q: All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

A: The fear that they are not enough.

And the people who aren't lonely, even in their solitude? Well, they feel that they are more than enough and that they have so much that they are willing to give.

So they share their lives with other people.

I looked into the mirror and I saw a glimmer breaking through. Now, I'm no shining soul, but give me time to pick the rust off and I'll feel brand new.

I shake the dust from tired limbs. I pull me from my shelf. I'm filled with love, I'm flowing over, and I won't keep this to myself.

Inside a bar inside a place with a language I don't speak, I ask for a light from the man on my right who says that I've taken his seat.

He came for the music, he loves the Doors, he's waiting to light my fire.

He's the perfect vessel to pour out my temper, this love that's too hot to hold.

Now some may call me bold but the best way to change your soul is to throw it the fire and shape yourself to another mold.

This started as a blog post but it turned into a poem. Some things shape themselves; all you need to do is watch them grow.

Most times I'm uncertain, but I'm learning to be less sure. I'm trying, motherfucker. That's all you need to know.

Life pulses...

Soooo, watching the blockhead vid reminded me of this gem that I actually have on my Ipod. If you haven't figured it out already, YES I actually loved Disney's Fantasia when I was little and never found it boring. I own Fantasia & Fantasia 2000. =)

Blockhead - The Music Scene

Dismembered colors and swirled beats present an unappetizing portrait of human nature.

Epic

see ARTIST'S PAGE, "Portrait of a Dying Atheist"

Hmm. It really depends on your point of view...but wherever I'm standing, damn, it looks cool. And it always means something new.

Selling Out, Pt 2

I am so selfish with your love, I can't risk fucking up.

Losing the slightest bit would hurt too much.

I am so empathetic toward you.

I comfort your afflictions.

That doubt, that insecurity--

it's piling up inside of me.

I pull at your knots so my own heart strings can breathe.

Selling Out, Pt 1

"How much is your integrity worth?" My mother taught by example and a few well-chosen words I assumed someone else passed down to her. Her lessons always stuck.

But a mother's lessons are much better than life's lessons. Those stick too, but they also suck.

I wish we thought of our parents during those times of intoxication and anticipation; all beating heart and flushed cheeks and lips parted, waiting. Just waiting.

OK, maybe not. No one, unless that person has got one of the weirdest skeletons hanging in his or her closet, wants one's parents (or significant other or dear friends) to come to mind the moment he or she thinks dirty thoughts.

Dirty, selfish, secret things. Stolen things. Stolen candy. Stolen kisses. Stolen recognition. I'd be lying if I said I never thought of these things. Yet I've always been so good at recognizing how bitter one person's sweet sin can taste to another.

Anticipation with all its pent up anxiety makes the realization, the release of a flood of conflicting emotions, so incredibly breathtaking. But when your heart slows down, when your veins retreat deeper under your skin, when that full-body pulse that smothered the sound of red flags and sirens stops its pounding...shit, that's an awful feeling. When you've been so drained, so emptied, every stray thought rings so clearly across the cavity.

And sings.

Guilt makes us remember its tune, and our mind hums it, unrelenting, like a Lady Gaga hook.

Fitness Inspiration

A.mazing!

Can't Sleep

Posting here because it's 4 am and my final draws nearer...Need to distract my mind from the harsh reality of this day.

A pretty poem I've loved since junior high, by E.E. Cummings. Each stanza is so perfect.

Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond
Any experience, your eyes have their silence:
In your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
Or which I cannot touch because they are too near

Your slightest look easily will unclose me
Though I have closed myself as fingers,
You open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(Touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

Or if your wish be to close me, I and
My life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
As when the heart of this flower imagines
The snow carefully everywhere descending;

Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
The power of your intense fragility: whose texture
Compels me with the colour of its countries
Rendering death and forever with each breathing

(I do not know what it is about you that closes
And opens; only something in me understands
The voice of your eyes is deeper then all roses)
Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

Painting Words

"Forgotten Dream" see ARTIST'S PAGE

A Language I Cannot Speak Without You

--Zen Oleary

There are earthquakes in me,
shivers of anticipation,
that disorient the day and
send me stumbling to
the edge of tomorrow.

I shout your name
across this abyss I cannot see
and listen for incoming echoes.

I wait for you like a seed
waits for rain or
a leaf thirsts for sunlight
or a bird lusts for grubs.

My eyes paint you in my mind,
your image strung on banners
streamed out of sky-writing planes,
whorled in rising thunder clouds.

I hear you in the graveled roars
of truck engines, the growls of lions,
the whispered buzz of bees.

I feel you in my blood, my breath
and the longing in my bones.

You have infiltrated and overtaken me
even in your absence till
you've turned me into a language
I cannot speak without you.

Painting Words

"Flowers" see ARTIST'S PAGE

Comes the Dawn

--Virginia Shopstall

After awhile you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn that love doesn’t mean possession
and company doesn’t mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
and presents aren’t promises
and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up
and your eyes ahead
with the grace of an adult not the grief of a child.

And you learn to build your roads today
because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have ways of falling down in mid-flight.

After awhile you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much
so you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure
that you really are strong
and you really do have worth
and you learn and you learn…with every goodbye you learn

Painting Words

"Butterfly" see ARTIST'S PAGE

Self-Improvement

--Tony Hoagland


Just before she flew off like a swan
to her wealthy parents' summer home,
Bruce's college girlfriend asked him
to improve his expertise at oral sex,
and offered him some technical advice:

Use nothing but his tonguetip
to flick the light switch in his room
on and off a hundred times a day
until he grew fluent at the nuances
of force and latitude.

Imagine him at practice every evening,
more inspired than he ever was at algebra,
beads of sweat sprouting on his brow,
thinking, thirty-seven, thirty-eight,
seeing, in the tunnel vision of his mind's eye,
the quadratic equation of her climax
yield to the logic
of his simple math.

Maybe he unscrewed
the bulb from his apartment ceiling
so that passersby would not believe
a giant firefly was pulsing
its electric abdomen in 13 B.

Maybe, as he stood
two inches from the wall,
in darkness, fogging the old plaster
with his breath, he visualized the future
as a mansion standing on the shore
that he was rowing to
with his tongue's exhausted oar.

Of course, the girlfriend dumped him:
met someone, apres-ski, who,
using nothing but his nose
could identify the vintage of a Cabernet.

Sometimes we are asked
to get good at something we have
no talent for,
or we excel at something we will never
have the opportunity to prove.

Often we ask ourselves
to make absolute sense
out of what just happens,
and in this way, what we are practicing

is suffering,
which everybody practices,
but strangely few of us
grow graceful in.

The climaxes of suffering are complex,
costly, beautiful, but secret.
Bruce never played the light switch again.

So the avenues we walk down,
full of bodies wearing faces,
are full of hidden talent:
enough to make pianos moan,
sidewalks split,
streetlights deliriously flicker.

Painting Words

"A Beautiful Mind" see ARTIST'S PAGE
Mad Girl's Love Song

--Sylvia Plath

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Snuggie Wuggie

Coupl'a things the snuggie ads fail to mention:

1) Snuggie does not close in back and cannot be worn as clothing without violating public indecent exposure laws.

2) Snuggie's "one size fits all" actually limited to BFFs Oprah & Barack. If you're neither wide nor tall your snuggie sleeves are more hindrance than help...

Which leads me to conclude that not only am I unable to leave my house in a snuggie, but I can't even "wear" it at all without tripping over its ridiculous length or struggling to retrieve anything other than the inside of an enormous wizard sleeve.

Best for being immobile (when a blanket would work just as well), pretending to be a pink cuddle monster, or playing Mrs. to:

Bite Me

Oh, I'm sure with such a title as "Bite Me" you expect this post to be about vampires. But no...they'll come later. In the meantime, I'd like to pay homage to one of my favorite authors: Zadie Smith. My freshman year of high school I discovered her novel White Teeth on my sister's bookshelf (a treasure trove of literary jewels) and fell in love. It's a kaleidoscope of humanity that touches upon topics as old as racism, ancient as love, and relevant as religious fundamentalism. It's all over the place, woven from many threads, that one never quite knows from whence they came and where they might end up--you just have to trust Smith knows what she's doing and then hold on tightly. Not that I ever would have considered letting go in the first place.

Smith's novel was made into a four part television series for British television station Channel 4 in 2002, and I believe it was aired once or twice stateside through PBS, but was never released on DVD. I thought I'd never get to see it until I hauled my ass to the UK, but thank god I magically stumbled across the complete series on Hulu.

I seriously finished watching the last video about an hour ago, and it was just as brilliant viewing as it was reading White Teeth. I know Christmas is nearly upon us, but maybe you'll find some time after the holidays and before the new year to watch a video or two. The second half of the series gets especially interesting when the twins in the story finally grow up...into some very fit men. Also stars that James McAvoy kid from Atonement...aka Mr. Tumnus.

http://www.hulu.com/white-teeth

Deliciousness:

Sean Kingston is So Infectious

Ever since I heard "Take You There," I find his sunny hooks and silly words stuck in my head like nananana everyday...Even his music videos are super sweet. I mean, I can't be the only one who thinks this--kid gets hella airplay on the radio. His songs instantly call to mind blue skies, ice cream, and Tang--kinda like "Party in the USA," "Crazy in Love," or "These Words." Some songs serve no other purpose but to make you feel frivolous.

Dude's also responsible for discovering Iyaz & co-wrote Jason Derulo's "Whatcha Say."