2007-2024
I don't know how to paint the way I feel every day, like roots are growing out of my toes and there is lead in my heels and my hair is wrapping round and around my shoulders and I'm standing on a cloud gasping at the intensity of it all and my face is resting against my knees as I'm curled up in a nest of quilts and the landscape I see is intricate and diversified in every way imaginable and many ways unimaginable and the future is full of so much of it and so was the past and my eyes are wide and shining and shut tight holding back tears of overwhelmingness and in my mind I'm always alone and there's so much future and every moment is everything.
How could I ever paint that?
There’s no such thing as distance, preach the lovers, displaying their sepia toned memories from the cracking maps in their hands.
There’s no such thing as time, claims the old man, dropping the rusted pocket watch into his vest from the sagging skin of his fingers.
There’s no such thing as love, argues the cynic, sitting amongst her collection of photographs, a bundle of letters held tight to her chest.
We are all hypocrites, explains the one person who has never, not once, lied.
The star was like a light bulb suspended in the center of a very large, very dark, and empty room. Reaching out yet unreachable, it tried to illuminate every corner. But the star’s room was the Universe, and the Universe has no walls, and therefore no corners. So the star was doomed to forever loom at its center of all things, shining forward and upward and downward and backward and inward, never knowing where to stop, and never touching enough to be filled. For, though warm and white, the star was hopelessly alone.
I can see that you have a secret world. You haven't hidden it from me, you just don't know how to invite me inside. Good thing I recognize every window you offer me and peer inside each from as many angles as is possible.
I know you don't like to be cared for, but I'm offering you my clumsy tenderness.
It’s all.
The air, the water pulses. You’re breathing in the universe in the form of steam, scrubbing dead stars from your skin, to make way for more. We all need the room to feel, to absorb. It wanders underneath the roots of our hair, it splashes on the wall. Slide down, gather together. It’s touch, touch-touching. It is building up, ready to burst into all of the pieces of glitter and baby dolls and grass and sparkling stones. Fingernails scrape, away the sadness. Cups hold pieces of the ocean, fractions of the earth, but every single tear of elation. Pencils dig into the surfaces of broken trees, ink stamps through ribbon to let them out. Unexplained impulses push tendons and pull thoughts, this is all very important. So important, it can’t be said.
Really? So we really are all just hanging by threads, clutching at straws? Mist leaks from our fingernails, and that’s all we are? Condensation inside car windows? The stars get washed out and the sun slices and the earth careens onward, erasing all the things we hoped to leave behind? And no one’s ever used more than 10% of their own godamned brains? But that’s a myth, you see. Don’t you see? Why is it that we set out to disprove the good ones? Why must we prove, prove, prove, never rest, never thrive? Our fake teeth wrap around our faces and that is what we become? We are our actions, not our thoughts? Which is more important? Can you really claim that my thoughts are less impactful than my deeds? Can I really say that? Can I really say I’m wrong? Does my conviction really mean anything? Did theirs? And if it doesn’t apply any longer, then where did it go? What do we evolve into? Why shouldn’t we change if it makes little difference on who we really are? Is there a difference? Are we different? Are any of us different? Are we not the same? Can’t you see that we are all the same? Do I want to be the same? But what’s your problem with it? Could you even tell me? Could any of you? Do you have any bloody fucking clue what it is that you believe? Do you know, yourself? Do you know, anything? Or, more importantly, do you think you do? Do you know that you think that you know? How much do you know that you don’t know? Does it matter? Could you ever really prove any of this on your own? Say yes. Would it hurt to trust the one person who can look at yourself as you are? Can’t you do this? Can’t you try? Thirsty, thirsty, thirsty. You’re the only one with that water. Stop running away from yourself. You keep running into yourself. Do you want to live like a fugitive? You can gaze through that short tunnel, or build a foundation out of glass, but then you’ll have to wring it out of yourself. They can’t convince you, so why do you think you can convince them? They’ve chosen. Haven’t you chosen? This is who you are. That is who you are. Embrace it, woman, man, brother, sister. Ride. Soar. Float. Thrive. Drink. Absorb. Can you do it? Will any of us ever do it? Our skulls have too much dust floating around through the sunbeams. Our mirrors reflect it all back, reverse everything. Should they? Shouldn’t they? Am I not okay with this? I am okay with this. It is okay. Doesn’t it all just shine? Why isn’t it easy to see? Are you looking through, looking past? What do you expect to see, then? Why don’t you look into the light, instead? Then follow it, let it illuminate. Don’t you want that light? Don’t you want understanding? Turn your eyes inward. Then you can see everything else. Stop waiting, and it can show itself. It could have then, too. Stop confusing yourself. Stop letting them confuse you. Stop letting. Decide. Recognize your choices. Decide to recognize, that this is what you have chosen. Why are you holding yourself back? How can you justify this? Not how, why? Do you know why? Do you know why?
Love is a Burning Thing.
The center of the planet - molten, burning, boiling. At its heart, our Earth endlessly blazes with a love for us that is so hot, and so strong, that it holds together everything we call home. Our world is kindling and rekindling with an endless, firey compassion for every one of us, its love unrealized miles beneath our feet. We walk, we forget to remember, while she burns.
Someday, you’ll reach up. And your steel lungs and your heart of flint will strike against each other. And they will spark, and your soul will finally ignite. And all at once you will become the fire that burns so big and so bright, that the stars and even the sky itself will gasp. Someday, I will stand in the white hot heat of you. And I’ll remind you to resurrect the sun. Someday.
And this, my friends, is beautiful. I know I use that word a lot, sure, but what word other than “beauty” defines itself so brilliantly? This is beauty. This is a catastrophic beauty, a life and death, every vein in every section of your body is pulsing and tugging you both backward and forward beauty. This is holding your breath for the split second before you realize you’re crying. This is a disastrous symphony. This is reaching for a stranger’s hand as the universe cracks.
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