Kamunyak, the blessed one.

My little sister and i are watching a television program in which a woman is tracking a lionness who has adopted an antelope.

The people in the surrounding area have named her "Kamunyak," and they think she is a sign from god.


The lionesses make the most beautiful noises. I fucking love nature....

muggle

I hate feeling like the awkward, idiotic carrot of a person I used to be.

Did I ever change? Or did I just stop talking?

Can I change? Because if changing means that this sense of being utterly contemptible goes away, I might.

Whine, whine, whine. But it's finals. Things always fall apart when you've got six papers to write and not a minute to spare.

3rd december

i think the reason why i had so many outstandingly odd human interactions today was because of that incredibly strange dream i woke up with.
withwhichiwokeup.

in a white room, not unlike an art gallery, i was sitting with an old friend. there was art of some kind around us, on the walls and whatnot, and it seemed to me later that my bear hat was floating above like a sort of crown for my aura. i was wearing a skirt that was not long and sitting with my legs spread-- not in a lewd way, but in a way that was completely uncaring and unconscious and unnoticeable. he looked with a detached interest at the bare space between my legs, in the way that a person looks at art. i saw it, too, but only after glimpsing that the area of neck and shoulder that settles above my collarbones was ringed with dark, thin hair. like fur. but then he complimented me on it, in a completely nonsexual way--again, in the way that people talk about art, especially art in which they have no deep interest, merely appreciation at the craftsman's aesthetic. i recall him saying, "i really like it. you did a really nice job with that."

i thanked him, and woke up.

i have never, ever had a dream like that.

no damn wonder the day has ended with me being banged on the forehead-- on the snout of my knit bear-- by a man whose enchantedness and whose arms i escaped by jumping on a random bus only to find that when i got on my actual trip home, he was still with me.

but i had taken off the damn hat. so ha!

the only intriguing thought i have had in a week

I think that documentaries would be more popular and widely watched if more of them were narrated by Antonio Banderas instead of Morgan Freeman.


I don't have anything against him, of course, but think about it. I could watch three hours of algae on stones if it meant that voice would be talking at me all day.


Mmm.

14th november

So, I guess we're being nice again. Which is cool, don't get me wrong. Made me very happy. But at the same time, I don't have the foggiest idea what is going on.

I don't want to be alone tonight. I don't. The prospect of it is exhausting and terrible.

Every event of today was a mishap. Small, yes, but frustrating, and I don't get over frustrations very well lately.

Please, please stay with me long enough to help tonight. I know it's not fair to want you to take care of me sometimes, but.... I'm going to do it anyway because it is still such a novelty to me.

your folks told me you should be left alone on a mountaintop, knocking the aeroplanes down with stones.

I think that's over. It completely sounds like I'm contemplating the death of a romance, but... Color me sentimental if I value even the idea of a friendship enough to want to fight for it.

I suppose it turned out that there wasn't really anything to fight for in the first place. I don't know if I ever suspected that.
I do know that I've always feared that the people I knew and valued saw me that way, judged me, and found me deeply lacking. It hurts to know that this particular Crazy was justified, that months of anxiety and worry at not being good enough were.... Well, I was right. That will be hard to recover from. Has been, as it leaked out over these past weeks and months.
And I'm out. I shrug as I tap this out because I can't, don't want to, don't see the point of trying. I don't even want to talk over or think about the specifics. The more strange we are, the more we will become people we used to know for a little while.

The hard part will be putting myself right again, growing back all the qualities and strengths I cut off.

Maybe I'm being too dramatic about this. To some people, it would seem so. But I think the people with whom I surround myself, in any capacity, have a great and important bearing on me, and I don't think that's stupid.

I've had cause to reflect on a different person lately. It's odd to call a. an old friend, and I'm not sure why. It's been, what, close to five years? And in some ways, it's really good, fun and laughable. And I am really happy that he confides in me, always has to some extent, and I hope that I am comforting to him in some way.

The thing is, I don't think I quite understand him. It's so easy for me to get that unspoken read on everyone else, even people I don't know at all. And I don't quite feel comfortable telling him things- or rather, I have recently come to do so, rely on him in a way I never have, and I don't know why. Do I really want to open up my can of crazy for the inspection for more than a minute? What must he think of me, after all this time? And especially lately, when I have been at my most frazzled, my most manufactured?

If not for the previously mentioned events of the day, I wouldn't be thinking like this. With some people, most admittedly males, I take pride in acting as myself and damning them (not really) if they don't like it. I wish I were like that with everyone, and more often. But if you met me at a certain time, in a certain mood, you wouldn't know me as self-conscious and terrified. Not for a little while, at least.

I'm thinking in circles and writing little curlicues around myself. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe I'm a little divided lately, due to defense mechanisms, and trying to feel out which parts are real. Maybe I have cause to question people today.
All the same, some lovely boy is just finishing his very last night at an awful job and it is about time to celebrate. Wake up, little girl. Shake off the round thoughts and wake up.

I'm tired of thinking so much about myself, and about petty details of relationships I should have understood from the first. Tonight I shall think only of him, and of making him as happy as he should be. If only I had blue paint, he could borrow my skirt, color his face and shout, "freedom!"

i cant seem to stop writing

I don't like the person I am being right now. I don't like how negative she is, and how deliberately that negativity comes. I am not certain if it's my environment or my defense mechanisms, but I know, even as I'm behaving that way, that it's not me.

I know I'm not being myself. And I know that this negativity comes out when I want to seem strong. But that's not strength. It's not. It's just easier to lie and portray the damaging kind of strength.

I don't know how I learned or decided that no one would think you were strong if you weren't forceful. If you weren't somehow damaging. Maybe it's to do with my upbringing. Maybe it's because I never really thought I was strong.

Don't know. It gets harder to stand on my own and not get sad, harder with every inch the sun sinks and every degree colder it gets. I don't have a choice, though. I have to be on my own this week, and I can't even try to rely on the one I love.

Suck.

lessons from DeVotchKa

I'm growing to love these hours of watching my friend's baby. Every time I learn more about her, how to make her happy. I was so nervous at first, though. Now she's asleep and all I have to worry about is whether s. will start another "discussion" when she arrives to take over. I hope not.
Even in a week, it has progressed to the point at which talking about things is no longer useful. I think we need space, cordiality, and time. When things go badly, you start to build up resentments. And I know both of us are defensive and somewhat prone to holding grudges, although for different reasons. We just need to give ourselves the opportunity to let things go. The closer we are in proximity, the angrier we will get with each other, and that has the potential for great ruin.

I like her and respect her too much for that to happen. It's tough because we're both changing a great deal, and we're having trouble letting go of the old selves long enough to understand each other. Maybe that's the whole point, and maybe that's why leases only last a year.


I should tell her these things.

"and you already know how this will end"
I love the way those last strains of the strings flow through my mind for so long afterward. It's like a lingering, painful peace. Much like I feel right now.

Look, Casanova, you've got it wrong.

Secret: I looked up how to spell "Casanova" to make sure I got it right.

It's much warmer than I'd anticipated today, which makes me think of defied expectations and some kind of unexpectedness.

Back to the title thought: it strikes me sometimes how desperately blind we can be when we are simultaneously desirous and afraid. I finally got back on good terms with s., not because of working things out but because I came to understand that I had been right about her- about her confusion and how divided she is. Truth is, she's terrified of being lonely. I can't resent her for her behaviour. I have to be honest and even.

Although I will continue to make bad puns in her presence just to bother her. Girl needs to be annoyed every now and then.

And then I was wrong, too. Desirous and scared. It's been just over a month since ------- and I started to think that I was being punished. I was growing number and colder to the touch every time, and it began to make me feel like a vessel. More than that, it made me feel like I was supposed to be one. Like I deserved it.

This can't be blamed on d. I don't mean to say he misused me in anyway or didn't try. If anyone behaved poorly it was I.

There I was, still blaming myself. And then, just hours after the worst of it, he proved me wrong again.
Smart bastard. He's always right. It's probably why I love him so particularly much.

And now I'm walking to meet someone else who might have been wrong, might have been misled.


Why do we make the same mistakes, or at least get caught in the same situations, over and over? Are we all idiots?

And why did I made the mistake of wearing a skirt that makes me look like a schoolmarm? Is it because I use words like "schoolmarm?"

crone: living in fables

Last week, I was walking home when I saw a cat playing with a mouse. I stopped, and the cat scolded me and leapt away. The mouse fled to my foot's protection, then ran up my leg to the end of my jacket. I picked it up and it sat in my hand as I carried it a block or so away. Then it raced up my arm and disappeared over my shoulder.

A block or so later (and yes my walks home are long enough that I measure them without minutes), I saw a bee on the ground. It was just barely alive, so I coaxed it onto a leaf and then carried it to the first black-eyed Susan I could find. Everything deserves to die well.

I don't know. It seems that I live differently from a lot of people in the sense that those moments made me really happy. In a way that sometimes other people can't. Maybe I'm more childish than most people. It's a little hard sometimes.

I hate seeing people get frustrated with me. I hate knowing I lost control and did or said something really stupid or annoying. I'm still not used to a lot of the things that go along with being with people, and I think I overcompensate.

Speaking of which, things are getting bad at home. I feel a little like the bee.

mercury in retrograde

aw, hell.

i destroyed my phone and my SIM card today.
and i'm bored as hell, tired of not having friends, and amazed to find that i'm just as invisible and, well, lame on the internet.

blaaaaah whine

i'm embarrassed to even post this. but hey, fuck it, right? i'm the only one who looks.

Our Lady of Benevolent Axe Murderers

There are bad things everywhere today.

Last night, or early this morning, I dreamed that I was living alone in my mother's old house. It was slightly more decrepit than when I'd lived in it, and I occupied my days by cutting, displacing, and storing parts of corpses. I packed them, freeze-dried, into cardboard boxes, as though saving them for sale. None of this affected me, even though in waking I can't watch the violent parts of movies because they bother me so much. But as this dream me, I was fairly certain that I'd killed some people, but it didn't really affect me enough to be of even a passing significance. The only halfway normal part came when my mother, stepfather, and younger sister came by to visit, and I had to stash some of the boxes under chairs and tables, and sit on a few more, for fear my ever-snooping mom would peek inside. So, yes, dramatic irony, sort of funny.

But why would I dream that? It bothered me all day.

The only conclusion to which I could come was that, since I've been running myself so hard and refusing to feel the stress, my mind was trying to let me know that I was feeling things, and that something wasn't right, and that being numb to it and ignoring it would only make it worse.

It even gave me a marvelous idea for a painting. Hence the title.

Now, however, I can't bear to work on it. Put the idea aside, might not even begin it, ever.

I was walking down Franklin, the bad five blocks to the bus stop, and one of three men passing me in a group called this out:
"Hey, how you doin'? Can I preserve you? I've got some Saran Wrap."


Since then, terrible images have flooded my brain. My skin feels taut and itchy, and my mind plays two reels at once: violence, rape and plastic wrap mixed with the more detailed shots from my dream.

I'm home alone tonight, and for the first time in a long time, Powderhorn seems like a shitty, scary place. The cement walls of my apartment feel paper-thin and not protective. The locks on my windows have never seemed rustier. All of my intelligence, all of my defensive anger seems useless, because the truth is, I am a woman, and a man could decide that he is stronger than I am, and try to prove it. And he might catch me off guard and prove me right. Because he is a man and I am a woman, he could hurt me.

That's a fear that no one should have to go to bed with.

d. says that something is going around, like something negative has infiltrated him, me, and everyone else.

I know he's right.

I just feel it too deeply to let that make me feel any less isolated and... unsafe? afraid? Neither word seems right. But that sense of security I've always felt deep down isn't there.

Fuck....

recovery room

I was walking to the bus just now, breathing in the green air for the first time in what feels like weeks, and the strangest happiness came over me. Or rather, I noticed it. And by rights, I shouldn't be. But I guess all that's happened, an agonizing week and more pain than I've ever encountered.... It makes everything I used to be afraid of less significant. I don't feel that constant anxious gnawing to prove myself. I don't feel the guilt I've always carried. And I know now what bright spot will always be in my eyes. This must last. I want it to.

as many requiems as possible

I have never had a more difficult day than those past few hours. I got past the screaming sobs and the shock as they went down the shower drain with soap and tears. I went into action as soon as I towelled off. I've never seen myself so level-headed. I've never felt so old. Other than procedural trepidation, I am left with only a deep sorrow. I don't want to celebrate. I have no cause to. I'm just cold and sad and I tripped and fell off the bus just now and I am so, so scared that this will make us lose something. Part of the joy we took in each other, maybe some of the trust. The truth is that now I have made another sad memory for him to feel the sharpness of the past in, and I always wanted to be so different for him. I'm so sad. I've never felt such a wordless anchor, never had such an overwhelming reason. I do now. Birthday transmission, end.

error: uncertain domain

There are few things that are more terrifying to me than not knowing what is going on inside my body. In fact, I would be hard pressed to come up with something that scares me more absolutely and fundamentally. That's why I've never been one for substances. I don't like being out of my own control, and I don't like unexpected changes to my health. (greatest explanation for recent anxiety and near-constant terror) It seems this thought is overwhelmingly appropriate on the eve of my twenty-first birthday- a day already sadder than most birthdays because people only seem to care about the alcoholic number, and not a whit that it's my birthday. How strange to be eclipsed by one's age. But then, I've never had the gumption to be special. My intent is simply to ignore the day as much as possible. I'd rather be left alone, I think. I don't think the ability to drink is going to change my life in any way. I truly don't care. I wish they knew how I felt. It's not easy for people from this culture to understand. But I decided today- on the subject of not understanding what a body is doing- that what would be worse than not knowing, worse even than having to choose, would be to know and be powerless. I just have to keep telling myself that I'm not, and maybe the fog won't matter.

tired

Two days before school starts.

A month ago, my friend Ann and I baked a cake in the shape of a cheeseburger for our friend's birthday.

I have no funny or goofy symbols for this new season.

sleepy.

[Bon Iver+ general exhaustion= sublimity.]

um.

i'm a little embarrassed at how negative i've been these past months. i don't know how to let my emotions out. i used to not feel them, and now i know them for what they are and they render me helpless.

my home life isn't the best, or at least, it's not what i wish it were. there are a lot of transgressions of space and etiquette, two things i do not handle well. and instead of acting constructively, i have become exhausted, overly sensitive, and vaguely passive-aggressive. i hate this about myself.

that stress has climbed into work and taken hold, as well. aside from the completely unmet financial needs, of course.

i don't know what to do. is it enough to know that i have fallen into these tendencies? is being aware of them changing them? or do i have to conduct an overhaul of my entire being?

i feel, increasingly, that a mass purging is necessary. some kind of rite of purification for myself and my head. it's becoming a need. but there is no time, not when i have to frantically sweep everything into planning for school and work more than i sleep.

sigh.

i should go to bed. cross your fingers that i actually get to fall asleep this time. noise, blissful irritating noise....

The bruise on the inside of my left wrist is my favorite feature.

To make myself feel better, I am trying to bring myself back twelve hours.

I was in this limpid daze, singing "Reflection" (Belleruche, amazing, amazing) while lying on the floor. Was there because I can't breathe inside my apartment without inhaling stress.

Frustration and annoyance give way to resentment, and I'm so fucking negative lately. I can't stand it. I don't want to be this person, but right now I am, and it's so weak that it kills me.

Singing, I tried to soothe myself on his floor. I was only falling further into that fog when he came back from whatever he was doing and somehow drew me into the other room. Whenever I'm forced to look at myself through his eyes, I can't imagine I and she are the same person. Nothing matters, not my flaws, not my illness, not the constant paranoia that it will come back, not my fears, not my insecurities, not my way of picking apart every aspect of myself to be certain it's wrong....
We share this perfect synchronous addiction to each other. The second his hands fall on me it's like I'm both myself and him at once, and I don't give a shit if that sounds like the immature version of romance because it's real and it's mine.

No one else has to get it, because they didn't stay up until four in the morning laughing after making each other pass out. Somehow it gives me comfort to believe that no one can touch this. No one can have it, no one can make it walk away.

I've never had this before.

also also wic

i think that the smell of booze on someone's breath is contemptible and the least attractive thing imaginable.

it smells like rotted meat rolled in fruit

J is fucking cheesy.

Oh, the snobberies escaping my mental lips....

By now I have typed and deleted many things, telling myself not to be uncharitable, etc. etc.

But truthfully, I am uncharitable. I think the sort of behaviour currently exhibited is incredibly low-class, and the constant lack of manners doubly so.

Etiquette and morals may be related, but they are still very, very different. Religion, one of man's "moral compasses," is in no way universal. But two people from separate countries and cultures would still greet each other with respect, be it a bow, a salaam, or a handshake.

So fuck that.


S"cupcake"B: Rock 'n roll. Wrap some barbed wire around your fist. It's called the stinger.

another letter

Dearest Friend,
You are kind of an idiot. Not really, and I don't mean to say that I look down upon you, because I don't, but you can't pick up on my signals of need and that pisses me off.

I came to you, begging you for comfort, and you could only tell me that you hurt physically. I told you I needed you and you punched a wall
i really hope you don't have a scar but if you did i would kiss it
and made me cry harder. I hate my home right now so I run to yours. I need you sometimes.

Those sometimes when I close off and can't recover, you need to break me out of it, show me with force that this is real and you still mean it.

Why don't you know intuitively, the way I know these things about you?

love, and you know that i do,

i was really glad that i actually said these things to him.
i didn't know until i said them, and i couldn't say them until we both lost it a little.

to begin

One of the runes on my arm means "warrior."

It's the first one I think of, the first one I list off to people, and the first one I inscribed when I wrote the blessing.

The warrior spirit is something to contemplate.
I don't know that I have it.


I wish that I did.
In those dreams I write of [ofwhichIwrite], I am always able, strong, brave, fighting.

When was the last time I fought against anything? When have I ever felt that confident power flowing through me when I wasn't on a windy precipice or in a bed?

Why do these dreams make me wish I could change? Why do so many waking moments do the same?

d.

I want to call d. and wish at him that he were here, in this less-than-dank pit of mine, just because there could be something in his answer that lets me know he wants it too. I want to see that look in his eyes, that too-bright gleam like blue suns, the indistinguishable curl to the lips that means he has Plans. I want to let him know that it's okay that he's got a lot going on, that he needn't spare so many moments and attentions for me, that it's okay to ignore me once in a while.

And yet, referencing the past again, he is the only person who has ever given me his undivided attention, the only one who has said and meant and proven that I matter to him. I know that it is not simply tact that keeps him from letting me know what he sets above me in importance.

I blush at my audacious sentimentality (Remind me to pray that no-one I know reads this.) as I start to note that I know from his hands what living marble must feel like, only better.

In my dreams, however, he is never there. Almost never. When I dream, the people I love are always allegorical figures of some sort, and I frequently wear greyish-blue, and I can never find him. There is almost no sign of him in my subconscious, as far back as I can remember. I can dredge up childhood dreams that say twolettersafterh. I knew that the whisperer in Portuguese who woke me unsatisfied was e. My sister and I had the same dream about my brother on Halloween, and it sort of happened. But he is nowhere to be found.

The post-dawn madness of me wonders if that means I don't really know him, and recalls that I can never properly explain him to someone else, that I can't possibly encapsulate him in words and give him off to a stranger because there is too much and so much of it bends into me.

The tiniest corner of me is terrified that he ignored me twice, and the larger angles are entirely too contemptuous to answer.

c.

My fucking cat is incomprehensible. She mews and cries and yowls and meows all the time, and sometimes I know she's "talking" and I get it, but she's every bit as temperamental (see: moody, pissy, ridiculous) as her owner and it's getting a little silly.

Furthermore, she jumps far too high.

[Give me a break, I'm alphabet-themed here.]

b.

[omitted]

a.

I must be secretly arrogant.

You can tell a person it's all right to read their most personal publishings, but that doesn't necessarily make it so. I should not have done that. It wasn't so much reading as scanning piecemeal, but I.... There are some things that are simply too personal. It makes me angry to have done it, especially since I would never have had the courage or openness to share such a thing of mine with him.1 It wasn't meant for me. I wish I hadn't, for that exact reason. Yet here I am, with my nose inches from my MacBook-- because I, in my natural state, am pretty nearly blind-- feeling uselessly lonely and completely stupid and overly fond of adverbs.

And writing. On the Internet. For what reason... I can't define.

The fan that I constantly have going in this bedroom that gets the best and the hottest sunlight a basement ever got is blowing tiny fibres of hair into my face. In my dreams, they are apricot colored and I am never alone.

Fuck.

I want to call d. (see below) and wish at him that he were here, in this less-than-dank pit of mine, just because there could be something in his answer that lets me know he wants it too.

I knew it would happen, that it would flow into me and meld and mix with other pains, compare itself to them, and stew. Raw and overdone and not enough and too much and not mine at all.