Cleave

My favourite word in Italian was lasciare. It means to leave someone or something. We don't quite have the word in English, and it is a shame.

I don't love it because of what it means, but because of the way it sounds. It matches perfectly the tearing crush of parting with whatever or whoever it happens to be that you love. I've discovered that people love concepts as much as they love things that are "real". I know people who would be happy to be in love, regardless of who it would be with. I also know people who are enamored of ideas of the world and themselves, and to see these fall apart breaks their heart. I do also know some who go madly for the sum of the parts. He loves her for her eyes and her laugh, for her effortless way with words and the fact she isn't afraid of him. Or, someone who loves the river and the traffic, all the faces that are always different and every place she can find a photograph.

I don't know where I fall. I become attached to ideas. To words. To the way that people think of me. I also fall deeply in love with people, friends and otherwise, for details. So, I am not sure what kind of a lover I am. A little unsure, perhaps, but always loyal.

I've discovered that the essence of love is giving. Loving the place or the person or whatever it is does not detriment you, but nourishes you. Giving them or it little pieces of you doesn't mean sacrifice because you get so much in return. And that is the best thing. Maybe a city can't reciprocate love. But the feeling becomes yours. It is something that is perfect for sharing, but if it can't be, it exists just fine in solitude.

To leave something, lasciare. The pain only comes from the attachment of leaving what you love. The fact of the matter is that holding on is alright. Bringing little pieces of them with you is allowed. The illusion of leaving is separation: phyiscal entities can be separated. Feelings and connections have an infinite reach.

As much as I can intelectualize this, I don't know how qualified I am to live it. I've left things that I have loved dearly. I've seen people come in and out of my life, not knowing how important they are to me until they waned back and forth. Absense makes the heart grow fonder.

Maybe the purpose of the separation is to teach you what you have. Because nothing that is a loss is anything but a gain in disguise.

Parting

I reflect on where I live, and I realize, for the fifth time, that I like long goodbyes.

Image

We are made in the image, right?

Then what does HE or SHE or IT look like?

And how many of us have white beards, four arms, or a hawk's head anyway?

Or, being made in the image maybe means something else. Something very different. Does it mean that we are made as a part of God?

Because we've come up with some pretty neat images over the years. It almost seems like a two-way street: we make our god(s) in our images. Then again, though where did those ideas come from?

The art that has come from trying to bring the divine closer has been amazing. Anything that works from the desire to come closer to the underlay of the universe ends up being somethin' else, depending on what was actually achieved. Perhaps the desire to create that image or be that image versus trying to make something worthwhile or valuable is what 'true' art is (I know I am NOT the first to think so).

Maybe the idea of an image is not an appropriate one, but considering how visual human beings are, we go right to what we can see. But it is the best we have for now.

Expect

I have some massive expectations for this summer:

1 - Continue to work at my first job at least 25 hours a week
2 - Find a second job
3 - Take singing lessons
4 - Take dance or martial arts classes
5 - Write the essays for the scholarships I am going for (more short-term)
6 - Read the last remaining Shakespeare plays I haven't read, and re-read most of the others AND watch some of the films
7 - Maintain long-distance relationships with my close friends and my family
8 - Actually maintain a social life during the summer

I also want to learn to take care of myself. This will mean spending more money on things like food (I owe myself better quality meals) and even extras like something pretty to wear or a DVD as a reward. If I were a seperate person taking care of someone else, I would be treating them a lot better than I have been treating myself.

It seems my expecations for other people are lower than they are for myself. I give most people the wiggle room to be human, but god forbid I screw something up. It's a very ego-based way of living, isn't it? I'm sure that people can move beyond the ideals I have. And who am I to have to reach these superhigh goals? I am no better than the next person.

I want to expect more from people. I do.
I've just been dissapointed enough to be realistic. Maybe I don't have the right expectations for people.

I want to be able to put 100% of myself out there. I want that and I just want someone to want to give me that back. But that is something I need to let go of more.

This summer, I want to be able to try and give without the fear of recieving. I want to give and not worry what I'll get back, if anything. I was able to do this once or twice, but it is fairly painful when it backfires.

I want to expect the best, but love what happens anyway. Maybe that is too lofty a goal for one summer. Or a lifetime.

But it is good to keep in mind.

Speak

I talk you over the mountains to this seat in the sand
where we lie. It is a blanket in a million pieces.
Did you laugh?
I can understand why, reading the lines around your mouth.

There is water, unfriendly brine. Too grey to explore today,
so you - always with more spirit - test it with your finger
but are shocked away.
We will come back when the sun is out.

You and I speak and the words are never words.
My hands are never just hands, your eyes more than what they see.
And everything that passes
is true.

Lipstick

That's the lipstick that can't fade when you wake yourself up
you've been talking in your sleep and the worst part is
when you can't shut yourself up.

And the words that you hear seem torn and still true
so awful and perfect that listening is too much
but they are your own words.
How clumsy of me.

And the worst part is when you want to be quiet
but the sleep self denies, and lives through the night
speaking things you didn't know you could understand.

So you bite your own tongue and you dissolve your own words
they don't feel like yours, do they?
But your lips are stained
and they look the perfectly awful colour of the truth
so waking up and seeing your face adorned
with the mouth of someone who shouts the answers

the answers you didn't know you could understand,
feels distantly powerful.

The memories of the sleep shout are dead, they've gone to a space
that doesn't exist when you try for it.
And you are clumsy again
and you wait, again, for night to come.
To speak what is horrifyingly, beautifully whole.

Withdrawn

It feels odd and wonderful to be in the place I grew up in. I am in a halfway stage between homes. To be here means comfort and family, but it also means a lot of other things as well.

I do miss my friends that I grew up with. They haven't really left me and nor I them. And the newer friends I have made have become a smaller offshoot family. And none of it feels unnatural, maybe just a little pull in every direction. 

And the lack of work and outlet of the creative is also making me feel different. There aren't any classes to go to or papers to write. 

This city is also quite a bit less pedestrian-friendly, especially where this house is. The city may be getting to big for itself.

But this house is a little planet unto itself and feels like the incubated creative I have known forever. A place to come back to.

Renard

Il etait une fois ...

Examine

Apparently, this life is very worth living. To be evaluated. Examinations and year-end check-ins. This is not the unexamined life.

Today was slow. The minutes of cars waving, distorted by heat seemed doubly as long than they did yesterday. Today was so beautiful, and it was nice enough to slow itself down for us. Funnily enough: when a day comes like this, I don't take the time to witness it. It is easier to witness when things go speeding by, and you watch yourself get up at the crack of dawn to walk to work. Maybe the out-of-body thing is a survival technique so your soul doesn't get shocked when you blaze by someone asking for change or when you haven't eaten since who knows when.

Today, it was slow. I was hungry, and I fed myself. I met so many people today. Buying coffee for Sarah and I, another person in line chatted me up, flirting, I suppose. She was very tall, and I remember a nose ring. And the boy on the bus with huge cloudless blue eyes with music I could hear through his headphones.

My mind is entirely to quick for itself. I never stop thinking. I never stop wanting to know what everyone else is thinking. There are always songs stuck in my head. It was nice to be made to stop. It was nice to have the world hold me, and remember that I am loved, that I can be loved and that I can love.

Thank you, I really needed it.

River

Back soon

Kindness

I have little doubt that there isn't some plan that I am only beginning to understand.

Sometimes I see the knots in little moments of my life. Little kindnesses. I was walking home feeling low from goodbyes. Big and small ones. I walked past a puppy and its owner and it stopped and licked my leg. How do dogs know?

My life is full of kindness. Sometimes, the kindness is wrapped in a little cruelty, but the good part is that the cruelty always teaches you something. It always takes a few blows before you can learn how to fight.

There is never a moment that isn't a lesson or a consequence of a lesson.

I understand the gentle moments. But that isn't the half of it.