don’t you just hate it when you drink like, 3 glasses of wine and you’re a little bored then you start to get curious and then you think it’s a hot idea to google someone... and then you totally UNEXPECTEDLY stumble on something that was written about you, by someone you know and you’re pretty much positive that they didn’t think you’d ever read it, cause it really sucks and in that moment you realize that you actually have the most horrible judgement in the history of judgements, and that someone you thought was nice, actually isn’t and that they blatantly used you in the worst possible way, as evidenced by the thing you just read, and you kinda feel like you might barf, and then you feel like the floor is a giant magnet sucking the: my-heart-just-dropped-into-my-stomach anxiety baby right out of you, right before your head implodes, or gets like, sucked into a black hole- but you can’t say anything about it, cause you were fully snooping and although it was about you, it technically isn’t your business. yeah, I totally hate that.

Dear Bryn, (a letter to my 16 year old self)

Knowing you, you’ll want me to tell you everything that is going to happen. Want me to tell you how it all pans out.... does he love me, doesn’t he, what will I do, where will I go? que sera, sera... I get it, because these are the questions I’d want to ask my 64 year old self... and I hope she will give me the same advice, and go all Rilke on my ass too: I cannot give you the answers, because the point is, to live your way to the answers. You have to live your way there to understand what you need to know. that the mistakes are just as important as the successes. sometimes we have to fall... to keep you from falling, would only keep you from learning how to get yourself back up. and that’s the important one.

But (because it’s me/us) I will give you some advice.

Love yourself the way you want them to love you.
paint more, do art everyday. practice, you are better than you think.
you can do the things you think you cannot do.
keep reading, keep learning, keep searching, you’re on the right track.
stop hiding out. go out more. talk to your friends (who are STILL our friends, thank god)
journal, write it all down, every day. even if you think its boring. it’s not. it’s all golden. and take more pictures!!! people are going to be famous and you’ll want more documented memories of the slumming it days.
take care of your teeth, you KNOW what I mean.
save more, spend less. except on traveling (yes, that I will tell you- you are going to travel. a lot)
you don’t have ugly hands or legs- so get over it.
start learning another language, so I don’t have to start now. you have more time, and patience than me.
think twice about the black hair, just sayin.
but mostly, have fun. live your life. life is as wonderful as we let it be.
sometimes it will suck and hurt and break your heart, but sometimes it is wonderful and brilliant, and those times make it all worth it.
and you are going to be fine.

you are a star, keep being sweet. don’t let ‘em get you down kid.

I love you.
me

TAGSmy life, Dear Me

that picture was taken in Amsterdam. I’d just bought that hat at a flea market, and it became my uniform for about 3 years. I did not leave the house without it. it covers my eyes and most of my face and it let me hide. I love that hat. I bought that dress in Prague and the coat at a second hand shop in Paris.
I love europe. i pine for it.
We used to sit and smoke Gauloises and drink cheap wine and write postcards and haunt the second hand shops (where I picked up a 1920’s wedding dress for a song). you could be in a different country in a few hours and the french franc had a picture of the little prince on it. there were accordion players in the subway, people riding bicycles with baskets of baguettes and flowers. we’d walk for hours and then go to cafes and have mussels and wine (like hemingway). and we’d have cake everyday. (because I had a dream that we would, and so we did. cake and cappuccinos everyday- even if we had nothing else).

sometimes I wonder: when did I get so boring? when did matching sheets and the right fabric softener take the place of foreign films and wanderlust?

TAGStravel, my life

I had a dream that I was riding my bike along Venice Beach, under the palms, along the boardwalk, past the freaks and the vendors and the Venus in blue jeans. on a bike with a basket and a bell and a radio in the basket, just like we used to do.
what does that mean? who cares. I’m just one of those people who tells people what they dream about (it’s ‘cause I’m part hippie).

Anyways, I’ve been thinking a lot these days about communication (in case you hadn’t noticed...). Last night I was laying in bed thinking about the communication of intent, and more specifically about how it’s total bullshit most of the time.

There are different varieties of intent. There are the times when people say: “I’m going to do __________” and state some life goal or change and they feel pretty good about themselves for making these statements and other people might feel pretty good too, especially if it’s the intent to change a problem. Just defining that something is a problem and defining the intent to change can feel pretty good. But you know what- talk is cheap. Prove it. It is such a giant let down to HEAR over and over how things are going to change, but knowing that really, they aren’t. I say, if you are going to change something, change it. Don’t rattle on about it. and if you aren’t going to change, accept it and stop the empty talking about it.

Another variety of intent (which is far too common and much more insidious) is when people state one thing and do the other (i.e. saying: “I don’t want to hurt you” as they are doing something obviously hurtful). Or they use their statement of intent to excuse their bad behavior. The latter is the one I want to bitch about discuss.

There are a few ways people go about doing this. They might say: “don’t take this personally” and then say something shitty and personal. Or they might mask something shitty and personal by saying: “I’m just being honest” (thereby defining their intent as being “good”, when really, it isn’t). and then sometimes, people will define their intent as a whole and use it justify themselves- and make other people look like idiots. Which is actually a pretty smart move. I’m going to start using that one... I’m going to say things like: “I have emotional reactions sometimes” and then when someone schools me for acting like a crazy bitch I can roll my eyes in exasperation and condescendingly say things like: “ uhhh, I TOLD you I was emotional”. Which would make them feel stupid and me feel justified in acting however I please, just as long as I state the intent.... cause that makes it okay, right?

TAGSBitching, random thoughts

Dear World, please kindly disregard anything I’ve ever told you.

oh why do I have this depraved need to *communicate* everything? I hate it. it is something that I profoundly hate about myself. I hate that I have this emotional temperament that vacillates so hard between hot and cold and nowhere in the middle (nowhere rational) and then blows up and over the sides and spills out all over everything all of the time. it’s humiliating (but I keep doing it. over and over. I keep doing this to myself, clumsily, thoughtlessly and poorly spilling everything open).
I want to fade into the ground, blow into dust or roll up into myself, like a woodbug. stop speaking. stop writing. stop feeling. stop telling anyone anything.
I want to be one of those stoic girls who just keeps it all in, says nothing, clean and pretty... not like this, not like me.

Turn On Me (Album) - The Shins

the wind whipped up last night, woke me up from a dream I was in. I was eating chocolate in Harrods and feeling desperately angsty; I was crying at a doorman over some love affair, over some affectionate exasperation.
I’ve been feeling stormy.

I needed to get out of the house.

there is so much i need to do. so much work to do. so many things I want to do better. so many things half started and half finished.

I needed some air. to think, to find some clean clarity and focus.

I can hear the train across the water. I am going to put on my rubber boots and collect oysters out of the cold water, wade out, stand in the sunny patches, crack shells. pick smooth, warm stones off of the beach. listen to the waves.
(these things are real and clear and uncomplicated, not messy and obscure, not like feelings or words).

I need to break through this barrier of confusion, this wall of whatever it is.

TAGSmessy and obscure, random thoughts

There have been so many times that I have pondered: why did he come into my life.
I've wondered if it was for a reason of reckoning or maybe some kind of karmic retribution. a lesson on how to give without the expectation of receiving. a lesson on how to give for the sake of giving.
and I’ve ruminated over and over that old line: everything happens for a reason. there must be a reason. it must all mean something...

that is what I told myself in those cold moments of feeling helpless. those moments of wondering if I was an unknowing sacrifice. wondering if I was the sacrificial lamb given up as an offering to get his life back. (and maybe he felt bad at the back of all of it, in the quiet moments, between the lines. he might have felt a holy sort of guilt, the way people do when something is sacrificed. but he also felt justified and righteous in those actions). he felt justified in latching back onto that old basic machinery of what he deemed to be virtue and so righteous in rejecting the warm, but confusing, and sometimes sticky attachment of me.

I don’t get why I liked him still. despite so much, despite of all of it. I let him treat me with an awkward irreverence (he had this real talent for backhanded compliments and saying hurtful things, masked as something else. a way of hurting me and making me feel like it’s my fault). because then sometimes he was so good and present and I felt like he really wanted something for me, like he cared about something deep in me, like he wanted me to succeed and like he saw something in me that I couldn't see for myself. in that, in those moments, I saw his real humanity (which I find so insidiously warm and interesting and real) and so I forgive all the other shit.

but mostly, I wonder: what happens to that warmth... to those feelings and the good times that we have when we were together. where do they go when you leave this house? do they get conversed out of your memory? rejected for the structure, or the machine... or maybe it’s over some basal need for rejection. I don’t know. I don’t understand; I can't even begin to understand the seemingly bottomless well that is drama of your motives.

TAGSstories

I dreamt about whales last night. I was on a beautiful, well lit boat, playing with miniature vintage citroen toy cars. the water was still and calm and we were surrounded by whales, gliding in and out of the water.

In dreams whales are supposed to represent intuition, and emerging creativity.

Creativity has never been a problem for me. Ideas have never been a problem. Getting off of my ass and actually making things is the problem. taking the idea and translating it into something that isn’t garbage is the problem.
I always get tripped up. talk myself out of it, find distractions (oh, hello blog). or think that an idea is silly or stupid or that there is no way I can actually make what I see in my mind. I create reasons to restrain my creativity.
I really need to stop doing that.

i realized something yesterday: I have an artistic temperament (in a firey, impulsive and emotional way. not in a lame, lispy: “I’m a visual artist” way ) and trying to be more normal or appear more rational than I am only makes me depressed. and then I start feeling disillusioned with life, stop making things, lose inspiration and become a shut in for days at a time... which really doesn’t help... nope, not at all.
I also realized that I am attracted to people with artistic temperaments. if I ever marry someone, it will have to be a moody, unpredictable artist type. the other types just won’t do. they bore me. (maybe I’d rather be mad than bored).
I have a high tolerance for bad behavior because I find it so much more interesting. I think that because of this- the things that bother a lot of people, just don’t bother me. it’s not because I’m a pushover -it’s because I light up around people who push the envelope and are out of the ordinary. people who are more acutely aware of being alive, of feeling things. people who struggle to make sense of things, rather than trying to fit in. that’s where I feel most comfortable, most alive and most productive.

Please watch this video:

TAGSunpredictible artist types

I think it was pretty simple. In that moment, he was cruel. He was being mean. I don’t think there’s any finesse about it, he’s being mean to you.

life never just takes a straight line. it intertwines, loops, takes jagged turns around the conflicting forces of right and wrong, good and bad, truth and lies, justice and injustice, comfort, discomfort, cruelty and kindness.
sometimes we feel everything, alive and present. and sometimes we feel unhooked, uneasy, disconnected and unteathered. it’s never a straight line. there are no clean boundaries or black and white answers.

maybe you were being cruel and it made you feel bad. you were mad and mean and wanted to feel different. wanted to prove you could win. but it didn’t help. it only made you feel worse and looking at me only reminded you of that.

Last night I dreamt I saw ships burning in a harbor. I sat on the shore in a summer dress and watched, as everything around me moved in slow motion. my heart ached. I wanted to help, but the flames were too big, and the water was too deep. so I sat, clean on the shore.
and waited for the survivors.


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TAGScaring and cruelty make strange bedfellows , stories