Tuesday, December 28, 2010

A pocket full of stars, continued.

(Part one can be found here.)

She was Delilah Lott, and she lived just before the edge of reality. Her existence, therefore, often teetered between the two.

Delilah lived in a tall, teetering house that seemed to bend and shake with the wind. The windows were never quite sturdy or thick enough to keep out the cold-air blowing off the near-by body of water. They lived on a cliff, you see, jutting out over an ever dangerously splashing sea. She would often stand on the edge of the cliff at night and wonder where the waves would carry her, were she to jump, or if she would fly - like she did in many of her dreams - into the vast and sparkling navy blue canvas high above her. She wondered, were she to do that, if she would be able to collect the stars in a jar, like fire-flies, and keep them on a shelf in her room to light it in the darkest of nights.

In her tall, teetering house just before the edge of reality, Delilah also lived with her two younger siblings - fraternal twins named Alexander and Alexandria; her mother, named Anna; and her father, named Dayton. At least, she had, before her father’s mysterious disappearance and assumed death. He was simply just gone one day, without a note or a trace, his morning coffee still steaming on their modest kitchen table. It was just her, her mother, and her little brother and sister now.

She had often felt, before, that her father was her only connection to this family - an inkling she had shared with him many times, and just as often had waved away as her being young and simply coming at odds with her mother. Now more than ever, however, she could not help but notice the glaring differences between her and the rest of the people she lived with.

Delilah could only describe them as fair. Their personalities were as deep as the pigment in their appearances - light and barely there. In contrast to her (and her father’s, for that matter) dark, rounded features, each of them were pale, with white-blond hair and gray eyes. Their noses and mouths and chins made up of thin lines and angles.

Delilah, therefore, was not at all surprised when, one Sunday morning, she found the house simply and completely empty, without any prior explanation as to why this could be. All that was left was a note on the kitchen table informing her that her mother and two younger siblings had gone to the nearest town (which happened to be an hour away), to attend the church’s morning service. She found this vaguely strange - while her father had been alive, they had not attended or practiced any religious beliefs or functions, and she - along with the rest of their secluded family, had simply accepted this without much question. She didn’t pay much attention to it, however - her mother’s behavior had become increasingly odd after the disappearance of her father. This simply meant that she would have the old, dusty house to herself, and that suited her fine.

She didn’t bother changing out of her nightgown or setting her hair in the proper curls when she stepped out of the door leading from the kitchen to the yard - behavior that her mother would have found simply unacceptable. But, the nearest neighbors were miles away, and it was a fine summer day - the sun making the ground warm and soft beneath her bare feet. She stepped closer to the edge of the cliff, her attention focused solely on the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks below. She barely even registered that she had stopped herself subconsciously, or her transition from standing to laying in the grass, until she saw the cotton-like fluffy clouds drifting by slowly above her. A peaceful smile spread across Delilah’s mouth as her eyes fluttered shut.

This would be the last peaceful moment Delilah experienced for awhile.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

My one and only.

So… this is my boyfriend. I’m sure everyone who actually reads or pays attention to my blog knew that. Anyway.

Five months ago, this boy came into my life, kissed me, and told me he felt fireworks. He held my hand on a cloudy day as we went walking through a park. He pressed his fingertips to my skin and sent sparks through-out my whole body. He laughed when I told him he thought (and still thinks) in movie moments. He became my wonderfully cliche boyfriend. Five months ago today, this boy brought laughter, and hope, and happiness back into my life.

Since then, he has become my most intimate best friend, my first and only lover, my support, and my strength when I don’t have my own. He has told me I am beautiful when I am not, held me while I cried, comforted and loved me in my absolute worst hours, told me that he wants me - all of me - whether or not I am perfect. That he even wants the parts of me that sometimes get angry with him. He has told me that I am the only one for him, the best for him, and that he is mine always. He has become my favorite cuddle partner, and he has inspired me in every possible way that one can be inspired. He has become one of the very few people that I am absolutely terrified to live without.

I am so thankful for this boy, and so grateful to the Universe for guiding us to each other. I love him, with all of my heart. And I never, ever want him to go away.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

A pocket full of stars.


Their fingertips barely touched as they lay on the edge of the horizon - the edge of reality, as it were.

His hands were long, slender, thin. Strong. They were marred with callouses and healing burn-marks., wrapped to the knuckles in fraying bandages. Hers were fragile, delicate, though too big for her wrists and they made her arms look gangly. The only blemish on her pale skin was the occasional freckle marking the top of her hands and up her forearm.

The stars above them seemed to flow in a thin and simple stream, like a river. He slid his hand into his pocket, and then reached it up to the sky, unclenching his fist. Orbs of glittery light slid out of his hand, each shimmering a very vaguely different color. They floated along in uneven, wobbling paths to join the stream of sparkles far above their heads. He smiled.

Her free hand landed weightlessly on the space above her heart, still vaguely surprised by the lack of beat there, but not as much as she had been the first time.

“You’ll have to go back, you know.” He said eventually, his fingertips enclosing around a glass vial chained around his neck. It, too, seemed to be filled with glitter, though the swirling glitter-like substance there was distinctly sunshine yellow. She eyed it warily, and looked back up to the stream above them.

“I don’t.” She said quietly. “I don’t want to. I want to stay here forever, with you. You wouldn’t make me leave you.”

His lips pressed into a smile, and he dropped the vial back to his chest.

“You’re right.” He murmured, his gray-blue eyes fluttering shut. “I wouldn’t.”

Friday, September 24, 2010

The act of being small.


This is absolutely amazing.
In the summer time, and still on clear nights, I like to go and lay out in the middle of my street. My polaroid-picture, quiet street, where you can only very faintly hear the sound of cars passing occasionally a few streets away. You can see so many stars from there. With my back pressed against the ground and the soft air surrounding me, it's hard not to feel so absolutely connected to all of these great things - the air, the trees, the Earth beneath me. The insects, the animal kingdom as a whole. Humanity. The oceans, the mountains, the grand cities that would swallow me completely. The stars painted against the navy blue canvas above me It's all interconnected - moving and dancing around each other in perfect balance and rhythm.
With that realization comes the knowledge of how tiny, how insignificant I truly am. These stars, these planets, these beings that would completely dwarf my solar system look like in the sky. Like I could collect them all and put them on strings like Christmas lights, or gather them in a jar and hand them out to the people I love almost like fireflies. If they look that small to me, I am nonexistent to them. I am a speck on a speck on a speck on a speck. I am irrelevant. I am meaningless. But I am here.
That is absolutely freeing, I think. Our actions, good or bad, do not matter. They are a speck on the flow and stream of time, and more often than not they do not effect the Universe as a whole. We are a small mass amongst millions of other small masses. We can be angry, resentful, cry and yell and scream. We can put others below us and bring them down. We can put others above us and bring ourselves down. We can stress about the unpleasant, about the chaotic and about the sickness that is Humanity sometimes. We can fall into depression, into anger, into anxiety, into negativity as a whole - but it doesn't change anything in the world besides us and our perceptions. It only effects a small, small fraction of everything in existence - a fraction small enough to be nearly invisible. It doesn't matter. Our unhappiness does not matter. It does not effect anybody. We can feel it as we need to, grow from it and learn from it, and then we can let it go and it is completely irrelevant from that point forward.
Happiness - pure joy, pure positivity - is a different story. It starts with one fraction of a fraction of a fraction. It starts with you. Happiness, positivity, joy, awe of the world and the Universe in general, it's contagious. If you spread your happiness to somebody else, they will spread that onto somebody else and it'll continue. It still might be a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the grand scheme of things, but it's positive and it's beautiful and it's wonderful. It's bringing something large and bigger than you into existence and sharing it with the world. It's making the world, the environment, the Universe a better place in the simplest way possible. Spreading positivity. Choosing in that moment to try to be better than you are, to be better for yourself, for others and for the environment. And honestly, it's as simple as looking at your life and being thankful that you are here, you are living and you are experiencing the beauty of the world around you.
And it's beautiful.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Beautiful.

I think today is a perfect day to be thankful. We are alive. We are here. We are breathing. We are comprehending. We have the ability to feel, to think, to love, to hate. We have free will, we have the choice to be better than we were in the last moment and that is absolutely beautiful. We are consistently surrounded by the love and joy and beauty of the Universe. We are consistently given the choice of peace. It's wonderful. Breathtaking. Awe-inspiring. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Friday, September 10, 2010

There's so much energy in us.


And the Universe is so big around us (truly, honestly, completely.) It could swallow us whole if we let it. And it would be more beautiful than anything you could or I could ever experience. It would take our souls to a complete place of unreality (that place I strive to be consistently.)

It would touch our hearts and our souls, and all the right songs would play at all the right times. For all of us. Our very own personal soundtrack for our ears only. Everything would disappear as if it never existed in the first place (like the way negativity leaves through deep breaths and open minds and hearts.)

And we would all be nothing but energy. We would be equal. One. Together. Striving and moving and changing and growing. And I think it would be beautiful.

But I'd rather be human for now.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

I breathed out the butterflies from my insides, and they replaced themselves with the glitter floating around down from the clouds. In, out, in, out. If it could fall on our noses and stick to our skin, the places we collide would sparkle in the movement. Surreal. I don't think those moments could get any more beautiful.

Friday, September 3, 2010

The pieces of fall. (p. i)


Just as suddenly as it had come, Summer left and in it’s place there is cold air that makes my legs break out in goose-bumps and my toes curl inwards from the chill. The air does not quite smell as sweet as I know it will in a month’s time, and the leaves on the trees in my Kodak-photograph neighborhood and the grass lining the nearly perfectly manicured lawns is still a bright and vibrant color of green, but I can see the leaves near the top of the trees beginning to turn a pleasant shade of gold and the dirt is cold beneath my feet wherever I walk. Autumn came faster this year than it had last year, but I welcome the sharp contrast to the heat that made my make-up smear easily and my skin drip with sweat every time I walked out the door.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

You.

My nose pressed into his chest. My hands curled into the back of his shirt, holding him securely against me, and from here we could not get any closer. It still felt too far away with layer upon layer of clothing separating our bodies, our skin from pressing desperately together. (I've never felt more real than I do like that.)

"The longer I go without seeing you," I told him into his shoulder. "The harder it gets to breathe."

"I know exactly what you mean." He said, and then everything else disappeared.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Wide eyes.

And I'd rather be innocent than jaded. I'd rather be childish than cruel. I'd rather be simplistic than needlessly negative. I'd rather have peace.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Thursday, August 19, 2010

So, I miss you most when I can hear the night bugs screaming symphonies around me. Or maybe I miss you most in the morning when I realize my nose isn't pressed into your chest and your arms aren't around my waist. Maybe I miss you most when my bare feet hit the pavement and carry me anywhere and everywhere (they aren't biased and they'd get me lost if they could.) Maybe I miss you most when I walk away from you for the last time ('til next time, anyway) or when I can't sleep because my mind keeps moving at a million miles an hour.

Maybe I just miss you (and maybe I just love you, that too.)

Friday, August 6, 2010

Monday, July 26, 2010

The act of being small.

I lay in the middle of the street, my eyes wide open and staring at the wide expanse of stars set against the navy blue. The sound of a party, with music blasting through-out my block, makes the air around me vibrate from a few houses away. I can feel the concrete pulsing beneath layer of clothing separating my bare self and the ground. Every once in awhile, a silhouetted insect will float through my vision. The trees are inky black against the canvas before me. The street lights are absolute. The moon is vaguely surrounded by filmy white clouds and it stands as a bright orb in the middle of nothingness - a light in the darkness, something to strive towards.

I barely take up a fraction of the street. I barely take up a fraction of anything, for that matter. I am so utterly small and insignificant. We all are. Our actions, in ten years, will not matter for better or for worse. There will be others with our thought processes and others still with our woes. Our ideas are not unique or original, ever. They were all someone else's, somewhere else, first. It's beautiful. I want to scream, to sing, to laugh, to cry, to tell the world how small and tiny everything we do is. I want them to understand how lovely that is. I want to whisper the words to the wind and have them repeated in Times New Roman on the petals of some flower somewhere or spelled in the constellations. It's okay, it's okay - don't worry, none of this matters. Enjoy yourself.

The art of being terribly alive and therefore terribly small is beautiful. The freedom that comes with that knowledge is even better.

Friday, July 23, 2010

The heart nebula.


She lost herself the first time they kissed.
She took all of her heart that was still hers and slipped it in his pockets.
“Be careful,” She warned him. “It’s all I have left.”

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

At any occasion, I'll be ready for The Funeral. (P. III)


Its like something you see in a film or hear someone else describe. I think we are trained by what we see on screens and read in books, how to feel about death. To scream and shout and cry and then with some kind words we have an epiphany and everything is ok again. But a million words never properly describe it. That awful conflict of pain and confusion deep in our chest. You pick up a book or go online but it doesn't make any sense. It literally does not make sense. ... How wasn't she here any more? Why was everything else still there? Why didn't the earth sigh or the table bend? There are so many little things that make a person who they are, it seemed impossible for them all to be gone. I find it so hard to think about death. I think for such a common occurance in the world it is the hardest thing to understand.

- My friend and darling older sister, Anna.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

I'm coming up only to shove you down, I'm coming up only to show you wrong. (The Funeral Pt. II)

In death, people bring food. It scatters the kitchen table and friends and family shove it at you. "Eat," they say. "You need to eat. You need to remember to eat."
Platters upon platters upon platters scatter the kitchen table. Eight bags of chips. A box of Mountain Dew. A box of pastries. A tupperware container of home-baked cookies, still crumbly enough to fall apart in your fingers. A platter of fruit. Cheese and crackers. Food doesn't numb the pain, the reality of the situation. It makes addled brains clearer and stumbled thoughts organize themselves under the pretense of you are okay, you are prepared to deal with this. You are taking care of yourself.
I'd prefer not to feel. No thank you, I'm not hungry.

"This is all normal." They say, and I stare at the rain bouncing off the surface of the previously glass smooth rain. When I woke up this morning, the sun was shining brightly. Within hours it began to thunder. It beats down hard against the Earth. Cleansing, or it would be, if I were feeling. No thank you. "Not wanting to move, not wanting to eat, not wanting to shower. This is all normal. Everything you're feeling is normal."
Nothing about this is normal, I think, but I'll keep that to myself. This is the tragic movie scene that projects across a large white screen in a dark room. The actors don't really feel it, so why should I? (But I do and it aches.) This is something you read about in the newspaper. This doesn't really happen to you and your family, not in your boring lives in Somewhere Suburbia, America. Your life is not tragic and you could have it worse. But this is happening. This is tragic. This is happening to me and my family and my body is aching with the stress that my mind can't handle quite yet.

It's hard to understand why somebody would do this. Why somebody would take the beautiful aching freedom of life into their own hands and end it. It's hard to understand why we aren't good enough, why all of the wonderful things around us aren't good enough to keep people alive and hopeful and happy. They don't. They don't see the glitter in the sky or the magnificent colors floating around in the air. Their lives are black and white and now they are non existent by their own hands. 
I wasn't done with you, yet. You didn't get to see yet. You are gone now. Now what do I do?

The Funeral.

Thursday, July 15, 2010


People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
- Abraham Lincoln
  1. The smell of used bookstores
  2. Soda in glass bottles
  3. Grassy fields under mid-evening sun
  4. Sunny days with big white clouds
  5. Kittens
  6. Rainbows
  7. Rainbow lollipops
  8. Mixed tape
  9. Vintage bicycles
  10. Riding bicycles in skirts and heels
  11. Cookie Monster
  12. The Mad Hatter
  13. The Doors
  14. The Beatles
  15. Turning the last page of a good book
  16. Laying underneath the stars
  17. Listening to the perfect music at the perfect moment
  18. Long talks late at night
  19. Getting home at two AM
  20. Not coming home at all
  21. Blue Raspberry jolly ranchers
  22. Tie dyeing
  23. Taking photographs of my friends
  24. Disposable cameras
  25. Listening to new music
  26. Finding amazing bands that are local
  27. Reading stranger's blogs
  28. Listening to other people
  29. Dancing to pop music
  30. Looking at good art
  31. Going to galleries in little towns
  32. Bottle caps
  33. Boys in sweatervests
  34. Boys who read
  35. Boys who wear big glases
  36. Boys who look like Buddy Holly
  37. Wing tipped shoes
  38. Vintage clocks
  39. The smell of antique stores
  40. Ladies with parasols
  41. Pearl necklaces
  42. Yellow smiley faces
  43. A freshly sharpened pencil
  44. A box of crayons
  45. Laughing until my stomach hurts
  46. Cooking for my family
  47. Wearing a bathingsuit in the summertime
  48. Being teased by the person I like
  49. Making lists
  50. Being so tired I don't think at night
  51. Harry Potter
  52. Glitter
  53. Reading poetry. Anybody's poetry
  54. Playing with cameras
  55. The way hands look after tie-dying
  56. Pigtails.
  57. Plaid
  58. Nirvana
  59. The word 'joyful.'
  60. The word 'melancholy.'

What makes you smile?

Sunday, July 4, 2010

The glitter in the sky.

The last firework scattered across the sky in fading sparkles and we, scattered across the lake - separate and yet together, watched with baited breath as the fireworks died off. That's it, that's it, that's it (and that's alright.)

"They look like stars." I whisper, eyes half shut with the surreality - even more than the consistent surreality that addles our brains - of the situation. This isn't real, but it is and it's one of those legitimate 'existential' moments. I reach out and pick at the grass absently. "They're beautiful."

And they are.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

That Rainy Day Feeling.

That rainy day feeling - you know the one.

It doesn't always have to be a rainy day to sit down and say you feel like a rainy day. It's that feeling of spiraling into infinity - of impatience for everything and nothing, it's a total disregard to reality and when the sharp edges of what is real blur and spin around with each other. It's the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning. It's somehow everything and nothing, comfortable and uncomfortable. It's the state of becoming an paradox of yourself.


That Rainy Day Feeling
Tracklisting:

  1. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot - She & Him
  2. Fondu Au Noir - Couer De Pirate
  3. Stars - The Weepies
  4. '81 - Joanna Newsom
  5. Orchard - The Honey Trees
  6. Better Times - Beach House
  7. Swim Until You Can't See Land - Frightened Rabbits
  8. Wild Winds - Free Energy
  9. We Could Be Friends - Freelance Whales
  10. In The Next Room - Neon Trees

Download here.

EDIT: If you downloaded this mix before 11:02 PM (central time) on June 3rd, you'll need to download it again. I made the decision to switch Peach Plum Pear out and replace it with '81 by the same artist.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Perfectly imperfect, flawlessly flawed.


I will learn from my yesterdays. I will be thankful for my todays. I will be hopeful for my tomorrows. And I will be grateful and remember that the Universe has blessed me every moment in between.