We'll get there with our wings.

trav'lin'

All of the places we could go for Spring Break:

Americas
Redwood Forest
Boston, Mass.
Big Sur
Hawaii
Guatemala
Chile
Venezuela
Europe
Amsterdam, Holland
Germany
Paris, France
Italy
Austria
Sweden
Ireland
Africa
Egypt
South Africa
Asia
Vietnam
Thailand
Australia
New Zealand

p.s. If I discover all of these places in my lifetime (with the addition of some colder places: Russia, Antarctica, Iceland, Greenland) then... well... You know what happens.

First Snow

So, even though Yule isn't here yet- today is winter. I looked out the window this morning and was amazed by the many inches of snow that had piled up over night... and just yesterday I thought about how Indy looks much better with the dead trees than it looked when they were green. I am head over heels in love with this natural cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Seeing the cycles right before my eyes, month after month, gives me a feeling of stability in a world where everything seems so chaotic...unplanned...sudden. It reminds me that everything goes through the cycle, over and over again; including humanity. The fear and paranoia of what is to come-- whether I call it the apocalypse, Global Warming, a conspiracy, the War on [insert something to be afraid of], or even whether I choose not to see it--is erased by the blankness of the snow. The snow is so clean, pure, and dead that it seems like the most natural thing to happen since last spring when the trees budded.
Also, it reminds me of a time when I wasn't so taken my worldly issues. When a 2-hour delay was much more promising, because I spent my time in activities that didn't seem so important. They didn't have the affect on my life that every single day does now, or so I thought. Since school started, everything has just mattered a lot more than it ever did back then. Treading through the snow with Thomas or Sarah T., for no real purpose other than maybe to go to South Gate to steal stickers, or to go to Caleb's because it was the only thing to do. Bills and paychecks and financial aid and finals and George Bush didn't exist then, and so the stress of thinking about them and jumping through their hoops didn't either.

Winter means solace for my worried mind.

Trumpets

You were Right
by my side
with your wings spread
and your grin-faced Head!
The tiniest gray imperfections wrinkle through my belly.
Thin hairs are plucked,
dipped in ink,
swirled on a clean page,
creating the dots that'll be used for connecting
at a later date.
I have something to say, in quotations.

The Prophecy has come, Dear You!

I wonder sometimes
if the sounds
I think are figments of my imagination
are your sparkling diamonds,
cutting close to the bone;
so close, carved out of Gold.

Prophecy found the matter of this deja-vou:

Repunzel, I am, with a strawberry Blond
lock for you to caterpillar up.
Up: if you ever find me clenching my heart
or attacking anemia, panicking...
Love, We
could
dance!
in the streets of Paradise,
breathing steadily
rhythmically two-stepping, to our own way(out
of this two dimensional scene)ward lyric.

G: 24 8 2007, T: 30 8 2007

Grass is Greener Complex

If I were to tell you, Dear

that the Grass is greener

right here,

Would you marry me

to a Riddle or a Maxim

that I might hold, Dear?

A Deer and A Doe

are in the middle of a Prarie,

with a hammer and the Nazarene

so is their Grass green?

A merman stubs his toe

on the Glass of broken wine-glasses,

sucking at the sore scene

is his Grass green?

"I bought a handsom bottle of breakfast wine from the corner store,"

and "Tip," says god

the Wine is gone--

cradled in the Hands of Raw

Picked and Peddled his way

to Jaru-Salem, Mass.

There He stood before me in

line,

Small talk about the Rainy Day.

The last question I have for you, Lord Gray,

Is your grass green beneath the earth in the Rain?

A Timeline of Reluctance

Her leaves stare through the window of the classroom, like perverts peeking on me in the shower:
So curious of what time it is.
Nestled in her rather stiff and uninviting crevice,
I love this lady, Tree!
Does she love me?
I don't think so, afterall I am like them
I shit, take, and pillage her Dear Soul
with carcinogens and a Cancerous
Will not to feel guilt.

She is so cool
solitary
anorexic, but I- the opposite-
(Am I her Yin?) No.
Displeased with this snug societal gluttony,
I wish I could just stand and shake my fist!
or yet
wish things were different
here in her Home.

It isn't difficult to see my part
in her disfunctional family.
Some accusatory daughter,
"What Time did you get Home last night?"

As I slept warm in my bed.

Golden Age

• So right now, I'm in Indy. I did my first college homework today, my first college art class yesterday (Beginning Ceramics, wheel throwing) and almost everything has gone according to plan thus far. I'm not really sure what all of the fuss is with picking schools. It took me 2 years to settle for a state school, and I am very much in doubt that it is a lesser quality education than (place big city art institution here). All of my teachers have Ph.D's and are very obscure. Then again, I'm taking some honors classes.
• I have an idea and I think I'll run with it. I think I'll stay here for 2 years and then transfer to Humboldt State University, after taking 3 semesters of some foreign language, because that's what they require.
• Why am I wasting my time on this computer?
• In the class next to this computer, the professor is talking about how the military can not take the huge risk of promoting/accepting homosexuality, and it is sort of amusing. He is so passionate and determined to get this point across.
• A few weeks ago, I don't remember what it was, but something sparked those old memories of mine, and I've been quite disturbed about Everything since then. I'm starting to notice the consistency in the times of day that I feel most insecure about life, and most regretful of things that I have done and not done. This pain in my heart from them will go away, as the times of day that those old *sentiments come back are waning in number.
• ...not that I should have even written something that personal in here.
• So gratifying it is to work very hard at something [art] and to see it evolving itself, after time, without really having to brainstorm or use one's conscious mind to think about what it is, or where you might go with it.
• *I think sentiments is the perfect word to describe Them.
• I still haven't finished Walden or any of the other books that I should be reading.

*I miss New England, and I still conjure up ways that I could go back. I think about it several times everyday, about just disappearing and going back to the city where I can feel the Gold everywhere. It's like I buried some sort of treasure there a billion years ago and the essence that is me is continually pulled to it. I'm beginning to wonder if it's just in my nature to wish that I could Time Travel. or to wish that I could be two (or twenty) places at once. or maybe to just run. Flee the scene of the crime. Am I a criminal?

• I vaguely remember there being a time when I could do those things. Whether it is still that Time; and if not, when/if it might be again, I don't know.

Seaside Heights, New Jersey

How I love you.

concord grapes

leaf wings fluttering through You,
Swimming through Them,
Shifting and Swaying Thousand Foot Tree
I'll climb to the top of you
and kiss you good-night
and it was a good night
You silenced the flesh searing
light.
If I were Henry David then I'd
build my cabin on the Wood

and I'd try to remember the good-days
mornings
when you gallavanted over the
Red Wood Forest
and into my Red Wooden spirit
--You carved it with the air, My Dear
and widdled away my fear--

If I were Mr. Thoreau,
or Silly Billy Burroughs
I would have said, "Make peace with your
helium-inhaling brothers,"
But I'm not and I didn't!
and the balloons (made them) convulse,
fall out of their oak-holes
Where the Owls paid them no attention

and six Clocks later, the gas guzzlers
smashed them with their black rubber hearts
No one rescued the Rangers,
and they were too busy
Rescuing the Endangered
to peir into the Looking Glass
to see Your blonde Cat Cross their Path,

so they catch koalas
--until the day the Ko-alah Supply runs out--
and save them in the drawer.

The Cat runs up the Tree,
Clock lives forever more
The Owls drink their tea.

" I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. "

Walden, Henry David Thoreau

Lemonade

I really, truly hate them sometimes... destroying every little bit of peace that I try to create in this house, and I just exploded today. Gladly enough, Mom was around to see, and finally came to her wits and told them they have to move out. I'm so ready to live somewhere again where I'm not battling with everyone around me.

Existence, well what does it matter?

I exist on the best terms I can.

The past is now part of my future,

the present is well out of hand.

[Ian Curtis]

The cold has hindered me from riding my bicycle and getting out of the house lately, but I hear that it is supposed to clear up by tomorrow. I'm definitely ready for Spring to begin and to be happy again. It's sort of difficult when most of the people around you are self-centered battlers until the end. I'm thankful that I've had Matthew around through this shit, and the knowledge that Dan will be coming soon. I'd lose my head without them, I think.
Since I left Providence, most of my uncertainty about life has also left. I had this lurking feeling that I was not doing the right thing, that every step on every little crack was going to break my Mother's back. Always. Not any more. I am no longer so fearful about how I'm living my life; I'm free, and hopeful.
Behind every light; however, is a shadow to accompany it. My cousin, Alex, just passed away a few days ago. He's been sick for quite awhile and has had MS his entire life. I really hope that Death doesn't pass the Domino Effect on my family, like I've seen in so many others. I'm not afraid of dying myself. I'm not afraid of dealing with Death. I'm afraid of what it is going to do to my fragile family that is already in pieces, each and every one of us, from other Unspeakable Facts of Life.



All of the talking about food that Thom Cat and I did in P-rov has finally opened my eyes up to how much happiness I can bring somebody with just a little bit of time in the Kitchen. I'm definitely addicted to baking at this point, and I've been spending way too much time on the internet looking at recipes. I need to get a fucking cookbook. Whenever Danbaery comes to visit on Hitler's birthday, I'm going to cook until my eyes pop out, I really can't wait. He ate up all of the cookies I made for him for his birthday in about a day and a half. I don't know if I've ever boasted about anything before, but I'm going to keep working on these recipes until I have something to boast about.

• Speaking of Thom Cat-- I wanted so much to go to his house and bake bread, but like I said, the weather was ill-permitting. It would be so fun though. Baking parties are definitely the best idea that I've heard of in a long time. Also, I have a premonition (maybe it is just a hope) that there will be many, many campfires this summer in Sarah's back yard and our Spot in the woods near Superior Street.
  
• Speaking of Danbaery-- I can't say anything except thank You, thank You, thank You [to the Universe.]
  

I'm reading the Beautiful and Damned again, and I feel that this insert could accurately describe life right now

Silence crept down again over the wet country; the faint dripping resumed, and suddenly a great shower of drops tumbled upon Gloria stirring her out of the trance-like torpor which the passage of the train had wrought. She ran swiftly down a descending level to the bank and began climbing the iron stairway to the bridge, remembering that it was something she had always wanted to do, and that she would have the added excitement of traversing the yard-wide plank that ran beside the tracks over the river.
There! This was better. She was at the top now and could see the lands about her as successive sweeps of open country, cold under the moon, coarsely patched and seamed with thin rows and heavy clumps of trees. To her right, half a mile down the river, which trailed away behind the light like the shiny, slimy path of a snail, winked the scattered lights of Marietta. Not two hundred yards away at the end of the bridge squatted the station, marked by a sullen lantern. The oppression was lifted now—the tree-tops below her were rocking the young starlight to a haunted doze. She stretched out her arms with a gesture of freedom. This was what she had wanted, to stand alone where it was high and cool.

[F. Scott Fitzgerald]

conundrum

He's looking at me
eyes bluer than the skies, sunshine beams cutting through my fantasies
Baby Blue Eyes and California Golden Poppies,
woven floral decorations in the curtains
that I can't see,
I'm blind
And you're leading me through the masses.
Mosses
Inchworming over Our bodies,
Through Them and They're painting Red X's
on us,
Burning holes with their magnifying Eyes.
Nonetheless, His fish are dead
My chair is broken.
My cheek is Pressed against
the glass of His Dodecahedron.
We're trying to lookout,
but it is frosted over and we're fingerdrawing
Smiling faces.
Fingerpainting
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
I just learned
how to tie my Shoes,
You don't remember teaching me do You?
Two rabbit ears and a loop
loop loop
loop looploop
Point A and He's looking at me
Eyes bluer than the sea, pool.
Than I can see.

He says he isn't Perfect,
but what is the difference
when you subtract Zero from One?

I still can't see
but I know he's looking at me.

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Tomorrow at 3pm I am going to board the Greyhound, and after 3 layovers and 26 hours, I'll be back in Fort Wayne. Whenever I'm in Fort Wayne, I'm going to get a job and finish the application procedure for IPFW. I'll save money for a car, pay Thomas, and start my life.
I decided years ago that I was going to go into the field of Fine Art, and a few weeks ago Thomas listed all of the reasons I should go into Art History, and they all seem to be correct, so that is what I'm going to do. Since I dropped out of school senior year and went to San Francisco, I've been floating around looking for every possible option that wasn't Indiana or Fine Art. I never wanted to be "stuck" in Fort Wayne, like Sarah and Angie and all of my high school friends, but my perception of the situation has changed. I probably could have gone to some amazing school on the East or West Coast, but dropping out of school ruined those opportunities; it is only now that I have accepted this fact.
Coming to Providence got me away from most everything. I’ve been left with a lot of boredom, time to think about who I am and what I’m doing. I’ve said all of this before, but I was never forced myself to be optimistic enough to change the path that my life was on. A complete change of heart and mind was necessary, and I really do feel like a different person than when I left Indiana two months ago. I thought I was done riding the Train Wreck, but it still followed me. I’ve been around Dan enough for the past month to see how people of Integrity live their lives and I have to say that the feelings I had in Boston were enough to crush my Dreams. They are rebuilding and I’ll be stronger than ever.
Before I left, I read Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney and I could definitely see the same defects in myself as in the main character’s ex-wife: Midwestern girl that knows so little about who she is that she loses herself in the glitz and glam of the City, after years of yearning to do the opposite in the same City. I could see them, but after all it is just bad fiction, so why acknowledge the fact that McInerney had my character down 20 years ago? This is the point when I’m going to step back and use my head. (No, I didn’t leave it in Michael’s pocket in BFE, Rhode Island a year ago.)

Addictions
I don’t know how or when, but I’ve decided that I’m going to quit smoking. Every time I open my pouch to roll a cigarette, I get a little bit more disgusted with myself. I can’t do anything without getting winded, I cough all of the time, and I am always cold. Not to mention: both of my Grandmothers are slowly dying from this (one with emphysema, the other with emphysema and lung Cancer) and, I might not want to live to one-hundred, but I’d at least like to have sixty comfortable years of life on Earth. I want to be able to ride my bike without huffing and puffing. I want my constant heart burn to go away. I don’t want to feel like every hour I’m gradually committing suicide and that my soul might possibly pay for Eternity for it. Addictions suck.

Boston
Boston last weekend was awesome. Dan and I rode the Bonanza out and wandered around on the Historical Path for awhile, visited Boston Common where there was a memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Mass. State House. We saw the graves of Paul Revere and Samuel Adams and a deeply depressing Holocaust Memorial. A giant clock, a million people and pigeons, dinner at Cheers, and the best pizza I’ve ever had. We took the Commuter Rail to Concord, Massachusetts and stopped in at a very quaint decor shop on Thoreau Street and asked for directions to Walden Pond. The 2-3 mile trek to the Pond (we underestimated how cold it would get) didn’t seem so bad, only took forty-five minutes or so, and was well worth it. I guess he really did live in a "Shanty", if the replica of it was similar to the original. The Pond itself was picturesque and frozen over, with a perfectly blue sky to go along. We got there around Dusk, and it seemed that nothing else existed anywhere on the earth. Right in front of the place we decided to sit, written in the snow was "I Love Jeff,"...odd...We froze our asses off of the trudge back to the yuppie town and plopped into the Starbucks (one of seven tallied), drank coffee, and defrosted for an hour, and back to Boston. Dan surprised me with a hotel room at a Hilton in some middle-of-nowhere town, where I got to sit in my first "hot tub" (not actually hot, just piss-warm) and we spent most of the next day at the Museum of Fine Arts (also my first museum [besides FWMOA]). The Italian Renaissance sculptures were amazing, the Monet was less than I expected, and there were too many other pieces to make a comment on every single one, but I will say: there were too many people. Back to Providence for beers and cheeseburgers at Trinity, and I couldn’t have been more satisfied with the whole experience–unless, perhaps, it was a few degrees warmer.

End of an Era

My era of unhealthy relationships is over, finally. I have never felt better and more optimistic about what life can be, about what I can make it, and who I can become. It is kind of disappointing that Providence didn't work out, but I guess that's life. I can stop running from it now. I've learned a lot about who I really am and about what matters.
Hello, I'm Jessica, it's nice to meet you. I am quite eccentric and a lot less normal (whatever that is) than I thought I was. Way too melodramatic, but I don't cave under pressure. Hand me anything to do and I can get it done, no matter how ridiculous it is. I have this amazing ability to adapt to anything in only a short amount of time.
My goals since senior year have been, at best, off-the-wall and way too idealistic, and I've realized that if I put more thought and planning into my life, it could be something interesting and amazing. Dropping out of school and going to California was the first attempt at ruining my life. Continuing in that insane relationship (up until yesterday) to end up 860 miles away from my family and my stability, after a year and a half of driving myself fucking crazy with failed plans and psychoanalysis, was the last straw. I always thought that, for life to be interesting, you had to be doing something extreme but that is just not the case.
I don't feel guilty this time. I'm nineteen and I did what I knew: I chased a guy around the country hoping that he would love me as much as I was obsessed with him. I justified it, made excuses, and hurt a great many people in the process. Maybe now I'll stop repeating my mom's life and get started on living my own.
I am completely satisfied with the idea of living in Indiana and going to IU and doing whatever I have to do to find some sort of psychological, spiritual, and physical stability. I know that is what I need; I've talked Thom's ear off about it. I'm satisfied with making art and finding out more about myself and also with giving travelling and moving around a break for a couple of years, until I can honestly say that it is what I wanted to do.

Lack

Everything is dreary today, with the Unicloud pumping out tiny flakes of snow. It threatens to kill us all if we don't do it ourselves. And we are, slowly, depriving our minds and souls of any possible Joy with our petty

(in)differences. Stick in the mud: that's what You are. He came last night and I now know how impossible it is going to be to find the happiness that I'm searching for. It isn't something that searching will find, because it can't be found. Wandering the bad neighborhoods in my mind, in the streets. This place really is a reflection of what has been going on (since I became old enough to realize that something was going on). The many times wondering "is that so much to ask?", silence answering that Yes It Is too much. Because you can't ask for happiness and asking for anything, for me, is just contradictory to what I'm doing here.

I thought, "If I can find happiness in Providence, where the people are dreary and the streets are cold.... I can find it anywhere, No Matter What." I found it here. Is that why I doubt it so much? Because I know that what I'm looking for can not be found so if I find it then it must not be what I was looking for. Nomad. Fucking emotional nomad. Being content with what I'm doing in my life is so difficult, why does it have to be, why do I make it so? Pick up and leave and start over again? I'm not getting anything done, and it is sad. I wonder why other people don't think about things this much. They're happy with their stuff and their goals, but I can't be. I wish I didn't use the word happiness so many goddamn times.

Maybe drawing pictures wasn't enough and that's why I've given up so many times. I suppose I can do it now without thinking. Read without really forcing myself. I always wanted to be able to do these things, but doing them seems so meaningless. I'm not getting my point across about how much I value interconnectedness and how I know that I'm taking it for granted. I'm not really saying what I mean. What do I mean? What am I saying? I want to be a part of everything, but I think that want is fucking me, because I'm not really a part of anything if I'm a part of everything; or maybe my philosophy of the whole situation is just fatalistic. Fuck. No, not that. I know that I'm not fatalistic because I realize that if everything were this way, that....

more Idealism.

Shave your head and throw it all away. I want to start fresh, but I think that's impossible isn't it? I don't mean socially; I want to unlearn everything that I "know" and start with a clean slate. Really, all of my inner dillemmas and all of everyone's are based on what we have learned, and when we learned it. Whether we were looking for it or not, we'll all become more human (flawed and flawless) every time we learn something of any value. But what is the string that connects these contradictory beliefs that are all really true?

What the fuck is truth anyway? Truth, to me, is just something that fits in to what life already is, something that I can believe. Usually it helps if my physical body can actually experience it, because that tells me that is isn't breaking the major laws of Science, which is really the Dictator for what is truth and what is not (even if I'm not referring to Science as it is currently).

Maybe there is no string and it is just the fact that I, myself, believe them that makes them seem like they all connect in some way.

But I don't believe that.

I should really figure out how to explain what I'm talking about, because as it is, the words that I know how to use are lacking.

means to an end

I've been trying to avoid this, because I don't want to say things that aren't true.

This won't be long, I'm at the library.





Living here is really showing me just how much stress I can take, and just how happy I can be. I'm ecstatic. The past few days have been the best of my life for no apparent reason. Routine. Pigeons in the park, Starbucks, "Legendary service", fuck them. Keep looking. Don't settle. Walk faster. See everything. I have...

I realized the ora or the energy or the feeling of the city the other day, I'm not in Kansas anymore. Living here is so much different from just existing here.

It's hard. Not many friends, stress about how I'm going to find money and how I'm going to go to school. What do I want to be when I grow up?

I'm still not quite sure.



I feel good though. I know it will work out, if not here, then somewhere. Life really isn't that difficult afterall. Life, in general. People become lazy and impatient and wonder why nothing ever happens for them, why life isn't as idealistic at they imagine. Mine is as idealistic as I imagined, almost. It is getting there. I don't enjoy listening to Thomas's bitching, and I hate sleeping on that uncomfortable couch, but




those things are so trivial that it doesn't matter.



I'm not riding the trainwreck anymore.