performance art

dear readers, after five years of making coffee i have taken my first job doing something entirely different: i am a maker of sandwiches. the best part is that it's still performance art.

this is what i'm listening to and falling in love with

right the hell now.

big things are coming

now that i have funding for life again.

more later...

bread and butter

cheering with a stranger for nothing in particular,

and too disowned to know you're never alone.

but there it stands: a breathing end

counting seventy times back again.

i think i heard the birds calling

your name

in the quietest moment of the daytime

when i'd forgotten about you.

if i could write lovely things about you all day

i guess i'd spend my time wondering if you really existed

or if

i was in love with the honest things that weren't

about you; the things we hold onto anyway

because it reminds us that

love is more than just a verb

and maybe then that

it's there if we're patient and...

maybe still...

a whole lotta nothin

it's a shattering feeling, but not leaving me feeling broken. it's a shattering feeling like... like the earth or the sky or my self broke open and i can finally get it.

it's something.

it followed when i realized "this is something everyone's doing right now and i can't do this". but who is everyone?

more later.

It's a Draw

it's a toss up really. a draw would mean both sides would have given a good fight.

oh you make lists, too?

things i absolutely have to do today:

1) finish my homework

2) go grocery shopping

3) put my belongings where they belong

4) do the dishes

5) buy film for that camera i fell in love with and then fell out of love with and then fell in love with again

6) follow up on those people i bothered about hiring me.

what? you don't make lists?

oh lord have mercy on my soul

"she's the devil."

i had no idea what she meant, mostly because it'd been a long time since i'd had a belief that involved a satan in a personified form. theology does that to you i guess... or maybe it doesn't, but it did that to me. "she's the devil," she kept saying, like maybe i would begin to believe it if she said it more. i didn't, but i loved her all the same. if there's any evil forces in my life, they're the ones that creep up on me when i don't have enough sleep, when it's early in the morning, and i can feel a hangover coming on. it would be the things that sneak up on me in my weakest hours when i'm certain all that's connecting this moment to the next is my chain smoking and the coffee brewing.

nobody is the devil and

g-d didn't put shackles on our feet, they sang.

no, we do that ourselves.

no. she's not the devil. nobody is. if there's something evil in this world it's our inability to let our instincts kick in. it's the thing that forces us to think too much and not at all. it's the thing that reasons we'll feel better in the morning when we know we won't. it's the fear you build up and never want to let go of because you're afraid there might be nothing left when you release it. it's the walls you build up when you're afraid to believe in something greater than yourself. it's everything you use to hold yourself back, but it's something you make up... not something that's forced upon you.

for me. for now anyway.

these things are manmade, and so is it...

it's the brokenness of our universe at best,

but it's still something we can make and shape and change.

g-d didn't put cuffs on our hands either, i heard.

diet

i'm pretty damn broke.

i'm on this college diet called "buy what's cheap and hope it works", and i'm pretty sure most middle-class twenty-somethings go through it when their thirst for knowledge overrides their hunger for decent nutrition. i go grocery shopping enough to make sure i'm getting enough fruits and vegetables, and i'm learning enough to know i'll care more about where my food's coming from once i can earn enough money to support my concerns. i'm on a diet called "i don't care about anything physically because my mental stability is all that matters". it weans you off the bullshit and makes you think about what actually matters.

you practice it in high school - everything is either so damn important or nothing at all, and the tragedy is that nothing's really that important most of the time unless your adulthood breaches itself on you prematurely and you have to care about adult things before you understand why or how.
and i'm on this diet called "i don't give a shit about you anymore" and it involved feigning interest. i'm slowly weaning myself off caring about anything involving you. breaking it down, i don't know why i still give a shit. i really really don't. half the time i feel like i'm just feigning my care because it's downright in my nature to care about every damn thing. and i do. just not this... or at least i don't want to... badly enough that i just don't care one way or the other what the shit happens. or how the hell i act. or anything. i don't have any way of measuring my progress or knowing whether or not this is worth occupying my precious living-waking minutes, but... hell... if something bigger comes along (and that's not saying much because there's so much more to this world than me or it) i'll have a tougher skin and a better attitude. i'll be able to navigate my concerns in a more constructive manner. i can't tell whether i actually give a shit or i'm pretending so badly so that i don't have to think about anything else, but at this point it's a diet of the mind.

cut out what doesn't matter.

the tragedy of twenty-something is that everything matters.

one hundred truths for every one lost in the cave

i think i know what i want and that scares me...

...because what if it's not what i want at all?

have i conditioned myself to think i want something?

have i convinced myself i don't actually want the things i do?

time flies

let us remember this moment in time

that i was writing about liberation

and feared the morning.

let us remember the moment

i ate cold chili from a tupperware

contemplating my next move on something

that always feels next to impossible,

and the irony that

i'd just discovered oppression is not a response of divine things,

but rather a reaction of people by people

and i was only moments ago frustrated

with something i feel i cannot escape or change.

enlightenment and deliverance comes in all forms,

creatively.

here, through tupperware and cold chili.

sea of words//cortez cortez

it was a combination of everything: music to live for, a crusty venue i'd been existing off of since i was in high school, good company, probably more to drink than i should've had, the city, the nighttime, and a thousand bodies pressed up against the stage to feel and smell and breathe the music.

it was good. really good. not like the "my spirits are lifted" good but like.... "today is the sort of day that's worth living a few more times through, and it's gonna fuel my spirits for a long time" good. good like fresh coffee. good like the sun and the rain all at once.

really good.

"nothing can go wrong" good.

but the sea of words tumbled out as soon as i started getting tired and comfortable and they just... ran far and long and off without me. it was like watching a movie in a dream in really slow motion--- the kind of dream where you try and get up and leave but your feet move too slow. i opened my mouth and the words tumbled out, and i could hear them move faster than my brain could stop them.

the night ended in a terrible argument and honestly? that didn't even matter. all i was hung up on the following morning was the fact that i admitted it.

i downed a few glasses of water mulling over what i'd said. maybe nobody heard. maybe they didn't remember. maybe we can just go on pretending i didn't say anything. i filled my glass again - things were still good... they always are if you let them be.

everything changed since i was eighteen except for that and i had to go on and admit it.

mother of mercy.

more later.

i am in love

i am in love

right the hell now

with this music.

Go Ahead:

ask me what i believe in.