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dimestorelips.blogspot.com

i'd still love to wash in your old bathwater

so this is the new year...

1) "everything you want" - vertical horizon

2) "wherever you will go" - the calling

3) "one headlight" - the wallflowers

4) "(absolutely) story of a girl" - nine days

5) "she's so high" - tal bachman

6) "if you could only see" - tonic

7) "dare you to move" - switchfoot

8) "you're a god" - verticle horizon

9) "wherever you will go" - the calling

thursday

i am counting

every day like it's something to pass.

i woke up after a twenty minute nap i never realized i was taking... you know the kind, where you wake up entirely unaware that you were asleep. it was already dark, and it was barely after five pm. i flicked on some bon iver and knocked back the rest of my sunny delight; something in the back of my mind hoped it would make the sun come back the way i remember it did in all the commercials growing up.

after staring out the window at the space needle glowing in the greyish darkened sky, i pulled myself together and realized "this is it". i'm getting somewhere, but i'm not there yet. i have a lot to do.

then i wondered, am i always going to be stuck in this feeling that i am always searching? is this a feeling that i should be pleased with? i washed some dishes and played the music that reminded me of the summer i felt freed. i grabbed my planner, packed a bag, and made a mental not to sit down and make a list of everything i needed to accomplish to hit a turning point.

sunday secrets

anyone who gets to hear me talk in real life, get to run into me in real life, or gets to wait behind me in the magazine aisle in the store can easily guess that i am in love with beautiful clothes. i'm not sure if "fashion" is the right word for what i'm in love with, since fashion encompasses trends, designers, magazines, hipsters, and run-of-the-mill blogs; lovely clothing and interesting clothing are what i secretly love.

anyway, here's a photo from fashion week that everyone and their mother already know about, nicki minaj and anna wintour (editor in chief of american vogue):

i love how nicki's top is actually a similar but more outrageous interpretation of what anna's wearing. two icons from two planets, side by side. i love this. but it's a secret.

thoughts on images, part 2

i spent my entire junior high and high school years concerned about losing weight, and now that i'm years past recovery, i weigh less than i did when it all began. i don't know where it went or how it happened, but i am aware i dropped a significant amount of my body weight since i started getting my life back together. i do not think they are related; i don't think i lost weight because i got my life together or vice versa, but the fact that i don't know what happened draws out some sort of uncertainty. i prefer knowing what is happening to myself.

some things make me want to punch you in the face

other things make me realize i'm a better person

sometimes, these two things are actually the same thing.

up & up

he wrote

to me about michelangelo. the loveliest things would slip from his mind onto the keyboard, onto paper, onto the pavement. anywhere. he was like a bit of energy that would leave a glowing trail of himself everywhere he went. he would glow everywhere he went, but it wasn't the sort of lightness you could recognize. you had to look for it. you had to really see him. he was an unconventional bit, radiating unbeknownst to himself. beautiful things are like that: unaware of how wonderful they are. and that's how he was, unconventionally everything and unaware.

and he wrote to me about michelangelo, but not how we were similar, but rather how he connected both myself and the artist. i wanted to keep every moment in a jar. the whole time was like trying to keep sand from falling between my fingers, but being too drawn to the faintest of sparkling it made when it moved from my hands back to the ground. he was like the sand itself, i guess. he belonged everywhere.

( __________ )

first thought

alone:

can i just drink this straight?

/night

walk me to barcelona

in autumn

when the weather proves to be too cool for one

and too lonely to stroll alone.

walk me somewhere near spain

and soon

and maybe then

i can find my way across the ocean.

come quickly,

walk me till my knees are weak from

dragging this weary soul across the shore.

walk me till i have no question

of who you are and who i am not.

walk me till we see the trees

and the seas are waving lovely goodbyes.

walk me till we never say goodbye

and then...

whisper me silent love songs

when our feet are too tired to carry on.

when we near where we are going,

dear,

tell me you love me.

read me every book you've read,

we'll part the reeds and find out way

and then

sing me the rest of the way

to spain.

this isn't working

i thought

if i worked really hard at something

and did really well

i would leave feeling really good about it

and myself

and everything.

but i go to work every day

and i work my ass off

and i do really well

and everyone tells me i'm doing well

but i don't leave feeling like i've accomplished anything.

this work isn't working.

when am i going to figure out how to make this all feel worthwhile?

thoughts on images, part one

rarely will i post photos of myself on my blog. i thought i could do a photo a day as i went through my (ridiculously large) collection of band tees, but i got bored with writing about that so i dropped it (but still went through a month or two wearing a different band tee every day). i think i thought that if i was tracking my physical progress through something, it would make my own means of tracking my internal growth more tangible. this, of course, isn't how things work, and i came back to the realization that my image and my thoughts are entirely separate vehicles of expression.

when i think more about it, i guess i feel like seeing my face will somehow distract or influence what i write, and whether that's positive or negative, i'd like to steer clear from that. i like the way words sound and look and feel when you say them and read them. i like the way words paint their own pictures when you don't have any pictures to base them off of. i like the thought that someone is out there reading this in their own voice and trying to figure out the tone to read each word and which ones to emphasize, and perhaps even what sort of facial expressions come along with each idea. you don't need to see a picture of me to do any of this, and perhaps if you had one, your own thoughts wouldn't be able to stir properly.

everything seem to be accompanied by an image as well. think of everything you buy, think of how the new york times seem so much more captivating with a lovely photo.

words alone begin to be terrifying when you're left to deal with them yourself.

the board game.

let's play a game called "pull yourself together and pretend everything's fucking fantastic even though you're having the shit chewed out of you every other night." we'll make the rules simple, dress yourself up in every goddamn outfit that makes you look fucking fantastic everyday, and ten extra points if you throw on a pair of heels and get your make up perfect. you win if you've pulled a fast one on everyone and nail this.

let's play a game called "one cup half empty" where you pretend it's half full the whole damn time. let's make up rules and number them one through six and have them go as followed:

fake

it

till

you

make

it.

let's wrap it up in a lovely package and sell it as something beautiful, and let everyone know that the beautiful thing about mastering this game is that even in your worst, you can manage to pull yourself together when everyone else needs you more. let's say this game lasts about a month or so. let's say you can't play with friends, they couldn't catch on. when they say "too much" and "attention" right after one another, you pass. you could try and explain the rules, but if they want to be best friends AND shoot you down when you explain what's going on, is it worth it?

--------------------

--------------------

--------------------

let's cut the bullshit and get to the point:

conflicts that drag on for over a few months blow.

stress and conflict that manage to maintain themselves for nine months and more are exhausting and heavy on the heart.

sometimes i can't handle it all on my own.

sometimes i just need to be around people/places/things that aren't weighed down to heavily by all of this, and i'm starting to think that's too much to depend on.

so i'll just do everything by my goddamn self.

today i realized if i can foresee and ending point, this doesn't all feel so weighty and morose, and perhaps if i pretends it's a game i have to feign my optimism though, then maybe i can make it out okay.

so everything's fucking fantastic.

and if it's not, it has to be... it just does.

one two three four

could've been better focused

(it's a metaphor, fool).

summertime & stay 18 forever

Nietzsche, I am in love (with your words)

"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' "

all at once

i kept

all the sweet things in a file. girls do that i think. all the sweet nothings that might have meant something if i had any patience. i'm slipping. not down, just out. i'm slipping too fast and too far from anything recognizable, and it's the same damn problem i keep running into, but they're not really problems, they're just things that don't have solutions yet. the thing is, i keep slipping too far away and it's like i can't recognize the things i have and what they are anymore because

because

the measuring rod by which i kept track of what lovely and love were

have changed

or shifted

or been taken down.

after things got bad at home, i haven't been able to figure out anything anymore.

patience

is the one thing i will never be able to keep much of, and with that i am certain i will never be able to keep anyone close. i keep everyone at bay. that's the worst of it all; i keep everyone at bay and with that it seems to be my most gracious company. i can count in my head the handful who have stuck through, one of whom is living with me, another few scattered around the state.

i think

i think i fear anyone getting too close again

because

i still can't get over how much i lost myself the last time and i don't want that to happen

(again

again

again)...

...

"you need too much attention" he said. they could kill if they were anything but words.

"that's too easy" i thought, and i thought more about how i need someone who can put up a better fight. attention is easy to give and easy for me to live without (the sullen bay being my most giving of company). calling it attention would be too easy, and maybe i just gave up with it being a simple name for something so much bigger.

the webs we weave ourselves can either bind us else...

"it's not attention i need" i thought. i didn't have the energy to argue so i let it go. sometimes that's all the beauty we can find: the letting go. the truth was that i didn't know what any of it looked like anymore. i didn't know how to say "everything you've told me i've heard before and had my heart broken worse", and i didn't know how to tell him "everything you've done for me i've had done before" because the truth cuts deeper than anyone wants to talk about. he could have told me every day for a hundred years i was something, but i'm lots of things to lots of different people, maybe seven hundred years worth of different things to different people. i didn't need attention, i needed to know why this was any different from anything else. i'd been told too many times before that someone's wanted to keep me forever, so much so that forever means nothing.

everything's been stripped of meaning.

i needed definition.

that's something i lost a long time ago, and have been stumbling in and out of relationships (boyfriends, family, friendships and otherwise) trying to figure out. "it's great that i'm special, but why am i special to you." i was awful. maybe i still am. i don't need attention. i don't need structure. maybe i just need someone who knows what the hell they're doing.

i guess i just need someone willing to fight me for me.

i don't want any of that world back

but i don't know where i stand anymore.

tell your fiance i'm sure she's lovely

but please don't bother telling her about me.