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'm ill, not sick.

"this is bullshit" i thought to myself. i'd been lying in bed for three or four day, only getting up to make the occasional peanut butter and jelly or when i thought i was going crazy and needed air. i'd been sick, but i'd been wondering if maybe i was on the downhill roll toward being depressed.

bullshit.

i don't have time to be sick OR depressed.

it's hard to explain of you haven't really experienced it. being depressed i mean. it's like any other illness, it comes out of nowhere and sort of sucks you dry. it's exhausting being in it but it's exhausting trying to pull yourself out of it, and even though people say "just snap out of it"... you.... can't. either way, i didn't have time for any of it, i had a shit ton of deadlines to make and i didn't have time to be sick. or depressed.

dammit.

i walked to school a few times just to pretend i was okay. do you ever do that? just try and pretend you're fine even though it's obvious nothing's alright? i could feel my eyes bloodshot from allergies and sinus infections, my nose was running and raw from blowing it every other minute, my whole body ached.

"i'll just pretend i'm fine," i told myself. who the hell doesn't do that, right? i got dressed, put on make up, packed my backpack and went to emerald city smoothie. perfect. energy boost, vitamin c, and some protein: just what i need. i'd be fine in no time!

"i'm great! i'm doing fantastic! i'm terrific!" i kept telling myself, "i'll just trick myself into feeling better! this is gonna be easy!" after i finished my smoothie i realized drinking it had worn me out. always stubborn to admit when anything's wrong, i kept trying to remind myself everything would be okay soon. "i'm great! i'm doing fantastic! i'm going to make all my deadlines for homework! i can do this!"

i finally made it to the school library and got to the stairwell- i ALWAYS take the stairs over the elevator. i looked at all of them and all of a sudden i felt like i was in one of those really bad dreams where you're trapped running up or down stairs forever, and it's really a pain-in-the-ass sort of nightmare.

they all are.

"this is bullshit. i'm sick and there's nothing i can do to pretend i'm not."

soup&salad

since i'd moved out, we'd made a point to have dinner together at least once a week, but she'd been gone down to the city i'd left pieces of my heart all over, and so it'd become less frequent than either of us had hoped.

we were splitting something pretty normal: salad and chicken noodle soup. neither of us really had the energy for much creativity, and we were more focused on just existing off of each other. it's been pretty rough for all of us.

"those girls were always so condescending, weren't they..." she said, more an observation than a question. it was true. i'd been mulling over a friend's birthday this weekend and was bouncing my thoughts off of her. i love my friend dearly, but i'd always got the impression a friend of hers looked down at me because i never treated high school like a grand competition. pettiness aside, my friend was the most important thing, so i'd decided to go. screw what other people think.

"yeah, kinda. i don't know. they liked to compare grades in high school and this person was always really shocked when i did well." it was true. how can high school girls be so mean? it's been ages since high school, but i was more than certain some things wouldn't change... why do people hold on to bullshit things like that? life's not a competition, and as the great words of baz luhrmann, "in the end it's only with yourself."

"you know..." i started, "...theres a kid in my theology class that seems pretty shocked when i turn in homework."

"why? you're pretty smart, you just always put yourself down." truth. when i was younger i was shipped around the state so i could take tests and be tested for my "intelligence". i blew everyone out of the goddamned water every time, but it just never seemed important if i wasn't doing anything with it... like helping people or changing the world or something.

"it's my attitude."

"what do you mean? i mean i know, but..."

"i just.... i'd rather people think i don't give a shit than know that there's things in my life i can't handle that are a million times more important." another truth - my life has always been like this. i basically sabotaged my grades my senior year of high school when my best friend was raped... how do you help someone through that? that was the first time i realized life can be (and often is) more important than a gpa. when a friend took his life two years ago..... even though we'd only recently made amends i still dropped out of school for a while to figure out how to deal and be the support for our best friend (there's never a way to "deal" with these things by the way).

and now.... now things are really bad, and i'd really rather everyone just think i have an attitude than know my world is falling apart.

she knew exactly what i was talking about.

more later.

to whom do i belong?

"who do you talk to?"

the words cut through everything and hit the floor deliberately. he always spoke with intention, even the times he wasn't sure what he was getting to. i'd spent the last three months working with him to try and put a talk together, and i'd taken pride in orchestrating a lot of the event... i wasn't about to answer, answering would mean that i was asking for help, and how much sense would that make if i'm the one who's supposed to be giving the help? then again, i hear pride's a sin.

"who do you talk to?"

he asked again. i was a mess. i had been for about the last two weeks, and i'd done a damn good job keeping it from everyone.... because honestly? i wasn't there for me, and nobody needed to hear what i was going through. as far as i've been concerned, a good leader is strong even when they feel they're breaking. i wasn't about to give in to my weaknesses, especially in front of my team.

who do i talk to? the question hit me hard. i can't even remember if i answered it.... chances are good i didn't. it hit me in the gut. it was too close to home. i don't talk to anyone anymore.

oh.

sure.

i talk a lot, and i talk a lot about things that aren't extremely important, and hell when i'm two or three down at a bar i can talk theology all night. but who do i talk to? the only answer i had was a brutal reality check:

i only "talk" to my therapist these days. more specifically, every other week on wednesday mornings. it's easier. for now.

i get into the most intimate details of my life, and over the last six months i've had them all twisted and thrown back at me. humiliating. when did people stop thinking logically or with care? i have nothing left to give in speaking, family and friends alike. everything's been used. i'm spent.

that's not to say that life is any less beautiful, and i've run out of love, but the very precious words that carry my thoughts have been torn up and cast out and..... if i can't keep anything lovely for myself, what then will my words hold? if my words are taken from me, then to whom do they belong? to whom do i belong?

small towns

I'll preface this post by noting that a lot has been going on. Most of the days I'm left feeling emotionally exhausted, a little scared, and in a roundabout way... content. I've moved to Seattle... out of the small town I've grown up in, thirty-something miles north-ish of what I'm used to. In the two weeks I've been back up here I've noticed something backwards. When I was down in the south end I was better known to belong to Seattle: I go to school in Seattle, I go out in Seattle, and I generally hang out and kill time in Seattle. Now that I'm back here again I catch myself absentmindedly talking about the south end. Ask me my favorite bands of the moment: Big Sur, Goldfinch, Elk and Boar... Tacoma bands. My favorite venues? I'm in love with the art gallery I started hanging out at on weekends, and even though the Liberty Theater's closed it will forever be my favorite Puyallup venue. The five mile drive around Owen's beach is no longer a drive away since I don't have a car... but I left part of my heart on the beach so I won't miss it as much when I'm away.

It's not that I'm sad or that I think that I'm missing out... it just makes me wonder.... to whom do I belong? I'm waking up in Seattle wondering when the city's going to eat me alive, but I'd wake up in my small town trying to get away before it did the same thing. I feel like I'm stretched between one city and the other, like my heart's skipping beats between cities wondering and wandering along the water.

I know I've chosen to be here, and for me it was for the best. I don't feel like I've given anything up... maybe some conveniences... but at the end of the day I'm still left wondering... where do I belong?

something something something else

trying to make better what i do what i do

but you can't make this better

if the roadblock is you.

rinse.

repeat.

walked along the sidewalks with a ghost and wondered if anything was worth saying out loud. how do we reason with the ones who can't see past themselves? what about when you knew them before they were consumed by themselves, before the time they thought everything that couldn't be understood in the measurement of self was either an attack or something to be discarded?

"stop being a victim" was all i wanted to say, but patience and courtesy are my two biggest vices, and so i let it pass. he wouldn't have understood.

everything's so damn lovely save for the things people won't let be. even the brokenness of everything. i mean i know life's not rainbows and sunshine, but if the beauty of all the downs and outs are overlooked just to race toward the onlys and the ups...... there's a great amount of life left incomplete.

oh.

we can't fix each other so we gotta just move and dance and save ourselves...

more later.

paper hearts//yellow walls

i never really spoke the words out loud.

i knew it the whole damn time, too. long before he said anything, long before we even really talked about much, i just knew. what do we call that? intuition? reading coffee grounds? attention to detail? nobody had to tell me, and maybe that's what it is about being attached to a physical space: that you leave bits of yourself behind to be picked up by others. half the time i can't make up my damn mind about what i believe, but i know i think there's something to this... i guess it's the only way i can explain how i knew.

maybe it was the brokenness that attracted me. him. all of us. i don’t know, but wouldn’t it happen that zarathustra would point out that it's our weakness to give attention to pain... maybe that’s what drew me. maybe it's what drew everyone else in, too, you know? that need to repair whatever they sensed needed repairing... that desire to gaze after what is broken.

it's the same feeling you get when you slow down to look at a car accident, or when you can’t help but hope the waves will wash over all the tracks in the sand.

anyway.

i remember the night he told me. i was looking for company... really i was looking for anywhere to go but home, and i knew (by intuition or by habit) that someone would still be around. i swung by and we closed the place down: we cleaned and scrubbed and wiped down anything and everything... maybe just to try and clean the heavy weight the place had held. i drank to remember. he drank to forget. i could feel it coming a mile away, and i figured i was finally going to hear the entire thing beginning to end.

it was the heart.

it always is though, isn’t it?

it took everything not to drag out from him the words i already knew were coming. patience is not my virtue when i already know the answer, but it wasn't my story to tell. i don’t really know how i knew. it wasn’t intuition but it wasn’t spelled our across the peeling linoleum floor, either. the words slipped out, first quietly and then...

i've been told to never get old

...and we're just falling because

we're too beat to fall in love

and fill our winded pipes with

anything... least of which we'd hoped

was love.

so we're falling fast

to break our backs on broken bones:

the softest thing to call a home

for now

because we can't keep anything

down and out (aside from

the soft fall of nothing

in our stomaches).

and i wanted it too...

-h

it will steal your innocence

but it will not steal your substance.

ohhh i could sing this song over and over again it sounds like forever and all the lovely things i lost hope in somewhere back there.... oh. this is something to not lose hope in.

but the water is cold. i guess the everything everywhere is cold. everything leftover is the drive down into the valley with the perfect view of the mountain in the distance. it's getting lighter, spring is coming around somewhere sometime soon, and i've slipped out of the quiet routine i acquired over the winter..... i'm ready to drive. somewhere, i don't know where. back to the places i went fishing over the summer... or something.
i've been spending every free time i have drawing/painting/cutting and pasting.... getting rolls of film in and out of my camera... saving up what little money i have.... living exclusively off coffee and soup. i feel like i just don't have time for anything else anymore.
homework, maybe. art for breakfast. art for lunch. art for dinner. music in between. film for sleep.

daydream believing.

oh: all the lovely music.
i think i finally have some work worth posting.
more to come.

swiss army romance

ten year reunion show tonight at neumos.
pretty stoked. i was fortunate enough to have a friend give me an extra ticket to the show. i don't know what i'm doing with my life, but i'm happy i have a friend who's a concert junkie just like me.

sometimes you're just too far in to pretend you're growing up and out of the things you fall in love with.
cheers
-holly

ps. buying a disposable for the concert tonight, photos to come.

transatlanticism

isn't that one of the most lovely words?
is it even real?
oh...death cab.



i spent a couple hours killing time in my car talking about music and the old local scene seattle used to have roughly between 01 and 08... all the glory bands like daphne and ghost runner and what not. i had a mix in my cd player (not by coincidence at all, it was what playlist i'd posted a few days ago) and he'd asked what album the death cab song was on.
"transatlanticim"
it came out without any hesitation... there was no thought involved in my answer.
weird, huh? i don't know, i mean,
is that even what it's on? i don't own the album.... i don't think i have any death cab albums at all, and i don't think i've even listened to any of the albums it all the way through. it was just.... something i know. where did it come from? is it just a seattle thing?

but i love the way the word sounds. i've been saying it over and over again to myself, mostly in thought... but it's slipped out every once and a while.

transatlanticism....
maybe it's just a seattle thing.

over and over again

he used to play this one cd some girl gave him.

he used to play it on long car rides, usually home, sometimes to twin peaks, but always on long car rides. there was one song he played over and over and over again on repeat, and i always thought it was one of the saddest songs i'd ever heard... one of those ones that made your heart quiver a little. i think i asked once who it was by, but he never knew.

i came across it today on my computer though.

i haven't been writing, just painting and playing the guitar a whole damn lot.

i've had the biggest writer's block.

but i came across the song on my computer, i'd lifted it off a friend's computer two years ago when we were all crashing in my apartment when i used to live in the big, emerald city. i'd fallen in love with the way the music sounded like it was raining, like it's always raining in seattle.

i miss the seattle days more.

the irony is in the title of the song: "enjoy your worries, you may never have them again" by the books off their album "thought for food".

enjoy:

sitting on the side waiting for a sign

i can't write anything.

woke up and drove

i woke up and started driving this morning... not really sure where i was going, but i left with the absolute certainty that i would find something different and somewhere new to study if i drove somewhere else... somewhere not where i usually land. not seattle. not federal way. not.... anywhere specific. i played cortez the killer, called my other half, and then took the first exit and stopped at the first coffee shop i found. i decided that wherever i landed would be the start of something else. new? i don't know. everything is new now.

life probably isn't made up of signs as much as it is lovely coincidences, but i figure... if i can just put the pieces together myself and make my own signs and meanings, it'll work out itself.
so i named this cafe my new hangout.
here's to writing papers.
love.