i'll take a hundred for every one in the cave.

welcome home
you're never alone:

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 freezes your already cold heart

still in a timshel mood.
these are a few weeks old, but this is where i go home to.
love.

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.

i look like the trouble i caused

i look like the fabulous sort of trouble i caused. there's only a few pictures from when i was 19 and cut all my hair off (i'm now 22 and look nothing like how i used to). i caused a lot of trouble. these were the days when i moved out and lived with a couple girls i worked with and partied every night. this picture was taken right after christmas that year in my room at my parent's house with the notorious teal walls. my sister used to tell me this photo was asking for trouble, and to be honest, i didn't give a shit. i was fabulous. i could walk into any party on the hill uninvited. i had bands crashing on my floor regularly. i was kind of an asshole. i notoriously showed up for class hungover every morning.
it's only been three years.
three years? no... this photo had to have been taken when i was eighteen. four years.
things have changed.
a whole fucking lot.
i don't even recognize the girl in this photo, and i don't think anyone else would, either.

what the what

vendetta red's having a reunion show at el corazon (of course, if you know better it will always be the graceland).
this is the most important thing right now.

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.

frosty frosty sounds

1.) "maps" - the yeah yeah yeahs
2.) "i can't take it" - tegan and sara
3.) "the catch" - nyles lannen
4.) "re: stacks" - bon iver
5.) "postcards from italy" - beirut
6.) "california one youth and beauty" - the decemberists
7.) "a lack of color" - death cab for cutie
8.) "enjoy your worries, you may never have them again" - the books
9.) "subsong" - jel
10.) "tatou" - brand new
11.) "romeo" - juliette lewis and the licks
12.) "i am always the one who calls" - pedro the lion
13.) "flume" - bon iver
14.) "gone away from me" - ray lamontagne
15.) "mare mortis" - the appleseed cast
16.) "linger" - the cranberries
17.) "white shadows" - coldplay
18.) "manhattan" - kings of leon

and she and she is out at sea

she's out at sea again...
since she's left i've ended every day realizing i've slipped something on or into my pocket that was hers or has been hers... you know how best friends do these things. there's borrowed things and traded things and things that are pocketed or swept up or drunkenly exchanged. more absentmindedly than intentionally, i've been carrying something of hers around with me. it's silly. it's sweet. it's something.

(it happens sometimes when my sister leaves, too.)

this is one of my favorite shirts i've swapped with her, and everyone always comments on the hole in the back. i've no idea how it got there but i've no intention of sewing it up... i love it the way it is (not unlike how i love her unconditionally). i usually hear "well, you should sew it up, otherwise it doesn't look nice."
nice for whom? it looks damn near perfect to me in its imperfect state: perfectly worn in, nice color, good neckline, not too tight, much nicer than a stiff, starched, ballet pink, skin-tight scoop-necked something or other.
i don't know.
i guess i just think a hole in a shirt is the least of my worries at this point.
besides.
i love the shirt the way it came to me: from my best friend.

the end of the year is approaching.
more later i suppose...
<3

works in progress

there are seven on the wall
all works in progress.
all terrible as far as i'm concerned...
but they're where my mind's been:

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.

"don't forget me"

"try not to forget me, okay," he said. how could i? i remember most of my classmates names from third and fourth grade, and could probably remember half of them from kindergarden if i gave it a good shot. besides, he'd worked pretty hard to argue against the professor the entire quarter while i'd basically done the opposite and tried to understand exactly where the professor was coming from. we were polar opposites, that much had been made clear over the quarter... then again...

"it sucks i'm leaving the day we finally meet, doesn't it?"

well. we'd actually met three months prior, but we'd only just had six hours worth of conversation to make up for lost time. i'd given up looking for anything, and for some reason as soon as i'd let go, all the worthwhile things were falling into my visual realm of.... whatever you want to call it. of course. as soon as i'd thought i had no more heart to give, i realized it had only been kept armored inside a steel dinosaur trap...

that would probably not open for a long time.

or a long while.

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

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

i watched the teens last night.

the ones i can't help but return to every weekend.

if my heart was left anywhere, it was somewhere between the south narthex and the cafeteria. i watched them all at once: the flirting, the giggling, the chasing, the awkward conversations, the hand-holding, the hugging... all that fun stuff. i remembered when a high-school break up was the absolute most devastating thing in the entire world. i remembered when everything was absolute. that's what i like about going back to volunteer with them: they remind me that things don't have to be so grey and wishy-washy. things can be defined if i let them be what they are.

more later i guess.

take me there

it was a long night of everything at once.

the greatest christmas party we'd ever had kept happening, and then just as suddenly (though not soon at all, for it had had a good eight hour run), everything began to slow down but it never really stopped.

he woke up a few hours later in a panic, and i wasn't really sure if i'd ever really fallen asleep to begin with. she'd just fallen asleep, and was far enough away from me that i wasn't sure what to do.

you know.... how you can always think a little clearer when your best friend's closer to you.

he told me he'd had a nightmare of the world ending and buildings burning, and all the three months of talking about philosophy had me wondering if i had anything to do with it. how hypersensitive are we, anyway? where'd our senses go? was i just over-thinking everything? i was too tired to continue wondering if anything meant anything at all, and i still wasn't sure if i had fallen asleep anyway, so i did what any good friend would do and i patted his forehead and told him it was going to be okay.

and then i wished she was awake, too, so that maybe she could pat my forehead and tell me everything was going to be okay as well. but she was asleep, and the night always brings more fears and doubts than it ought to.

and then i thought of all the places i wanted to go.

not just the following day, not even in a few weeks.

all of a sudden i wanted to stand up and run and go to all the places i'd captured in my heart, but then i wondered if i even had one at all, or maybe if i'd given it away one too many times and was left with absolutely nothing.

do i have to build myself a new heart?

i was thinking too much.

maybe i still am.

all i knew was that i wanted to run somewhere right the hell then. i sat up and saw the moonlight peeking through the blinds: all the city was asleep.

maybe the city won't take me back, but everywhere else will welcome me:

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.

oh my thoughts? they come out sideways.

oh sunday

"there's a secret magic past world that you only notice when you're looking back at it"

it snowed, it rained, and soon... and then...

....and then there was music.

the sun is out.

1) "naomi" - neutral milk hotel

2) "a fond farewell" - elliott smith

3) "naked as we came" - iron and wine

4) "hallelujah" - jeff buckley

5) "pamphleteer" - the weakerthans

6) "etienne d'aout" - malajube

7) "i can't take this" - tegan and sara

8) "autumn sweater" - yo la tengo

9) "hoppipolla" - sigur ros

10) "empty" - ray lamontagne

11) "maple leaves" - jens lekman

12) "the orchids" - califone

13) "half dead" - the mountain goats

14) "postcards from italy" - beirut

15) "two zero two" - northstar

16) "barfly" - ray lamontagne

17) "time of no reply" - nick drake

18) "conversations" - the posies

19) "the summer ends" - american football

20) "rebbelions (lies)" - the arcade fire

21) "skinny boy" - amy milian