When you took me in your arms
I knew I'd revive
You breathe me in so deeply
You took my hand as the music began
I knew I could dance if you let me
Everybody knows your fate honey
Everybody knows your fate
Everybody knows your fate honey
Everybody knows your fate
The snake is poised and is held by your noise
You charm the life out of demons
You kept me up there with a web of your hair
My spun my life into meaning
Everybody knows your fate honey
Everybody knows your fate
Everybody knows your fate honey
Everybody knows your fate
I've seen your stars so many lives
You seem to shine forever
Do you remember the time
Do you remember the time
Our memories held us together
Everybody knows your fate honey
Everybody knows your fate
Everybody knows your fate honey
Everybody knows your fate
Everybody hopes for so much healing
See your face in windows
Everybody knows your fate honey
Everybody knows your fate
Everybody knows your fate honey
Everybody knows your fate
"Everybody Knows" | James
So: it sings again, the Road, in this heart, stirred by so many strange people on the side of the road, crawfishing in the flood, in the swamp, the afternoon cold in spite of being nearly April. There's a twist in my heart this morning, a throb like a morning I barely remember, waking up in the cold, yellow light of St. Petersburg, unbelieving, anxious, excited...
...that cold, yellow light seems to have crystallized in my mind this morning, in my heart, in the darkest nooks and crannies of the mind/soul complex. It feels heavy, a little bitter, cool to the touch, and downright confusing...
...I'll let the pulse of a song be my heartbeat, so I don't have to think about it...
I am tired, down to the bones. And my mind is uncooperative...
3.30.2009
3.23.2009
just want to hold on tight...
....that must be love, no doubt....
...can't get you off my mind....
...if you ever will be mine, I will never ever let you down...
....I feel really raw right now. Really, really raw, and I can't account for it. Other than binge-listening to "It's Only You (Part II)" by Salem Al Fakir...it's like it's burning out all the BS in my skull, leaving behind all the good stuff, all the not-cynical stuff, all the...real stuff. The good stuff.
...that must be love, no doubt...
I'm sitting at my desk, in tears almost, and I can't really tell you why....other than the vision being harbored in the Sacred Seventh Space of my mind...you know how they say you can only hold 7 things in your mind at a time? I think of the last 3-4 places as being those things that never really go away, that are truly never far from one's mind. And right now, in the Seventh Space, there's a strange vision, akin to the virginal world they discover at the end of BSG. Akin to the rare sights the show "Planet Earth" provides the civilized world.
....if you ever will be mine, I will never ever let you down...
I feel a little crazy....like I'm constantly on the verge of an epiphany. That the vision will blaze forth from the Sacred Seventh Space and take me over, becoming a muse of sorts, and an idée fixe which I might not ever escape - the lens through which my world will be viewed, the measure against which all experiences are posed...like a prophet, starved, singing the reality which is and not the reality we see.
...shouldn't tell you all I got inside...
That's probably good advice for me....or maybe not. I don't know anymore. I'm afraid if I sing all that's in me, whether it's mine or not, people will run away, or be annoyed, or roll their eyes at me. And there's a level of vulnerability involved in singing all one's Self that *does* give a damn, that would not be able to endure mockery, endure judgment, endure disregard, that would be crushed.
But I feel like I'm...wasting away a little mentally because I don't sing myself out anymore. I think that's why I'm craving solitude; there's no risk. There's no reason to worry. I don't have to worry about offending, about inconveniecing, about annoying...just the solitude, the silence, which accepts it all and does not judge, is not annoyed...but other than being filled, about which it does not feel one way or the other, receives nothing from the songs...
...and that's what I want. I want something to come from the songs. I want them to be received, to resonate, to echo, to strike a chord, and set something out, release something, something that makes the listener more of who he or she is, or longs to be....
...I just don't know anymore. I live such a surface life, clinging to weekends, clinging to my solitude, in a quiet desperation I pretend not to be aware of...
I can't figure out if I'm lonely or restless or just tired. I oscillate between "lonely" and "desperate to be alone." I can't sort it out. If I let myself feel it, there's a tremendous feeling of ~tired~ underneath the surface, but I don't want to feel it. I want to forget it's there, keep pushing on...it seems rather straight-forward, not feeling the tired, but it's not so easy. Ignoring it is as taxing as the fatigue itself. But I have to ignore it; ignoring me helps me feel normal, feel more like myself before fibro...
...desperation + tired = something I'd rather not consider...
...can't get you off my mind....
...if you ever will be mine, I will never ever let you down...
....I feel really raw right now. Really, really raw, and I can't account for it. Other than binge-listening to "It's Only You (Part II)" by Salem Al Fakir...it's like it's burning out all the BS in my skull, leaving behind all the good stuff, all the not-cynical stuff, all the...real stuff. The good stuff.
...that must be love, no doubt...
I'm sitting at my desk, in tears almost, and I can't really tell you why....other than the vision being harbored in the Sacred Seventh Space of my mind...you know how they say you can only hold 7 things in your mind at a time? I think of the last 3-4 places as being those things that never really go away, that are truly never far from one's mind. And right now, in the Seventh Space, there's a strange vision, akin to the virginal world they discover at the end of BSG. Akin to the rare sights the show "Planet Earth" provides the civilized world.
....if you ever will be mine, I will never ever let you down...
I feel a little crazy....like I'm constantly on the verge of an epiphany. That the vision will blaze forth from the Sacred Seventh Space and take me over, becoming a muse of sorts, and an idée fixe which I might not ever escape - the lens through which my world will be viewed, the measure against which all experiences are posed...like a prophet, starved, singing the reality which is and not the reality we see.
...shouldn't tell you all I got inside...
That's probably good advice for me....or maybe not. I don't know anymore. I'm afraid if I sing all that's in me, whether it's mine or not, people will run away, or be annoyed, or roll their eyes at me. And there's a level of vulnerability involved in singing all one's Self that *does* give a damn, that would not be able to endure mockery, endure judgment, endure disregard, that would be crushed.
But I feel like I'm...wasting away a little mentally because I don't sing myself out anymore. I think that's why I'm craving solitude; there's no risk. There's no reason to worry. I don't have to worry about offending, about inconveniecing, about annoying...just the solitude, the silence, which accepts it all and does not judge, is not annoyed...but other than being filled, about which it does not feel one way or the other, receives nothing from the songs...
...and that's what I want. I want something to come from the songs. I want them to be received, to resonate, to echo, to strike a chord, and set something out, release something, something that makes the listener more of who he or she is, or longs to be....
...I just don't know anymore. I live such a surface life, clinging to weekends, clinging to my solitude, in a quiet desperation I pretend not to be aware of...
I can't figure out if I'm lonely or restless or just tired. I oscillate between "lonely" and "desperate to be alone." I can't sort it out. If I let myself feel it, there's a tremendous feeling of ~tired~ underneath the surface, but I don't want to feel it. I want to forget it's there, keep pushing on...it seems rather straight-forward, not feeling the tired, but it's not so easy. Ignoring it is as taxing as the fatigue itself. But I have to ignore it; ignoring me helps me feel normal, feel more like myself before fibro...
...desperation + tired = something I'd rather not consider...
I'm unfocused today, unfocused and throbbing, hungry to be home, to be Home, and wishing the thousands of dreams in my skull would either come to some kind of fruition, or just leave me alone...go away...disappear. The World will always tax us, it will always make demands of us - we can hardly escape that. But when the Inner World makes as many demands, well...it's easy to see the morning star as a harbinger to frustration, to see the moon pulsing in the sun, and to want to disconnect from the World, in order to answer the calls of the Inner World.
That's probably my problem - I've not really hearkened to the Inner World for a long while, and perhaps I've neglected it, to be honest. So I'm feeding it music, to make up for that. I'm watching BSG to feed it distilled humanity. I'm committing myself to solitude to encourage my mind. I'm writing letters to vent the furnaces of the heart. I'm...trying...3.12.2009
...you were kissed by a witch one night...
...and later insisted your feelings were true....
I'm in a dangerous place, I'll be honest. I'm really tired, pure and simple, and in varying amounts of pain. Things aren't going like I want them to go - but then, rarely does life really go like we want it to go. I frustrate too easily, I know; patience has never been my virtue. Strength of the mind, yes, a great virtue of mine. But not patience.
...I am Homesick. I am tired, I am being nurtured on bad fires and fleeting hope (a terrible thing, to be sure). I feel...bad. I'm not talking malaise, I'm talking morally, though why I'm not sure. I just am. I wish I could explain it; perhaps then I could dismantle it, exorcise the feeling.
Today it's cold and overcast...in this season when the greatest joy is green and sunshine. Damn the cold, and damn the clouds. My shoulder aches, and my heart aches, and I just want to go home and sleep, angry and throbbing and frustrated, unsure of the sun, distrusting the compass, and feel the fine, hairline cracks of depression. That's what it boils down to: depression. Pain + fatigue + frustration = depression. But, then again, that's the price of mania.
I'm in a dangerous place, I'll be honest. I'm really tired, pure and simple, and in varying amounts of pain. Things aren't going like I want them to go - but then, rarely does life really go like we want it to go. I frustrate too easily, I know; patience has never been my virtue. Strength of the mind, yes, a great virtue of mine. But not patience.
...I am Homesick. I am tired, I am being nurtured on bad fires and fleeting hope (a terrible thing, to be sure). I feel...bad. I'm not talking malaise, I'm talking morally, though why I'm not sure. I just am. I wish I could explain it; perhaps then I could dismantle it, exorcise the feeling.
Today it's cold and overcast...in this season when the greatest joy is green and sunshine. Damn the cold, and damn the clouds. My shoulder aches, and my heart aches, and I just want to go home and sleep, angry and throbbing and frustrated, unsure of the sun, distrusting the compass, and feel the fine, hairline cracks of depression. That's what it boils down to: depression. Pain + fatigue + frustration = depression. But, then again, that's the price of mania.
3.09.2009
...spin me down the long ages, let them sing their song...
....and as promising and precious as that song is to me, I still can't stop listening to Danzig's "Mother." It's so much...wilder and fiery. Whatever the undertones are, whatever the shades of meaning in the song have wrought, I love it. I love what it does to my blood, what it suggests to my spirit, what it means to me.
....not about to see your light...
I'm somehow regaining some of the vitality fibro deprived me of - at least, that's how I feel. It might just be the mania talking; even if it is, it makes me feel like myself again, gives me the energy to wreak my own havoc on my own universe, on my own terms. And I like it.
...so enlist every ounce of your bright blood, and off with their heads....
Sometimes the world is so full, so bright, so wide and wonderful, it's hard to conceive of evil, of war, of hatred....can we climb this mountain? I don't know....
*shakes head* I don't know. I know what I feel; I don't always know what I know anymore. But it's okay. They say the devil's water ain't so sweet....and I'd believe it, you know? Man, there's so much I used to believe. So much I still believe. So much I want to believe. Hot damn, the world is just so BIG and so FULL, we just don't see it anymore. We've shrunk the world, and made it lonelier somehow. I don't know how we accomplished that as a species, but we managed to do it, and as efficiently as we do most things, which means randomly.
How beautiful this line from such an innocuous and bubblegum filter: "It was all in her head, an engine for dreams, an engine she built with her blood." We find the flowers in the cracked pavement in the ghetto; can we do more than just find them? Can we love them, too, in spite of the heat, the poverty, the gunfire?
And brilliance, wisdom: they should never be the sole purview of the damned ivory tower; here again the bubblegum bursts into genius and goodness and thriving thought: "If Gods didn't eventually wear out and asked to be replaced -- if we didn't insist on changing and evolving every generation, if our societies stayed static, needing the same Gods as the week before, and the week before that -- maybe people wouldn't have to die in their name so often. Observation lends existence."
I takes my fortune cookie intentions, tears them up, and sing another song: "'Listen. You may feel like hell, but sometimes lost is where you need to be. Just because you don't know your direction doesn't mean you don't have one.' We're all on a trajectory; she was lucky to know it, even for a second. She looks up, younger than before. Stronger, maybe. Maybe strong enough to live."
...we're burning down the highway skyline
on the back of a hurricane that started turning
when you were young...
Maybe I'm finally young again. I checked out of young when I was 11. I'm not sure I really checked in again, ever. I checked into wild; I checked into restless. I checked into broken, into hungry, into the World, into the Road. But I think I gave over young in favor of surviving, of functioning, of learning how to live, over and over again. Maybe I can be young again, in a different way. A better way. A way that lets me reconcile all those things - wild, restless, broken, hungry, World, Road, surviving, functioning, living - in a meaningful and blessed way, a way that blesses the Self, the Soul, without condemnation, without damnation, without judgment, with the ability to distill wisdom, to engage in learning, without destroying innocence. Without compromising our basic humanity.
...sometimes you close your eyes and see the place where you used to live...
What I'm wondering is: can I close my eyes and see the place where I want to live, where I hope to live, where I will live?
Then I wonder: what can I do for others who find themselves at odds with themselves? Who have forgotten all the wonder in the world?
I'm too restless to be sitting here right now, and almost too manic to focus. *frowns* Usually mania enables me to focus better. I guess the embers in my blood are burning hotter than my mind. The furnace of the flesh is often thwarted by the power of the spirit, and this is apparently one of those times.
...if I shut down these bones, blot out these neutral walls, feel through the glass to the air outside: I can have a vision of the sky over New Orleans, the sky over Firenze, and smell nights that are more precious than can be expressed. Remember nights that will never die. Days that are written in the roads that run up to Assisi, in waters that line I-10 right into the ribs of the City and deeper.
...he doesn't look a thing like Jesus, but he talks like a gentleman...
How do we learn to forgive ourselves, learn how not to hurt ourselves, how not to hurt others ever? Do we ever really learn that? I'd like to think we can, that we do. That I could.
....not about to see your light...
I'm somehow regaining some of the vitality fibro deprived me of - at least, that's how I feel. It might just be the mania talking; even if it is, it makes me feel like myself again, gives me the energy to wreak my own havoc on my own universe, on my own terms. And I like it.
...so enlist every ounce of your bright blood, and off with their heads....
Sometimes the world is so full, so bright, so wide and wonderful, it's hard to conceive of evil, of war, of hatred....can we climb this mountain? I don't know....
*shakes head* I don't know. I know what I feel; I don't always know what I know anymore. But it's okay. They say the devil's water ain't so sweet....and I'd believe it, you know? Man, there's so much I used to believe. So much I still believe. So much I want to believe. Hot damn, the world is just so BIG and so FULL, we just don't see it anymore. We've shrunk the world, and made it lonelier somehow. I don't know how we accomplished that as a species, but we managed to do it, and as efficiently as we do most things, which means randomly.
How beautiful this line from such an innocuous and bubblegum filter: "It was all in her head, an engine for dreams, an engine she built with her blood." We find the flowers in the cracked pavement in the ghetto; can we do more than just find them? Can we love them, too, in spite of the heat, the poverty, the gunfire?
And brilliance, wisdom: they should never be the sole purview of the damned ivory tower; here again the bubblegum bursts into genius and goodness and thriving thought: "If Gods didn't eventually wear out and asked to be replaced -- if we didn't insist on changing and evolving every generation, if our societies stayed static, needing the same Gods as the week before, and the week before that -- maybe people wouldn't have to die in their name so often. Observation lends existence."
I takes my fortune cookie intentions, tears them up, and sing another song: "'Listen. You may feel like hell, but sometimes lost is where you need to be. Just because you don't know your direction doesn't mean you don't have one.' We're all on a trajectory; she was lucky to know it, even for a second. She looks up, younger than before. Stronger, maybe. Maybe strong enough to live."
...we're burning down the highway skyline
on the back of a hurricane that started turning
when you were young...
Maybe I'm finally young again. I checked out of young when I was 11. I'm not sure I really checked in again, ever. I checked into wild; I checked into restless. I checked into broken, into hungry, into the World, into the Road. But I think I gave over young in favor of surviving, of functioning, of learning how to live, over and over again. Maybe I can be young again, in a different way. A better way. A way that lets me reconcile all those things - wild, restless, broken, hungry, World, Road, surviving, functioning, living - in a meaningful and blessed way, a way that blesses the Self, the Soul, without condemnation, without damnation, without judgment, with the ability to distill wisdom, to engage in learning, without destroying innocence. Without compromising our basic humanity.
...sometimes you close your eyes and see the place where you used to live...
What I'm wondering is: can I close my eyes and see the place where I want to live, where I hope to live, where I will live?
Then I wonder: what can I do for others who find themselves at odds with themselves? Who have forgotten all the wonder in the world?
I'm too restless to be sitting here right now, and almost too manic to focus. *frowns* Usually mania enables me to focus better. I guess the embers in my blood are burning hotter than my mind. The furnace of the flesh is often thwarted by the power of the spirit, and this is apparently one of those times.
...if I shut down these bones, blot out these neutral walls, feel through the glass to the air outside: I can have a vision of the sky over New Orleans, the sky over Firenze, and smell nights that are more precious than can be expressed. Remember nights that will never die. Days that are written in the roads that run up to Assisi, in waters that line I-10 right into the ribs of the City and deeper.
...he doesn't look a thing like Jesus, but he talks like a gentleman...
How do we learn to forgive ourselves, learn how not to hurt ourselves, how not to hurt others ever? Do we ever really learn that? I'd like to think we can, that we do. That I could.
3.03.2009
...not about to see your light...
....till you're bleeding...
I missed Mardi Gras this year, because I had/have bronchitis and a viral infection. It is hard to express how deep my disappointment is -- I've been going to Mardi Gras my whole life. I've missed, now, only two seasons. I go every year - it's as much a family tradition as it is an individual pilgrimage. Yes, it is a pilgrimage, in its own way holy: I go to celebrate the City; to celebrate human nature before the holy season of Lent; to celebrate the senses, the sensual; to thrive, for a short while, without too much guilt and too much mindfulness; to live, for a short while, the life I've dreamed and idealized for most of my conscious life. It's not about excess for me - it's about living the fantasy, about reveling in a construct founded half in reality and half in the imagination.
But Mardi Gras is also a guaranteed trip Home during the year, and I missed my fix. Miss my fix. I need New Orleans like I need food, air, water, love, music, and understanding: these are the building blocks of my survival and continued existence. Without something like regular trips to New Orleans, I go through withdrawal, depression, deep and abiding longing.
I'm realistic enough to know that life doesn't always run the way we'd like. But surely, at this point in my life, I have enough resources and wherewithal to accomplish trips Home, to sustain my own soul, since no one else is going to help me accomplish trips Home. I have to make them happen, have to enable them.
....which raises the question: if I have the power, why don't I make it happen more often? I think the answer is simple: self-protection. If I went more often, I'd function less. The hunger, the restlessness would be fed more regularly, but it would be like oxygen to a flame: it would sharpen, enhance, gorge the hunger. The more I fed it, the greater the flame, the greater the restlessness, the hunger.
I'm keenly aware of my self, my desires. I'm not sure how that keen awareness serves me, other than being able to understand my own motivations and clearly examine my actions with something resembling objectivity. It also allows me to more easily justify and rationalize my actions and non-actions (e.g., reasonable reasons for not going to New Orleans more often) in such a way that is productive and self-protective.
...but it makes me angry sometimes that I am able to restrain myself so well. That discipline - that great and terrible discipline - serves me so well as it thwarts me. Perhaps that it is another function of self-awareness: thwarting lower impulses and self-destructive behavior; in a few words, the survival instinct enhanced to deal with my intellectualism and soul-hungers.
But it means that so rarely do I let my guard down, so rarely do I let myself enjoy things, so rarely do I thrive in the normal, every day, day-to-day environs. And I have to thrive - mine is a nature meant to create, meant to love, meant to seek understanding and learning, meant to reach out into the world and clarify. How can I do that if I can't exactly reach out?
I missed Mardi Gras this year, because I had/have bronchitis and a viral infection. It is hard to express how deep my disappointment is -- I've been going to Mardi Gras my whole life. I've missed, now, only two seasons. I go every year - it's as much a family tradition as it is an individual pilgrimage. Yes, it is a pilgrimage, in its own way holy: I go to celebrate the City; to celebrate human nature before the holy season of Lent; to celebrate the senses, the sensual; to thrive, for a short while, without too much guilt and too much mindfulness; to live, for a short while, the life I've dreamed and idealized for most of my conscious life. It's not about excess for me - it's about living the fantasy, about reveling in a construct founded half in reality and half in the imagination.
But Mardi Gras is also a guaranteed trip Home during the year, and I missed my fix. Miss my fix. I need New Orleans like I need food, air, water, love, music, and understanding: these are the building blocks of my survival and continued existence. Without something like regular trips to New Orleans, I go through withdrawal, depression, deep and abiding longing.
I'm realistic enough to know that life doesn't always run the way we'd like. But surely, at this point in my life, I have enough resources and wherewithal to accomplish trips Home, to sustain my own soul, since no one else is going to help me accomplish trips Home. I have to make them happen, have to enable them.
....which raises the question: if I have the power, why don't I make it happen more often? I think the answer is simple: self-protection. If I went more often, I'd function less. The hunger, the restlessness would be fed more regularly, but it would be like oxygen to a flame: it would sharpen, enhance, gorge the hunger. The more I fed it, the greater the flame, the greater the restlessness, the hunger.
I'm keenly aware of my self, my desires. I'm not sure how that keen awareness serves me, other than being able to understand my own motivations and clearly examine my actions with something resembling objectivity. It also allows me to more easily justify and rationalize my actions and non-actions (e.g., reasonable reasons for not going to New Orleans more often) in such a way that is productive and self-protective.
...but it makes me angry sometimes that I am able to restrain myself so well. That discipline - that great and terrible discipline - serves me so well as it thwarts me. Perhaps that it is another function of self-awareness: thwarting lower impulses and self-destructive behavior; in a few words, the survival instinct enhanced to deal with my intellectualism and soul-hungers.
But it means that so rarely do I let my guard down, so rarely do I let myself enjoy things, so rarely do I thrive in the normal, every day, day-to-day environs. And I have to thrive - mine is a nature meant to create, meant to love, meant to seek understanding and learning, meant to reach out into the world and clarify. How can I do that if I can't exactly reach out?
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