We Write We Speak

May 29

S.

All sensory cues seem to diminish as time collects its gifts. They all blend together to form a collection of hues I can look back on some day. Blended together, it all won’t even matter anymore. But I’ll always keep in mind that each color, at one point or another, meant the world to me.

And how minuscule it will be, to see a portrait of experiences, memories, and moments plastered together. Unable to differentiate one from another.

Time gives you gifts and then take them back unexpectedly. Who am I to complain? To be considered worthy enough for any moment of emotion is a bittersweet blessing.

What I learned in my first year of college.

Jay Avenue: A Permanent Piece of the Sun -

On these California nights when it’s cold and quiet outside, I’ll light the embers of some distant, happy memory and find a tiny piece of comfort and a little peace of mind…   

And it’s at this hour when every memory you have of a place is suddenly bathed in some golden tinge, like it’s something immaculate, or it’s in some way divine, or like you somehow managed to catch a warm ray of light and keep it eternally frozen in time, ‘cause from the depths of the night a flickering spark ignites and now you’ve got a permanent piece of the sun forever fixed in the back of your mind. 

And though your body is tired your soul searches on, guided by that fiery beacon through all your memoirs and mementos and all your favorite thoughts of home, ‘cause even against a thousand starry lights that small flame still burns bright—you’ve got a permanent piece of the sun forever fixed in the back of your mind.

And you lose yourself somewhere underneath that vast, open sky, that stellar void between the veil of the night and the lids of your eyes, a place where you can’t tell what’s past or a dream or just some longing manifestation of your own wishful thinking, but by the end of the night things will be all right ‘cause now you’ve got a permanent piece of the sun forever fixed in the back of your mind.   

And it’s only in these sleepy moments when you realize that missing something isn’t exactly the same thing as missing out, not when you can see for yourself that you’ve got an unending supply of people you love and a place to call your own—when you can just close your eyes and drift off to sleep and find that all your memories of home are shining brighter than the sun.

May 28

he has three souls -

rufiewrites:

his lips
yielding only when he
needs to breathe

he doesn’t speak much
but he thinks much
and
he loves much

he has three souls.

he holds three captive
bolted doors and rusted chains.
he’s lost the key
but he’s trying to find me.

the other broke free
yet comes back for three
it craves attention
but not too much
and
he loves much.

he shakes the pen,
palm-rolls its build,
whispers secrets into its ear
but nothing flows

he strokes his wrist
clutching air in his hand
friendly fingers find their way
but it slips away.

he has three souls.

one is a dreamer
packed tight in his nerves
he doesn’t speak much
but he thinks much
and
he loves much.

so he calls out to the Gods
and pleads for gloves
but his hands are stained

he has two souls.

his feet stay limp
crushing nails amongst their brims
folding like chairs at
picnic tables.

he lays hidden,
lets the images speak
sketched pale,
but he forgets me.

he has one soul.

he found her waiting
on the cliff-side wailing
whether her wings were real;
whether he’d reveal
but the winds blew her cries.

we don’t speak much
but we think much
and
we love much.

by Ruthie Esperon

(Source: agr8perhaps)

May 27

quiet quarters: Our hands could almost know each other. It is instinctive that when I... -

quietquarters:

Our hands could almost know each other.  It is instinctive that when I drift off into the concious-less mine reaches for yours.  I’d like to sleep that way: with the perfect measure of warmth enveloping us like a cooling cup of tea, our bodies liquid, light fingers resting on one another’s as a gesture of I’ll be here with you through the night.  On walks home my eyes are pooled with gold, and as the sun washes over my skin its embrace upon life’s surface is as natural as love.  Everything is simple now.  I could easily imagine your heart beside mine on such a day where the gracefulness of life could be felt, and there wouldn’t need to be any words.  I would slip my hand in yours, and it would be just as effortless.  Just as natural.  But there will come those evenings where the walls are cold and echoing emptiness, and the tiredness of your soul immobilizes you—it will be okay.  Rest now, I would hold your hand.  You won’t be here alone, and morning will come, and you’ll find the strength and reason to sing again.  Unravel now, you’ll be safe.  And only sometimes, in the calm of mornings or the quiet of late nights, we’ll pass a few words, giving just a silver strand of ourselves.  We’ll be wrapped within such shared breath and held together this way.  And in taking one another’s hands—delicately, hearts swallowing—we’d hope for them to give everything unspoken and flooding through our chests.  I feel whole with you, and it’s so warm here.  You should know I love you always.

May 25

Growing Up

The Truth

I’d rather be someone who tells the truth, even if it makes me look bad, rather then be a good-looking liar. We go through our lives telling lies to one another, just so we can endure the next day feeling that much better about ourselves. Is this what we have really come to as human beings? Good-looking liars treading water for days on end?

I’ve lost friends, simply ‘cause I enjoy telling the truth more then care about a reputation to uphold. No secrets when I come to the table and everyone will flee for the fact that you want to experience life differently. When you go through life, you have to remember that these are your moments, experiences, mistakes, and truths put together only by you. And if you decide to lie to yourself and to those around you just to keep your friends by your side, you’ll only deepen the burden of lies that weighs you down even more. 

something about the night

There is something about the night, those dreaded late hours of the night, when all the excitement and distraction of daily life dwindles down to an unavoidable quiet, and you’re lying in bed and cannot sleep—thinking, thinking, thinking, sifting through the vignettes of memory. Perhaps you dread the intimate silence trapping you, listening closely to your thoughts alone. If only we could slip on some earphones, turn up the music—anything to drown out the discomfiting anxiety the night brings, anything to blanket our burgeoning thoughts in which fears not about the world but about ourselves stirs from within. There is something about the night, something about the night that makes you think the things you don’t want to think as if tiredness wears away your strength to keep them at bay and they finally catch up to you. Something about the night brings to surface the vulnerabilities of the innermost mind, the haunting emptiness that is life— how the conscience cries out at this terrible time!

On such nights, it is as if no one is there to calm the turmoil, and a feeling of loneliness pervades as insecurities surface. I will try, to no avail, to make some sort of sense out of all the chaos, desperately trying to grasp onto a a loose strand of the truth, perpetually elusive. Though I close my eyes to shut it out, still I cannot sleep to a restless mind. It races and drowns in a torrent of thought, and the heart pulsates in the uncertainty of murky waters. And the deepest emotions long kept silent throughout the day continue to flow out and I cannot help but attempt to take hold of them and write them down—they’re words, they’re words infused with emotion, deeply troubling words I’d rather just shove back to the recesses of my mind yet I can’t afford to lose them because they’re mine. I’ve held on to them for so long and I must let them go. Release them from my grip, let them pour onto a page, let it slip into my mind and linger into my dreams, and in the light of the next morning it’ll all appear quite silly and I can move on for the day—at least…until the night creeps in with its insidious darkness, as it always does, that profound and all-too-familiar sense of vanity within uncovered once again.

evenrise.tumblr.com

It isn’t Misandry —or, Mis(s)-Medea’d

Women! Your men will eternally fetch you, hoist you on their broad, thick, shoulders and carry you like a knapsack full of kittens —either to the corner they baptised “whore,” or that other, opposite cubby-hole called “prude.” Do not let them paw you with their blunt armatures —once in your specified cell these men will turn you on your tail, peeling back the petals of your skirts, intent on finding your flower’s dewy anthers. Once they’ve sat you up properly, with your nether face held high, your jailer will pull up a seat and gaze at your supple visage and —from those lips, my sisters —he will know, without need of your (clearly wicked and false) opinion, that he has found female “truth.”

This dichotomy —as lascivious as it is vicious —caricaturizes two wholly distinct (though both are used as means for the same end) male-created ideals of femininity. The pig pen into which men throw the “whore” is thick with nature, also debased by this caricature of fertility —abused, taunted for her own virtues, poked and prodded until all her loving generosity melted into mud. In this mud the “whore” wallows.

Behold, prudence! the alabaster prison cell into which the whore’s enemy, the “prude,” was carried. Prudence, once valued and aimed for as the highest good, is now the simple handmaiden to virginal purity. Man stalks prudence, studies her movements, and —when she leads him to her mistress —he forces darling prudence away, and overtakes purity.

Prudence is exiled to the white walled prison, until she becomes the prison; once purity’s aide, she is now her physical captor. For, from the day man sentenced prudence to solitary confinement onward, purity mayn’t wear her custom skirts and dresses —rather, she is guided to the muddy pit once reserved for fertility’s clown. In these quarters, purity is commanded to don the garish visage of her former opposite, now her comrade. Now in her gewgaws and spangles, purity is led back to her alabaster pedestal, where she —like fertility perverted —is poked, prodded, and finally sacrificed for the cause of all female subjugation.

Such is our treatment at the ruddy hands of the more barbarous sex; little wonder, too —for their lust rubs against their legs as they march indomitably onward. So fond are men of the luscious temptation concomitantly provided by this shark-like perambulation, that I wonder if it is not the reason they purport the constant value of Hegelian progress towards ultimate rationality. But does rationality seem to move these somnambulists? Or rather, is the reason they move ever-forward simply their physiological inability to stop? Do they, like all sharks, fear death in all passivity? Or do they fear that, without their lower head’s mind being continually excited, they will forget for what they were marching?

Finally, I say to you this: If you are forced to play the part of whore or prude —slut or spinster —never hesitate to choose the latter. For —while in bed, before dozing, a man may fancy to imagine all women as Eves —if you play the Mary, he will worship you accordingly.

Or, perhaps, you are a bolder breed of female, who flauts this Manichean treatment with vibrantly enflamed, steadfast force.  Legs firmly straddling the chasm between good & evil, you are the most dangerous kind of woman —both waspish and winning.  Hardly content to be cornered, your fiery gaze guts men before they may even know your name.  But this power cannot be permitted, as we now know —frightened by your flames, the mind of the Male cannot comprehend anything that can span the fearsome, fertile gash that seperates red from white, dark & light.  You will be crowned with the hat of a clown, entitled “maddened git,” who must be safe and softened with down.  You become the most fearsome of forms: the hysterical woman.  Your denial of the demure is devilishly dangerous to the masses of malificent men, who merely wish women were sexy or static, but would dare not act dynamic.

But you are a dervish, a dynamo that drinks in passion, while pissing out the perfidious portion wrought by musty lust.  That wretched excrement enflames the lot of awe-struck onlookers; it then trundles tirelessly into the sun; even engulfed in these greater flames, the acrid, acerbic stuff continues to burn on its own with a brazen buffoonery that the masses maim with descriptive names.  They call you crazy, and concoct a feathery soft cell that —so they say —is for the good of your Self, which was lost on your descent from Enlightenment.  Your obedient body was shattered by light. But, in a comfortable cave, they will introduce night; in dulling shadow, doctors will proscribe all “frantic feelings” —all will to thrive —until your one wish is to simply survive; your embers they douse with draughts of “normal” & “nice”.  Pressed into a prison of politeness, you are drained of brash vice —social structure seeks to blanch your vibrant vicissitudes, until you’re nothing more that müde.

Their process won’t end until your resolve does.