Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Why am I reading Neruda at a time like this? Masochism.

Instead I turn to a book of poetry Charli showed me, An Almost Pure Empty Walking by Tryfon Tolides. Never heard of him before. But man.

Two poems right now:

"Praying or Love Poem"

I go to the bookstore, where I don't
want to go, especially, or to be, after I get there,

as if being is burdensome, as if I might find a place
to set it down, instead of carrying it,

so I can rest. Perhaps I mean the body's
weight and entire containment,

the soul straining and fatigued.

The bookstore, in afternoon light, with comforting
jazz, a cafe, people absorbed

in reading and in conversation, is not the place
I want to find. Nor will the next place be

where I go dragging that weight as if I had chosen it
as a solemn and mysterious duty.

and the next, shorter but no less sweet:

Something inside myself keeps me
enslaved, yet saves exactly who I am
I don't want to give you an example--
it's too private, I think, painful--
Let's talk about the weather, how
humid it is these days, or
the war--why we are always at war,
or let's not talk. Is there a quietness
that can make us whole?

From Lowell's "Epilogue"

"But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?"

I take a lot of heat for writing about my mental illness here, but it's what I do. This bit of Lowell's (famously bipolar, himself) sums up how I often feel about anything I write...I'm laying down the moments that grip me in some way: "lurid, rapid, garish..." Why don't I write more about the happy moments in my life? To be once again brutally honest, for me at this moment happiness = peace and quiet. And when things are peaceful and quiet I am generally sitting very still enjoying it and hoping nothing will change. When things head back to hell in a handbasket then I thrash about and take action. And blog. My joys these days are small and private, while my catastrophes are loud and impossible to hide.

I need to stop typing, my hand is killing me. I tore a ligament and OW.

A friend bought me An Unquiet Mind a book by/about a bipolar psychiatrist. So far it is pretty gripping.

I am discovering the joys of pop music

And rocking out to Brandi Carlile's excelent album "The Story." Almost every song on there goes right to my heart.

All of these lines across my face
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I've been
And how I got to where I am
But these stories don't mean anything
When you've got no one to tell them to
It's true...I was made for you

I climbed across the mountain tops
Swam all across the ocean blue
I crossed all the lines and I broke all the rules
And baby I broke them all for you
Oh because even when I was flat broke
You made me feel like a million bucks
You do and I was made for you

You see the smile that's on my mouth
It's hiding the words that don't come out
And all of my friends who think that I'm blessed
They don't know my head is a mess
No, they don't know who I really am
And they don't know what I've been through like you do
And I was made for you...

All of these lines across my face
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I've been
And how I got to where I am
Oh but these stories don't mean anything
When you've got no one to tell them to
It's true...I was made for you
Oh yeah and its true, that I was made for you

My Duhpreshion

Another poem.

This is my song:
part gospel, part drink.

Fear of God.
Fear of self, of distance, change.
Fear of stillness.
Fear of being still.

Being still the same
after all.

After all this.
After all I am only one.
After all I am all alone.
After all I am still afraid.

Drink the cup that's set before.
Before question, before doubt.

Drink.

A poem by Charli Henley

lamplight and moth night
for amanda


solid glass ice cubes
rose dyed black
drought rain
you
knit
at the bar
and drink
books and books and books
things you know
a beacon, a lighthouse, a match –
lamplight, moth night


strange princess
tower of madness
shipwrecked, fighting for islands
weeping with life, treading water


(don't go, don't go)


angel voice a talent for sadness
triumph – if even only over death
circle girl by yourself
red shoes
real live make believe


(i love you and
that tower of madness on moth bitten night)


peach-colored maiden, maiden
here is your heart, bruised and still
dripping


(gauze)

Woah

I was poking around some dusty corners of the internet and found an old picture of me: 16! And skinnier...pointier. But otherwise exactly the same. Huh.

This is me before my life turned insane:



Life is strange. That seems like many many more years ago than 8. Though 8 years is a lot when I think about it.