Digging

I am the type of person whose mind circles around quotes. Often too unoriginal or too lazy to come up with my own thoughts, I use other people's and just connect the dots so that their words apply to my own situation. This means that I am very good at writing history and political science essays, but lack at other types of writing.

Snowed in this past week at my parent's house, I had to start digging out. Digging through old shoe boxes and stuffed manila envelopes with my name on them. They were stuffed with poems, short stories, e-mails, lyrics, and short summations of various political and philosophical theories. Most of these things were given to me by one person who had a very big impact on the way I thought all throughout high school, I am sure I still think of many things the way he taught me to. About half-way through one stack I found two sheets of yellow paper stapled together. The first was titled 'Quotations of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 1844-1900.' These were short, succinct one-liners that must have had some sort of impact on me (or him?) at the time. The second page looked at first like a continuation of Nietzsche, there was no title or anything to distinguish otherwise, but after reading a few quotes I decided that these were very clearly not him. Here is one that caught my eye:

Learn to detach. Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent. Detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That's how you are able to leave it. Take any emotion--love for a woman, or grief for a loved one.... If you hold back on the emotions--if you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. You can say, "All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion. I don't have to let it control me. I see it for what it is. Detach.

(By the way, I Googled this and found that it is a quote that, although I hate to admit it, is from Tuesdays with Morrie.)

I think that up until very recently this quote would have been one that I would have adopted as summation of my personal character. Had it not gotten lost in stacks of other quotes, I am sure that I would have typed it up, printed it out, hung it on a bulletin board in my room, and spouted its wisdom to anyone who would let me talk for a few minutes.

I remember about a year ago, driving back from a family Christmas party of a friend that I was visiting, sitting in his Jeep and telling him about how I was convinced that everything that anyone did was motivated out of fear. He looked at me disappointed and said that he didn't think so, and that he hoped I really didn't think that. Maybe that was just me I was talking about, it's hard to tell.

Now I am at a different point though. The thought of detachment makes me sicker than the thought of the pain of all of those different emotions. I want to feel those things fully, completely, dirtily, and I want to hold onto them and not let them go. Like a mother protecting her babies, I want to savagely clutch them to my breast, and desperately fight off anyone who tries to tell me to put them down. I am tired of letting these things go. I want to feel them with or without fear of propriety, disappointment, or regret. I want to let them consume me; I want to stay in bed with these emotions all day, feeding them and not myself. I don't want to compromise, I don't want to be rational, and I don't want to settle. I want to travel around the world chasing it, I want to be made a fool of.

Arg, I don't know, maybe it's just the season to be thinking these sorts of things. To quote my brother (who, knowing him, may have been quoting the Simpsons):

"Don't worry, it's the holidays, you're supposed to feel like crap."

Snow

Drifts

There are places in my parent's backyard where the snow drifts come up and wrap around the blue, green, rusted frame of the trampoline, two point five or three feet high. And then there are places where there isn't a single flake on the ground. More than halfway through the storm, they say, should stop snowing by noon tomorrow. The wind is singing loudly and stirring everything around so much that when I look outside, it feels like I am lying on my side and looking out because everything is falling the wrong direction.

There is a bad taste in my mouth and my lips are half numb. Numbly numb.

Christandloveandmásandchristmasandgiftsandgiveandtakeandfriendsandfami
lyandloveandwantandneedandloveandhurtandabsenceandprivilegeandmisunde
rstandingandcrueltyandstruggleandloveandwrongness are all in the air, getting mixed up with each other and falling the wrong way in the wind out there. Some of these things I believe in, some of them I laugh at, some of them I hope for, and some of them I just play along with. We make big Hollywood movies about some of these things, like the way we make movies about superheroes, and then we wonder why spidersuperbatman doesn't come along and make it all okay. Some of these things we devote our lives to, whether or not we believe they are true. Some of these things are all that we have. The mere existence of some of these things contradicts with the possible existence of others. Some we justify, some we ignore, some we embrace, some we long for, some we can't touch, some we condemn, some we shake our heads or wag our tails at. We are debased and exalted by them. I don't have anything else to say about them now, other than to say 'there they are.' They're making snow angels on top of the trampoline.

Facts:

1. Nachos, tim-tams and coffee make an excellent meal that can be consumed for either breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a late-night snack.

2. Dexter knows a lot more about the history of Latin America than one might originally think. He also eats his share of nachos and tim-tams.

3. I am writing a paper with this thesis: "Contrary to popular opinion, revolutions are very much unlike Twinkies."

4. Everything is going to heck in a hand basket.

5. I am very much ready for winter break.

AAAGHHHPPHAAAAHHH!!!!

sigh.

Rememory

Sticky, salty fingers and a bloody toothbrush,
A cool, clogged porcelain bowl
What was that noise?
In the hallway
Hey, honey, did you hear that?

I bet you five dollars
My skeletons wouldn't get along with yours.
Now look at them
Trading baseball cards
And chewing bubble gum
On the swing set in your backyard.
Can I write you an IOU?

Hey, honey, what was that noise?
Beyond the snoring, the laughing,
the gasping, the coughing,
the wind blowing leaves against the glass.
Did you hear that?
The walls are getting braver.
I forgot. What do I need?
What do you need?
What are we looking for?
I forgot I was looking,
I forgot if it was or was not found.
Hey, honey, did you hear that?
Braver, yes, I think they’ve got some things to say.
Do they remember?

I need you.

I need you
To turn out the light.

The light.

Yes.

That’s better.

I forgot.

Pólvora en la boca

All I want for Christmas is a man with a mask, a pipe, and a headset.

Good Life

Softly now,
You owe it to the world
And everyone knows that you're my favorite girl
But there's some things in life that are not meant to be
I'm not meant for you and you're not meant for me
Here's to our problems
And here's to our fights
Here's to our achings
And here's to you having a Good life
From Me...

And promise you'll have such a
Beautifully happy and painlessly romantic
Good life
From Me
Good Life

--Francis Dunnery

Dice

Dice que no quiere ir
se quiere quedar
Dice que no quiere ver
quiere tocar
Dice que no quiere hablar
quiere escuchar
Dice que no quiere ser
quiere intentar.

Dice que no quiere oír
quiere patear
Dice que no quiere estar
quiere arrancar
Dice no quiere reír
quiere llorar
Dice no quiere saltar
quiere volar

--La Vela Puerca

One say infinity the next say forever

infinidad, para siempre, l'infinité, à jamais, Unendlichkeit, ewig, l'infinità, per sempre, De oneindigheid, voorgoed, a infinidade, eternamente, бесконечность, навсегда, uendelighet, for evig...repeat, repeat

I think it's time for you to that necklace off.

Have You Fed the Fish?

The keys to your heart open the door to the world
You've got to give me two days
And woman I'll make you a girl

Sometimes you've got to rewind to go forward
There's some good times around the corner
But have you fed the fish today?
Have you made your wish today?

--Badly Drawn Boy

Fruit Bowl

She was pretty.
Fucked up.
With dark skin, light eyes
And a green knife in her hand.

He was torn.
Apart.
With an amazing sense of what ought.

They sat together in a room.
Perfumed
By shit and spearmint Lifesavers.

He said please, honey,
Let me be.

The one.

She leaned closer and pressed her lips so close to the side of his head that he could feel her moist words beating the drum of his ear and then slipping down the back of his dusty throat to get deep inside. Listen: rather than fake it with you, I will use the green banana from the fruit bowl and then put it back to ripen after I'm done. You will eat it two days later with Cheerios and milk as part of your healthy, well-balanced breakfast. What a great way to start the day. Personally, I don't care for breakfast.

Laugh now and walk away.
I have got a plane to catch.

The Tim Tam Slam

Everyone is doing 'em

There Are Kittens in the Sewers