I can see by reading my blog archives that I'm not the same person I used to be, even if I'm only judging this by the way that I write.
I gotsta get my swag back.

life sucks

without cable.
Some things...

1) I'm starting to feel a sense of unrest. I wish there was a job I could have right now that meant a lot to me. Unfortunately, I am uneducated, and this leaves me with few options outside of retail or food service.
2) This has led me to want to volunteer. At least I won't feel so useless.
3) Some people really get it. Some people just REALLY DON'T GET IT. It's clear that a lot of people aren't thinkers, and that it's not average to contemplate everything. You may say, wait, I'm thinking about things all the time! But it's the level on which you're thinking that might be different from what I'm talking about. Indulge in matters of the soul, it's good for you, like Raisin Brahms. It makes me think of Cher from Clueless, though. She was actually kind of a deep thinker...
4) Soon, I'll be in Florida visiting my family, and I can't wait to see little Jonah swishing his big butt.

25 Songs that Changed Everything

I've been meaning to do this for a while. I've compiled a list of songs that either changed the music I listened to or the way I felt/perceived things in general. Songs that saved me and songs that define me. No particular order.

1) To Be Alone with You by Sufjan Stevens
2) Dog by El Perro Del Mar
3) It's All Gonna Break by Broken Social Scene
4) Sadie by Joanna Newsom
5) Talk Show Host by Radiohead
6) Sender by Pinback
7) Jesus Christ by Brand New
8) Pachuca Sunrise by Minus the Bear
9) Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie
10) Dramamine by Modest Mouse
11) Tautou by Brand New
12) Haligh, Haligh, a Lie by Bright Eyes
13) Metal Heart by Cat Power
14) Candyland by CocoRosie
15) Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect by The Decemberists
16) Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap
17) The Sea and the Rhythm by Iron & Wine
18) Cat Faces by Ugly Casanova
19) I'll Believe in Anything by Wolf Parade
20) Cute Without the E by Taking Back Sunday
21) The Queen's Rebuke/The Crossing by The Decemberists
22) Seven Years (Acoustic) by Saosin
23) Everything by Lifehouse
24) Gold in the Air of Summer by Kings of Convenience
25) Casimir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens

So here's what I say
about coming of ages
and the ends of beginnings of ends--
If it's true you will stop this,
and it's true I could stop this,
then I'll never give up again.

Anything important my life can be summed up in a moment. The clarifying moment, the first moment, the last moment, the fleeting instant, the brief glimpse. My foundation is made up of very, very small things. I don't remember most of them, but there are a few that stick with me.
The moment of truth. The sixty seconds in which I felt completely aware and at peace with reality.
The moment of deception. The sudden realization that everything I knew was a lie, and the life I had invested myself in was worth nothing.
The moment of value. I've walked the earth for years and feel like the things I have to show for it won't be worth much when I'm older.
The moment of cold water. The rush of a Pacific Ocean wave, and why I will never leave California.
The moment of love. The dip my stomach made, assuring me I would never get tired of the way things are.
The moment of life. The wave of understanding that I was extremely lucky to have still been alive.
The end moment. The pain that hit me when I knew everything needed to change in order for anything to be right.

Then there are the things that took me years for me to learn. There are things I am still learning. There are the things I will never learn. I will be so disappointed if it turns out that society really determined the person I became. I really hope I have more of a say in it than that.

I want a new life

Haven't written because I have nothing that great to say. Life reveals itself to be continuously false. I'm over it. Ready to move to the woods or the desert or the beach and just farm or something. I'd invite you, but I think I have to do this alone.

I have a lot to say

but I don't want to share it. At least, not certain parts. Going back and reading this blog, I've said a lot of stupid shit. I don't know who read it or if anyone cares. I'm not sure if I even care about most of what I've written.
Now I like the food court in the mall. It's the best way to be alone, because you actually aren't, even though you really are--you know, that sort of thing. People there are usually in groups. I like being in groups, but most of the time, it's with people I don't know. I think we probably look the same as these people do to me, so I wonder how many of them aren't really friends. When I think about the people who have friends, I think that they have probably been in the same place for a while. It makes me feel better.
I'm over people being shitty. I want to submerge myself. Be on the frontlines, like I had planned to do. To be frank, I want to follow my heart.
If you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about, I watched the Biography of Chris Farley last night and now I've got it all figured out.

HAPPY

People greatly underestimate confidence, like it's so easy to obtain or keep.
I'm so glad I feel it more often now. Thanks to God, life just isn't as scary. Nothing else matters but this.

wow i do not get ANYTHING.

Does anyone want to start a band of outsiders? We can also be IN a band, as well as being a band of outsiders. So band would serve a dual purpose when describing us. Then we can just gtfo of society forever, except coming back to see our moms and dogs. better yet, we would all take our dogs with us, but probably not our moms.
i really don't like that i get so jealous. i just don't know about all this anymore.

Life would be good if you could throw down $2200 on thigh high boots

Would I if I could? Imagine how many homeless people I could have bought jewelry from. I don't think so.

Rebel: Noun vs. Verb

I feel like my relationship with the devil is like a subconscious dependency. The farther away from him I get, the stronger his pull becomes. It’s almost flattering--he doesn’t want to let me go. It’s hard for me not to take it personally, as if he has some sort of critical investment in me.
Well, he does have a great investment in me, but it isn’t about me. I’m just his tool. Putting it that way makes the state of our relationship a little more clear. I am a person who doesn’t like tools. I can’t stand it when people fall into other people’s traps or are easily manipulated and mass produced. It’s funny because I am totally this way, just on a spiritual level, so maybe to me it isn’t that obvious. To realize that I’m a tool is to realize that I’m a conformist in ways that are under the radar to my shallow eye. Maybe I think for myself in the forms of self-expression, and my choices in life may have made me different because I am NOT a “good girl”, I am NOT moral, and I certainly don’t do the right thing. This all sounds extremely rebellious on paper, but in reality, isn’t that what everyone is doing? Don’t most people ultimately reject purity? Don’t most people blur the line between right and wrong? No, being a rebel consists of something a little more profound. It’s the ability to deny ourselves the gratification of doing what is easy to reap the benefits of doing what is right. It’s being consistent. It’s standing up for what we believe in even if everyone else thinks we’re crazy. It’s telling people exactly what we think. It’s giving up our positions of power to give up even more. It’s throwing away our blueprints of how we want things to be. Are any of us doing this? We’re probably not as far along as non-conformists as we think.
The biggest difference between someone real and someone fake is the ability to think about something deep on a level of absolutely sincerity--knowing for the sake of Wisdom, not for the sake of knowledge itself, and not being afraid to address this wisdom in front of everybody. I am openly not one of these people. I will never go so far as to say I am fake, but I hardly ever feel real. I guess I can go both ways with this. Sometimes, I compare myself to other people and see how absolutely unique from them I am--how I am separate because I acknowledge things they refuse to. And yet there are days when I see how forced and contrived everything I do is, all to somewhat resemble how natural everyone else seems. Here’s what I realized--I am nowhere close to alone in this.
Wisdom is having no need for a front. This is my goal. My goal is also to never be a tool.
It’s very hard to let go of everything you’ve been doing your whole life, even if you know those things are bad for you. “Bad” isn’t a term that can be objectively associated with everything, but let’s be honest. There are things that are right, and there are things that are wrong. In the end, we’ve always known what those things are. It’s not that the things we’re doing aren’t bad, it’s just that we no longer feel bad about it. A true rebel knows the difference.

2 corinthians 4:8-10

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.

Lennel House

A convalescent home in Scotland for shell-shocked British soldiers of World War I.










Smithsonian Magazine!!!

2

“You know, normally I do really well in school. I’m not stupid. I just don’t care anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m never going to be what I want.”
“Is that why you cut your hair?”
“No. I cut my hair because I’m ugly,” he said again. “I just wanted everyone else to be able to see it.”
“Physically ugly? Or internally?”
“Completely.”

So a lot of people deserve to know the truth about themselves. I think that's something impossible. I don't think people know themselves until they're forty, and even then, everything's still up in the air. At any minute, you can become someone you convinced yourself you weren't. How easy it is to revert to past mentalities.
It's too bad that I feel like I am completely out of control. Otherwise, I'm unaware. Either way, every time my life falls apart, it's obvious that it's what I deserve. For those of you who think I'm nice, there's as many of you that think I'm a huge bitch. There are two of me and both are hungry, and I don't know which one to feed.

How to Disconnect Yourself Completely

1) Get inebriated, all the time
2) Focus on the physical pain
3) Stay busy
4) Deny everything
5) Bring other people down with you
6) Show no mercy
7) Give in
8) Just don't give a FUCK


Inspiring? Sensational? You bet.

1

Nights are the hardest. During the day, I’m too distracted to think. But when everyone’s gone to bed and there’s nothing on TV, I lay awake for hours. I spend the day perfecting my normality, and when I’m alone, my mind destroys me.
I feel evil, and at the same time I feel good. My mind creates things that I know are not real. I lose my sense of self on a daily basis. My emotions and thoughts are magnified. And I get scared thinking all people are like me. Violent and crazy, but still functioning somehow. Still seemingly normal. And my reflection is odd. Everything is cracked. What am I even so sad about anymore? The way my life went, or that the way my life went made me crazy? Either way, it only makes me feel weak.
My history teacher asked me what the hell my problem was. He knows I’m smarter than my grades. He can tell by my essays. Why aren’t I ever in class? He wanted to know. Why can’t I just suck it up?
It’s because I know I’m sick, and I don’t want to do anything about it. It’s calmed down for now, but I’m not going back. I want it in me. It’s the only thing that proves that I’m real.

Lately it's been hard to know anything true about myself from where I'm standing. I'm too blinded by my innate bias, it's hard to see myself for who I really am. I wonder when I will. I know I justify a lot of things. I'm not sure if I ever truly know the core meaning of why I do things, or, if I do, if I'll ever admit to myself what they are. Sometimes I think I get the picture and then other times I find a perception I had of myself was so totally inaccurate that it completely changes my self image. WHAT? How did I not see that I was coming off this way, or that I was making seriously ridiculous choices, or not taking something seriously enough?
I say, fuck THAT shit! It's messed up we can't even notice when we're ruining our own lives. I'm so sick and tired of being ignorant, it's not even funny. I try to be in tune with things, but at the same time I allow myself to be dissuaded and blinded, let myself be convinced so I don't have to worry about what is morally right anymore. So I stick to what I do, and I stick to what's easy.
But I have goals and dreams, and hopefully they'll break up the monotony. It's hard to see anything awesome I want to do as reality, but I just have to work with my circumstances.

To stop the self-loathing

I have to keep telling myself
Everyone who doesn't like me sucks because there's nothing wrong with me. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks of me, anyway. If someone has a problem with me for being myself, it's probably their problem.
I'm making it a mantra.

If you're in jail

you more than likely broke the law.
Next time, maybe don't do that.

what to expect

Hi, I'm back, I've decided. Expect more updates, and I will answer your burning questions on sexuality, such as...

1) Does getting grossed out while watching same sex couples engage in physical affection make me a homophobe?
2) Does it make me gay if I like it?
3) Obama--secretly gay?

and many more.
What I'm trying to say is stay tuned.

things i've learned among thieves

I don’t watch my weight, and the scale falls and rises. I’m not conscious of anything I put in my body. My indecisiveness becomes numbers that exist under my skin like the sun exists on earth. I’m still thin and not dead.
I hurt my legs and I can’t go anywhere. I focus on distance. Deepak said something about destinations but those don’t exist until I go somewhere.
Splinters poke my sides when I choose the road less traveled. My body takes the shape of people I vowed never to become, and the only way I recognize my face is because I’ve seen it before in the gaunt figures of the rooms they let me color in when I was seventeen. They were convinced it was therapeutic and it was great way of avoiding what really brought me there, and my bathroom had no shower curtain or mirror, and my bedroom had no door.
Also on the road less traveled I’ve noticed a lot of people don’t like me, and you’re not allowed to wear shoes and you‘re supposed to tell everyone how hard it was to get to the end and how much better you are because of it. But it’s hard to feel proud, because my success never would have come if it weren’t for my destruction.
I’m not going to say I don’t feel better when I come clean, but California mud is WARM and hides my face. I look like I was here before Manifest Destiny and waded in river beds to catch fish and painted my cheeks with the red clay you find here when you get to a secluded enough place that white men eventually forgot about it, along with fool’s gold and the small turtles no older than twenty years tops. In the clay there is sometimes sand and kelp if you are far enough west, but that same clay creates foundations of homes that you will build, and the beach will be your chain and the waves will be your whips, so it’s best to turn back now before you start feeling guilty because you give your family your P.O. Box instead of your home address and you don’t really miss them at all.
Lately the world has become see-through, and I feel like I’ve been playing chess my whole life because I know all the moves everyone will make before they make them, and I would prefer a little vulnerability and spontaneity on the part of humanity in general. I can’t expect it, but I would like to think there is a whole other level to the people I meet, although lately it’s been seeming like that’s just something I’ve convinced myself to believe.
As guilty as I feel on an everyday basis, there are some things I’m not sorry for. Like my voice or my realizations, or my only true cause. I’m not sorry for the things I believe, only the things I do. Eventually the unbalance will weigh heavy enough on my heart that the scale tips, and I’ll be left with a very big choice to make.
I feel like a lot of people should love me by now, but then I realize I don’t love a lot of people.

more tao

welcome to bubbletown

you fucking freaks

Matchbox 20 defined an era

what is it with Colin Meloy and watery graves?

regret nothing

forgiveness is supposed to spread my skin flush. leave me with a glow and some sort of rush. but i kick up dust where tar was supposed to be. i regret nothing i repeat it in my sleep


still i see the dead trees i once called my home, the burnt field that was green until i lit a match to it, the river water i filled with my own ink and would use to wipe the red off my palms. the effort that i put into doing everything wrong.
i regret nothing
not the pain i saw in other people's faces, the way it etched ribbons beneath their eyes. every broken limb i cut off, far away from the trunk because i didn't want it to grow back. every root that spread under dying soil, and how i refused to give it light. maybe a little water sometimes, enough to hope for life.

the cruelty of salvation, the crippled realization, the fact that i'm forgiven.
how i want to believe, how it makes no sense to me. oh lord to let me be
to simply accept my apology
and to ask that i forgive myself
for my own soul for my own health
means that what i have done is
permissible, acceptable
deserving of love, deserving of light
and worst of all, meant to be
determined by you
and chosen by me.
so excuse my audacity
when i don't want to know and i don't have the strength.
i am nowhere near worthy
but i can't walk away.

attempt two

Dior Spring 2010

Toni Garn

hi everybody

whats happening
I'm Question Mark and I'm wondering...

1) Have you ever considered the idea that the our precious and democratic American government is always lying to us? Well, I have, and let me tell you, it's not any sort of fun at all. Enjoy your hamburgers and roller coasters people of the United States.
WHILE YOU STILL CAN!
2) Couldn't it be possible that the Facebook captcha codes are really predicting the future? Today I got ghosting something. OOOH I'm scared of ghosts.
3) Who remembers this song?


But really all jokes aside America rules.