Attention:
Steph's services are currently out of order.
She will remain out of service until the following thing is aquired:
One true heart.
If that is not acquired, you can find her down in Florida drinking gin with her twelve cats, listening to old Hank Williams records.
Thank You.
P.S It is a joke.
I'll be strong like a flower
That blooms in the spring
Pluck off all my petals
But it cannot destroy me.
Around this time next year
All of the strorms and rain
Will array me in new colors
And I'll be born again.
There's no use in crying
Over spilled theories
There's no use in trying
For those who do not hear me.
There's no use in dying
Over things that cannot kill me.
All of these emotions
All the pain and doubt
All of the sadness
Passes through me like clouds
But my soul is the blue sky
And clouds are so fleeting
Why hold myself ransom
When I'm already free?
There's no use in crying
Over spilled theories
There's no use in trying
For those who will not hear me.
There's no use in dying
For things that cannot kill me.
And I'm learning
As a woman
How much strength there is in
Fragility.
I look towards the pulpit
And see remnants of another time
I know he loves his Jesus,
So why can't he love mine?
So full of words and phrases
The hungry are just outside the door
I stare at empty church pews
And wonder just what for.
"It's because they're all wicked",
He says with a grin
"Funny" I think,
"He doesn't recognize his own sin."
I move up towards the altar
I smell persimmon and sage
But the fragrance is interuppted
By the tearing of a page.
I turn my head to look
and someone pushes me down
"No use aaking questions here,
We never turn around."
They all march like an army
To an uncertain fate
But I try to find my bible
Outside by the gate.
The preacher follows me out
And I try to find his eyes
But they are hidden
Beneath a heavy veil of tyranny and lies.
I know that he can't help it
I can see the fear
I reach out in sympathy
But he refuses to get near.
"No use being frightened"
He tells me as I weep
"Cleanse yourself and go back inside
With all the other sheep."
I reach up to touch my face
to see if there is mud
And was blinded by a vision
Of a wooden cross and blood.
"I think that I'll stay dirty"
I say in a broken tone
"I want to go to heaven,
But I don't want to go alone."
Don't cast your pearls to the swine
Don't sell your soul for a scrap of bread
His love is a paradyme
His words are fat
But his soul unfed.
You see yourself through a broken mirror
You see yourself in a foggy haze
Look to the left and the coast is clear
But you're looking at death
When you look in his face.
I see you through the eyes of a child
I see you through the eyes of God
Slow disintegration of your smile
And your heart that screams
From the chopping block.
Your only love and your only pain
Your only love pulls you out of your head
You drink the sorrow in the name of change
Instead of loving yourself instead.
I've been living with my father for the past couple of months, which probably sounds lame but it's actually very wonderful. My dad left my life when I was 8 and I never saw him again until I was 19. For years I was deeply saddened, angry, and confused by this...obviously. I was a total daddies girl when I was young. When we first reunited I still had a lot of anger and misunderstanding towards him and I completely gave him hell. But now as adults having the opportunity to get to know him again and be there to spend time with him during the sunset period in his life is awesome. I am hearing his side of the story, which I never heard. It's touching to learn what a truly good man my dad really is. Him and my mom are actually friends now which is something that I never believed would happen. It's amazing to me how things can come around full circle and heal. I no longer question why it is that I had to go through such a tough time. I really know that it shaped who I am, which I am actually grateful for. Who has time for anger and regrets when there is so much love?
We spent the day today cleaning out his spare bedroom, which will soon be my room. (finally...no more couch) He came across some old pictures of us and my brother. I actually started crying. I somehow managed to kind of black out a large chunk of my childhood. Seriously....I do not remember much of it. I've heard that it's some sort of defence mechanism. Anyways...These pictures actually jogged my memory again and I am so happy to have some of my memories back! I kind of feel as if a piece of me has returned. It's a difficult feeling to explain.
Anyways...here's to dad.
Everyone talks too much
Words can be a disease
They squander the love
Most good things
Rot and turn poisonous
So be careful
With your tounge
Everyone acts so happy
Then they cry themselves to sleep at night
Everything is just a fallacy
So, don't talk to me
Just hold me close.
Hold my hand and we can sail away
On a white wave of time
Forget the fear
Forget everything
Just look into my eyes
Everyone loves to fight
They hold their candles to the night
They burn them til the end
All of those candles could outshine the sun
But we're too busy being right
Hold my hand and we can sail away
On a white wave of time
Forget the fear
Forget everything
Just look into my eyes.
Silence, please.
To you it's just a word with four letters
To you it is only flesh and chemicals
To you it is simply something that happened to you
Indifference is laziness
Indifference is hate
I thought you were someone else.
Just do me a favor.
Do not continue to blame others.
You lock your heart inside your bedroom
While love stands outside crying.
I cannot live in a time capsule
I cannot sit on a strand
I cannot wait
For you to finally decide
That I'm important enough
To be in your life.
Indifference lets things die.
Indifference stares blankly at a perfect sky.
I thought you were someone else.
Has there ever been a person in your life that you adored, that you loved completely and totally, that you knew with the vision in your heart was the one that belonged with you? This person was the one who you burned for, who inspired you, who kept you awake in the night with visions of their face. Have you ever felt a love so deeply that it stripped away every facade and false pretense and cut straight through you? A love so intense that it opened you up made you cry all the tears you could stand? A love so true that the joy you feel in their presence made you smile with all of the sunlight in your heart?
I have felt this kind of love and if you have, you immediately will understand what I mean. If not, you may take in the words and appreciate them, but you will never understand unless you experience it.
The love that I felt for this person made me feel so vulnerable, not weak, just so incredibly bare like an open palm. It's both horrible and lovely at the same time. It's so disarming and so scary. You don't have control over yourself, the walls that you have spent your entire life building to protect yourself, fall in this person's presence. It's just this one person, who really is no different than any other person. But for some reason this person said hello one day or smiled at you and you could feel yourself spiraling. You try to catch your breath, to stand your ground, to keep yourself from losing control, but the moment they kiss you or speak your name--it's involuntary.
Love cannot be possessed. It is a mystery and a precious gift. All you can do is hold it when it's near and kiss it when you feel it inside. You cannot change it or stop it either. It moves with it's subtle, strong force. It takes no regard for time, circumstances, situations, heartaches, ambitions, or fears. It shows up and it blasts through you.
The worst thing ever is when you feel this kind of love and yet you know that you cannot be with this person. For whatever reason you know that it's the wrong time. It's the worst hell you can feel knowing that love is requited and yet because of differences or distance or ambitions, it cannot burn. Yet it burns anyway and you cannot make it stop no matter how much you want to and how much you try not to care. Heartbreak I am convinced is the deepest sadness there is.
My brain has been full of philosophy lately as I have decided to read or shall I say re-read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s collected works. A lot of people think his writing is too heavy, and I agree to a certain extent, but his writing is also very rich and when I read some of his essays I often get a similar feeling as when I read the Bible or other spiritual book. I’m not blaspheming the sacred; I just mean that you can really glean off of just one page or even one idea or thought of his for a long period of time. I have always loved his essays “The American Scholar” “Self Reliance” “Politics” and “Nature”. He writes different from anyone I have read really. It sounds strange but he seems to pull some kind of natural wisdom from out of himself, almost like an impressionistic painting. I think with a lot of writers it is the opposite, they pull wisdom from outside and make it theirs. I guess what I am trying to say is that he listened to himself, to his heart, and to his spirit. With that being said, I guess it makes sense that he was also a true poet. He said, “To believe that what is true in one’s own heart is true for all men, that is genius.”
This got me really thinking. It seems that us humans are always looking at certain people as somehow better than us or different from us. Many of us have idols in our lives, people that we look up to and wish that we could be more like. We say, “if only I had their talent” or “if only I had their discipline” or “if only I was as brave as they are”. Yadda yadda yadda. But if you cut all of the fat off and get to the bare bones aren’t we all made of the same stuff? Don’t we all have essentially the same template? I think a lot of times the reason that we look up to others is because they have the courage to voice or express their innermost being and that resonates with our own innermost being. The beautiful prose that Shakespeare wrote, don’t we essentially have access to the same inspiration that he had? I want to pose a question. Instead of wishing to be more like others, why can’t we just wish to be more like our self? Isn’t that essentially what those we look up to do anyway?
So how do we attain this…this fullness of self? I am not really sure. I certainly don’t have all of the answers, but my intuitive thought is pretty simple: silence. I mean isn’t silence so under-rated? Americans are so busy all of the time; we are constantly over-stimulated with technology. It seems we have something in our eyes (phones, computers, televisions) or in our ears (music, talking, etc) from the moment we wake up until the moment we sleep. We don’t listen to ourselves much. We don’t listen to our intuition much. We don’t listen to our hearts much. We don’t even listen to our minds much. I would go as far to say that this could be the root of MANY problems in today’s culture. I’ve heard people say that American’s are self centered, but I disagree. We are not centered in ourselves at all. We are self un-centered. When do we have time to be centered in ourselves? In my experience, some of my greatest epiphanies or revelations came in moments of complete solitude. Perhaps if we weren’t constantly stuffing ourselves with false substitutes we would find within in us everything that we already need. Just a thought.
I had an idea the other night (or shall I say twilight) while I was tossing and turning and getting no sleep. (Hey...who said insomnia didn't have it’s advantages?) It’s kind of based on a dream that I had about my best friend Sara. The details of the dream are relatively important. I don't remember much except that I came to see her and when I arrived at her house she met me at the door with this medieval looking scroll. (Is Sara my subconscious Yoda? Ha.) On the scroll she had a list of things that I needed to do before I was allowed to go back home. She did a very good job writing it (or I did...whatever) The point was to take risks and expand my horizons more. (This is lovely. I am SO in need of a little rebellion.) I don't remember everything she listed in the dream. I only remember two things she listed.
1.) Ride the Tilt-A-Whirl five times straight. (Yikes!)
2.) Build a sand castle
Anyway...I think it would be so much fun to actually do this! I am working on my own list now as well as taking suggestions. I will post the suggestions as I receive them. When I finish all the tasks I will post it (with pictures for proof) I would also like some ideas from you! The only rules are that they must be reasonable and they must things that I will actually be able to complete by December 31. (Keep in mind also that I am PO..and I don't mean poor, I mean PO.) Please help, and be creative! The more creative the better. (At least I think so...ah...what am I getting myself in to?) I’ll love you forever.
Upon sharing this idea with a few people I found out that it is similar to the movie "The Bucket List." I have never actually seen the movie (I'll have to now, of course.) Anyway, it's not quite the same thing. It is simply me being random and crazy. I proclaimed this to be my year of self-discovery and I may be getting way more than I bargained for. Tee-hee.
Here are some other additions I received today:
3. Slash in a fountain
4. Break a rule, any rule
5. Swing at a park
6. Run in any marathon
7. Do five cartwheels (Yikes!)
8. Dance in the rain
9. Get ten strangers to hug you and pat you on the head
10. Sing and play on the street corner for money.
11. Join a talent show
12. Eat lobster (Okay...so there is nothing strange about this...but if you knew how much I loathe seafood you would understand. Can we say giant bugs?)
13. Take a random class at the y or some place like that (I think I'll try sewing!)
14.) Be a people statue in the city. Stand really still until someone walks by and keep a tally of how many people you scare. (sounds fun!)
It’s amazing to me how many hundreds or thousands of people that we meet in life. We see them come and watch them go. We brush shoulders with them at work, or on the street, or in the grocery store. Sometimes their faces become familiar to us, like a part of the scenery in our day. Other faces we never see again. Out of all these beautiful people we meet, at least in my experience, there are only a select few who seem to resonate with our soul/heart. There are some people that when we see their face there is something intrinsicly familiar about them. A part of us seems to know that we want them in our life. This has happened to me with every close friendship and relationship in my life.There was one instance in particular in my experience where I was simply walking along happy in my solitude, just a plain and regular day, and I saw this person’s face for the first time and literally stopped in my tracks. It was so weird. It was as if my heart was saying "stop. you know this one."
We possess an amazing inner radar. There are some people that I could talk to and talk to...just surface conversation all day long. They are nice and polite and I am nice and polite. This exchange could go on for weeks and even years but that’s all there is. Then there are others who I have talked to for thirty minutes and I felt like they had given me a piece of themselves or vice versa. My closest friends and I could go months without even speaking to one another and then when we speak again it’s as if no time has even gone by. There is one person that I knew for a month and felt so well understood by them that it was as if I had known them my whole life. I completely fell in love with them. I also felt as if I somehow "knew" this person although by all "logical" standards I didn’t know them at all.
There are some people that when they hug us or smile at us there is a sense of peace and comfort. It’s just an instinctual and automatic thing. Perhaps it is because these people are like us in some way and we just sense that about them. Or perhaps they are not like us in a lot of ways, but there is something that they must teach us, some gift that this person out of all other people must give to us. Or perhaps there is some gift that we sense we must give to them.We are so lucky and blessed to have the opportunity to love and learn from one another. There is this simple quote I heard a long time ago that says "friends are God’s way of caring for us." I like that one.
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