shiver deep-down

I woke up this morning early (e-gads!) with a shiver in my belly and sad oozing out all sticky from my dreams. I remember waking up feeling this way sometimes when I was younger, and describing it as feeling like I need some hot chocolate, or a friend. The clarity and hit-the-nail-on-the-head accuracy of kids is alarming sometimes, isn't it?

Yesterday, my 5 year old friend Beatrice asked me to write this for her: Anybody I pass, I like. She wanted to write it on a big heart that she had cut out of tissue paper. I think she planned to tape the heart to her shirt so that people passing by her as she walked would see it. What a brilliant idea! Why not give light to as many people as possible? Why not tell everybody you love them? Just now, the shiver in my belly feels a little less lonely, honey-and-milk-Beatrice warming me up from the inside.

After writing this post, I switched over to homework and came across this report. Brian Welch says, "I always felt, as a kid, that I didn't need anybody trying to entice me into believing that the world was interesting." Cosmic.

Today my motto will be that of the curious campers- I promise to be awesome.

...creeeeeak...

This post will include none of the following things: perspective, generosity, benevolence, gratitude, selflessness, discretion, logical development. (Well, maybe a little, but I don't want you to get your hopes up.)

I'm having a hard time connecting the dots- getting from point A to point B. Is my life now anything more or less than it has been for the past six months? It's not simple, is it? Time, emotions, trauma, love, inspiration, they don't move from A to B. They go from Hindi to English to color to black and white to imagination and full circle back to roti which goes to autumn and who knows what next. Maybe uncertainty is what runs through it all, or maybe it's hope. Or moisture or combustion or fairies who creep out after consciousness fades into dusk.

And then there's this song that makes a whole lot of sense to me:
When you run make sure you run to something and not away from...

After the campfire dies down, all that's left are the smouldering remains of the logs collected hastily in the last smokey minutes of twilight. Frantically located, they are arranged in a formation most appealing to the stars, whose gratitude is expressed in the spark that lights the tinder, ensuring instant mashed potatoes and Swiss Miss. The logs are transformed into lumps of charcoal, rounded and grooved into monster's bones, glowing sparkly orange from the inside.

Sometimes it doesn't all fit. Some of those times, you end up sitting in bed, propped up with pillows looking at your room like a princess surveying her very tiny kingdom, slippers peaking out behind the laptop sitting on your lap. It warms your legs, glowing in the semidarkness, light pulsing from bright to almost-gone so that when you squint your eyes, you can almost see a heart beating.

so far

Impulse, need, desire to write, express, lash out and cut without mercy. But who will be watching? Can I choose? Oblivion is preferable when distance and space to fling and explode are necessities. I am so angry, and so much exploding with fire, and so far from everything I want to touch. So shaken up and spun around that I've no idea which way is up, and can't for the life of me motivate myself to throw water on the flames and watch them go out with a hiss and a plume of steam.

"You are the you you have been waiting for."

It brings tears to my eyes and I can't reach that place while I feel it so acutely in the space right between imagination and stomach, acid and storm-clouds. Turn lime green and let out a roar of earth-shattering and eye-watering intensity. Pull down your hood, elastic around your face tightening. Wait out the storm, blinking drops from your eyelashes, honoring the thunder as it hollers.

To Haiti with Love

Hi folks! This is a service announcement, rather a departure from the usual musings of a befuddled and bedazzled, almost-bachelor-degree-wearin'-twenty-something. Please check out this website, created with spectacular magic and common sense by René and Kate. As you will see, they have collected offerings from artists and imaginers from all sides of the globe to auction off. All proceeds of the auction will go to St. Joseph's family of homes for children in Port au Prince, Haiti. Check it out, and bask in the glory of what being a person is all about. These ladies have the right idea. You might even see some offerings from a certain blogger/coed who you find to be disarmingly persuasive...

P.S. And hurry up, will you? The auction ends Monday!