One Word

I found oneword.com from someone's blog. Neat idea. I have a cyclical obsession with words that on some days finds me exploring one word, scaping its underbelly for any escaped meanings, and testing its shape against all my sentences. I'm not usually conscious of the provocation that causes me to try find places to mark my day with just this one word but:

yesterday's word tumbled from a litany of "I want you". Litany is one of my favourite words, so I discarded oneword.com's "glossy" to write about it instead.

Eschew

Eschew: to shun, as something injurious.

Some of us have good judgment and others not so much. We should figure out which we are before we eschew perfectly good advice.

The year I turned seventeen I inherited (helped myself to because she had the good sense not to want it) a jumbo silver eye pencil from someone's make up collection. That and a brown lip pencil represented my makeup collection and sadly, acumen at the time - not suggesting I've gotten a much better, but for what it's worth I now have a lot more excuses for making a mess of my face. Because:

At the time my routine consisted of brown lip liner blended into chapstick (I hadn't discovered any of those fancy glosses yet), and a swipe of silver eyeliner blended out to "highlight" my eyes. I thought I was pretty clever, but my boyfriend's mother said to me once "Why do you wear that silver eyeliner? It looks like you have "mattah" in your eyes".


I thought she was just being uncool - she didn't want me dating her son; she didn't like my nose ring, and she'd told me so with HER nose "skin up" (wrinkled) to imply what she was looking at -and smelling - was actually a small speck of shit on my nose; she didn't like my hair; or me for that matter, so her judgement was questionable.


My nose ring and most of the things she criticised about me can be chalked up to our generational gap and me being a "bad influence" on her son, but if I had listened to her about the eye liner I might have avoided going around for a whole year sporting what looked like huge silver clumps of mattah in the corners of my eyes.


*mattah is what we call that stuff that collects in the corners of your eyes while you sleep.

tree hugger

I'm a tree hugger because they are email servers to the universe and some days I get so euphoric with blessings I just wanna say "hey friend.. thanks"; and they understand love.. really, they do - because do you really think you can hang around that long without getting to understand a few things? And cause we're all made of the same substance but strangers get weird when you run up to em and hug them (it's true, try it for yourself); and trees need love just like I need love, no explanations necessary.

I talk to bugs and birds and bees because I think they know a lot more about the thronging and pulsing and surging of life than they're letting on, and maybe one day I'll remember the language of their secret telling. But if I never do the pauses in my one sided conversations hold a promise and possibility so huge it absorbs me into a world of my own orbit.

Because a life that visits simplicity is like an easter egg hunt- (or an orgy, pick your flavour) there's a treat behind every bush!

Untitled Work in progress(oil pastel, oil, papier mache - sort of, charcoal, on water colour paper)

p.s. The new drawing I mentioned in my last post, is in the garbage, and after adding colour to flower girl I no longer like the look of oil pastel on brown paper.
and,
a new follower and comment, plus a good word from san and slowtumblinglife about my drawing has me bouyant today. Thank You!
and,
i'll be back to code links to san etc.

Here's hoping

Out my window I can see students returning from school. Knowing nothing about their lives makes me wish my current school situation was as theirs seems, simple as going to class and back.

Unfortunately for that wish today is my last opportunity to register for classes and there is an unjust balance against my account that threatens to change my course. It's difficult to accept that something that seems so simply fixed has so much power over the decisions i'll be making tonight and into tomorrow.

But, I cross into everyday with the faith I am cradled, and that provides the optimism that any resolution will be abidable.

A few posts ago I said I was working on meteor and flower girl. Meteor is now hanging on the bedroom wall of my friend's 7 year old and Flower Girl stalled at a few lines on brown paper.

It hasn't been all idleness for me though, below is an untitled piece I finished today (almost, it needs cleaning up), and when I leave this post I will start applying media to a new drawing.

untitled

media: oil, charcoal, ink, oil pastel on watercolour paper

A life more free and hello hidden follower.

I picked up a new follower a few weeks ago and I went over and gave his blog "a lick and a promise" of a proper read and a thank you comment. I tried to get to that this morning but he's no longer among my followers. In case you ever come back forgive my poor internet graces and thanks for reading, your subject matter was very interesting despite being a teeensy bit challenging to read.

On my followers page I noticed something else peculiar - it shows only four even though it says "5 followers". I'm somewhat challenged by (lazy about) the technicalities of blogging but I'm guessing I have a hidden follower? I'm not sure what to make of that - aside from it's tantamount to lurking in the bushes outside my house - but that's ok too, so long as you continue to worship from afar and never try to take me home to meet your parents and see your shrine - at least not without tricking me into it by pretending to be normal first, because if you're going to shock me I'd prefer you be gentle about it. But what I really mean to say is thanks for reading and leave a comment sometime so I can visit your blog and secretly follow you in a somewhat odd and internet stalkeristic way. Unless you're the one person I never want to find my blog in which case I already know you're crazy so go away, you're being creepy.

Ohh, and also you're a clever cookie aren't you? None of my other followers have so far managed to get an entire post dedicated to them, but don't get too swoleheaded because it might have more to do with me having nothing to post about than you very cleverly drawing me into millions of suppositions with your mysteriousness. Damn it hidden follower, you're clever. I'm going to go look for scarcely updated blogs and secretly start following them too.

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For the other part of my post; this week I have amassed a collection of fruit peel and other organic kitchen scrap that I can't bring myself to commit to a thousand years of slow decay in garbage mountain. Of course I have to, I have no acre of yard to throw it out to, cows to feed it to, or garden for which to compost it, all of which is what I've been accustomed to. I was reflecting on the contrast between living here and how much more free my rural life was so I was going to write about barefoot summers spent climbing trees and littering the yard with fruit peels and other such careless freedoms I enjoyed at my grandparents house. But I spent all my brain power writing about my secret follower and now I can't be bothered. See what kinds of havoc secretly following wreaks?

Break glass in case of time travel

Perhaps if I could have offered a 10 year old me the benefit of my now eyes I would have said pay no attention to the rules, you will be labelled a rebel, but still too well trained to stray too far from the lines" pay no attention to the rules or you will make me a good hearted chameleon, with too much work colouring inside each of our boxed personas when you and I together only want to decimate borders for the freedom of escaping colours.

Pay no attention to the rules! You will spend too much time leaning into your whims, feeling triumphant for never floating away until you see there too is a world for the floaters. But you will have stayed too long inside the lines to retain the airiness that outweighs the fear you've gone too far.

I can see where this is going, and if I were you I'd simply pay no attention to the rules.

love bite

i like it when you put my name to paper or breathe it to air and
the way you never leave me without leaving your mark, because I don't want to forget I am loved.

parasitic egg pods

I dreamt last night that I went someplace - a field perhaps - and when I left I discovered I was covered in hundreds and hundreds of pods of bugs eggs. Perhaps nothing I'd encounter in real life, each pod was an about .2X.4X.2 mm (wxlxh) rectangular shape that was flat where it ahered to my skin, with each of the four corners rounded, and curved top as though it's contents were stretching for optimum room. The first I discovered on my shoulder as I scratched what felt too hard and too symetrical to be a bump, a run of my fingers revealed my arm was covered and further probing revealed my entire body was covered in a rash of the parasites.

I do not remember who else was in the dream and offered the advice I should let them mature and fall off because to try to pick them off tear away my skin. I was completely panicked and disgusted, and woke as dream me was trying to work one loose from my shoulder.

My dreams are so vivid that when I wake I sometimes have to check my memory for any signs it was only a dream, luckily dreams as extreme as this are easy to dispel, but sometimes the more mundane are question marks that follow me for days. I digress, I forgot everything leading up to leaving the field, but if I could I wonder what interpretation there is for this dream.

Moments to live in

Tonight everything is fleeting. I started to post about how Tori Amos' "Jupiter" reminds me of a time in my life when I was always running for rescue, then I started reflecting on my recurring fear that even though I don't ask for it any more, perhaps I still need to be rescued.

A few years ago I walked out of an office defined as a girl with a propensity for dangerous situations, self mutilation, and a fairly good chance of taking her own life. It was all true, and I decided I wouldn't behave inside the limits of those paragraphs in DSM-IV-R anymore, and that changed the course of my life. I accepted responsibility for my own choices and reactions, and left every one else to their own.

Frankly, though I have learned to colour inside the lines of normal the fact that I should still want to curl up inside "Jupiter" or any good song and die, and a little thing could set my day on a completely new axis, and mostly that I'm becoming someone different makes me worry that all that really happened after I walked away from my mental health professionals was I learned what not to do, and instead created new symptoms for the DSM-V.

Those quirks of my personality are the perks of knowing me, but for me each one trails the question on which my sanity hinges. How far can you go without being too far away from normal?

A friend once told me "You don't understand what it's like to be me, you walk into a room and everyone looks at you" and I felt sad for her, because that's no place to live. Even though I revelled in being different, after while being the entertainment got tired. If there were a place where there was no "why?" and no consequence I wouldn't give even a tiny shit, but there isn't and really I just want to fit in.

No matter how hard you try who you are always sneaks in (apparently especially in your blog), so I alternate between the 100% and the scaled back me. Which now that I think of it is actually kinda crazy.

the story of the moral is

There was a man who'd never lived in a house. He knew what they were, but he'd never once thought of living in one even as he came upon them wandering through the forest, joyfully experiencing the things he encountered. After many lifetimes of wandering, he began to wonder why people lived in houses, because it seemed they were all as happy as he.

One day as he was walking he heard singing; a woman's voice more beautiful than anything he'd ever heard. Following the voice he came into a clearing, and in the clearing was a beautiful house that made him suddenly understand why people lived in houses. He knew he was welcome - he had a way of knowing things - so he walked right up to the house and entered. Standing in the middle of the room was the woman whose voice had led him there, and he knew she belonged with him, and he knew he would stay.

He looked around him, the house was perfect. It was a small house made for a small woman, he was not a big man, just a lot bigger than her. But he knew they were one, so it was a house made for him too.

They settled into their life together, and it was a beautiful life in a beautiful house that didn't fit that was made just for him. He still wandered the forest, but he never went very far from the beautiful woman and his beautiful house that didn't fit but was made just for him. As time passed the distance he wandered became shorter, and the times he left became less. One day he tried to leave the house to visit the forest, but he couldn't. Without noticing, he had tried to fit the house, and as time passed he had become more cramped, until his legs no longer knew how to stretch, his arms no longer knew how to reach, and his neck no longer knew how to carry his his head for wandering.

Disregard the rules before visiting, this is not a story at all.

There was an unfortunate Midas, a little boy whose touch made eveything filthy. He thought if he collected enough beautiful things he could create a fortress in which to keep his secret. His desire drove him to go about touching things and spreading his filth like a disease.

He was sombre of countenance, and always lingered along the edges of company. As he had his goal of building his fortress, so had these beautiful the goal of spreading beauty, and the air of him drew the most beautiful to his touch. In this way of the Defeated Purpose his pulling and seeking created a colony of sadness spreading to meet its limit.

There are different types of beauty, the transient and the fighting and he did not understand that as dictated by the second Law of Balance only those of the first category would fall to him. Beauty of the second was of a heavier substance, meant to practise a deceit that would see him tricked and consumed.