2 days ago
In Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy, and in popular culture, the meaning of life is said to be the number 42.
1 month ago
A Doctor’s Education in Empathy, Identity, and Poetry
I wonder whether my obsessive impulse to write was even at it’s earliest manifestation a rebellious one, engendered by an unconscious desire to revise the world according to a discordant internal reality I was trying so desperately to decipher.
I used to think identity was like immunity. In some ways I still do. If only I can define myself, I think, I would be safe. But I have unintentionally counteracted this, pushing away parts of my awful muse for older-me to manage. For so long I have been terrified of my obsessions; I have tucked them neatly away in the deepest part of my soul, unable to forgive my lack of voice. I am so angry for my shortcomings that I have almost given up entirely to explain my world as I have come to see it. I think about the thing that I am most self-conscious about, my skin is usually the first thing that comes to mind. But my most visceral flaw is my writing, my imagination, and the way I relate to others through these devices. I feel as if my writing is something that would only be useful in afterlife, or in another realm. As if it is a pulsing, organized imagining of what once was, or is to be. Sometimes I think I’m so removed from this world until I experience something grounding, like folding the corner of a mesmerizing page, only to see that the book’s previous owner already has. A few years ago I was on top of the world and I felt I could accurately describe my view from the top. I became crazed in my ideas of my first novel. But I became so utterly emotionless and my work ended up that way too. I look back on this time and I’m so angry for not caring about anything, and letting every moment of life pass through me as if I wasn’t experiencing it. As time passed, without closely looking at this period the way I am now, I started to cry, to feel, to be. In many ways I am now making up for that emotionless time, with my amplified feelings along every crevice of life.
So why haven’t I done anything about it? Why haven’t I shared this with anyone? Why haven’t I put my obsessions to good use?
Sometimes it takes a little bit of remarkable prose to bring out my own desire to heal.
2 months ago
Oh Ben Howard, how I hardly know you. Although your hands caught my attention, your conviction kept it and at 2:32’ i’m swooning, that instant, that note— it’s over too fast. Way too fast. I see the struggle to envision what will come. Is life going to be this way for long? Will we be wiped out, only to return as something else entirely? Will we meet the same people, the same souls, only as other creatures?
Or are we wasting time, because nothing will ever be the same? Will our memories be wiped out, escorted by our existence? Is every moment as arbitrary as it seems? Does it count for anything? Are experiences enough? Sophistication, worldliness, or even common sense?
At 3:32 the audience stole him away from this deep, deep sense of infinity. But by 4:25 it all comes back to him. It’s everywhere, never shifting, and robust. And it’s there that he remembers it all.
Here’s to a scotch, on the rocks. Maybe that’s where I’d find the answers, if only I’d touch it.
2 months ago
So much inspiration. Spring 2012, this is for you.
All I want to do is dance.
This was published in the Saugus High Literary magazine in 2008. It’s funny how everything can change.
Unattainable:
I often found myself staying out so late, just me and
The relaxed chaos of the summer night sky,
And I’d trace the stars with my finger
Hoping to connect the dots.
The lines I drew stayed with me for months, but lately I’ve
Let regrets go,
Broken fragmented thoughts.
Sometimes I wonder if I got caught in the lines that weren’t really there,
Or if I cared too much about the reflection I saw from the moon.
I made a wish on a star one night,
And haven’t made any more since then.
I always thought it’d be better to wait for the first one to come true
Before making another.
4 months ago
On how to be emotionally stable:
Start as someone who loves with above-average intensity. Stay up all night reading a book you can’t put down, or listening to a song on repeat until it reaches 66 plays on your iTunes. See abyssal profundity where others see only surface. Experience moments in which you feel as if your life is in a vessel that travels a million miles and back and you feel entire concentric cosmos come together into one unified image of perfect beauty, and all you can do is fall onto your knees and worship it. Start to see this image frequently. Feel its beauty morph slowly but inexorably into terror. Try to drown it out with drugs and alcohol and deafening music.
Understand that feelings are much more than the amorphous clouds of pain or pleasure that they feel like when you’re in them. Notice that these moments of Gestalt illumination reminds you of the clarity you receive after a yoga class, a good movie, an esoteric kiss. Realize that love is gently rewarding. Explore the inner structures of your darkest moments, start to feel them coalesce into something solid and unmoving. And realize that after years of false hopes, you have finally arrived at something real, something that no one can ever take away from you.
4 months ago
David Ramirez doesn’t write about luxury, he doesn’t search for satisfaction. He’s honest, unfiltered, true.
He speaks about our blind hearts; they seek nothing. Your heart is precocious, and knows more than any brilliant man can tell you. It speeds up with attentive angst and, soon after, it slows down with the hope that everything can just stop and stay in exactly that place. You see, our hearts are so much smarter than our minds. And in those wide-eyed moments of introspection, It’s as if an interior window has opened up, and the whole world sparkles. The world becomes infinite and onerous.
And it’s all up to you.
5 months ago
5 months ago
This guy is fucking poet. And he deserves every last bit of credit. Love is his light and his darkness, whose end he cannot see.
It’s so god damn tenacious.
“We’re all born to broken people on their most honest day of living
and since that first breath… We’ll need grace that we’ve never given
I’ve been haunted by standard red devils and white ghosts
and it’s not only when these eyes are closed
these lies are ropes that I tie down in my stomach,
but they hold this ship together tossed like leaves in this weather
and my dreams are sails that I point towards my true north,
stretched thin over my rib bones, and pray that it gets better
but it won’t won’t, at least I don’t believe it will…
so I’ve built a wooden heart inside this iron ship,
to sail these blood red seas and find your coasts.
don’t let these waves wash away your hopes
this war-ship is sinking, and I still believe in anchors
pulling fist fulls of rotten wood from my heart, I still believe in saviors
but I know that we are all made out of shipwrecks, every single board
washed and bound like crooked teeth on these rocky shores
so come on and let’s wash each other with tears of joy and tears of grief
and fold our lives like crashing waves and run up on this beach
come on and sew us together, tattered rags stained forever
we only have what we remember
I am the barely living son of a woman and man who barely made it
but we’re making it taped together on borrowed crutches and new starts
we all have the same holes in our hearts…
everything falls apart at the exact same time
that it all comes together perfectly for the next step
but my fear is this prison… that I keep locked below the main deck
I keep a key under my pillow, it’s quiet and it’s hidden
and my hopes are weapons that I’m still learning how to use right
but they’re heavy and I’m awkward…always running out of fight
so I’ve carved a wooden heart, put it in this sinking ship
hoping it would help me float for just a few more weeks
because I am made out of shipwrecks, every twisted beam
lost and found like you and me scattered out on the sea
so come on let’s wash each other with tears of joy and tears of grief
and fold our lives like crashing waves and run up on this beach
come on and sew us together, just some tattered rags stained forever
we only have what we remember
My throat it still tastes like house fire and salt water
I wear this tide like loose skin, rock me to sea
if we hold on tight we’ll hold each other together
and not just be some fools rushing to die in our sleep
all these machines will rust I promise, but we’ll still be electric
shocking each other back to life
Your hand in mine, my fingers in your veins connected
our bones grown together inside
our hands entwined, your fingers in my veins braided
our spines grown stronger in time
because are church is made out of shipwrecks
from every hull these rocks have claimed
but we pick ourselves up, and try and grow better through the change
so come on yall and let’s wash each other with tears of joy and tears of grief
and fold our lives like crashing waves and run up on this beach
come on and sew us together, were just tattered rags stained forever
we only have what we remember”
6 months ago
Oh, Andrew Bird, you make such delicate musical enigmas. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. If I all the music in the world had his enthrallment and delivery, I’d post every day, a thousand times over. But that’s the problem, the inspiration gets lost and lonely and so many musicians have lost their reason for creation. Creativity is so valuable—it’s cathartic, in so far as getting shit off your chest is therapeutic as it is self-indulgent. But you are passionate in these moments, foolhardy and reckless, and you can be powerful and poetic to the point where all you can say is, “Wow, that’s poignant.”
