We've got a job to do, and this is it

Today I realized, most people - even when they've seemed to hit rock bottom - continue to spend more time trying to solve everyone else's problems than really taking a minute to realize what a huge mess they're sitting in. Why do we all try to run away from the problems we can solve for ourselves and try to play heroin to someone else's story? Because the truth is, the only mess we can clean is our own.

Voyage Insondable

Sailing away,
deserting our dwellings
Our friends
Our family
Our enemies
Our lovers, too
Entrons ici en territoire inconnu

Plummeting
towards the abyss
Discouraged
Abandoned
Nostalgic for comforts,
for stable ground.

Winds propel
Waters agitate
Dampening our spirits
Hardening pieces
of our souls

Falling
Tumbling
Plummeting
An insignificant spec
on the horizon

Paralyzed beneath veils
A silent cry
like a darkening crescendo
Locked on the line
time draws neatly for us
Entrons ici en territoire inconnu

Fred Baby

Sometimes, I just miss having a best friend...
someone to laugh with,
someone to dance with.







"I'm like cat here, a no-name slob. We belong to nobody, and nobody belongs to us. We don't even belong to each other. "



Where's my "Fred Baby?"

And I'm dancing as if I were in the woods with you

I'm back to reading "The New Earth" [by. Eckhartt Tolle]. I had to take a little break from it and start living in my state of awareness, Here's a little juicy morsel to kick your morning off that I found pretty powerful...

"The ego doesn't know that your only opportunity for being at peace IS now. Or maybe it does know, and it is afraid that you may find this out. Peace, after all, is the end of the ego. How to be at peace now? By making peace with the present moment. The present moment is the field on which the game of life happens. It cannot happen anywhere else. Once you have made peace with the present moment, see what happens, what you can do or choose to do, or rather what life does through you. There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of all success and happiness: One With Life. Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realize that you don't live your life but life lives you. LIFE IS THE DANCE, AND YOU ARE THE DANCER."

You hold me without touch

I forgot how much I loved this song/video concept.
Ya dig?

High, neighbor!

Dom: "I'm so proud of you Ali!"

Phil: "Why are you proud of Ali?"

Dom: "Well look at her!"

Phil stops and looks me up and down with his stoned eyes...
"Why because she's sober?"

"Well aren't you cute!"

The next month is going to be such a wonderful learning experience for me.
I can't wait to take it all in, and be working on something that I'm truly passionate about again.
I'm already getting so inspired and motivated to work my ass off.
I feel so grateful and blessed for this opportunity, I don't even know how to express it.
I just really appreciate someone so talented, and someone who I admire and respect as an artist, giving me the opportunity to work with and learn from them.
I'm probably going to say "Thank you" way too many times, but I don't even care!

Here's to a month of hard work!
Ciao. xo

It's a brushfire spreading, feeding as it moves

Tomorrow is a big day for me.
[I'm crossing my fingers & toes!]
Time to prove something to myself
and gain some confidence once again.

Meet me at the North Shore

Get in my pocket
and fly away with me,
little dove.
The sky is so blue today
and the winds tastes so sweet.
Get in my pocket,
we will travel these cerulean seas.

207

I found a short story that I wrote for my creative writing class my sophomore year in high school. I re-read it for the first time since I wrote it and turned it in, and it definitely brought a few tears to my eyes. I have come so far from the naive and scared little girl I was, but I am glad I have put so much faith in the universe around me, because in fact, as I predicted - the journey has been epic, and I hope it continues to be filled with surprises. I feel so infinitely blessed.




The first time Cat walked through that musty low-income apartment hallway to number 207 she knew she’d be coming back again, and again. Even the chipping paint of the once white walls, that now seemed to be a slight shade of yellow, seemed more exciting than the varsity football game the rest of her so called “friends” were at. They would be drinking their cheap vodka out of water bottles, praying to not get expelled from school, while she drank her just-as-cheap vodka out of a red plastic cup wishing the night would never end.

She felt safe in that crowded little apartment not even a mile from her own home. It sort of excited her to think what her parents would do if they found out that their fourteen-year-old daughter wasn’t sleeping safely at her best friend’s house, like she told them earlier, but at an apartment owned by four guys over the age of eighteen. Not to mention how would they react to see her playing beer pong with the skill of a college frat boy? Or to see her flirting with guys who should see her as nothing more than “jail bait?” And that’s why her parents thought she was sleeping at Allison’s house for the night, and not her eighteen-year old friend Greg’s newly rented apartment.

At some point in the night, after being greeted with an anonymous “Heyyyy!” from the already budding group, she found herself the center of everyone’s attention. The mixture of liquor and heavy beats from the live DJ broadcasting on the radio always seemed to summon her hips to some sort of modern tribal ritual. Even if there wasn’t music playing Cat would have still kept her hips moving to some deep rhythm inside her soul. A few random bodies slid up to her and swayed with the habitual movement of her dance, always making sure her free hand had a filled drink in it. She knew the power her still slim hips had over those older boys’ straying minds but it didn’t really matter to her. She had one guy in mind, and he was the only one whose straying mind she cared to seduce.

Mark made the pit of her stomach turn over, and under, and inside out. He was in a band and didn’t even start becoming attractive until after the fourth or fifth shot. In this case, his looks weren’t her concern, it was his skills that kept him on her mind. She always felt like she was the one in control, that she was the one using him to get what she wanted, or at least he let her believe that. In her mind “a girl has needs too,” and he definitely knew how to get the job done. Their relationship, if you could call it that, was nothing more than in-the-moment drunken hook-ups. They seldom even talked outside of their intoxicated lip locked moments.

As much as she told herself she didn’t care about him, it still bothered her when the music stopped and she saw that scenester girl, with her stupid black studded belt and pink Converses, sitting on his lap in the corner of the room like she was something special. She was holding Mark’s drink and whispering something into his ear, and he had a smile on his face that she’d never seen before. The music was still playing, but she couldn’t really hear it anymore as she walked from the center of the room and sat down squeezing her way between two unfamiliar bodies on the couch. She could feel the color quickly fading from her face. She tipped her head back and let the last swig of cherry vodka slide slowly down the back of her throat, numbing the anxiety on its way down.

“Cat, what’s wrong?” screamed her best friend, and “homeowner,” Greg from mid-conversation across the room.

“Oh nothing! I’m just a little nauseous. I need some fresh air, that’s all,” she said trying to cover up her look of disappointment in the girl on Mark’s lap, that she was positive he had picked up on.

She pushed her way through the obnoxious unknown array of bodies, which seemed to have flooded into the apartment uninvited, to the sliding glass door of the balcony. As she stepped outside she caught a glimpse of her disheveled reflection in the glass door and concluded why it wasn’t her sitting on Mark’s lap. She looked like hell! As she stood on the frozen porch, watching the winter blow, with only the glass door separating her from the party, the cold seemed to sober some inner riot inside of her. Cat lit the palmed cigarette she bummed on her way out and balanced herself on a single chair. She sat beside the fake Christmas tree, which awkwardly sat outside over a month after this year’s snowless holiday, and questioned what she was even doing here.

She looked down through the cracks of the four-by-fours of the two-story balcony to the first floor patio below her. Her view was distorted through the small cracks, but she could still tell a small child must live there. The sprawled collection of brightly colored plastic toys seemed to be forcing her to recollect a childhood of riding with training wheels, shiny pink ribbons and a basket for her “big girl makeup” through the neighborhood while chasing boys with Barbie dolls and threatening to apply lipstick to their faces if they put snakes in her sandbox again. Cat tried to remember the last time her parents doted over her like they did during those years of pigtails and sent-home tests with the letter “A” written brilliantly across the top. Her short-term memory couldn’t seem to recall the last time her parents said anything along the lines of “Good job,” let alone suggest that they were proud of her.

She ashed her cigarette over the ledge of the balcony and leaned a little too far forward on the chair, losing her balance just enough to remind her of the amount of alcohol she had consumed in the past five hours. The ash floated two stories down turning a brilliant orange to a pale yellow until it burned lifeless into the darkness of the quiet winter night. As Cat went to take another calming drag of nicotine, she noticed not only that her hands were now cold, but they were wet. Minuscule molecules of water had formed into what would become the first snowfall of the season. Closing her eyes she not so secretly wished for a morning worthy of the title “Winter Wonderland,” and all the excitement it brought during those same years of pigtails and sent-home tests ornamented with that prized “A.” What did that “A” stand for anyways? Amazing? Astonishing? Astounding? Admirable? Advanced? What did it matter now as she sat isolated from her friends, who didn’t even seem to notice her prolonged absence, nothing seemed to matter now besides the cold wet dampness accumulating on her hands.

Cat closed her eyes because she didn’t need to look at what was happening at her fingertips anymore, the sensation was becoming even more vivid and stimulating. It was like her skin was falling off like clothing. The small droplets of water were accumulating into snowflakes and melting leisurely in her palms. Her pores seemed to be drinking the water and transferring a wave of alertness through her intoxicated limbs. Cat opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue, like her five-year-old self would do, until her tongue felt stiffened by the below-zero temperature. The wind was whispering forgotten memories through her hair as the snow melted the comfort of years long forgotten like awkward moments through her dampened clothing. A distant voice breezily echoed, “Cat, we know,” over and over as her hair got tangled with the force of the blizzard wind. All she wanted were the answers and the security she heard in that distant voice that grew closer with confidence in each passing second.

She stood up on her chair, trying to pinpoint where the voice was coming from. It seemed nearly feet away from the balcony, as if the wind was breathing passionate answers on billows of currents towards her perched figure. It continued to grow closer and closer, “Cat we can tell you,” and so did her desire to reach out and grab the voice, to shake from it what answers she could. Putting all of her weight on her left foot, she strategically placed her right foot on the balcony’s railing while steadying herself with her hands. Making sure she was stable enough, she lifted her left foot from the chair and placed it softly on the railing, pairing it with her right. Slowing lifting herself from a stooped position she deliberately stood up, raising her arms to the snow-weeping sky with a growing smile of satisfaction spreading across her once apathetic face.

Now this was the experience she had come for, this freedom. She was on the edge of finding answers to so many questions that kept her awake night after night. She forgot about the booze, the “friends,” Mark, her disappointment, and everything in that dingy apartment behind her. Cat stood on the balcony looking up into the night sky and imagined what life would be like months from now, a year from now, ten years from now. “Cat, have faith in me,” and Cat reached out to the voice that was nearly two feet from the balcony railing, and fell into the swirl of the season’s first snow not caring where it took her but trusting it would be epic.

Waging wars to shake the poet & the beat

Kings of Leon - Use Somebody

I love everything about you that hurts

I want my picture taken.
I want someone to take an honest portrait of me.
Something real.
Something tangible.



"It's a lie. It's a bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully, and... all the glittering assholes who appreciate art say it's beautiful 'cause that's what they wanna see. But the people in the photos are sad, and alone... But the pictures make the world seem beautiful, so... the exhibition is reassuring which makes it a lie, and everyone loves a big fat lie."

Voyagez la monde!

Another reason why Maggie is [one of] the best roommate, ever...
she's always making me laugh!

M: Who's passport is this?

A: Mine.

M: Where's it for?

A: Uhhh... the World.

When I fall asleep it is your eyes that close

His absence stabbed like a knife,
leaving trenches too deep to fill.
He was always hours late,
finding her on the clammy tiled floor
preparing for her finale.
Gazing down at a porceline face,
starry eyed, and forgetful of what took place
before the gentile warmth began pooling onto her boney thigh.

Dipping a pointy fingertip into her own paint
and smudging onto the Listerine green tile,
what she imagined a heart would look like,
[if she were to ever meet anyone who had one.]
Her hands were of an artist, aged beyond their years
fortifying a brush for a taste-test of love.

Reaching out, only for him to pull back in shock
Letting that crimson hand fall limp
echoing in her heartache.
He use to love holding those hands
and how they were always cold from her poor circulation.
Today he turned away in disgust.
Disgusted with himself for falling short
for letting her hate defeat his love for her.

Kissing her soft bitter lips
and laying his head aside hers just as the heater turned on
blowing on his face from the vent beneath her vanity
He fogged the mirror with his stale breath
Just to remember he was alive.

Missed connections

I love this song.


If you see her, say hello, she might be in Tangier
She left here last early spring, is livin' there, I hear
Say for me that I'm all right though things get kind of slow
She might think that I've forgotten her, don't tell her it isn't so.

We had a falling-out, like lovers often will
And to think of how she left that night, it still brings me a chill
And though our separation, it pierced me to the heart
She still lives inside of me, we've never been apart.

If you get close to her, kiss her once for me
I always have respected her for busting out and gettin' free
Oh, whatever makes her happy, I won't stand in the way
Though the bitter taste still lingers on from the night I tried to make her stay.

I see a lot of people as I make the rounds
And I hear her name here and there as I go from town to town
And I've never gotten used to it, I've just learned to turn it off
Either I'm too sensitive or else I'm gettin' soft.

Sundown, yellow moon, I replay the past
I know every scene by heart, they all went by so fast
If she's passin' back this way, I'm not that hard to find
Tell her she can look me up if she's got the time.
-Bob Dylan

Looking at art

If you're wondering why her placid fingers are gripping your waist so tightly...
it's because she needs you
or wants you.
Or maybe a combination of both.
Consider it a privilege
that she's reaching for you.

Goddamn you.

Another bag of bones

It’s a brushfire spreading, feeding as it moves. It’s a disappeared glacier, it’s an airborne flu. It's your disbelieving eyes locked in concrete miles. It’s your yawning conscious and your lawyer’s smile. It’s an occupied country, foaming at the mouth. No smoking gun, no mushroom cloud. It’s a military mother with a boy in hell. And it’s a flag draped casket down an oil well. It’s an Argentina school girl, gagged and bound. It’s a torture camp, it’s a long way down. It’s the constant brace and shock of now. It’s the whole damn world turned inside out, all right. It’s a march to extinction with your god in step. It’s his name in your mouth, it’s his cross on your neck. It’s a farm boy sprinting over desert dirt. And he’s panting the ‘Our Father’ in staccato spurts. Now that's his automatic rifle and it tells no lies. That’s his truth in your stomach, it’s no alibi. But the trouble lies on the other side. With an equal truth prepping for his holy night. He sees his crescent and the star in the virgin sky. He hears the call of milk and honey from the afterlife. And as he eases to the check point, he is calm and sure. It’s collateral damage, it’s the cost of war. It’s another bag of bones for the gods to sort. It’s just another bag of bones for the gods to sort. It’s the species disappearing, all the birds fly south. In a January heat wave and a pulsing crowd. It’s an African militia, kids with sub machines. It’s a conflict diamond on your bride to be. It’s the dispossessed lining up every gate. It’s the facts worth facing, faced way too late. It’s the mission of modernity, go get what’s yours’. ’Til there’s nothing leftover to get no more. And it’s not what were owed but it’s what we’ve earned. And it’s closer than we realized that it's time now, to burn. It’s time now to burn. Oh, it’s time now to burn.
-K.Devine

I'm leaving my peace with you

"God is always on time, he's never late, but he's rarely early."
- Greg Barette


In the spiritual life, we need to pray for our faith to hold out before we pray for the material things. Hold in your faith. You're getting through every time. It may not be according to your timing, but your prayers will be answered. Isn't that wait faith is? Establish your faith in peace. It happens from the inside out. Build consciousness first and it will show up in your outer world.


"People are moving, and learning, and loving... and all the bad news is not the final say. YOU are going to determine your experience, and your experience won't be conditional or determined by what you see... your experience will be determined by what's in your mind and in your consciousness."
- Greg

God Save, McQueen!

Alexander McQueen Spring '09

Coloring

A: "I love Samantha"
H: "That's because you are Samantha"

I've got a crush on you

Christian Siriano





Spring 2009

Resolved

I never make "New Years Resolutions." I don't really understand why people feel that January 1st, "the start of a new year," needs to be their excuse to make positive changes in their lives and set new goals. Why not do it NOW!? Throughout the year I am constantly challenging myself with new goals and when I feel my lifestyle is becoming "unhealthy" I act on it in the moment and make the necessary changes. The whole idea of a new year does put you in the spirit to make these changes, so I do encourage everyone to take the opportunity to think about what they need to do for themselves to live a healthier and happier life... emotionally and physically.

Starting 2 weeks ago I started making some transitions in my life, because I didn't see the point in waiting for January 1st.

1. Before I left for Detroit, I started running again. I'm committing myself to at least 2 days of running 30+ minutes with light lifting and 2 days of lifting for 40+ min, and 1 day of yoga. I have no excuse to not go to the gym since there's one in my basement, and it makes me feel physically healthy and it does wonders for my anxiety.

2. I am also giving up using/purchasing plastic water bottles, because they are consuming mass amounts of our oil reserves to produce and contributing to the ridiculous amount of waste our country produces. I got a Kor One water bottle for Xmas and I've been keeping it filled and in my bag, which has resulted in my drinking much more water! Check out their website korwater.com, and if you are concerned about tap water - you should really research how "clean" that bottled water is you're drinking... personally I am going to stick to the tap. :]


3. I have also slowly been making a transition from a vegetarian diet to a vegan. I've been vegetarian for 5 years now and strongly believe in the health benefits of a diet free of animal products. I've been reading a lot about alternatives for vegans to fulfill all their nutritional needs and I feel it is something I can easily transition to, and in the process better myself and my environment. I'm not doing this as means of loosing weight, but I strongly believe in a "greener" lifestyle and believe this is something I can easily do to be a more conscious global community member.

2009 is going to be a good year, I've decided.

10 of my favorite CD's from 2008

10. Lydia - "Illuminate"
9. Brett Dennen - "Hope for the Hopeless"
8. Coldplay - "Viva la Vida"
7. Manchester Orchestra - "Let My Pride Be What's Left Behind" EP
6. Cut/Copy - "In Ghost Colours"
5. John Mayer - "Continuum"
4. Cold War Kids - "Robbers and Cowards"
3. City and Colour - "Bring Me Your Love"
2. Ryan Adams & the Cardinals - "Cardinology"
1. Kings of Leon - "Only By the Night"

You will always be the same

You need to get out on your own,
so you can grow up!
She is holding you back,
but most importantly
she is stripping you of the joy
of saying "I did it myself!"



Enabler
en·abler
Pronunciation:
\i-ˈnā-blər, -bəl-ər\
Function: noun
Date: 1615
: one that enables another to achieve an end ; especially : one who enables another to persist in self-destructive behavior (as substance abuse) by providing excuses or by making it possible to avoid the consequences of such behavior.

It's a Friday night affair

Foot taps
To the beat
Of anxious heart strings

Departing
Le maison
I have currated
For myself

Tap
Tap
Tap
Tappitytaptap

Arriving
In rooms
Holdings photos
I was too sentimental
To destroy

Your scent
Lingering
In the floor boards
Lingering
In my bed sheets

Mine.

Never have I ever
Never have I ever
Never have I ever

Never will I ever
Hold a soul
Like yours

You're light, you're love

With sprinkles on top

Three passions have governed my life

"If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others."
-ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH

Time is eternity

Reality is a question
of realizing how real
the world is already.

Your sex is on fire

To this day, the best thing I've ever heard...
"I want to hug your face with my eyes."


:]

Afraid, not scared

It's sick, it's selfish, it's pathetic & it makes no sense... but, I miss my old body more than anything.
No matter how healthy I get & how normal I get I can't get IT out of my head.
I don't act on the urges any more, which I'm proud of, but I'm never happy - and I'm rather miserable
I hate this body I'm in right now.
This isn't me & I don't even know how to deal with myself.
I'm going to the gym right now, and it's 2am because if I don't I'm just going to lay awake looking at old pictures being depressed and I'd rather be productive.
I'm pathetic.
Dear God, please give me the strength.

I can't take my mind off of you

I watched Closer the other night at a friend's apartment & it made me totally fall in love with the movie again & with Damien Rice.

Love is Madness

I found some pictures from a particular weekend,
a long time ago.
They make me smile. :]
These are some good people.

I still hold your hand in mine, when I am asleep

James Blunt "Goodbye My Lover" came on my iTunes while on random play just now....

I remember laying in bed next to him on our last night together. The music was playing softly as we tried to fall asleep, but neither of us wanted to close our eyes and give up on the last few moments of being together. This song came on, and he sang it to me. In his perfect English accent that always made me weak at the knees. He sang it so beautifully, I didn't even expect it. I miss his arms and the way that I just seemed to fit so perfectly. It felt okay to let him hold me, I wanted him to hold me - I couldn't get close enough to him. Even though he was singing "Goodbye my lover, goodbye my friend..." we both knew it wasn't going to be a "goodbye," but simply a "see you later." You can't give up on something that good.

I learned a lot that week with that beautiful foreign soul.

The freckles in your eyes

Laying in bed reading all day - felt this was worth sharing....

Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form. In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love. What is God? The eternal One Life underneath all the forms of life. What is love? To feel the presence of that One Life deep within yourself and within all creatures. To be it.

Therefore, all love is the love of God.

Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the "love" of ego. However, the intensity with which true love is felt can vary. There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more clearly and more intensely than others, and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs.




"You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter. "

Like knives

Faces became the canvases for Maggie & my art projects tonight.
We procrastinated our homework because Hillary came home with a bag of makeup from the beauty closet at Teen Vogue and we got a little excited.
Maggie did my face & I did Hillary's.
Things got a little crazy!


My handy work!

I threw on a life preserver, but preservation is only temporary

I haven't seen any live music (bands, musicians, ect.) since I moved here to the city. If you know me you will understand that LIVE music is a necessity in my life/weekly routine. I've probably averaged a show or concert at least once a week since I was in 6th grade. Since my first local hall show, to my first experience at St. Andrews in Detroit, I have been addicted to the intensity and freedom of standing in a crowd at a concert. I love music because of how it makes me feel inside, like I am the only person in the room and the floor is MY dance floor. I love feeling the bass and pumping percussion move me to dance like no one is watching. I love being apart of a crowd, gathered like a small community all there united with a common interest and love for that band at the front of the room. I love the friends I have met through years of being apart of these small communities and the memories I have made.

It's been about 4 months now and I am going a little CRAZY!
I don't care if it's even a musician with an acoustic guitar at a coffee shop or you sitting on my bedroom floor playing me my old favorite 80's & 90's classics. At this point - I need to hear something loud and passionate - SOON! Come find me.

A dull ache & a slow bleed

"It's the lies that we tell ourselves to make it feel alright
But who's gonna get your back when you're always turning around"

Teaching you how to swim

"Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs, or a person you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain. That is why, after the initial euphoria has passed, there is so much unhappiness, so much pain in intimate relationships. They do not cause pain and unhappiness. They bring out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you. Every addiction does that. Every addiction reaches a point where it does not work for you anymore, and then you feel the pain more intensely than ever. This is one reason why most people are always trying to escape from the present moment and are seeking some kind of salvation in the future. The first thing that they might encounter if they focused their attention on the NOWWW is their own pain, and this is what they fear. If they only knew how easy it is to access in the Now the power of presence that dissolves the past and its pain, the reality that dissolves the illusion. If they only knew how close they are to their own reality, how close to God. Avoidance of relationships in an attempt to avoid pain is not the answer either. The pain is there anyway. Three failed relationships in as many years are more likely to force you into awakening than three years on a desert island or shut away in your room. But if you could bring intense presence into your aloneness, that would work for you too. "

From The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle
I'm re-reading this book. I read it back when I was in treatment my first time [4 + years ago] & feel like I need a little refreshment right now. I highly recommend it.

Desperate desires

In order to win, you have to want it more.