aliceinwonders

what I've realized is this. you can't get happiness just from knowledge or from lonesomeness, no matter how many poems you write or awards you claim. and you can't get it just from interaction either. too much interaction is too much talk is too many words. Words tend to obscure things. I always find myself saying what I don't really mean for the sake of forging a connection. But that's besides the point. what I mean to say is that I've found satisfaction in something much deeper, something I can't quite condense into sentences. It's sort of the feeling when you're laughing so deeply and thoroughly that even after the joke is forgotten and your voice gets hoarse you forget you were ever jealous of anyone, ever self-conscious of your own contribution to humanity. or its like walking to that spot in weston nurseries where the plants are all tangled and wild because nobody tends to them anymore and seeing the light dim and remembering all those you dared to come and trespass. it's you'll all float on anyway because that song you liked way back then says so and when you play it in your head it still sounds so honest. I'm so caught in my head but  I'm happy because I know how rich my life has been, how many people I've managed to laugh and run and sing with. How many fine silent places I've been.

Next Stop:
Santa Fe New Mexico

Even boston looks beautiful today,
with the businessmen peaking out of half orange buildings
and the harbor waves mumbling soft 
as the sun gets weak

post man on a green no-gear  meets the drunken glow of lamposts
to sharpen a  bleuecollar sidewalk
as the pupil of evening closes
and I'm still high from the memory of your face,
from the irreplacable solidity of a body well nourished
by the sweet food of foreign hands
which this morning traced the secrets of my freckles
that hang beneath wrinkle crossroads
and yankee blue eyes.

I like how the photos on my camera begin and end in september. I like seeing the gold light sneak its way into all those memories, into front street and and the graveyard and the faces of all my friends. It's so easy to diminish the past in dismissals and regrets, to color it pale and unremarkable. But those bundled days in January really were as pretty as the crazed vibrancy of July. We laughed and we watched some good movies and some dumb movies and we tripped around lake whitehall when the air was nice. I think we've gotten a better year than most. I'm glad I have a few good shots. 

"So then I did coke with Allen Ginsberg, after my gay phillipino  friend  introduced me to Jim Morrisson.  Had hair down to his ass, that skinny tough migrant. Said  I was cool even though I was straight.  It was a great time, great time." 

I love ex-hippies with a little wine in them.

And like eyes the evening
opens its electric pupils
in streetlamps spitting soul
on the flat faced hudson river

and if you are silent
you can hear
the click of wires
as bright men snap bullets at the dark
and new york shakes its muscles
in protest of sleep


man
I'm going to relish these
rooftopsmokestaintrainheavy days
days that loose their names
and laugh at the fraying clock
on your bedside table
who was absent when we rode our bikes
past the evening taxis
and ate cherries in the gauze
between 4:59 and dawn

that sun was no secret when it rose.

I have nothing to say because I'm

So before I make a long philosophical entry that will bore everyone, I want to get some facts down. I've been wandering for a lot of this summer, in both a physical and mental sense. I'm afraid I'm coming across as slightly delirious, but there are roots to the insanity.

CHRONOLOGICALLY 

1.) Andrew Bird

2.) I met poets. I wrote too much.

3.) I spent more time with children in two weeks than I ever had in my life. And I enjoyed it.

4.) I fell in love. The real bad, late-night headache kind of love that makes  your throat hurt and your sentences spiral into tangential messes

5) I found out he likes me too I guess.

6.) I went deep into West Virginia to repair a house for a lonely old man, along with 73 strangers from one of those churches my parents never brought me too and I never quite understood

And in between it all there have been blueberries and fireflies and sparklers and incomplete dresses and lake excursions and broken guitar bands and just too much time on the roof and with the mosquitoes in the crabgrass

And now, I am about to see this kid again and go spiraling off to New York City. Then back again to New York State and maybe Cape Cod and maybe Portland and then at the edge of summer I'll be in the city again. All the roaming gets me off balance, but I'm almost more afraid that I prefer it this way. I'm not so good at real life.

I've got someone to go to these days.

If you could give me bombs
I would split my love like shrapnel
and scatter it in the mouths of glass eyed artists
chewing their pens in New York City and Malaysia

And they would cling like children
to the scraps of  affection
encased in those lonely aortas
that tremble in their pencil heavy hands 

And they would bite off the tooth of solitude
until the blood in my gums flooded the breath in my heart
and every acre of the world would burn
by the friction of our touching hands

And the photographers would split their thumbs on the flashes of cameras
And the painters would fill their eyes with oil and color the tombs acrylic
And no I would not put daisies in your guns
because artillery has no language for light,
no word for flower or kiss or skin

And I have no time to change
the lingua franca of hate


----critique, maybe? I don't know why I'm publishing this.

their light punctuates our skin like momentary candles and we are running on our own time, with our own cars and our own songs and our own destinations. and we are trying to grasp these moments, to say "this is summer" before summer burns out. because we will remember nights like these when we are old and uninterested in fireflies or hidden gravestones. these kind of nights remind me of my luck. thanks, everyone, for being my friend.

today I met three children whose favorite color is black. This must mean something, but I'm not sure what.

says he wants to be brilliant but
he can't stop talking
can't push the words from his teeth to paper
while he cry cry cries for black israel
spitting the wounds of his country
on to impermanent nets of ink
and cool quick teenagers
with tongues too fast for wisdom
hearts spinning verbs and adjectives
for all those truths that are so speakable
but never last.

/quotes/
"Don't tell anyone, but I'm not a poet!" 
"Who doesn't believe in energy?"
""You look like Juno." 
"I just want to meet believers." 
"My friend is a fire-breather." 
"It was so annoying, George Clooney's nephew kept hitting on me. I'm not gay I swear." 

"All men have the stars," he answered, "but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travellers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all the stars are silent. You--you alone--will have the stars as no one else has them--"

-The Little Prince

Slowly, I am learning to be concrete. I insulated walls this weekend and squash this afternoon, crushing the grass between my fingers until it bled into the thick fertility of my mother's garden. I am learning to make things, to offer up something that the rest of the world can trust. I want to learn to cook next, to paint later. I want to be self-sufficient, I want to look at my hands and see that I am no better than the green dirt that stains them.

The strawberries are growing!

(I have a picture, but I'm dumb and can't figure out how to put it on livejournal...)

Today didn't feel like the seniors were graduating. It felt boring and drowsy and normal, and altogether lacking in momentum. So, instead of getting emotional over the fact that half my friends are out of this high-school (or melting in an identity crisis about being older than I feel) I just got sleepy and I just daydreamed. Sometimes I get so tired I feel like liquid is pooling up and pouring out of my skull, my mind so numb I can't remember sentences after reading them. Particularly not french sentences about french-canadians (ehem, Marie de Champelaine...).
So instead of reading or ruminating I just thought of all the different lives I wish I had. These daydreams are more occasional than they were when I was a little kid, maybe because my own life is much fuller now. But here are a few of them, anyway:

1.) I wish I was a farm girl in a family with 6 farm children (3 boys, 3 girls) where all the girls have different hair. I have black hair. My job is to pick the flowers and fold the napkins.

2.) I wish I was an 80 year old homeless folk musician with a smoky voice and missing teeth.

3.) I wish my family were diplomats, and we lived in Vietnam or the Carribbean, and I spoke 7 languages. (English, French, Italian, Spanish, Gernman, Gaelic [I've always wanted to speak gaelic], and Vietnamese/indigenous carribbean dialect) 

4.) I wish I was a reclusive mystery writer who lived in Maine in a beautiful, silent house with a beautiful, silent husband. People always pester me for interviews but I don't give a shit and never answer my door.

5.) I wish I was a cattle-rancher from New Mexico who occasionally went down to real mexico for the nightlife and magically-nonpolluted cities and dios de los muertos celebrations.

That's all for now, mabe I'll think of more later.

"I was in love five times before I met your grandmother. That's why I'm not homophobic. I think the gays should be able to get married and be as miserable as the rest of us."

"You know, I think writers are the best artists. Because they create worlds!"

"Abstract art is just bogus. I like things that take SKILL to make."



....I wish I talked like this.

the problem is we're all trapped like little game pieces
inside our own playing boards
caught in the invisible patterns that regulate
our steps on the tricolor squares
and our brains keep on repeating
the same numb sighs and exhalations
and that's the reason
he's already developed a tolerance for alcohol
at 17
and she can't stop scratching at the dirt beneath her fingernails
and I can never talk about
the insistent pain
that screams inside my throat

but soon I wonder if all
the funny figurines
will crack back into the ashes that made them
and we will have no compass,
no red and yellow two dimensions
with which to carve our maps and boundaries
and shape the subtle madness of our lives.

May = Self Combustion
June = Get Pregnant
July = Get Abortion