Scratches

The scratch of pen on paper - that’s what it’s all about at the end of the day, right? That’s what it’s always been about. Sometimes it’s scratches that turn into bytes, pen and paper that becoming clacking keyboard keys. Sometimes it’s someone else’s scratched out thoughts you turn to in books and blogs and memes and stories. Sometimes it’s an essay, sometimes a hurried cube drawn on the corner of a napkin, used and discarded and never thought of again. But always, permanent or ephemeral or somewhere in the long road in the middle, always it’s the scratches you turn to, to make sense of it all. Sense of the bruises and the cuts and the muddled befuddled puddle of thoughts in your soul, sense of the clouds drifting across the roiling landscape of your mind, the butterflies blossoming in your stomach, the cracks forming and freezing over and melting in your chest, the wheezing insecurity in your lungs as your heart alternates between a beat of “not enough” and “just this”.

Just some scratches, runes, hieroglyphics. That’s all there is to us.

~ Sam 

Lost

I turn the music off and all I'm left with is to pick up my personal pieces

Bear with me (or don't, it is entirely up to you to leave, I will not make you stay, I will never make you stay)- I'm here because this is one of those times when I need a blank space, and my diary is too full of thoughts and emotions to offer me that, and because I want to think about how I am feeling, and not why, and this is where I turn to for that. I haven't written in a while, and I'm rusty, and I suppose this is what it feels like to climb onto a bike after you haven't ridden in a while- not that I would know, I never learned to ride without my training wheels. (Maybe that's why I'm so cautious and concerned about dealing with adult life- I never even mastered how to deal with childhood, and my foundations are shakier than most.) Except perhaps it is more like getting on a bicycle after years of not riding, but when drunk- because not only must I learn to ride again, but I must also, simultaneously, marshal my thoughts into some semblance of coherence. 

So open your eyes and see how our horizons meet

Can you tell I'm playing all my Ed Sheeran songs? He still gets to me, and I hope he always will, will always be able to wash me away with his voice and his words. I will never be able to write like that, but as long as someone can, I suppose I don't really need to. 

Where was I? Oh yes. Blank space- an empty page. I'm not sad/depressed and frustrated this time, like I was the last time I decided to use this blog for myself, wholly and unabashedly, without censorship or self-restraint- or at least, that isn't all I'm feeling- it is not that simple this time, the process of characterizing my thoughts and feelings. I suppose I'm lonely, and in need of a good laugh- I suppose I'm in need of a conversation, an actual, real-life conversation, which does not revolve solely around someone/me telling me/someone else what to do. I suppose I'm in need of a life.

We'd go anywhere our minds would take us

As I was saying, before I was distracted by the newspaper ("Once upon a time, there was a home." I wonder if real estate advertisers realize the impact their words might have on one sad girl sitting in a white and beige room, with clothes strewn around and books neatly piled, a girl with a propensity for embracing everything into the interpretation of her experiences? For that matter, I wonder if most of us realize what impact our words might have. Are we too self-absorbed, or do we just not give ourselves so much importance in other people's lives?), and the need to clean my room (put my shoes in a line of neat, orderly pairs, because you know which shoes belong with each other even if you don't with people), and the fact that it is too warm without a fan (suffocating- pressed down- smothered- but there is nothing holding me here, there is nothing but myself keeping me from walking into the fresh air and clean sunshine, or at least switching on the fan and drawing a blanket about myself, but then again, I'm quite the force, no mean feat to contend with) and too cold with it, as I was saying, my thoughts are a meandering mess right now, at least as entangled as my first attempt at weaving would be. 

I tried to carry the weight of the world, but I only have two hands 

I think this is, at least in part, brought on by that god-awful (beautiful, evocative, heart-wrenching) book the Marshmallow decided would be a good idea to present me with (I cannot tell you how grateful I am for it- I hate you). I think it is, in part, brought on by the fact that I was silly and careless, and that I forgot something I shouldn't have- that I am not, it may come as a surprise to learn, a perfectly functioning human. In part, it is brought on by the fact that we are not talking. In part, it is because I only have two hands. It is because I am terrified, walking the streets alone, my heart thudding at all the threats walking around. Because I use too many commas and spend too much money and eat too much junk and drink too much coffee (a recent addition, this one) and feel too irrationally. It is because I have too much time on my hands and too many thoughts in my mind, and feelings which refuse to form themselves into manageable words.  

It is because I am young, and lost, and I cannot see the road ahead, or recognize the road I'm on right now, for that matter, and because the only necklace I want to buy has pendants of an arrow and crossroads, because even my accessories must reflect, must scream quietly, elegantly, how very lost I am. 

Should this be the last thing I see, I want you to know it's enough for me

I wonder what I'll feel that way about, and when. I have before, I have been lucky enough to have had moments where I was ready to die, such was my contentment. 

(August 20th, in an auto by Infinitea, I see you sitting in the window and it is enough. I do not even need to go inside. You are enough. Waking up to open the door as you step into our room with a suitcase and a careworn smile, here at last, it is enough. Two years ago- stepping drained and battle-worn into my mother's rejuvenating arms, her life-giving smile, home, it is enough.  Your small projectile self barreling into my arms as I surprise you with my presence, it is more than I could have imagined. Collapsing on a white bed with wheels in a room where the AC does not work, your head in my lap, and you sitting behind me with your head on my shoulder- it is enough. Under a tree, my head on your shoulder, it was enough.)

What will be enough for me?

Maybe it's all part of a plan

This is my favourite Ed song- in the way that Ode to a Nightingale is my favourite poem, because it touches a place in my soul other poems and songs don't, even if my mind recognizes that they are just as lovely, even if they sway my heart just as much- and I am going to choose to stop with this one, even though there were songs and accompanying thoughts I didn't quote and write about ("It's all right to die, cause death's the only thing you haven't tried."- so melodramatic, and of course I love it.) I'm going to choose to stop because I'm okay now, my thoughts have hushed and settled down for a nap, the buzzing and the noise has quietened to listen to the songs and music, because I have comforted myself, and my hands are free again. Because dinner is getting cold, and I have friends and work to attend to. Because this is enough for me, for now. And perhaps contentment and peace, like belonging and joy, must be taken in the moments when we can find them. 

~Sam 

For You

"Dear You,

Today my pen stopped working, and I finally got the courage to write how I feel about you. I checked three times to make sure it really had stopped working, scribbling inklessly across pages and pages, ensuring it wouldn't betray me with ink at the last moment. It didn't work, and the haunting (evocative? beautiful?) music played on, and it really was too dramatic a moment to pass by, and so I wrote. I wrote that I loved you, and that I was a fool, and I wondered to the still-blank sheet why I must be like this. I wrote that you were beautiful, and I was not, but it would be the same even if it was any other way, if I was beautiful and you were not, or we both were, or we both were not- because I would still be in love, and you would not. The sheet listened, oh it listened like you never could, absorbing every word, and leaving just enough of an impression to show it was listening, and I wrote everything, I said it all. And then I rubbed the sheet out gently, rubbed out every indention of my emotions, rubbed till my hand was warm and the paper was smooth and every slightest trace of my love gone. 

And now I've confessed all I felt, and all I'm left with is a blank sheet and a pen which does not work.

Love,
Me." 

I'm not even sure why we have viewers anymore (if we do).

Hi, it's time for the normal spiel again, i.e., it has been a long while and I am in no position to write something deep or coherent [shit loads of work left, and a friend is making the strangest noises as she experiences Confessions of a Shopaholic-the movie, not the book-for the first time]. So here is a bunch of things I've thought since the last time I blogged, in no particular order.


Loving is giving more, and getting more than you'd ever imagined you could or would.

Beginnings and endings are so special to us, to all of us, as a race. One rarely comments about the beauty of the sun at high noon-it's always a sunrise or a sunset that wells the heart. Maybe because they actually are more beautiful, but the same can be said about births and deaths, which have a way of bringing us together in a way that most occasions don't. We celebrate birthdays every year, a symbol of a beginning; we celebrate weddings and moving and retirements and farewells, because they're a new beginning, and an ending.


Not yet.
Not yet decided,
Not yet written.
Not yet a star,
Not yet a somebody.



Putting something into words is such a big deal. It imparts such a sense of certainty. Permanence. Words are so..lasting.



I am intensely fascinated by bruises, both metaphorical and literal.



Epiphany of the week: I've realized that I actually have hope for the human race, despite all our contradictions and our wars and our stupid silly quarrels and our egos and our occasional insipidity. Despite our Hitlers and our Idi Amins. Because we still have Schindlers, so many Schindlers that we don't even know their names. Friends, lovers. Who sacrifice for us, even if it is something as simple as staying up all night just to let us rant. And despite what Ayn Rand may have preached, I still do believe that to sacrifice for someone is the greatest thing you can do for them, and, in the right situations, for yourself.


~Sam

The Difficulty of Explaining Something to Someone on the Outside

Well the title sort of says it all. I just finished reading The Devil Wears Prada (not a good idea, should've finished Lolita instead) and the main character, Andrea, talks about how her work life is so completely insulated from the outside world, and how no one on the outside can understand her, not even her best friend.
And that is so, so true. I highly doubt I'm the only person who relates with that. People keep asking me how life is, how things are going, how I like this and that, how I like my new place, and how do you explain? How do you possibly put all the feelings into words and explain them to someone who isn't there and will not be able to understand (and usually, who isn't even listening, which is just pissing off)? When you put something into words, it becomes so real, so understated, so..incomplete. Because you can't speak someone a blogpost giving them a complete picture of your life. Can't answer a "How are you?" with a thousand word reply of how, exactly, you are. You just say "Fine" and move on with life. Because even if you gave them the thousand words, they still wouldnt understand, wouldnt be there, in your place, feeling and seeing and being.
Much as I value words, they aren't the same as feelings, as participation, as presence.

~Sam