impulse

Today I cut my hair. It was a bit of a impulse, kindled last night and fulfilled on my way home from school today.

Maybe it's the weather. After the past few weeks of cold and snow and sleet, today sprung up 66 degrees and sunny. I drove home from school with my windows down and the music up.

Maybe that's what's causing this restlessness. I feel punchy. I'm gearing up for a fight and I don't know who with or what against.
I'm in the mood to say no.
I'm in the mood to write graffiti in sharpie in unobtrusive places.  "It's okay." "Someone loves you." "XOXOXO"
I'm in the mood to write angry feminist literature.
I'm in the mood to fall swift, bubbling, head-over-heels in love.
I'm in the mood to get in my car and drive hard and fast to the nearest ocean.
Because this kind of feeling is eased by that kind of roar and swell and immenseness. This craving for life is stimulated through the living.

I don't know how soon this feeling will go away. I can't promise that I won't shake some things up. I'm in the mood to do that.

I might become a bad influence.

I feel like a lit fuse. I can't tell you what will happen next.

poem for a chilly Tuesday

A god can do it. But tell me how
a man can follow him through the narrow
lyre. The human self is split; where two
heartways cross, there is no temple to Apollo.

Song, as you teach it, is not desire, not
a wooing of something that's finally attained;
song is existence. Easy for the god. But
when do we exist? And when does he spend

the earth and the stars on our being?
When we love? That's what you think when you're young;
not so, though your voice forces open your mouth,––

learn to forget how you sang. That fades.
Real singing is a different kind of breath.
A nothing-breath. A ripple in the god. A wind.

- Sonnet 3, from Sonnets to Orpheus by Ranier Maria Rilke
(translated by David Young)

we are bound by symmetry

'This is the story of the boys who love you,
Who love you now and loved you then.
Some were sweet, and some were cold and snubbed you,
Some just laid around in bed.
Some would crumble you straight to your knees
Did it cruel, did it tenderly.
Some had crawled their way into your heart
To rend your ventricles apart.
This is the story of the boys who love you.'

Red Right Ankle, by The Decemberists


I'm sick. I've been sick for a week. And if you showed up at my door today, with Inception and mozzarella sticks (and maybe a burrito), I would share my blankets and my tea and be your best friend.

This is a good song.

My thoughts are discombobulated. I'm sick of being sick.

But I hope you're having a nice weekend!

a champagne toast

There are hazards to befriending a drummer. You will be drummed upon frequently. Your knees, your forearms, the top of your head: anything within drumming distance is fair game.
For Christmas, he will use his drumsticks to knit you a scarf. He will make you mixtapes with metal songs oddly and wonderfully combined with the Jonas Brothers.
When you make scones, he'll smudge your forehead with batter before you're quick enough to stop him.

None of that encompasses the hazards of befriending a heavy metal screamer. He will send you the angrily beautiful lyrics he's written, and ask your opinion of them. He'll encourage you to write your own.
He'll send you haikus on scraps of paper in the mail. He'll give you tea and chocolate and music and advice. And in the dark of the movie theatre, when the White Orc appears suddenly onscreen, he'll grab your hand and bite it, and then grin at you in the silver light.

The very most dangerous hazard isn't any of these.
It's the 6 AM when you're alone in the airport with your feet propped up on your carry-on suitcase, and melancholy muzak dripping from the ceiling. You suddenly have to blink very hard, because 1,000 miles feels so real and tangible and solid all at once.

No one warns you of these perils in the beginning. But even if they did, it wouldn't change a thing. Sometimes friendships, like goldfish, grow to fill the space they occupy. And with that chance, 1,000 miles seems no less huge, but a little more golden.