Valiant1785's Xanga

if at first...

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 02:36:21 GMT

To her, she speculated, chewing purposefully on the edge of her eraser, it did matter what one said or did at any given moment. It might not seem to others that being intentional or honest right off the bat with a person would be the preferable or safe way to go, but... it had to be the way, right?

She tucked her hair annoyedly behind her ear and sighed, turning to face the back "yard", which wasn't a yard at all but really a series of parking spaces and other people's backyards. Legitimate backyards. Even a Slip-N-Slide was out in the open, with an inflatable shark.
Must be nice...
Though, the shark seemed to be drooping a little...
Hm... small comfort...

Turning back to the paper she hunkered down again over this concept. It didn't seem fair that in a lot of ways she had a lot of friends. There was no shortage of people in her life, she could attest to that, even view it as a positive fact, but every now and again would pop up a stranger who, once she met them, would resonate with the core of her spirit. She couldn't put her finger on it, but there was an element in these meetings with these rare and random people that simply could not be recreated.

And that was frustrating.

It was a fact, she realized, absently stroking her shoulder, that you can't make people do anything. And perhaps these people who you're connecting with just happen to connect that way with everyone else they come into contact with.
So, the real question would be, why you?
Why would YOU, of all the billions and trillioins of people they know, be so worth their time and effort to invest in?
And you just want them to know, like you know, how interesting and rare this connection is, and....
well... isn't it special to you too?

This last part she said out loud, mostly wanting to hear the words themselves, adding their realism to this dream-like theory. She said it because she wanted to hear it said to her, and this was the closest she could get to that at the present moment.
Because you can't make it.

She knew, she nodded her head for a moment and lowered herself to sit on the carpeting in the living room.
Legs all sprawled out, arms all the way back, feeling like she could just melt and disappear into that carpet. And wouldn't that be nice for a change? Just a bit of berber... not filling any higher purpose except to be a shred of a brainless community, made to serve as footing (somewhat comfortable, but not too inviting), not to think.

She wanted to watch a movie.

A nice '80's movie, with an easy yet strange plotline, fun and lively characters, quirky relationships.
Something that was just enough out of the realm of reality to believe in it, though still talking about good and relevant things.
Yes.
She smiled, and started listing the possible movies in her head, toeing the velour ottoman.

Hopefully at some point, people would just start trying more to make their connections worthwhile and lasting,
and no one would have to worry about "ruining" anything...
because, really, she decided, you can't ruin anything that wasn't real in the first place...

-----------------------------------------------------------------
SPEECH
sugared peaches
eagerly enveloped
conditional harvest...

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"One question: do you need... someone, or do you need me?..."
-Lloyd Dobler

how very...

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:21:20 GMT

So, the state of my bedroom had been a little inside joke for a little over a month now, mainly because it's seemingly a full-fledged tornado aftermath...
My reasoning behind cleaning or not cleaning my room is based on the fact that only I really ever SEE my bedroom, so technically, to push me to a caring point, it has to stress me out enough for me to clean it...

Which brings us to Scenario 1, entitled Housemate's Whole Family Comes to Visit:

A couple weeks ago, one of my housemates' family came to visit for a day, and I couldn't spend any time with them so I told her to bring them by my work to say goodbye to me before they left. They came in and one of the first things her mom says to me is, "So, your bedroom could use some cleaning, hm?"---
I was mortified. No person should EVER have seen my room. So of course, really embarrassed, I mumbled something about being extremely sorry and wishing they hadn't ever seen my room. and I think I said something about cleaning it. Her WHOLE FAMILY. Saw my room. Ridiculous.

Which brings us to Scenario 2, called My Performance Review at Starbucks:

Three days after the Family Visit, I had my performance review set up at work. So I'm sitting down with my boss and she immediately says, "Nice room."................WHAAAaaaa?? you're my BOSS, how in **** do you know what my bedroom looks like? My element-torn bedroom that no naked human eye should witness?? I was, obviously, really embarrassed again, and a little peeved at this point, and asked her how she happened to see my room. She mentioned that she had been at my house a couple days earlier to meet up with my co-worker housemate for a project and had forced to her to let her see my room. Of course.
So now the count reads: Someone's Whole Family plus My Random Boss.
And I still didn't clean my room.

Which brings us to Scenario 3, known as So We Called the Police, Just In Case:

Last week, I was at my friend's house at about 10pm and I got a call from my one of my housemates who asked me if I locked the door when I left the house. I told her I hadn't been home since 8am and asked her what was going on. She said that they had just gotten back and the outside door was unlocked but the inside door was wide open and they were scared, so they were going to call the police just in case. I thought that might have been a TAD extreme but since I wasn't actually at the house I just let it go and said for her to call me when they got it all figured out.
So she called me about 1/2 hour later and this is how that conversation went:

H- "So, the police searched the house and everything's fine."
Me- "Oh! good, I'm glad..."
H- "Yeah, they had to bring the dogs in and everything..."
Me- "The dogs? Huh, that's funny..."
H- "Yeah... they searched the house and then came outside to where we were and said that the house was fine... but they thought they might have found a room that had been ransacked."
Me- "You're f-ing kidding."
H- "No... we just told them that that's just the way you live..."

WHAT.
So now let the count show, Someone's Whole Family, My Random Boss, and Policemen with Dogs.

This is not a movie.
This is my life.
And I think you might call that a supernatural sign to clean a room.

And, if you don't think I went straight home and cleaned the flying F out of my room for two hours, you're dead wrong.

How very...

"the film"

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:35:17 GMT

yes, There Will.

I just went to the dollar theater again today, sort of against my better judgement... but then again, that's been my better judgement this year so far. My practice has been to go to class (8-12) then drive across the bridge to the dollar theater, catch a film, go home. It seems that seeing-a-film-for-a-buck has been replacing the possibly more productive work-out-if-I-have-an-hour-free. This may or may not be a great thing.
For my wind-down routine it's been great, that's for sure.

Seeing films alone is one of the most individually empowering activities I've ever undertaken. I highly recommend this. There's nothing better than seeing movies, that have a 50/50 chance of being wonderful or mediocre, in a semi-empty theater, in a row by yourself, with other people surrounding you (mostly of the geriatric crowd if seeing the movie on Senior Monday--this is a treat, especially when I saw The Queen, during which the entire theater of 70+ year olds acted as if the movie was a 2+ hour inside joke just for them. It wasn't, and I was forced to leave early. Something I do NOT recommend... please stick it out. I'm sorry I didn't. Just on principle. This might be too long to be within a parenthesis still.).

Anyways, point being, if you allow yourself to see movies in a public forum on your own, you also allow yourself to engage the movie with the purest reactions your psyche can muster. This is a beautifully freeing experience, when viewing a good or quality film, and can teach you alot about yourself and the ways and whys that media moves you.

There Will Be Blood...
"I have abandoned my son... I have abandoned my son... I have abandoned my boy..."

this film was quite moving...
starkness, reality, seething, plodding, dark, dirty, void...
a full story of a man endlessly haunted by himself, desperate for everything he had grown up in, for all the ambiguity of himself, even though he lived as though he knew all of it.
But for all that, he did not.
All the good or redemptive parts of himself were so strange that he could not let them be expressed. And so he became instead a dead man, unable to collect a balanced life for himself, he shunned and killed everything that was emotionally important to him, only leaving for himself the most lonely and hollow scraps of a life.
what a sadness.
what a film.
Daniel Day-Lewis was perfect.

billy and blaze

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 04:03:30 GMT

So, what happened...

There was a boy whose face lit up every time he saw the sun shoot colors across a waning night sky. He would sit for hours, minus those he spent waking up much too early, breathless, his horse nuzzling his shoulder understandingly, both their breaths frosting the black.
He loved that horse. Cream and rust-brown, and the heart that beat in him so fiercly and gently.
True companionship was written in these, and the boy and horse both knew it.

One day, when that same sun was high above, there came a gypsy band. A rogue rider led the small pack, his beard a wild black, his bright and roughly sewn cloak whipping in the autumn wind. A haggard woman followed on her own rude animal, her eyes guarded and dim, her face wearing all the years she had taken. The motley group could be heard as a brusque whisper among the woods they rode through- only one care, not too loud.
For as they lived they stole, all the important things they dragged along behind them, behind their sad children, behind their sad animals, had once been prized and cared for by another. This was their way.

And so they came upon the boy's home, when neither boy nor father nor mother were there. And they saw the horse, all cream and rust-brown, and they took him, and his heart beat fierce, though they did not hear it.
When the boy returned, he knew.
He couldn't see the eyes that told his presence. He couldn't find his horse, his horse. Where had he gone? He would never leave!
The boy couldn't say... and his heart broke for all the thought of it.
He had been taken, the boy decided, angrily pushing back the tears with his arm.

And in his rakish, determined young soul, he vowed he would find his horse again.

----------------------------------------
"...daddy's ghost behind you
sleeping dog beside you
        you're a poem of mystery
     you're the prayer inside me

spoken words like moonlight
       you're the voice that i like

needlework & seedlings
in the way you're walking
to me from the timbers
      faded from the winter..."
-i.&w.

because she looks at me like this

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:50:51 GMT

The wind was tearing around the shop corners now,
and she stood at one edge of the city, looking at the place she had chosen to be.
It wasn't his fault necessarily, she thought, prying at one of her cuticles, waiting for the light to change.
"It's because she looks at me like this..." he had said, making a coyly cute smile, cocking his head to the side a little. And that, to explain his new devotion.
She laughed a little at the thought, he had been so flippant, so strange, but that's what it was like trying to get any serious information out of him at all. What a guy.
She crossed, observing the nearest two, their heads hunkered down, interlaced arms, almost whispering despite the roar and the crackle of the city ambience.

"What about being a twin.. isn't it different? Don't you know what he's feeling?"
"Well... it might be different if we were identical, but I think if you were closer to our age you'd probably know him just as well as I do. There's nothing that different."

Her arms were tingling as she got off the bus, it's sad how answers undo the magic of a thing. Just don't ask. I'ts better to not know. I'd like to think there's something ethereal about being a twin, can't I think that still? Being that close to someone as you're both becoming recognizable human beings... there's something special in that, right?
Don't answer that.

Don't answer me, I don't really mean to get answers to the questions I ask, I just don't know what else to do with my wandering mind, these savagely burning layers of reality. I'm cursed to feel them, to understand that they're there.
But I need to not know.

The clouds were overhanging now, covering the boothed stores, park benches, and wilderness.
She thought she'd take a break, an impromptu coffee, a parasocial date across the bar, making angels in the leaves.

~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_

"...Cause everything inside that's not something you own
Is what you're taking with you
On the day that you go
And oh, what a beautiful world when we sing
                      Hear all them bells ringing out in the street
                      Hammer strikes the metal and it makes me believe
       Oh, hammer strikes the metal and it makes me believe
Cause if I don't believe in love
Then I don't believe in you
And I do..."
-r.a.

careful

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:54:30 GMT

He turned on the radio as high as it would go, the blaring crackling speakers making the dust on top shiver and roll. Taking an unnecessarily long drag of his cigarette he drummed his fingers in an uneven beat on the worn out coffee table, before ripping the stub from his mouth and shoving it into the half-filled glass ashtray in front of him. A cuckoo weakly sprang out of its cupboard in the clock on the far wall and sang a few waning notes before sinking back into darkness, a faint wooden thunk following its premature departure.

>"Leaving so soon?" She asked, taking a lingering look at him, full in the eyes. His eye contact faltered, and he caught the ground with his foot.
"I just wish I didn't have to think of your being able to make it while getting away with not caring at all about me."
He fought the urge to correct her grammar, to ask her to clarify, and remained silent, lying through his unwillingness to talk, feeling fine about letting her believe he just wasn't thinking about anything.
"How is it going to be okay that I'm not allowed to know you anymore?"<

The smoke trailed up and up, leaving long slightly black streaks on the plastered ceiling. He coughed once or twice, absently stroking the arm of his chair, reading the words over and over. Outside, two trees leaned toward each other, giving in to the force of an unseasonal spring gale, catching branches for a moment, then, just as quickly and spontaneously, bending away to reach for another. Tired, he rubbed his forehead with his palm, then reached for the radio and flicked it off again. He sighed.
How was it okay?

-------------------------

"
Looking back in a mirror
It all becomes clear
The views are not the same
I see sun, you see rain...

          Wrapped in silent elegance
         Beautifully broken down
     As illusions burst
Too late to learn from experience
Too late to wonder how
To finish first...
"
-z.s.

after.

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:07:16 GMT

Looking up at the bright, unnatural sky, she heaved a sigh, letting it slip out in one long breath, winding around each leaf and stone and blade of grass, the milky softness of the fog engulfing every footprint she had left.
She knew this was the kind of expression that could only be in the moment, the kind of beauty just meant for one person, in one moment. The colors were dramatic, each their own painting, each their own watercolor, she saw each layer as being complete in itself. First, a lake, with shimmering crests, then a forest, lush in depth, tightly packed tree trunks, then the mountains, all purple and gold, with ice caps trickling down from the peaks... breathtaking.
She twirled one strand of hair, golden brown, and it naturally curled around her finger, first one way then the other, and then back again to the way it had been. It hadn't always been this clear, the smell of the fall opening up the sky, along with the idea that the world was just so big.
And she wanted all of it, all at once, even though, as then the tears started coming, she knew that all this love was to be experienced in letters by the day, in phrases that resonate in the instant they're read, and in each tired, wretchedly painful, endlessly fulfilling step.

----------------------------------------
CHILD
cool hands
idle linen dresses

----------------------------------------------

"The grass is screaming long
midnight cars roll past,
I've been chasing your room
while the summer lasts...
if we leave tonight then we leave it all behind..."
f.r.

the one where someone loves me

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 20:35:25 GMT

Sinking into the downy depths of comforter, she let her one foot slip out and dangle over the old, faded, shag carpet the room was so attached to. She couldn't bring herself to emerge yet, though the sunlight filled the cracks in the blinds to bursting, and the bird songs flitted through the wall, no matter that she hadn't left either window open, even a little. It was enough to lie here, her blonde hair reflecting moments of inspiration that she thought she had left behind in those dreams... the ones she could never remember. And she sighed inwardly, quietly longing at the far wall, the painting of the sea she had seen so many times before, wishing with her might that she could remember them, those elusive, scattered dreams.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cupped in a hand they took to flight,
but couldn't,
and each watched the others die slowly,
some hitting with such force that their minds were instantly crushed,
others gasping for air, their tiny wings slowing to the last
their red hearts burning to embers
red, then purple, black,
to grey.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There, I can see that church on the hill,
It's far beyond where I would have thought to look,
but the sun is shining it's strength on it,
three beams of grace, and I can see it so clearly now.

Two birds sitting on the rugged post,
when all I asked for was one,
knowing eyes, feathered grip...

The request for a dance,
in my white dress, a dance with only one,
and one was what I needed,
a surrender,
with blessings besides.

The promise of a growing life,
an ability to love,
a way to change a small part of this world,
with his hands...

Let me in,
a star shooting across a stark, daylit sky,
my knees dropped to the cement,
you've become so undeniable...

Love is a sound you give my ears to hear,
and I won't stand up again...

so this is what it means
to be free...

------------

"If you're going to say the Jesus Prayer, at least say it to Jesus, and not to St. Francis, and Seymour, and Heidi's grandfather all wrapped up in one. Keep him in mind if you say it, and him only, and him as he was and not as you'd like him to have been... because above anything else, who in the Bible besides Jesus knew--knew--that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddamn stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? ...I don't care where an actor acts, but they should be performing for the Fat Lady. I'll tell you a terrible secret--are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't The Fat Lady. Don't you know that yet? And listen to me, now-- don't you know who the Fat Lady really is?... Ah, buddy... it's Christ Himself, buddy... Christ Himself."

~f. & z.

clay

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 02:08:23 GMT

I know
that Hope is not present in my world

It does not exist in anything
I see, feel, express,
in no person,
no situation,
no thing,
without form until He breathes...
until my eyes are prepared with His perspective.

Hope. God's new heart.

----------------------------------

I wish you could feel
as you do inside me,
though you die in my world,
your life grows in my heart...
and I can't explain.

You're not the only one.
I also want to be saved.

----------------------------------------------------------

He does not withold one good thing.

figures

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:19:14 GMT

All through the darkness,
we heard the howling, wishing it could get through
we wished it wouldn't as we stared wide-eyed
eating our popcorn
buttery fists vying for the last.

You took a picture of me and we laughed
at the mess that we had made,
sketches swimming in your pool
dancing in your basement
handing out popsicles as the sun went down,
talking about the way things smelled so different and clear
at night.

I'm looking at you as you stand crying
holding the last piece of watermelon
when your mom just told you they sold the house,
so we sat together again, not understanding
what this would mean for us,
two kids...
we knew we were just kids...

and I know I love you.

---------------------------

TAKE
try again
kinder, each

--------------------------

"...
let Your mercy spill
on all these burning hearts in hell
if it be Your will to make us well,

end this night
if it be Your will,

end this night
if it be Your will
..."

l.c.