Humans fear the supernatural, both the undivine (the animal impulses such as sexuality, the unconscious, the unknown, the alien) and the divine (the superhuman, the god in us).
-Gloria Anzaldua

"Who is to say that robbing a people of
its language is less violent than war?"
-Ray Gwyn Smith

Concentrate. Concentrate. Concentrate.

Don't look back, you stupid bitch

Back at Bingaling. Time to get down and dirty.

What my cousin said to me from 3-4 years ago:
Move on definitely; if he wants you, he will find you. Don't look back.

Old Xanga Entry

Saturday, May 20, 2006

| |The Layers by Stanley Kunitz| | I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings. Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered! How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face. Yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go, and every stone on the road precious to me. In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: "Live in the layers, not on the litter." Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written. I am not done with my changes.

I couldn't sleep last night, not because of anything bad, but I was going over all the things that I need to accomplish, all the assignments that are due. There are nights where I promise myself that when I wake up, I'll be super productive. Then I get pretty stoked for the future because there's so much to do, so much to experience. I can't wait to explore the world.

And as for you, I don't know what to do. I try not to think much about it.

scatter-brain

I had one of those bad headaches again yesterday, so I slept at 8:30 pm--pretty much after dinner. I woke up at 6 am and returned to sleep to wake up once again at 12pm.

I haven't been sleeping much at school; I wake up paranoid and nervous. At home, I feel safe.

Dreams:
I was making these elaborate subs, turkey, cheese, everything, in the store. I spent an incredible amount of time making them, but in the end I forgot to purchase them. However, I was famished (like I am in real life for the past week), like there wasn't enough food in the world to fill up my appetite. The next dream consisted of me in the grocery store again, stealing chocolates: M&Ms, chocolate bars, etc. As I was doing it, I felt guilty, but I couldn't stop myself. I was on a rampage. When I got to the cashier, I bought some of the chocolate and hid the rest in my purse. A summer day camper saw me buy all this chocolate and began to make fun of me. I can't explain why, but that set me off. I was humiliated, angry beyond reason. I took my chocolate and jumped into the elevator to leave, but I realized as I was going down that I left my purse with the stolen chocolate behind.

I was driving on these roads--my driving was absolute shit, kept driving past the places I needed to be at.

My cousin asked me why I'm stressing over a boy who's not really thinking about anything and that until he does, I shouldn't worry so much. That's that.

I was talking to my aunt yesterday, she told me that I'm different from how I was when I was younger. It kind of caught me off guard. I asked her how so, but she couldn't say. She didn't say it in a way that implied that I matured, simply that I was different. I'm not sure if she meant it in a good or bad thing.

Why do we pretend everything is okay, when nothing is?
Maybe because we need some semblance of sanity.

Love potion? Psh. An anti-like potion would come in way more handy.

On a review of the TiMER:
"And really, how valuable is love if there’s no potential for heartache?"

SLEEP

CarrollBlog 11.4

Sweet Darkness
by David Whyte

You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

I'd like to tell Emma I know how it feels. It's not as if I've never lived. The first time, it's happiness all over. Happiness like a damp cloth on your skin. Later the doubt comes. Later is when the grieving starts.

Everything dangerous starts out as a joke.

"You just don't care about nothing. You so in love with yourself, you can't love nobody else. There's no room in that little heart for me and this baby."
She realized that she'd said it for him. There was something in his silence that lingered there, affirming what she'd said. It felt a little like breaking a spell. All that held her up from the clinic to this place, all the wishing that had her captive since she first saw him with the part on his hair so straight and his smile so quick and wicked, was gone, just like that.
-Laura Valeri

I wanted to run away from him, and I wanted to go to him.

...it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me?
-Jonathan Safran Foer

"Are you still so dull?" Jesus asked them. "Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean'. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man 'unclean'; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him 'unclean'.
-Matthew 16:4

There are some days where I feel enlightened, where I can feel the future on the tip on my brain. I will admit that I'm scared that I won't find anything after I graduate, but it will be due to my own stupidity and laziness, not due to anything else. If I can push myself hard enough, I see myself somewhere sunny and uplifting. I see myself somewhere far, learning and taking in everything. A step away from this place, not that I want to escape, but a new chapter to begin. It gives me hope and drive to hush my senioritis, at least for a little while.

Here's the plan

2011
Washington DC for AWP,
Boston for Lily,
Some island/beach for Spring Break,
Somewhere far away and warm for Teach for America (if I get it!).

Goodbye New York.

This is why I don't believe in coincidences

I used to think that believing was such mumbo-jumbo, something Disney movies were trying to perpetuate and a way for parents to keep their kids innocent and naive. But after everything, I finally get it. I finally understand. The truth that I've been chasing after, always at the tip of my conscious but never fully there, is finally mine. The hilarious part is I don't even know how to describe it. I can't even put a name to it. Words are not enough to encapsulate what this is.

But of course, as a human fallacy, I will try.

Here it is: Believing, having faith, hoping, willing things to be. It's all true. And no matter how much of every fiber of my being will try to get you (whoever you are) to actually believe me, it won't matter, because until you reach that point, of complete assurance, where no doubts linger, you will never believe in believing. It's a circle. To believe in having faith, you must have faith, but to have faith, you must believe.

Everything is neither, and yet of both. I'm here but not here. Sometimes, when I'm in class or amid a crowd of people, I'll distance myself out and realize none of this is significant, that I'm on my own, and not. It reminds me that this materialistic world is worthless, that I should not rely on it so much; however, it does not mean it doesn't affect me. On the contrary, it too is another circle; everything is interconnected, interlocked with each other. I cannot separate entities, ideas, and events. It's one magnificently woven tapestry, where every detail causes and is caused by another detail.

And I anticipate the day you become my detail.

CarrollBlog 10.15

“You see this goblet?’ asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master. ‘For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, “Of course.” When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.’”

Mark Epstein

I was yours

If parallel universes existed, I hope that in another world, you and I somehow worked out. Stupid fucking roads not taken. Fuck them to hell.

Do real love stories have happy endings?

Hiding between the lines.

Pluck my thoughts out like a magician's handkerchief trick.

My dreams are returning back to me.

I'm eating chicken gumbo soup and garlic Parmesan bread, and the light is shining through the blinds, and I'm all alone.

There's just something about this scene that lifts my soul.

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:18

Words don't come as easily anymore

How do you write when your emotions are linked to your writing and all you want to be is detached and emotionless?