pakistan

This song is really great.  It's world music, and it's Peter Gabriel.  It's only a dollar but it goes to help the victims of the flood.  Please look into it.

http://www.petergabriel.com/news/archive/2010/11/01/'Open_Your_Eyes'_for_Pakistan_Flood_Relief

gravity

Yeah, when I sit down to write, nothing comes out.  I want to talk about how I have felt about being alone.  I want to talk about the Sufjan concert.  I want to talk about how I have changed, and how I have stopped running in stupid circles.  I want to talk about being with my friends.  I want to talk about letting everything go, and holding everything close to my heart all at the same time.  I want to talk about taking things too seriously.  I want to talk about how Orson Scott Card made me cry.  I want to talk about what it feels like to feel absolutely pure love.  I want to talk about new feelings.  I want to talk about goals.  I want to talk about breaking out.  I want to talk about my new ideas.  I want to talk about the book I started writing today.

I want to be able to express myself.  I can't.  Not today.  So here are some pictures.

My life is a happy one.

"While Ugly Marie waited to pee,
Hamster-bell's scream attempted to quell
The scary urge he could easily see."

"Forgetting he was still subject to stress,
Phillip decided, today, not to dress..."

A boy I love.

Getting ready to have our lives changed.

My experience at the Sufjan Stevens concert.

I was taking pictures of the skyline, and Morgan said, "Do you want it to be prettier?"  And then she got in the picture.

After hiking to the top of the "Y" with Morgan.

We made faux apple crumble.

It was just as delicious as it looks.  We also watched Prison Break and Hannah Montana.  I think I liked Hannah Montana better.

the dark spot

Where there is no anchor,
How can I be sad when
A friendly ship floats away?

Whose hands are the clouds
And whose hands are the ocean
You are there and there

And I am there.
How can I not see all the light
For one dark spot?

my Self

I have been very busy.  When I say "busy", I mean that I have been frantic running around, thinking about things, and trying to sort through all the garbage that goes into the current that runs down the middle of my soul.  But tonight, it's been different.  I have done something I hadn't done for a long time- I visited my Self.

A quote came to mind.  The context he was writing about was a little bit different from my own, but the principle is the part I think is important.  Thoreau said,

"I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day."


Tonight, I cleaned my house, I closed all my books, and I turned off all of my music, I turned off all of my worries and thoughts, and I visited with my Self.  It wasn't me with Matthew Arnold, or me and Isaac Brock; it was me with me.  It wasn't me with Rudyard Kipling, or me and Sufjan Stevens; it was just me with me.

As it turns out, I really missed my Self.

And I started to realize something that I think is important.  I have not been my Self for a long time; and another quote comes to my mind.  This is Isaac Brock-

"You didn't buy a face, nope just a mask.  So HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!"


What I realized and what that quote from Isaac Brock helped me conceptualize is that I am not my Self most of the time- I am just a costume covering my Self.  Lately, I have chosen to wear the "I'm quite angry at the world" and the "I am so angry at the world I will change it no matter what" costumes.  I also have a cheesy costume.  And a goofy costume.  And an "academic" and an artsy-me costume.  I have all these, but none of them are actually me.  Even my poetry (which I thought was my pure Self coming out) is simply one or two costumes at a time exposing themselves.

I actually, despite my recent thoughts to the contrary, do know who I am.  The feeling I had while I sat with my eyes closed, shutting everything else out, was so familiar that I almost cried at having missed my dearest friend.

that's what I'm waiting for

When I leave Provo, I will have this as parting council- "You don't have to be in love or kissing buddies with a person to nod and say hello."

This, a Fallen World

Call in the strangest group of weirdchildren
Take! Emblazon on thy banner of cess
All alms to thy belly do we take!
I took the two broken pieces
Having broken it in two
The tree and the disgust, no more reaching to the moonlight
And I shriveled into less than two
Of how many creatures no longer stamping out their tribal songs
What with all the world a prodigy
And no room for a scab
It just keeps bleeding and bleeding
Blood was just the beginning
Each step I took took me deeper into the spark
Furl and bend, the burning, bloody banner!
Filth burns, and filth burns well

i hate words

I hate words

I hate that they won't do what I say

I want to crush them and hammer them

Until words stop forming words

And they stop showing to your eyes as symbols

But whatever fluorescence feelings are

I want your eyes to stop seeing and

I want your eyes to know

I want them to know pure communication

I hate words

All I will say is

GOLD

Think about gold

Inside yourself

And the gigantic, endless world that is you that can be you

Do you even know who you are?

You don't even know who you are

How can you know who you are?

GOLD

It means everything and yet it's just

A little nothing on the paper

It's you

And yet you can't know it's you

You, that giant of self that's swallowed up in so many other selves

Yet when you find you, you know real power

You know real truth and good

GOLD

I hate words

when i have fears that i may cease to be

John Keats:

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high pil`d books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,	5
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And feel that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,	10
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

Picture: Peter Gabriel

a testament

And when I die

What will I leave

But a streak

    across the sky?

My words are not as keys

To open locked hearts

My words sear no flesh

Nor brand any hearts

May I at least ask to be

A lingering testament
Of things greater than I?

loneliness

I read Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold, today (I seriously love my major).  I want to put the last stanza from that poem on my blog.

"Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."

(The reference to the "ignorant armies clashing by night" is a reference to a Greek war from over 2000 years ago.  In the war, it was dark and the invaders got confused by the darkness, and in their confusion, they killed each other.  At least that's what the footnote for the poem tells me.)

Stephan Balleux

I feel like any interpretation of this poem on my part would serve to trivialize it.  But don't you feel the loneliness coming from the poem?  Don't you just feel the aching for companionship and unity?

love

Love is the most pacifying element in existence.
After a full three week stay in the college town where I live, away from my friends and family, coming home has been like walking out of a place totally bereft of color and life to a world where everything has warmth and meaning.
I have been living in a drought, but here I have found water again.
Why do I say love is the most pacifying element?  Up to Friday night, I had been ready to fight everything.  Nothing was good and everything had to be reformed, in my eyes.  I was anti everything, because nothing was as it should be.  As I found out, everything had been missing love.  I sometimes forget how much I need affection, how much I need someone to listen to my grievances, how much I need a kind word, how much I need to have fun, how much I need to sometimes let everything go, and how much I need somewhere where I fit in.  When I came back to love, I realized how hardened I had become, how cynical and critical I had been, and how little I thought of the world.  Now, love has softened me, again.  I no longer feel at odds with the world.  I feel like there is hope and that I am no longer fighting this enormous battle all by myself.  Love is the most important anything in the world.
So, thank you my friends and family.  Thank you for giving me a place in your hearts.  I love you.

What is God?

What is God?
 God is found in every Good thing.
God is the cracking light flitting through 

bundles of golden-blue plumes.
 God is the movement of life- the way things 

spin, the way they weave, the way they jump, 

the way they dance.
God is trees. He is the absolute green 

in front of the backdrop of grey, 

leaves lifting from the earth, reflecting light to Heaven.
 God is a cool, dark pillow on a breezy 

summer night. He is drowning in comfort. I had 

to write that slow because God is life.
God is a pattern, a thousand threads woven 

together to pull your eyes up and down 

and in and out, to unite eye and spirit, 

joining them through the heart.
 God is finding what you are looking for.
God is a bent-legged, poised spider. He is 

beautiful close up and frightening when far away.

 God is tracing light in the sky, with 

beams so tight there is no direction to go 

but up, carrying glory in tow, shedding glory in wake.
God is Good.

Stavenachi, Florida, revisited

Run ragged,

                   run cold

  Thy machine is cold

Feathers, trains, rustic refrains

 These will melt the pipes

These will make thee right

don't take away my chase

maroon

what kind of strange, quiet world have i found?

What kind of strange, quiet world have I found?
Too old to be airborne, too young to be bound
Seattle sees Paris and is jealous
2D puzzles stutter around 3D fellas
Can I be outside? Do I have to be inside?
All I know is that quietly, quietly,
inside, Inside is where safety resides...

okay, stars and mars

Okay, stars ran into Mars
Who brought light to the barren
Red; what released springs above
And sparkling twilight granted
Deep furrows cultivated
By sky-bound ethereal
Faces, smiling, sowing
Seeds of the moon and gentle
Green of light's reflection.
Pain bursting from the scarred
Red; what strange fear of good well-
Doing- when light is again
An omnipresent haunting.

more were purple than i ever could have thought

More Were Purple than I Ever Could Have Thought

If I have to stand, shaky in the sky for you
Flickering like a star, standard as the ones you drew,
Someone's always gonna have to be there
Running around
Starships aground

An inkling, easy as an achy egg,
It was always rumored to be true so
Someone was to be found
Running around
Starships aground

Some sort of sordid details
Fanned your faceted face like little wings-
A standard in the sky for you
Running around
Starships aground 

Pull clink ding strum
Tee lull ding ding hum
Roll………………….
Running around
Starships aground

I forgot that I, I can't even stand
In whatever deep sky you are
Someone was gonna be there...
Now,
Floating around
The air, drowned 

Thank You

This shaded glen
Draws me in
When I entered the shade
I was home
Now the light through the shaking leaves
Casts shimmering shadows
Over the dancing grass
What kind of ocean is this?
The sun glints off the green
From the cresting waves of trees
The swallow is the seagull
And wind is the sand carrying peaceful calm
Forever peace will reign in this glen
Where never a human word was uttered
Where nature finally had its way
Where life was made to show me
That I am loved.

domes

Domes
Holy domes
Domes of sound
Domes of holy sound
Run,
And not faint
Walk,
And not be weary
Domes
Holy domes
Domes of echo
Domes of holy echo