Blood Potato Ale

I must remember that I am loved, when I feel like this.

By my friends, by my family, by my lovers, by me.

Even when I feel like a speck of dust, I exist and cannot be forgotten even if, perhaps, I want to be.

When I woke up this morning I felt at first as though I felt incapable, inept - I was a speck of dust, how could I write zine content or letters or a fifteen-minute comedy set? How could I do those things if I was just a mote, suspended in a ray of sunlight, if I'm lucky - or perhaps in some fibre of the carpet, lost to the world?

But then I remembered I am a human, with a big human body and all the muscles and tendons and brain electricity and oxygen I need to get up and do any one (or two, or three) of a million things and, even worse than not being able to do those things, I...

I didn't want to.

But I did.

But I didn't.
 
 But I did - I was just slammed up against this wall inside myself, this big, concrete wall that can't be kicked through with steel toes or gusto. And worse, it drains you. The longer you push, the more energy it takes, and then you have to lean to stay upright - and it saps, it saps, it saps. Then you're slumped against this wall so high you can't see the top. The pull of the beauty on the other side is so magnetic that you're pressed as hard to the wall as you can possibly be without breaking a rib, but the more you touch the wall, feel how cold and smooth it is, the more tired you become. It's a trap. It's a horrible, murdering trap.

So I got home from brunch, tired. Put on my pyjama pants, tired. Put on a big, striped shirt left by a lover that still smells like him, tired. Put on the kettle, tired. Chose a tea, tired. Removed a wasp from the windowsill, tired. Curled up in blankets, tired.

And now I sit here, tired. I'm being sapped but I'm lethargically chipping away at this colossus that wants me dead. My head is so heavy but I'm resting it against the wall, and my hands, light and quick as daddy long-legs, type away. The clicking sounds a lot like a chisel.

I may not do everything I want to do, today. I may not win this. I don't even know what winning looks like. But I will write. I will sleep. I will be.

I will remember that I am loved. That my heart is open like a fragrant flower, feeling pleasure at the sun's attention. That even though I am slumped against this stone, I am, for all intents and purposes, a divine being. I have much power, but also many lessons to learn. They are, in their right, all one in the same. I will move through, I will gather and forage, I will transcend. Such is the way, and sometimes we forget.

Milk Chocolate

Okay - stifled.

I've got my nest of clothes from the floor onto the bed, but I am distracted. I am tired. I am checking Facebook over and over and over again and I am somewhere, buried under a mountain of apathy and diluted angst, furious. Stirring. This is the excitement and zeal I felt earlier, but something grey and dull and heavy has it's hands around my throat and I am limp on the floor, losing consciousness. Not for good. The oppression only visits, but I am absolutely sick of it's doing so.

I feel very... angry.

I can hear my mother's voice saying that this is good - the anger's fire is what burns up all of the cobwebs, the stops, the blocks, the barriers. It is Durga's flame that courses through you, incinerating all that is unnecessary and inhibiting. I could murder this plight. I am so absolutely furious at this force within myself that suppresses, mocks, cajoles me into sickly sweet assention, concession. I lay my body down under it's weight and flick through distractions, small morsels on the too-bright melatonin-inhibiting light from my little phone.

What is this bullshit? What is this emaciation in my creative life? I am starving, I am weak, I am pale, I am blue under the eyes and fighting for breath with my small, dry, shriveled lungs.

Where is the smell of the ocean? Where is the paint on my hands? Why are my lips not raw from kissing the earth and it's dirt and it's people? Why am I so soft, when the soles of my feet should be calloused and my arms and legs and core sinewy and able? The sun should be soaked into my skin. My voice should be loud and moist and clear and rising and falling in the velvety night. It should sound like red wine. I should be writing until I fall asleep at my desk, singing until kisses move over my mouth like the tide on the sand, halting the sound. I should be running through this evening, smelling the world and coming home to fall into a heavy sleep, dirt still on my hands and feet.

What is this cycle, this pattern I have created? Why am I so estranged from my mother nature, from the song of my soul? I fight through these reeds to get to her, but it is so hard, consuming is so hard, I am force fed, I am told I am what I am not and I believe them because if I don't, I am punished. I wear a muzzle and a collar and I am servile. I will not break from being so until I actually don't care what others have to say about my body. If I am attractive or not, if I smile enough, if my hair looks a certain way. I will not be unrestrained until I know where to find my happiness instead of looking for it in stores where people are paid money to help me give them my money so they can pay the people to help me get my money again.

I cannot. I cannot.

I am nauseated. My mother, she would say this is good. Barf it up, she would say. Get it out - it's only the world. You are only barfing up the world, so heave away. Heave and choke and sputter and spit and weep - it is only the world. But once you are empty, you will be free.

The real world, your mother nature, your writing, your beauty, your song - it will all come to you. You must act as a vessel. Stop trying to build, to accumulate the right receptors for what you are trying to be, what you are trying to be, what you are trying to be. What are you trying to be?

Barf up the world. For once you are a vessel, it will come into you.

The Large Intestine

I'm running away from my widely publicized (ha, comparatively so) blog. Why? I don't know. It's not what I want it to be, as well as in the public eye? Double whammy.

This is so, big. I am so, free.

I'm at a coffeeshop, eating a muffin, drinking a tea, getting to work on my creative projects. And what did it take? Seemingly, one person to shake me out of my routine. One person whose presence forced me to redefine my values. I was asked questions I had never asked myself, made to feel things I wasn't sure I was capable of feeling. When someone looks into your eyes so deeply, day after day, you wonder - what do you see, there? What is it in me that causes you to gaze, so intently? That causes you to pay attention? Perhaps I should follow your lead and find out.

And I am swept up.

I am now, effortlessly, as if the blocks were never there, meeting people. Making things. Writing. Singing. Living. Talking. Crying, when I need to. Laughing shortly thereafter. Not feeling like I should wallow for a prescribed 20 minutes before allowing myself to feel joy or delight. Allowing myself. I am no longer regulating so heavily. A very picky, very attentive, very tyrannical part of me has calmly stepped back.

Even now, I think, "Maybe this could be a pattern - I could write, blog, for 20 minutes as a warm-up before I begin my projects. I could come here often and have a pattern, build this, wear it in." I am trying to make things easy for myself but in doing so, make them harder. Make them sharper - with more corners and lines to step over, more things to remember, more things to foresee. But it is so easy, now, to let go of things as quickly as I conceive of them. Some I grasp to, fighting as they wriggle, slippery fish in my ice-cold, wet hands. Some are driftwood. I am learning discernment from the most peaceful place.

Now, to go feel the tip of my pen glide across paper.

White Foxes

Today seems to be one of those days where, if I don't look too closely or too far away, I seem to have the hang of things.

My day today has been pretty positive. Yesterday evening was the beginning of this streak, I think. I was visited by a friend who not only destroyed my plans for the future, but she also encouraged me to keep doing what I'm doing. She also recommended an author for me, which was prime timing since I'm about finished my Smile When You're Lying by Chuck Thompson. The author's name is Anais Nin, and I hadn't heard of her, but apparently she's a pretty big deal. She wrote erotica before pretty much anyone else, and she also kept journals for nearly her entire life. I picked up the first volume of her journals. 

The woman I bought the book from, who I assume owns the store, knew exactly where Anais' books lived, even though they were spread across three sections. I wonder if she could do that for any author. I was very impressed, but maybe Anais Nin is a way bigger deal than I know.

I feel like I'm also being tested. Yesterday, I expressed to the aforementioned ground-breaking friend that I seem to be falling for guys who are unavailable to me, for one reason or another. That's what I wrote Dear Somebody about, in case that theme wasn't obvious, though I feel it was... Wanting someone who's in love with someone else, wanting someone who has forgotten me and moved away, and wanting someone who I know exists but haven't met yet. This friend laughed when I said, "Maybe it's some profound level of me acting in self-preservation - I get heavily distracted by boys, when I would greatly benefit from focusing on my own passions." She replied, "So this is probably exactly what you need."

And I'm glad we had that conversation, and that I have that intention - to focus on my passions instead of being sidetracked by the seductive and persuasive prospect of a lover, or lovers. Hours later I learned that one of my pseudo-prospects might not be as unattainable as I thought. I feel I'm handling the situation quite gracefully. Anyway.

Some music inspires me so much. Certain chord progressions or voice types seem to remind me of some lost home I once knew but will never remember. 

Like Ophiocordyceps unilateralis

1A. Why is it that I ache to connect to people, but I can't look a waitress in the eyes?

2A. Why is it that I am so passionate on the inside, but I feel like there's some sort of disconnect?

3A. Why is it that I'm smirking and nodding and saying it's all cool, but really, all I want is for you to turn around and kiss me on the cheek in a way that suggests you understand? That you get it?

4A. Why is it that I'm asking a hundred million (likely) unanswerable questions, like I'm going through one of my adolescent existential crises?

1B. Because a very vulnerable and beautiful part of me is blooming, and it needs to be protected.

2B. Because once I realize I can become what I want, what I strive to be, there may be nowhere to go. Because maybe the happiness is in the idea, or maybe in the journey, or maybe in the fruition.

3B. Because I'm scared to be real and potentially unaccepted. Potentially hurt, rejected. I could handle that, though. Maybe that would be a greater gift than getting what I want.

4B. Because I'm going through an existential crisis. Or perhaps just living. 

I could go on to list, with passion and zeal, all of the wonderful, artistic, creative, espressive things that I want to do. I've recently made the observation, however, that this has become a pattern. 

1. This is where I am. Thus,

2. This is where I should go. Thus, 

3. I'll write a list of steps I need to take. Thus:

Step One: Get started.

...

Cue crickets. 

Cue tumbleweed. 

Cue vulture's cry. 

Exit motivation. 

And here we are. I am left back at the beginning of one of those trippy-ass time loops that makes your head spin when you see them in the movies or on the tv. And you think to yourself, "Shit, that was so complicated and yet so simple. Like, a paradox or some shit. What's a paradox? Imma Google that and then go eat some Sun Chips."

That's where I'm at. I'm in some spiral limbo, eating Sun Chips with a look on my face that could be described as a cross between doe-eyed and removed. Aloof, but slightly vulnerable, but aloof to the fact that I'm vulnerable. You get the picture. Do you? Do I? Who am I? What flavor are these metaphorical Sun Chips, anyway?

I want to write letters, so I'm going to. I think I'm going to, anyway. Maybe I should (See? Do you see what I do to myself? Even when I'm about to express that I'm hoping to release myself from the obligations to follow my heart, I'm employing the word 'Should'. I shouldn't do that) relax. 

Relax.

Feel your body, and the space it's occupying.

There is a duvet covering the majority of me, but my arms are cooled by the air. There is a slight weight on my chest because of Sally, my doll. I like to think she's comforting my rampant, confused heart. She knows what's up. She's a little pink doll with a tiny green bowtie and a bear onesie, and she's always smiling. Her arms are a little stubby, but they're always stretched out. She's kind of starfished. Her pose makes me feel really accepted, like she's happy to be my doll. Like she's not judging me for being 20 and still finding comfort in what most people would assume to be a child's plaything. Clarissa Pinkola Estes has some very powerful opinions about dolls. I wish I could reiterate but my memory and my willpower are out for mochas.

I read somewhere that a large number of teddy bears have an intentionally neutral expression so children may easily project emotions onto them. I don't know how I feel about that. I think I'll go to sleep soon. There's still noise in my brain, but now that all of these thoughts have been transmitted to the incomprehensible entity that is the Internet, it's just lonely, wanting noise. I wonder if I can make any of these primitive, mournful emotional cries at all poetic. 

Dear Somebody, 

It doesn't matter who you are, but it does. I'll take anyone. I'll take anyone who will not make themselves available to me. Is that too much to ask? To be with somebody I can't be with? I don't think so. My friends say I have self-destructive patterns, but they just don't see the appeal of a man who loves somebody else, or who lives across the ocean, or who doesn't technically really exist. They just don't see it. I see it though, and I want you to know that I love that about you. I love that I don't know what your eyes look like. 

I love that I can't tell you how I feel, even though I want to shout it at you every time you catch me by surprise. It's like, I'd look up from my inventory paper, and you'd be there, you'd just be there all of a sudden and my heart would skip and my stomach would churn and I'd feel like I was plummeting and my eyes would bulge and I'd just yell a reactionary, "I THINK MAYBE I LOVE YOU!" And then my cheeks would flush and I'd be dewy-cheeked from the stress of exploding into a million shreds of wanting you to touch the spot between my shoulder blades with the pointer, middle and ring finger of your right hand. Slowly, like you were hesitant, or curious, or savouring the feeling of a little bit of my skin on a little bit of yours. I love how I'd burst into a million shreds of impossible for you. 

You make me smile with your silence, with your platonic flirtation, with your e-mail correspondence. 

It's so frustrating, trying to make a kiss into a stamp, but I'll keep trying. I'll keep hoping you remember me, and how my lips first felt on your collarbone, even though every ripple, every wave that passes through the oceans between us laps away at the memory. Hundreds and thousands of ripples and waves have probably already cleansed my name from the sand of your shores. At least they were gentle about it. They took their time. Two years ago I was your rock, but when you went back over the water, it knew to break me down, over time, back into sand. And now I'm here. Maybe someday a child will make me into a glorious castle, with turrets and a little flag made from a granola bar wrapper, and you'll call me beautiful again. 

The sound of you not knocking at my door resonates through my chest each day. As soon as I open my eyes, and stretch, and greet the day, you are the first person who leaves a voided silhouette in my mind. I'll get up, not thinking of you. I'll brush my teeth, not thinking of you - I'll hope my skin stays clear for the dinner date we won't be having tonight. I imagine sleeping in an empty bed, and my heart feels filled, fit to burst from not having you. Not knowing you. I want to say yet, but yet is a threatening word and I won't let it harm you. I miss you so much. I wish you were here, and you were taking me on a dinner date, and I wish you would hold me in your empty arms and not tell me that you understand me. Because I know you're the only one who does. Who really, really does. But your side of the bed is still cold, and my hand is grasping at the fabric of the air. 

I've fallen for you, all of you, and I am overwhelmed by all of the love I feel. I am pouring out, I am overflowing with affection, but I am alone. I am unseen. I am invisible. I am nothing because I choose to be the wallflower, the shadow, the breeze you don't notice until someone points it out. I'll cool the sweat on your brow, lover, when you get just a little too warm. I am the comfort taken for granted. I am the weeping yogini. Don't you see fit to love me back?

Body Lullaby

When he got off of the train, I jolted, mostly due to the fact that I was under the impression he was going in to hug me. It was an arm pat though, so I smoothly saved some integrity by waving. He walked away. He didn't look back.

And this is all fine. The surprise and the deflation I felt were fine. My unspoken words,  my chained-down heart, they are - it is - fine.

Maybe it shouldn't be, and maybe it won't be for long. It's hard to tell, I think. Is this person a crutch for me to want and not have? Somebody on whom I can lean while exiting a separate emotional situation, but who will not be coming with me? Probably. 

It was funny how vividly I could hear and see him singing Moondance, in my head.

I am a confused little bear. I've been trying so hard to write more, sing more, feel more, be more, but I had a little inkling today that maybe I should just relax. I should do what I want to do, relax into the flow, and perhaps it'll all come that way.

I should sleep. I want to sleep. Maybe I'll do some trip planning tomorrow. 

I am so full of love for everything, everyone. Goodnight, world.

Magic Words of the 21st Century

First, let me introduce myself.

My name is Sarah. I’m a 19 year-old woman with a 6 month-old kitten, a rampant donut addiction, and a predisposition to liking pretty things.

I am a consumer.

I am part of an age-group that is targeted time and time again by companies that want to sell me anything and everything. Apparently I need to wear makeup to be attractive and successful, laser hair removal to keep me from being an undesirable Sasquatch, and a gym membership to keep my buns in tip-top shape. I am bombarded all day every day with messages from bus benches, radio stations, newspapers, all telling me who I should be, and what I should want. It's been a while, and I’ve begun to notice a pattern.

To begin, (and, everyone probably notices this) there are trends. Similar to how body shapes go in and out of fashion, certain lifestyles also become more or less vogue as time goes by. For example, in these most recent years, it is extremely hip to be eco-friendly, health-conscious, and open-minded. Obviously these are not negative things – in fact, awareness of your body and planet shouldn’t be this innovative, new-age concept; it’s common sense to give a shit about health and environment, no?

There are certain words that appeal to the folk who’ve jumped on this bandwagon; words that have been taught to us by Professor Widescreen and Dr. Oz. Without further adieu, I present to you the words that will make your wallets cream themselves.

1. Antioxidants!

   -No frills, antioxidants are molecules that inhibit the oxidation of other molecules. How does this translate to health? Perhaps the inhibition of oxidation in cells has some way of keeping us humans intact, but my point is: there is no way we (the consumer) deduced, for ourselves, that antioxidants are beneficial for our bodies. And where is this information coming from? Qualified professionals? People who genuinely care about our well being? Or is it a company who wants to make a couple bones selling us some pseudo-quick-fix for our shitty lifestyles?

 (Also, a quick Google showed me that while everyone was crapping themselves about the efficacy of antioxidants at the start, large clinical trials have actually indicated that some antioxidants are not beneficial, and when subject to oversupplementation, can actually be harmful)

2. (Blank) Technology!

   -I think it’s a crime that you can use the word “technology” whenever the hell you want. You usually hear the word “technology” used in toothbrush or face wash commercials, and this implies that you are buying a product that was painstakingly honed by the world’s top scientists. My favorite product features are ‘crossed-bristle technology’ and ‘foaming technology’; they really give an unrivaled boost to my morning hygiene regime. Here's a fun facial cleanser commercial. I know they don't say 'technology', but they lip-sync, and that's just as bad.

3. Probiotics!

 -As someone who has done a lot of informal research on probiotics (anyone who has ever had a yeast infection probably hears me on this one) knows exactly what probiotics are. Simply put – good bacteria. They make your tummy (and your vagina!) happy. A lot of yogurt commercials will beat into your skull that their yogurt has ‘live cultures’ of probiotics. Rad, otherwise they won’t do anything. My issue with this one is the implication, however subtle, that probiotics are solely for fixing the digestive tracts of women. Luckily, I've found someone who agrees with me. Take it away, Sarah Haskins.

 (Also, did you know that it’s apparently kosher to put really scientific-sounding but entirely fabricated words into your yogurt commercials? Me neither!)

4.  Vintage!

 -I get the appeal of this one, I do, and I'm aware of the fact that some people take it a lot more seriously than I do. Vintage is environmentally friendly, and if done right, looks fresh as hell. However, some outfits (and their price tags) can not be justified by the fact that they're old. 'Cuz that's really all it is, man. In twenty years (I looked it up), all our new, modern clothes will be 'vintage'. You can just look at it as... thinking ahead. It's an investment.

Well, kids, the moral of the story is to be discerning in what you hear. Just because Dr. Oz says Pu'erh tea will help you lose weight (and he has said that, I work at a teashop and had to deal with the aftermath of that episode), does not mean it will do the work for you. Your toothbrush is probably not all that fancy, and yogurt (unless unsweetened) has enough sugar in it to encourage yeast infections despite the probiotic content. Do your own research, but in the meantime, enjoy kale chips and mason jars before they become "so last season'.

-ST