vanilla raindrops

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

yesterday i saw my shoes be covered in poison. the toxic, white droplets spread over green leaves and destroyed them. butterflies fled in terror. i had watched my friend's rhythmic spraying of yards of unwanted grass in the heat, seen him carry the heavy can of poison on his back for over thirty minutes before i offered to take over. i was a giant, pouring acid rain over a tiny green world, and i thought, they would have done it anyway. what does it matter if i or someone else does it? and i thought, this is what life can become, this is the poisonous apathy.

at night we watched a $22,000 fireworks display at a mormon temple, its decadent spire slicing through the smoke-filled sky. as the band played "america the beautiful," in this parking lot of a small, midwestern town, my friend turned to me and said, "why are we here? these are the people who don't want us to have equal rights." i took the tiny strip of rainbow cloth off the pocket of my backpack. i remembered standing under that giant flag on market and castro, with a group of such beautiful people and a tour guide who would tell us the history of this neighborhood in which i felt so alive, so at home. i pinned the cloth to my shirt. as we sat entranced by the explosions of light and color, i wondered how many AIDS-infected children in africa could be helped by $22,000. how many hospitals could be built. how many school supplies purchased.

we poison our lives with apathy and spend so much on flashy, colorful explosions; we fight for our moral right to deprive others of theirs -- here in this land of the free and home of the brave.

Posted by: noreia at 10:07 | link | comments (4) |

Sunday, June 12, 2005

Posted by: noreia at 23:25 | link | comments (2) |

Thursday, May 19, 2005

stopped suddenly by

this mono no aware,

i breathe, want to cry

God, how to express what this school has become to me? the place where i am silent and locked inside myself, yet feel so interconnected. i've fed off of people's words, words of personal power and truth and integrity, and i've come away with the message: it's okay to be yourself.

fuck my words, they can't express any of it.

yesterday i read a story about a girl who used to paint as a child, who tried to paint a sunset, the night sky full of stars. but she felt that whenever she painted something, she stripped it of some of its beauty. that is how i feel now, fumbling with these words.

a girl passes, a hint of cloves: imagined.

an almost-stranger gives me mono no aware on lined notebook paper.

and a hundred feet away, outside the window behind the woman at the library's reference desk, all i can see are trees, pine-green, triangles pointing up to the rainy sky. a blue-grey haze behind them, and it looks like a forest out there. i can almost believe that if i step outside, i will be in austria again. the air will be so clean you want to cry, my body will sigh and drop all these years, all these locks and keys.

http://www.sleepnet.com/disorder.htm <-- i don't know what that is. i pressed control v for "paste" on this library computer, and that's what someone before me had copied.

the cherry flowers have faded

here in the reign of mortality

here in the weary rain.

-- kokinshu, poem 113

arvo part

  My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
     My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
     Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
     My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
     The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
     Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
     The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
     My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
     Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
     My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.

Farewell to the mountains, high-cover'd with snow,
     Farewell to the straths and green vallies below;
     Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
     Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

-- robert burns

that there, that's not me

i go where i please

i walk through walls; i float down the liffey

i'm not here; this isn't happening.

in a little while, i'll be gone

the moment's already passed

yeah, it's gone

and i'm not here,

i'm not here

strobe lights and blown speakers

fireworks and hurricanes

and i'm not here, this isn't happening

i'm not here, i'm not here

-- radiohead

Posted by: noreia at 13:45 | link | comments (2) |

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

may 10th, 2005; 1:55? p.m. in sociology class

truths about myself:

i think i am better than some people.

and worse than others. for a variety of reasons. i now rate myself on a social scale which i had escaped for a long time. this is due to insecurity. which leads to:

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i am very comfortable with myself, and i am very uncomfortable with myself.

i am kicking internalized homophobia's ass, but i also suddenly care about looking a certain way, listening to certain music, doing what is "acceptable" to those few people that i see as part of the subculture i probably best fit into. i do what i like, but this "acceptable" standard sits in the back of my mind, no matter how much i like to just think that "i am who i am." i keep telling myself to stop caring, to stop adhering to perceived judgments that may not even be there -- and if they are, who cares?

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i am falling far behind in school.

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i feel guilty for spending money on anything, ever -- except maybe when it's on other people.

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i am completely sleep-deprived today.

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i hate that i do self-destructive things. it makes me feel like i am lying down and becoming a victim to the "system." it makes me feel like a weak human being.

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i have been afraid of letting my girlfriend really see me. i am getting over that, but now i am afraid that she won't really see me, that there won't be room in her for my thoughts, my experiences, my perceptions. her waters are too deep, dark, unnavigable already, and i'm afraid i will tire of the effort of trying to explain myself. i won't compete for attention with her, and i will hold all the depth inside because maybe she thinks her pain has been more than mine, because i can never express it all, all the tragic beauty and story and past, so why try?

but i really want to try. i'm starting to hunger for that real life, for that knowing and being known. because when we get through to each other, when we reach through the haze of self and past experience and distrust and pain, when our fingers intertwine and our eyes lock in understanding, i taste truth, purity, love. and it is so worth it.

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she baffles me because she is like me in so many ways. she is like no one else i've ever met. she challenges me. she is so truthful about herself and knows herself so well, and in turn she reveals the truth about me -- which is hard to deal with, but incredible. i am humbled and in awe. she actually makes me feel incompetent to express myself in words -- which is rare. every time i hear a piano, i think of her. i love her.

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i am so very, very tired of this schedule, this . . . everything. so tired of being. so tired of the effort.

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i don't know what i'm going to call home today, where i'm going to be. i don't know what i long for, where i belong -- except that ancient land, so far away.

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i can't wait for the summer, when i can breathe.

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i dread the summer, because i will miss her. and i will miss my beautiful, mysterious household that calms me and frightens me.

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i think i am hungry. i feel fat. i feel dirty.

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("we don't ask to be loaded up with stereotypes and ommissions when we come into the world" [over melancholy piano music] -- sociology video)

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i don't know where my walkman is and i crave beautiful music.

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i'm starting to remember how much is inside of me, and i'm in awe of it all, the depth, the beauty of life. i think my last girl messed me up a lot. i think that now, my girlfriend -- this situation -- is doing a lot for me. teaching me, when i was too proud to know i needed to be taught. she exposes underlying attitudes in my words that i didn't even want to admit were there. thank you, fig.

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this is life, unfolding itself for me. this is real, destiny, God, killdeer.

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Posted by: noreia at 16:12 | link | comments |

may 10, 2005; 3:44 am

tired eyes, and the temptation of sleep. i lie on the floor of my old bedroom at my parents house and read about women and girls attacking their own bodies with rules and denials and sharp metal objects.

i try to let my professors know that i care about what they are teaching, that i am interested, despite the fact that i can't seem to churn out these assignments as they pile up. i spend nine hours patrolling the used floor, or putting CDs in security cases, and i think about the books i could be reading, but the ritual actions, the clanging of plastic into crates, is therapeutic and numbing, soothing.

i float around the store in my long black coat and watch the sky outside the window as it slowly sucks away all the sunlight. i think about sushi and gay literature and days at the beach. i feel guilty for never being at home.

guilt: i feel it toward myself. for spending earned money on lunch, for not pulling straight As for once. guilty for being wherever i am instead of wherever i think i should be. guilty for doing whatever i fall into doing, guilty for not "applying myself." so that is what i am doing tonight -- forcing my eyelids to stay open as i read my women's psychology reader, wondering how i'm going to form the words to write an essay. but i'm forming words now.

i have to remember to form words. they have to flow like water, bleed, breathe. i'm forming words now.

and i'm trying to figure out everything, and the pressure makes me numb, robotic, animatronic. (animatronic: of, relating to, or being a puppet or similar figure that is animated by means of electromechanical devices -- mirriam-webster.)

but she teaches me to live, to love, to cry. to remember music. to remember myself. she teaches me that i am selfish, that i do not know everything, especially about human beings. she teaches me to bleed. to breathe. to be.

Posted by: noreia at 01:57 | link | comments |

Sunday, April 24, 2005

a haze.

driving home from work and everything's grey, everything's touched by golden sunlight, feeling in a magic world again.

"it's clipped on by something that can't spin." my dad is talking about spark plugs and i'm trying to describe a perfect moment, the touch of air that perfect temperature where it just glides over you like water, and i'm trying to think and breathe and every time i come here he gives me rules for life.

"now, sometimes when two friends get a little too close . . ." (hi, fig.)

this is unreal, but it makes me happy. she makes me happy.

Posted by: noreia at 20:32 | link | comments (1) |

Monday, April 18, 2005

can we please just stop pretending everything is okay here? stop drowning in wasted-television-hours, stop the routine, stop the shaky smiles hiding tears, fears, everything? i can run away to my own world, the world of purple and green walls, mind-numbing smoke and pulsating music, and quiet, quiet, quiet inside . . . but like a boomerang i am drawn back, i will never be separate. i cannot just run off and come back later when it's all sorted itself out. i have realized that i must be a part of it, must be here and be sorted out, sifted through, tossed and turned and churned like waves, with it all. but i long for the quiet, the whisper of wind against branches and dead leaves, the fires twirling under watercolor night skies full of pinprick stars. i long for austria, for that ancient land of castles and accordions, swaying beer glasses, rough mountain dialects. i long to belong to something like that, and i do, but i am never home.

i carry home around inside of myself: austria, the nature-park with its sprites and fairies, the melancholy cello. my house near the zoo, which i never see except after 12 am, and its beautiful inhabitants, with whom i feel both so at home and so disconnected.

i long to sit down with them and say, don't you understand, don't you understand. i long to sit still, just to sit for hours. to stare at the ocean. to sing with the ocean which once almost carried me away with it, which almost stole this all from me before i knew any of it.

death steals away.

i find a strange comfort in bones. smooth, something to hold onto. hypnotizing, a connection with the disconnected, reaching the unreachable. in touch with myself, the self i do not know.

let me live, breathe, bleed, push away. throw my arms in the air and scream. sing to the moon, tear away, writhe and cry and rage against. let me fly.

Posted by: noreia at 21:07 | link | comments |

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

i guess i should post now. april, and my last . . . wow, six minutes of being 20. five. four. april, and it's tired eyes and smoky haze, watching the clouds all shift at once outside my giant window, lying in bed in the moonlight. two minutes. lack of connections, loneliness. power/vulnerability. longing, longing . . . drowning in schedules, time mapped out as if they owned it, owned me. wanting to sit, just sit for a long while and breathe in and look out again.

one minute.

and i wish i could feel the beauty again. i wish i could feel it in my chest, the bittersweetness, unbearable and full of life. quietness. fire in the night.

wow, two minutes ago, how did that happen?

well, happy 21 to me.