vanilla raindrops

email: noreia@planet-save.com.

This is my blogchalk:
United States, California, sometimes Steiermark, Austria, something bored teenagers say when they speak useless words into brick walls of cotton candy, English, German, Noreia,creative writing, fiction, reading, college student, strange, cat power, mogwai, arap strap, dresden dolls, white oleander, the earth, my butt, and other big, round things, welcome to the dollhouse, fuckers.

body jewelry by bodyPUNKS!

body jewelry by bodyPUNKS!

body jewelry by BodyPUNKS!

 

English:
there's two muffins.  And?  and . . . well you know the rest.  yeah but i need it.  okay there're these two muffins right.  and . . . this girl puts them in the oven, and the first muffin says, it's getting hot in here, and the second muffin says, oh my gosh, a talking muffin.

Translated to German:
es gibt zwei Muffins. Und? und. . . Brunnen kennen Sie den Rest. yeah
aber ich benötigen Sie ihn. heißen Sie there're diese zwei Muffins
nach rechts gut. und. . . dieses Mädchen setzt sie in den Ofen ein,
und das erste Muffin sagt, erhält es innen hier heiß, und das zweite
Muffin sagt, mein OH- Mann, ein sprechenmuffin.

Translated back to English:
there are two Muffins. And? and. . Wells know you the remainder yeah
however I need you it are called you there're these two Muffins to the
right well and. . this girl inserts him into the furnace, and which
says first Muffin, it keeps inside here hot, and which says second
Muffin, my OH- man, sprechenmuffin.

www.systranbox.com

Posted by: noreia at 15:47 | link | comments (3) |

paint me a picture, an image of vanilla raindrops.
the scratchy static of the record as it turns
Eddie Vedder, a candle lit, a sweater
black words on white pages, herbal incense burns

people are fascinating. quotes from a "teen pen pals" website:

-- i am very placid i smoke haave crazy ideas and go a bit mad sometimes

-- I live for music.

-- Umm.... I like cheese a lot. Mail me.. Im fun :)

-- Likes about girls:Beautiful and clean skin,

-- hey everybody i'm just a normal punk kid in florida.

-- I'm P.H.A.T.

-- I love to play guitar and I hate racists.

-- looking for girlz 14-16 hu want guy for either friendship or sumfin more!!!!

-- When im older i would like to move to America and train to be a Physical Education (P.E) teacher. Bye-Bye. I hope you like me!

-- My greatest quality i pocess is to make the most stubborn of people laugh.

-- I LIVE IN A CITY WHERE I AM THE ONLY PERSON WHO ENJOY HIPHOP MUSIC.

-- I like spending weekends in my car then at night getting totally plastered.

-- I love to race I drag race so we me and my mom and dad i have two sister,s who come to sum of my races with there husbands.

-- hello i am looking for a girl pen pals that loves to make out and have sex i love sex talk i am 19 years old and very good looking i am looking for sex and more sex any girls instread write back and we will talk then joe

-- I like rap and hip hop. If you can't tell the difference between them two. Then don't bother trying ta talk to me.

-- I am 12 years old. I am really confused about my relationship right now so you could call me single i guess...

-- Just broke up with girlfriend and need someone to talk to.

-- hey people my name is Claten i have 2 sisters ones shelby and elora we are good people NOT j/k we can be bad when we want to Dont email me

-- well im blonde but aint dum got big eyez n ive got a tanned body lookin 4 cute guyz soo holla at me

-- I am bi-racial. My races include Italian, african american, scottish, puerto rican, and English.

-- Im lookin for a girl about my own age (13) as i got to an all boys school which sucks.

-- I love the dramatic arts and shit . . . i live in canada (aka the best country in the world).

-- i am really into Graffiti art and real punk rock.....

-- a lot of people call me hott

-- i love to spoile girls and to party

-- i am fed up of bieng hurt by this world

from this site.

Posted by: noreia at 19:05 | link | comments (4) |

just found this post by stargazer.  similar worries.

Posted by: noreia at 01:28 | link | comments |

i am going to work at a record store.  a music store.  and i am going to go to school.  i'm going to seek people out and ask them what color they love most and what they dream about and who they look up to.  i'm going to ask them if they've ever been overwhelmed by beauty or sadness, if they've wanted to fall into music like deep, dark water.

damn it.  am i always going to hate getting older?  there are phases and phases, life passes in boxes and windows for me, chunks of time colored by leaves falling, by taking walks, by distorted rock guitars and bitter, scratchy-voiced singers. 

i think i fear the loss of youth because i see the middle-aged people around me, and they seem more hollow, more subdued, shadows and echoes of who they once were.  you can talk to them every day, and it takes months to see maybe a spark of the passion and recklessness and freedom and edge they once had -- and that's if they slip up and let you see that depth in their eyes, behind the cover of years.  they're so normal.

i don't want to spend my life lost in Lifetime movies.  even the idea of having my own house seems empty and final. 

or maybe it's that i hang out with seventeen-year-olds.

or maybe it's that i'm lonely.  i hide in music and goofy teenage novels, in creating things, stringing words together, in exploring parks by the beach, sitting on playground equipment or under willow trees, taking lost construction cones home with me.  i miss being somebody's girl.

the strange thing is, i'm not alone.  but there it is in my chest, this thing that drives me to seek for someone who must be somewhere.  someone who feels the magic in thom yorke's voice over the strange vibration of guitar strings, who walks in the dark and smokes, who thrashes and writhes in music, who breathes it all in and bleeds it out.  we used to be that.  we used to be closer to that.  i resent how normal we've become, how predictable.  i want everything to be new, everything to be possible.  it's in finding bent up pieces of metal to give to each other, in spending hours decorating letters while listening to "fuck you all!" being screamed from mix-tapes.  it's in the bricks of a.s.w., in hair dyeing disasters and stupid boys, in the way i snuck to the bathroom to put on makeup even at night so you'd think i was pretty.  it's in the way it felt to trudge over sidewalks in our skater shoes, to be ready for anything.  i think now you think i'm demanding.  it's just that i need all of this.  give me all of this.  don't be anyone else. 

once, after i got a new, short haircut, i was told i looked like peter pan.  maybe that's appropriate.

Posted by: noreia at 00:40 | link | comments |

okay, how does my font size look now? i followed sb's advice, so hopefully it's better (?)

p.s. happy thanksgiving. be thankful. appreciate life.

Posted by: noreia at 14:05 | link | comments (5) |

dresden dolls

Posted by: noreia at 01:42 | link | comments (2) |

 

 

...

Posted by: noreia at 00:40 | link | comments |

i want to know what happened to sara.

sara was thirteen -- we were all thirteen. sara had blond hair that hung like straw down her back, around her shoulders. she wore big, grungy clothes and had stickers of aliens. she laughed a lot, i remember her laugh. she moved away, and i never really knew her, i just knew that my best friend considered her "cool" so she was okay to hang out with. i would like to know sara.

and what happened to aja?

aja showed up at my old high school the year after i graduated. she wore grandma sweaters and had fuzzy green-black hair and fishnet tights and holes in everything. i visited the school and we sat in the bleachers during a rally, drawing cartoons, she and spike and i, and hers were twisted, pervertedly funny. she liked my boots, and when i sat in on one of her classes, someone asked if i was her mom. (we figured it was because we were the only two white kids in the class, since i was only three years older than her.)

what happened to cory?

he moved here from washington, d.c., having been kicked out of school there for drugs (he said). he had a following of little skinny girls, but he would come into the practice room in music class and sit with his head on his hands and tell me about his problems, about his life and his thoughts. one day he asked me, "want to see something funny?" and he removed a strip of duct tape from the front of his beanie, revealing the word "hottie" surrounded by orange and red flames. "my grandma gave it to me for Christmas," he admitted sheepishly. i wrote to him when i struggled with God.

then there's david whose words were like open doors, who showed me that God can be more than "three steps to salvation." and the other david, who wore army pants and came to youth group with his band of delinquent followers, who flirted with me and called me beautiful and was going to join the air force. there's tony from college who wore the cowboy hat, and the guy from the show last week who i didn't know, with the unshaven face and multiple silver earrings. he sat in the middle of the rows of chairs and stared silently, sadly, and then slipped away unnoticed by me before i could ask him why he looked so sad.

there's the girl from eighth grade to whom i was drawn. i was proud to have a "rocker" friend. i bonded with her over our self-proclaimed pyromania as we walked across empty basketball courts. and the girl from tenth grade who came from juvenile hall and had a buzz cut and flirted with all the guys and ran around the gym banging into walls before she came back over and sat and talked quite normally with us.

why are they inaccessible? i wonder if they realize that i value them. i wonder what they would have thought if they would have known how much.

Posted by: noreia at 23:41 | link | comments (1) |

"many moons away, i will find myself someday

it all comes back to you some way . . ." SAP.

and he sang with such passion on his face. the near and the far.

pale and beautiful, they screamed into the wooden stage, they thrashed and their black hair shone under red lights in the dark. throatshot.

Posted by: noreia at 03:40 | link | comments (3) |

". . . you are free," commented sb. "you can be anything."

sam says i can be a hobbit. i do not want to be a hobbit, i tell him. i would be an elf, because they are peaceful and beautiful and immortal. or a human, because despite all their bloody fumbling in this world, they know what it means to be really alive, to feel earth under your clawing fingers, to breathe in the scent of sweat and dust and blood. to love desperately.

but i wasn't going to write about hobbits and elves. i was going to write about the truth in her words, about realizing that i haven't lost myself, the me that was once there. i feel her in the incense smoke, in the way i listened to "metal heart" by cat power maybe twenty times last night, chan's smooth voice floating out over the sparkling city below my grandmother's house, and deep into the endless space in my heart, my mind, like warm darkness.

the beauty is still there.

Posted by: noreia at 00:07 | link | comments (3) |

feeing jolted. on too much caffeine. charged.

this is a time when i'm not quite okay with being myself. i need to be the girl who has just discovered there is more to music than Christian rock, more to reading than Psalm 119. she was eighteen and she dressed in dark colors because they soothed her. she loved to walk the aisles of the music store, browsing used records and CDs, realizing that she could buy anything she wanted to listen to, because there were no invisible rules saying, this is okay, but this is a sin. it was a strange, earthy kind of freedom.

she felt on the tip of the world, in a sense. she felt that the world brimmed with fascinating, beautiful people who could connect with her, who could love her. she liked the quietness inside, the space and the music that filled it. she liked liking the rain. she liked the new girl at school, who was younger and had all kinds of crazy friends, who made her laugh and forget herself, who wrote beautifully poetic letters.

she loved to come home and set the Pearl Jam record to "Indifference" and flop on the bed and sing. she loved being young and being herself, discovering what that meant.

but "that there, that's not me." i think i need it to be. i think i need to know that all that youth and craziness is not lost.

i have the urge to smoke and get tattoos and piercings, to sit in the dark and look at the sky, to kiss and yearn and mourn growing older. this urge to carve into myself in so many ways, to explode and implode and scream, to burn and writhe (that word she used so long ago), to be, to be, to be.

unsatisfied.

why did i suddenly wake up and realize that two years had passed and i didn't want it, i couldn't hold on?

i sometimes wish that i could stop learning, stop thinking so seriously. to be naive and reckless, to be narrow, to think about music and shows and people and being cool, to be satisfied in that. i rebel against growing older, against the thought of sickness, the worry of this big, evil world. maybe that's why i want to harm myself. maybe that's why i want to be numb.

but she's still there, inside of me. there doesn't have to be a difference.

Posted by: noreia at 20:44 | link | comments (3) |

are most people uncomfortable with living in a state of questioning?

i met a girl through letters, kind of. two years ago. we bonded because we were both questioning. it was a windy season, a season for melancholy guitar music with deep-voiced singers, for swapping cassette compilations and watching the stars under crisp nights. i walked around campus with her tapes in my five-dollar Walgreens cassette player with no rewind button, listening to music from Final Fantasy or the lamenting tones of Rufus Wainwright and Jason Wade.

we went to a coffee shop i'd never been in and the words poured out, unblockable, as we absently stared out the window or studied the old, brown map of the world on the wall and wondered at the number of individual lives on this planet. we laughed at the poor people around us, trying to enjoy a peaceful cup of coffee, having to put up with our crazy philosophical discussions and exclamations of, "i know!" and "exactly!" we fed off of each other's questions and frustrations. it felt like water, like soothing night, like rugged deep and human. as a friend just commented about us in an instant message, "man, good, crazy things come when the two of you are put together."

i don't know exactly what triggered the end of that phase of life. there are things i could mention. the day she walked up and said, "guess what happened? i went to church with my mom yesterday and i talked to all those people i used to judge as hypocritical and fundamentalist and judgmental, and we really connected. i realized that we're all human, we're all trying, and i decided to give my life to Christ."

i didn't know what to feel, then, in my dark clothing and the shadows under my eyes. i was happy for her. i am happy for her now, with her really nice job playing guitar and singing in church every week. i am happy she's been accepted to a great Christian college, that her dad, an agnostic for years, has started to go to church, is calling himself a Christian. i'm happy that she still questions, but never God, never Christianity. never shaken, right? from what i see.

she is liked by everyone. she is so sweet. she sincerely loves Jesus as if he were her best friend. and i don't miss that time, not in the way that i know you can miss things, with tears always leaking and that aching, that cave in your chest. i am not bitter.

i'm just wondering why i always come back to the questions. the real ones, the deep ones that threaten to strip away all labels, all the security of belonging to a group-ideology, all commonly accepted answers. why i feel more real in that than in any attempt at "accepting" what's right without feeling it first, finding it in my gut, wading through it and growing into it.

are most people more happy in the comfort of answers?

"World is all backward . . . People base their lives on convenient recollections and are considered sane. People who look too hard for truth are considered crazy. Did you know that most of the people in history whose books have lasted more than a few centuries have been either thrown into jail or murdered by angry mobs? All the prophets, the great philosopthers, the disciples, people like Joan of Arc, great novelists . . ." -- Lani Garver, What Happened to Lani Garver, by Carol Plum-Ucci.

i'm not saying my friend has settled for comfortable solutions. i just don't know her as well, don't know what's really in her head most of the time. but thinking about that time in our lives of swapping cassettes and autumn leaves and so many questions, and comparing it to now, makes me wonder about myself and why i feel most alive when searching, when trying to force my eyes open a little bit wider to the world.

i wouldn't trade it.

Posted by: noreia at 00:22 | link | comments (3) |

i finished my book tonight in the coffee shop.  sitting there on the blue sofa, book in hand, comforted by the same people who are often there: the small girl in baggy pants and a hoodie, the girl with short, choppy hair, the quiet guy in black with glasses and a book in the corner.  and i realized that i didn't know them, that i would like to know them.  that i would like to love people for being people, for being so beautiful and colorful and different from me and the same.

i was on the verge of actually standing up, walking over to choppy-haired girl with the book in her hand (most people there have books in their hands) and asking what the book was about, when small baggy-dressed girl beat me to it.  not knowing how else to start a conversation, and thinking i wouldn't get a great reaction if i walked over and just stared at her, i remained in my comfy indent in the sofa.  if only these intersting people knew that i just wanted to appreciate their individuality, to love them for who they are.  i don't think blurting that out to them would go over too well, though.

so then i got the idea to write a letter to each of the "regulars" in the coffee shop.  "dear small, baggy-dressed girl," i would say.  "how come you hardly talk to anyone?  why do you come in here by yourself and sit and read?  what do you read about?"  or "dear quiet guy in black in the corner, do you come here to escape something, or to find something?" 

i wonder why people don't try things like that more often.  i mean, if they all think i'm crazy and call me names and get together to form clubs that i'm not allowed to join, i won't have lost any friendships, because i don't know them now.  what have i to lose?

except maybe my comfy indent on the sofa.

Posted by: noreia at 21:58 | link | comments (4) |

something to think about.

one wall of the coffee house is brick, the others are shades of brown. the wooden floor is unbelievably scuffed. such comfort, sinking into the sofas -- which are arranged facing each other, inviting total strangers to talk about taurine in red bull or the worst times to get giggling fits.

i hope we can claim the sofas tonight. eight people who hardly know each other will meet there to support the local bands playing.

"it alarms me that i don't feel anything," she told me. at the time i was afraid. afraid and filled with a dangerous tidal wave of love that would not stop crashing. now i don't feel anything. or i don't know what i feel. nothing extreme, anyway, just a sigh of relief that i don't have to be anything or do anything. how beautiful just to breathe and exist, to drink in without analyzing. "so i open myself up to all of this."

when i was a child, i had a pen pal in jamaica. she sent me t-shirts and jamaican currency. i had maybe fifty pen pals back then. i lived my life through letters.

but what is my medium now? walk around, breathe and exist. is there meaning in the sad music of trees played by the wind? are there angels in pale boys in hooded sweatshirts, with long, skinny fingers whose white knuckles pass over delicate guitar strings?

i drink it in.

 

 

 

.

Posted by: noreia at 16:38 | link | comments (2) |

CAUTION! this is funny.

Posted by: noreia at 23:53 | link | comments |

i'm reading a book, "blue like jazz," by donald miller. it is frustrating because the guy is so darn deep. he is one of those few writers who write exactly as i would love to write, as i try to write, as i think i do write when i am most able to let go to the words. as i read this book, i'm thinking, this guy is so open to truth and real with himself. it's also frustrating because it's hard to ignore his candidly beautiful expression of his deep, personal experience of God. this may be the most un-religious book about Jesus that i have ever read. which is why i can read it right now.

the car parked, grey like sleep covering the world in the Walgreens parking lot. we hesitate before opening the car doors. "i don't know if i'm a Christian," i say. "can you be a Christian and have this many issues with the religion's fundamental beliefs?"

"just believe what you believe," she tells me five minutes later, as we sort through the ten dollar hoodies just inside the door. "that's okay." i don't know how to tell her the disturbing thought i'm having, that i'm bitter toward God for changing her, for giving her this peace. i miss the dark fire of rebellion, of isolation and fear, the headbanging, screaming teenage searching that bound us. i would never take away her peace, but where does this leave me?

it's funny, though. i feel like maybe i should feel something -- guilty, afraid, angry, something -- but there's this strange calmness inside me, this feeling of Christmas lights and candles, of woven rugs and instant coffee and acoustic guitars. and deeper than that, a feeling that i love -- i love! -- believing what i choose to believe, coming to my own conclusions about what makes sense, whether or not that's "okay."

it's funny how freeing that is. how it just makes me happy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

God's Towels

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

Posted by: noreia at 23:11 | link | comments |

"My mother used to say that he brought shame to the house of Hassenpfefferschuledunker" -- Rose Nyland, on "The Golden Girls."

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

from oct. 31, 04

Time passes, I get more complex. I'm like a collage, or like one of those painted wooden dolls inside of dolls. Adding layers to myself. And at each moment, any of my past layers can pop up to haunt me, to color my present with nostalgia, to get me lost in what I'll never fully leave behind.

But the thing is, I like order. I like things to fit together, everything a part of its own phase and all that goes along with it. Rain with Thursday and dark colors, with tea and aliens and death and depression, longing for what is out of reach. Spring with Pedro the Lion and the happy mix CD (entitled "Gilbert Swindelbottom"), with fast food and the mall and trying not to focus on the deeper things, instead of sinking into them.

And then there are times without phases.

Who am I? I am so complex.

off the freeway,

almost home

1:09 PM

_______________________

nov. 3, 04

3:51 PM "Coffee House"

There's a late-middle-aged man in a green scarf and an earring, reading The Idiot's Guide to Handling a Breakup and muttering to himself. He just asked us if we think men do things to sabotage their relationships. The grey-haired woman behind the counter (a lesbian) is discussing the results of the election with a teenage girl with burgundy hair and rainbow shoelaces. Spike's reading "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" on the couch, my sister is glancing through the newspapers strewn on a table, and me?

I'm full of energy. Energy and thoughts.

What a surprise, that Bush is so popular. I need to cut my fingernails. I wish I were going to school. Is God who the Christians say he is?

And the radio's tuned to "Smooooth Jaaazz."

And my sister's telling her younger friend that she can't drive an hour to pick her up from her mom's house without her mom's permission. I'm surprised by how responsible that is of her.

Now Breakup Man is talking to Shoelace Girl. I'd like to believe that when middle-aged men talk to young girls about their lives, they really are just connecting as human beings, but in my experience, it's usually more. They end up "falling in love" with you. Which is why, twenty mintues ago, I slouched and pulled my hood over my face when I saw a certain tall man in a poncho walk by.

4:13 PM

I want to be so beautiful that no one can tell whether I'm male or female. Fleeting thought.

4:17 PM

Why is it so hard to remain open to Christianity, without conforming, accepting it all, and without feeling threatened and running in the other direction, angry and closed off? I just want it to be okay to be myself (who questions that You think homosexuality is wrong, or how You could send anyone to hell, or if there is a hell). I just want my own journey, to walk slowly and reflectively, cautiously, aware, unthreatened. I just want a personal path with You.

4:28 PM

Posted by: noreia at 00:52 | link | comments (6) |