Drama only speaks to the discontent
don't play in the shadows and then tell me your heaven sent.
---
I am slowly realizing that my E$ is not going to be my roommate in less than a month :(.
I love her endlessly. I need to learn how to be more present in the next weeks to come because I know it's going to be heartache when she's gone. I want Katy to spend every day with me again. I cannot imagine life getting better than it is right now, really. I have a freaking CAR!
I love the people in my life. It's never been so easy to be thankful.

Officially half way through the semester and doing real well in school. I love being in school, I wish I could do it forever. Spending a lot of time with great people from Augsburg, hanging out with some tonight, then going to the Calhoun Beach Club where Whitney lives and having a cozy night. SOA trip to Georgia is coming up quickly. Got a new job with Marchese and Associates. May actually start being a professional..tomorrow. Seriously getting a car within the next month. Spending a lot of time at the Collins home. Sam is now my brother too and it's really nice to have a big bro. We watch movies and make dinner a lot with Tyrel. I love both of them a lot, we get along real well these days, we've got a nice household. I love all sets of my parents tremendously and I'm getting to spend more time with them too. I miss a couple people in my life a lot, but I haven't figured out a good solution for that one yet. I no longer feel abandoned, angry or guilty. Getting over a sickness. Zoe is home for good, which is beautiful. Kind of learning how to save money. Dropped 20 lbs while still managing to eat. Learning how to be dependable, sticking to my plans, returning every phone call, growing. Working on not being offended when people don't return the calls. Doing the things I want to do and finding people that want to be a part of it has been exhilarating. Ready to start doing yoga and reading more novels to get my head in the same good current that busy life is in. Unhappiness was wearing on me so I decided to throw myself into a lot of different new things. Today, I'm really happy with where life is and is going. When I'm thrilled I don't really have anything to write but the facts. There they are. This entry is pretty stoopid. I'm so thirsty for a trip to the bay state.

I realized today that this is all that I know:
scraps of worn fabric, flickering lights, missed calls, broken bed frames, strangers who once were friends waving goodbye from train stations, kisses in the dark, prayer and consumption. Dizzying seasons, calm snow storms that cover it all.
I speak but I am not heard. I wear his socks. I fold his shirts. I wonder if he misses someone far away. I wonder if I can grow big enough to fill his heart to the top, brimming. I am just a child today with a swollen stomach. With impatience and pitty and plight. Tiny hands outstretched, giving and begging simultaneously.
My life today is simply the compilation of these things. I cannot mourn, these things are all that I know. This is my only reality and it cannot be different no matter how hard I pull the threads of it. I cannot mourn but that does not mean that I cannot rejoice. I forget that sometimes.

"Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion."
-Thich Nhat Hanh

When shit turns to simply rubbish, people rejoice.
When shit turns to copper people think Jesus has come again.
I am sick of this, in the deepest part of me. I have always been copper. Unpolished, unreflective, sure. But I could have just as easily been shit. I know this and I won't pretend it didn't cross my mind a time or twenty. When strippers turn in to saviors and start reading books, when drug dealers get good grades, when people get jobs and pay rent, F YOU. It's a cold, scary world at times. I wish people would realize that some of us suck it up and knit blankets..not only for ourselves but for our friends and family. I'm glad for people that wake up, COOL. Mental disability/depression is an entirely different subject. I will be the first to rejoice with those that have found their way around that. Maybe because I haven't completely myself. But selfish cheating abusive slime saving Africa? (the entire continent?), please. I wish "different" people would stop trying so hard to be different while telling everyone they have really found themselves and shitting on the rest of the copper structures. It's true, I miss who I was. Katy has seen the here and there of me and for that I'm thankful. She gets excited sometimes when I'm outraged, acknowledging bullshit, so here it is.
Hopefully I move past this "confused, cluttered time in my life and know truth and love for the entire race. "Maybe I should eat shrooms for the first time and open my mind. haha, Life is complicated enough without hallucinogens. I'll explore this place on my own, with my own brain, even if it is critical and pissed at this point in time. It's all mine. I am a True, through and through.

I am neck deep in an extremely rapidly changing current and it's thick.
Some moments I think I'm drowning and the scenery is flying by me. I can't hold on to much. It's an exciting and painful trip. Another resignation letter today like another brick tied to my foot. I can't keep anything to stay, yet I can't say that I've done much. I want things to be constant, forever. Or I want to let go of wanting a constant forever, what I guess is real truth. I want our cupboards at the new house to be filled with the best things and I want to continue cooking lessons with Sam. I want so badly to be available to people, and to not crawl into Ty's bed early in the night because I am exhausted and frustrated because he is not available to me. I want to stop hiding with covers over my head. I want to stop lighting the night with a tiny flicker by myself. I am on the edge of drastic change, good (I think?) deep change, but right now it simply feels like an endless backstroke to try to stay afloat.

The ghosts come in and they refuse to leave..at least the past couple weeks. I wake up wondering why I am stomping my feet like a child against the bed and howling. My heart keeps blowing me over and bending me in half. July has never been good to me, and I, in turn, have never given it a fair chance.
July feels like December. The December when I was trudging. I remember how cold my feet were, and my hands, and my runny red nose. How Dad's huge boots threatened to leave me every time I picked up a foot and asked the simplest request, "please just walk with me", muttering in the dark. And the flashlight burned out long after we knew we wouldn't find his dog, but we kept trudging. And the journey home was long, and Dad had a broken heart, and I had a broken heart. We bought each other music for Christmas to try to mend things. He was learning to play the fiddle but it did not want to be played. The strings were tight from the cold and it just screamed and cried. My brother is staying with me for the weekend. We don't have enough beds in this house, he's asleep on the couch next to me, my baby. I remember how much harder life was when he was just coming into the world. I wouldn't sleep in his room because ghosts lined the walls like insulation. And it didn't matter how many there were, it was still freezing. I feel like everyone is my fathers bulky black boots when I just want someone to walk with. This has little to no truth or evidence behind it. To be in need of constant reassurance is a ghost that I hope to dismiss as soon as possible. When it floats in my bedroom doorway I become heavier than I ever have been, with every organ falling to the floor. I am anchored in a delusion and my mind runs ramped while my body stays in place. I feel guilty for wanting to skip over this part of my life, especially when I spend my days with Ray Bonneville, or on the phone with Greg Brown's mother. Or drinking beer with my Red House Records co-workers who I care so much for. I should be perfectly quiet, light, sound. But I'm shaken and I'm shaking all the time with no sensical explanation except that-
Damn December is wearing a mask again. A sigh of relief comes as the clock ticks 12:01 am, August 1st.

Still stuck on the whole "sacrifice" thing. Just got back from a 4 day escapade with my 27 younger cousins, 8 uncles and their spouses and extremely Catholic grandparents in the woods with running water or cellular service. Talk about sacrifice. Work in the morning..in like three hours, and I still haven't slept because Paul and Peter kicked each other in the head the whole way back (20 hours), the ac in the truck doesn't work, we blew a tire at 2am in the middle of nowhere Iowa and I was sandwiched between bags of food and the kickers. Plus, I haven't seen my friends in about 5 years which is really, really cool. Don't really talk to anyone anymore. I'm turning in to my little sister (who I saw for the first time in months this weekend). She shaved her head completely and dropped out of high school. When I don't sleep I am just done with life. I love my father very much and Ty too and I don't care if people don't understand either situation because at the end of the day I'm exhausted and upset and they sacrifice a lot to make it do-able. I am too tired to explain and my heart is kinda ripped open and spilling out like angel hair pasta. I miss Katy. I wish someone was here when I got home.

There are some proclamations of love that make me want to crawl back home
(Posey's gift to Chris and the wedding)
Some that make me spill drinks, or maybe some drinks that make me spill my love, but that gets into the whole chicken and egg debate..
Sometimes when the exclamation proclamations of love doesn't come I find myself with fist-fulls of dirt, grappling the ground, trying to get home or to a softer place.
For some reason I thought falling in love with my best friend would be easier than any relationship that came before, but I am learning that no relationship is without it's work, which isn't necessarily such a bad thing.
We still have to work at this love even though it's a massive love. I don't think I really realized how much I continue to sacrifice, though. Sacrifice might not even be the right word because it's never been a give and take of good or evil with him. He has brought so many astounding people into my life, and laughter and solidity. At the same time I hope it is recognized though that I am making a conscious choice to be there and be a part of it instead of doing some of the things that I love because of my profound love for him and his life. And when we turn on each other, through assumption or fear or defense, I have lost the most it seems. I guess that is because I have won the most too.

Tomorrow is my big first day with Red House Records,
excited to be stretching in my skin, finally starting to fill it. My obsession with Jenny Lewis has officially gotten out of hand. I wish all the time that I had the time to sit with myself and recognize all the new things going on in this life. Just today, Ty and I went to see Grandma and Grandpa Collins, cashed in some bonds for his new house (and more financial things that I pretend to understand), met with the realiter, visited with his brother and made plans for renovations, had a nice lunch date, opened some bank accounts, got a credit card, went to the DMV, took permit tests and got this much closer to finally driving (thanks boyfriend who can pose for my father), met with potential new roommate for my house, planned to buy a puppy, bought a dress for Chris and Sarah's wedding, went on a beautiful two hour walk, carved our names into a bench, designed our own stir fry dinner and took three naps. My Baba and his lady are in St.Louis, my mom is in Massachusetts, my brothers and sisters are in California and I ran toward each one last night with full force and tears on my cheeks hoping to find someone. I got dizzy and decided to stay north. I feel like a real grown up, which is exciting and exhausting.

I have created a family that surrounds me but doesn't always share my name. I didn't need to adopt them, and I didn't neeed to be adopted.. the family I was born in to is rooted in truth and art and spirit with soul. In the morning in May, like this, you don't have to strain to hear my father singing to me with love in his lungs "to be with you will save the day, and every time I think of you again, you just steal my heart away". My mother flutters around, generously and delicately, making sure everything is in place for my day. my baby brothers jump in the back of the raggedy truck that belongs to the man I love. I have loved him since I was their age. They try to hide so they can spend more time with him. I cannot blame them. My father hugs him like his own child. I wear his brothers sweatshirts in the country on the lake so I can gape at all of the stars. his little niece and i dance in his parents livingroom before bedtime. I am rediscovering the richness of life as my given family and my later recognized family share drinks around the same table. I can imagine nothing more than this.
"-But we've come back home
knowing that family and friends and the distant sky itself can climb into our eyes together,
and we can pace into this dream side by side,
or can even stand still in the dark and close our eyes and fall into the world.
The trick is like this-just being ourselves
and allowing what comes to have whatever we are."- William Stafford

Today is the last day.
Last year on this day I was filling boxes and suitcases and crying because I couldn't then [but I am learning to now] handle transition. Infact, it seems as I learn to let go of the need for stability, my world stops shaking as much, though my kitten did get trapped in the laundryshoot this morning. I am up earlier, I was awake later, but I feel better than I did last year, and much better than I did the year before that. I went for a walk so I could hug my mother and grab my boyfriend some green tea before he left for work. I have no hesitation and no fear anymore to love him with my entirety. he is patient with me as a sloppily struggle to figure out what it means to be with someone and be truly independent at the same time. I become clingy and jealous and distant and awkward, sometimes all at once, and he laughs and calms me down. It seems like I'm going 1 million miles an hour sometimes. His best friend took Erin for a motorcycle ride last night. I am late for my last class.

I'm just a spirit trying to be human.

I'm going to shows again religiously. having sobering serious solidifying experiences. Alexi Murdoch last night brought me to tears, or maybe it was my father who wrapped his arms around me and sung "In you love, my salvation lies in your love".
sometimes I forget to love you like I should; myself, my parents, my roommate, extended family, my best friend who I see about twice a month, the girl that does laundry at my house, that boy that is getting in at 3am tonight from a big boar hunting expedition and is crawling in bed as soon as he arrives. I am beginning to remind myself. I am ready for life to slow down, or at least to rearrange my life in a way that love takes precedence and is clear and focused to these people and trees and bodies of water and bikes and music and language and religion and home. I am clear headed and I've got air in my lungs and life in my toes and in my bones and in my heart. I feel like I've written this entry 1,000 times, but when I feel this I want to document it and rejoice. Erin and I are going to see the red sox soon. My new best frined's dad is Dan Gladden so...we go to twins games quite a bit. I'm enjoying being a waitress. I'm enjoying walking home from the library with a cool boy at 11pm. I enjoy my Tyrel and his friends and the music that they introduce me to, his mothers bright yellow mustang convertible...I think about it all the time. When he plays me his guitar and when he drives me around with the windows down and when he talks to his daddy about me and when his brothers call me. I'm writing my last paper for english ever. still:

I'm just a spirit trying to be human

I wonder if my feet will be frozen into old age like mother's always are.
I wonder if she knows how deeply I love her.
I made a secret pact to stop forging war upon myself. I haven't figured out what this new peace agreement will look like yet, but it has something to do with my last name.
Shannon doesn't call me back anymore. I know that it isn't her style but it's doesn't mean it's not heartbreaking and it doesn't mean that it's fair. The moon is huge and low tonight. I am waiting for winter to be done with its parade of white. I am tired of wrapping myself in things. I may have found the man I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, which isn't a joke at all. He is good to me.

some people write pure garbage and when I read it in my head it sounds like them...but with a bad french accent.
chris got me hooked on the national. erin rearranged the house. my sister was accidentally left at Wendy's in Hannibal, Missouri. No one realized until arriving in St.Louis, 3 hours later. People are coming out of hibernation. My lungs feel like their welding themselves into my ribcage. Still don't sleep alone. Adam and I are going to see a movie in Persian tonight at the Walker. He looks like a hipster already so I should probably dress up cliche. He's really intelligent and great and stuff. He thinks I need to meditate. I thought it was really cool when Obama spoke farsi to wish Iran a xub naruz. I really want to go to Asia for the first time in my life. I think dad and I are going to Ireland or Bali soon. Finally saw Oman on a map, waved to Ricky. My emotions have not only calmed down since Gabby's death, they've completely fizzled out. Maybe I should go visit Ellie D.C, what an innovative idea. the girls and I shut chicago down. From bar open to six hours after barclose our bartender let us control the sound system and pretend we owned the "hundo bar". jess is picking me up now. the point: garbage.

Lately I've found myself exhausted by the sheer arrogance of people. "woof"
I am disappointed especially in the people that I've kissed or called Gold in the past. It makes me ache to think of all of the potential there. Maybe I am a child who's eyes just well when I feel abandoned. I spend some mornings walking across the bridge from a boy's house whos upstairs neighbors make so much noise that I cannot sleep. I will never love him and he will never love me. It makes me ache to think of all the potential that is not there, but I continue to cross the Mississippi river.
I do not worry anymore about michael's bar fights, or the success of shaun's endeavors, or beltor's drinking or if the boy I'm leaving is going to be late for work. I am unenthused with the arrogance that I have found in my attempts of genuine interaction with the people I once cared deeply for.
I call my best friend at 4 in the morning so that I can wake him up from his nightmares, he wakes up and puts my nightmare of a day to rest every time. We have been knitting this security blanket for the last seven years and I am thankful for that. In the midst of thick sappy drinks and dizzying dramas I feel grounded in my love for him and his for me. I am going to go dance my arrogance away downtown with some people that I am enthused by. There is life in this love there is love in my life. Can't wait til Erin gets off work.

my head is pounding, every part of my body is swollen and every single thing seems so profound, so poetic, like Alexander Pope I suppose, but I'd need to do more research on that...
the way I used to listen to richard buckner on my floor at three am with one sock on putting postage on the things I loved and putting love into the things I put postage on and then sending them off.
the way I drink water, or whiskey or wine. the way I can't sleep alone. the string of christmas lights on my floor, flickering upon the wreckage from nights ago. my head pounds on and I pretend to play the keys to a richard buckner song. The love of my life told me on the telephone two hours ago that if I watched eternal sunshine of the spotless mind I would be destroyed and I am, but I think it might just be because I am sick and exhausted and I need to go to bed. But he's not here yet. so I'm going to stay up and write and wonder. I wonder so many things. Not everyone in the world, I don't know about every single one, but the people I know, I think we're all on the verge of some profound love. my kitten sleeps on my stomach, I move him and he crawls back into my arms and makes me sneeze. I am frustrated with that. I am frustrated that I can't make sense because I should be writing a paper on communism and the FMLN for tomorrow. I put everything off because I'm always wondering. My head hurts.

The Guerrillas welcomed me to their huts, I lived without running water and spoke with people who said profound things in a language that I didn't understand. when I held them and their tears came pouring I understood. We played music and games and danced under the open roof. There is a language of compassion and humanity that we all understand. For El Salvador, my heart was "broken open" (as Christina translated) so that I could let more love in. I was going one direction and now my life has jumped tracks. I am happy because I know longer know the phrase "I want to live that way" but "I will live that way" and work toward it immediately. I am cooking organic food at night and drinking fair trade coffee by day, but not as much as I used to because I'm sleeping through the night. I'm speaking a language that I love, and I'm writing it backwards too. I love the people in my life in a way that doesn't desperately ache. I tell them I love them. Preston signed me up for Brazilian capoeira at Lifetime. I'm obsessed with the singsong dance of that martial art, my trainer is pushing me farther than I thought I could go. I read Rumi a lot and Yassi and I drive around listening to salt and peppa. I hope I can hold on to the peace I've found and liberation from glutton. I pray I do not slip back into my own plight and impotency.

"From now on i am part of you, I am the story that you'll tell
Let my life empower you, Let my troubles teach you well
Let your burning hatred go, Learn yourself until you know that fear is where all hatred begins
don't fear death my adrian
As they set my last breath free,
turn your eyes but don't fail to see the love you feel inside your skin
don't fear death my adrian"

I am simply tangled intestine and brain.
Great grandma died, we bloke smoke toward the moon, tangled with emotion.
I'm in a relationship, unfair to the best man I've met yet, tangled with intent and lack of emotion.
awaiting home where max is waiting and comfortability
One of my best friends actually calls me back. He sings "it took a while for you to find me. I was hiding in the lime tree". True, it took a while for me to find him, but I will walk beside him and we can untangle, because that it what we do best.
It seems that everything is dancing its way to decay and it does not stir any emotion within me because I am intestine and brain. I wonder how many times my plea will go unnoticed.

Chicago was wonderful. Erin, Shaz and I got a new kitten. we love her endlessly.
Another death yesterday morning. Funerals tomorrow, tuesday and wednesday.
We had a bonfire to celebrate our friend down by the river tonight when I got back in town.
it was peaceful and cold and somber. I cannot eat or feel any other emotion about it but deep deep anger. I pray a lot. it's weird. I feel weird.
I need Dad.

hello good friend, I wanna be next to you
for my head,
for my heart,
for whats true.

I have a lot of things to get out of my system, many that stem from the abandonment of innocence. But I chose that and I let them flourish. I am getting on the road (yet again) to let toxins drain from my veins and lungs and eventually (hopefully) a heart that beats too fast and then too slow. I have prayers that I haven't been able to categorize, that run together as they wait to be lifted up, year after year. Unaware of which language to use in prayer, let alone which God, I let them linger between the pit of my stomach and throat. I hope the toxins don't steer them in the wrong direction, or weigh them down. I have thanks to give, but I no longer need a day to remember to remember to give thanks. These too are blending and cuddling up next to oneanother, waiting to be lifted up, waiting for me to shine some great light upon them, as if I have the ability to conjure this light. I do have the ability to fill the ice trays, and in my simplest terms I say "I am thankful for you both" when I do this. Shannon and Erin are at my dad's. I am terrified of shutting an eye without them, so I keep a light on in every single corner where a demon might be lurking. I know that this is childish, but, like I said, I'm trying to get back to innocence. Adam said if I'm still an insomniac in twenty minutes he's taking the 60$ cab here. I am thankful for that.
I am thankful for Brian's beautiful mind and the way it manifests hope. I do have one prayer put into words by someone else but it is clear and exactly what I need and want to ask. I sing it for the Colombian victims and Salvadoran people and for every soul that needs it. Mostly though, these days, I sing it for Brian's son. It goes:
"let them in Peter, they are very tired. Give them couches where the angels sleep and light those fires. may their peace be deep, remember where the broken bodies lie, God knows how young they were to have to die. tell them how they are missed and say not to fear, it's going to be alright with us down here".