words words words wordswordswords

"Slowly I am learning how to be."

You've been a grown up far longer than I have. Why do you keep apologizing for my mistakes?

N Judah

One day, we will evolve from should's and should not's to could's and would not's.

The Lovely Bones

The movie adaptation lost the point of the Sebold novel when the shock and grief ruled the subject of the film. A visual too graphic.

T. Conan

I arrived at the chasm of too familiar fear and pondered at its edge on whether or not I am ready.

Giving in to Torpor

Asobi Seksu - January 17 - Cafe du Nord
Spoon - April 13 - Fox Theater (Oakland)

Ingrown

We do not love our parents, children, and spouses out of fear.

Why must we love God in these respects?

(Un)Briefing

I dimly sleep-watch the news CNN is a worldwide leader minutes become hours night become eye-blinking this dream states a dull hurt repressed even in memory a fire that scorched a burn underneath this layer of numb unfeeling skin I ripped it hello, my body inflamed your body our bodies from the unfeeling to the (un)feeling I apologize for your burn our burn have you seen this my the ability to breathe?

We lay unwilling wanting unwilling you unwilling me but willing too easily willing for so long months years running lines in palms underneath eyes lines creasing in bedsheets distraction willing attraction willing dull dull desensitize underneath forced nonchalant exterior dull ignored second degree burns -

As I dimly allow my mind to wander from this chilled sleepless night, (God, is it morning already? - I suppose, the sun is up), I understand how we weren't careful with each other. I'm so sorry for always being careless, too selfish to have ever felt with you fully.

Dude. I'm finally mourning you. Long time coming, you got me? And I'm usually too late, no need for the sym(pity).

dear cindy: hope springs ETERNAL [A Recollection in Letters]

My lungs are on fire.

euhgrh, a raw feeling inflamed and congested and blahhh.

terrible sensation.

let me take care of you:

don't spin away.

after class?

can we go somewhere so I can do journals?

like at Barnes and Noble? I feel so guilty about not turning anything to Karen.

[we should be lovers

and be heroes]

(we can beat them!

forever and ever.)

let's mosey.

[i wish i had run after you.]

UNFREEZE ME.

run after me?

when?

just now.

let's do something heroic

some of these guys ->"are kind of dumb"<- er... you're born a man. you stay a man.

everybody get their right body now hup hup go.

This class... I find it draining by this time of day.

How did you feel about how the presentation went?

08 March 2006

Dara go Gaara,

I wrote a poem about the L-Quad Fountain today.

I hope you breathed more life into it than it's usually got. If I wrote about that fountain it'd have to involve some sort of cryptic explosion of water that flooded the entire area. Water is an awfully temperamental thing. I gave 1000cc of blood on Thursday. You have to be male, and big, "uh, and willing," says the nurse. They take a full bag, then they separate the red out and needle the rest back in. It looks like discolored water. They do this three times! Clearly I am superheroic, being the first person all day to agree to it. Everything is full of holes and wild geese, and there are threads in their beaks, and they are always opening things and stitching other things.

I'm big. Maybe male.

I wrote about the journey of children, leaving areas of security to the chaos of the ocean to spill into humanity.

I'd rather walk into it myself, but I suppose parts of me will have to spill if they cannot be made to walk.

You are a quilt of skin and blood threads. I wish I can give blood. Screw anemia.

Anemia can kiss the moon.

[Forget me and come upon me seven years from now - who would I be? Who would you be?]

Is your head bothering you?

Yeah, I've been getting black outs and ear-ringing often too.

Um. MEDIC.

The only time we spill is when there is an overflow.

Can I forget you? Have you forgotten me? I don't know. I'm so tempted to pull my arms around you and taste your lips. I miss your body warmth in bed and your smell and your breath. Maybe I've forgotten everything else, but I don't mind.

If I had forgotten, this would be easy!

"I'm not gay!" he assures us.

At times. I can remember nothing else, you know?

but I am off in the purple haze, now,

it would be a far expedition to find me again. And I do not want to always cut you with farewells.

The only word that comes to

mind

is

YIKES!

I'm not a sex fiend I'm a sea monster

LochNess

or long-lost dinosaur?

Long-hibernating

aquatic

cosmic mastodon

I think I'm lost.

Me too, sweetheart.

I hope this is the right kind of lost.

I think it is.

But I'll write when my hands have mended.

Super Naoki

ATTACKS

the Existential Abyss

with TANGERINES

Mandarins taste like Heaven on perfumed fingertips.

Let the colors strip, revealing pale, pink flesh.

HARUKI MURAKAMI

POETRY NOW!

dapper gossamer blossoming parasols faces off broadway

miniature mesmerized monocled optical parables pairing away at the side mirrors

tumult and triage, hangover geometry, men with badges and boots.

We are a buzzing, turning thing.

hi hi yo yo lub lub

lots of big days coming, coming.

"the scarecrow's hands

she set on fire

just so she could see."

ennured

on leaping over to the moon!

one detail of Pope’s biography

3. what is the real life situation the poem is based on?

rowrpublic

3.9.06

Cindy -

hi, lovely. It's some time since I've written you, or anyone but myself, and there's a thought rhythm from before that I vaguely remember, and yet it feels outdated, now. i'm guessing a lot. i'm not thinking much.

"life could not be grasped but only lived." - Hanif Kureishi

so here's what i know. i know that i'm a new growth in the world of being close. i know that the damage of the first go-round has left me with a certain toxicity in my system, a sum of pain and fear. I know that I did not ask enough, and now I know that the voice of what I want is very quiet in me. i know that i can prevent some of that hurt by saying No. I know I'm half of the creature called us. i know that i'm here now, and i'm going to try.

I felt I needed that silence, even though you had put it there. I felt that I should have gotten over you, and something about that was hideously, constantly painful. Something about it felt innately wrong, and that's what made me think that there was much more that could be done, that you and I had more for each other. being with you means challenging myself to grow, adapt, evolve. I came at you - and it was only a little over a month ago - with a concrete set of assumptions, of myself, of relating to people. and for my love of the word "sustain" I certainly did not make many sustaining efforts. my assumptions are mostly discarded. through you I am going to get to know myself, if you follow - i'm not entirely sure who i am, other than a vague sense of what i want, and where i am, and perhaps what i am capable of.

what do i want? i want closeness. i want to be KNOWN, cobwebs and all, and haven't you seen some of my cobwebs lately i do suppose i do i do! my hands do not write the same, now. they have less stringency, less... dogma. i'm less sure of everything and that feels nice. flexible. maybe a little capable.

(remind me of what i have promised you.)

(remind me often. remind me of what you want.)

Adventure. Advent. Venture.

a problem with the short stories I have lately been writing they are too much like dreams. they are hazy and reality bends in them. will people relate? I want to convey a sense that reality is always warping, even in its everydayness. I find it reassuring that you have doubts about me. reassuring, worrying, both. i am worthy of doubt. i THINK and TALK almost exclusively, i DO very little, and that, certainly, is telling. my mother has referred to me as hypersensitive to the world, to people around me, to new experiences. growth is a slow extension of the tendrils of my feeling. That shadowy girl, the one who runs off with me in your imagination. STABILITY is the sense I was missing. I thought I wanted someone who ENDED UP SEEMING EERILY LIKE MY MOTHER! but, pah. i am not so stable. i am not so mature, and my intelligence, if we are to call it that, may be a quickly-obliterated footnote by the time i'm further down the road. my Pride&Prejudice idea of love, as my therapist reminded me yesterday, is a movie, an image. i have to grow into the world, not build a world in my head and try to look for missing pieces.

I have come across you and you are luminous with history and hope. You're new and vast and not an ideal. The first time I gave you my love it was out of a conviction that no one else would do. but that's so FATAL of me, isn't it just. the sense now is just that you are a person, like me, like all people, but a person dear to me. this is the adventure, isn't it.

it's intelligence, beauty and maturity. you have those. those aren't ever complete, na? plenty of old badgers are going to die dumb, ugly and immature. moo oink baa, being childish is a fun thing. heals me. i wrote a story about a boy with a "punctured, punctured heart." his name was Takahiro. poor Taka.

(this'd be why Bride&Prejudice is more enjoyable than Pride. Color and singing and dancing.)

share the pie of life.

you're someone who cares about and loves and shares with me,

and that is worth MORE. come come let us let us.

i think if we're fuckups

at least we're singular. i like NOT KNOWING.

I ought to stop seeing my therapist. I got my life sorted, but yeah, now I'm like, just asking for relationship advice. That's expensive advice!

(if i find that i am not much of anything,

if i find that i am everything, distorted.)

recap time:

Cindy is gorgeous and brilliant

and worth it.

Dara likes Cindy a lot. A LOT!

I feel like I should express that I am grateful for your love, for your acceptance, which is really very validating. suddenly lit-up dark star.

suddenly bolting dark horse. I'm glad for you.

going to new places makes me nervous.

is that weird?

I am watching you take notes and I want to eat you. You look deeelicious.

Your notes are hardcore.

I don't know how to have fun.

What is fun, anyway? How did this tiny word invade the English lexicon?

And where can I learn *\ more? <--- it's not a typo it's a toilet brush.

this letter is cooked!

Blissfully clueless and yours,

Dara

3.10.06

Cindy:

"There's something about Blue."

this was my senior yearbook quote. it's from the very end of Cowboy Bebop - that was my favorite thing, at the time. my history is very unspectacular. it's only lately that more magnificent things have entered my periphery. in fact it's mostly characterized by people stepping on my head and me thinking I probably shouldn't talk or balk about it because, well, i don't know. i'm damaged goods with a hand that leaks the refuse of the hurt. i'm also vague as, as, as, as a pumpkin exploding on Mars. orange pulp in red dust. this whole long mess of life i am trying to find a voice that i can use. i don't feel altogether connected to reality somehow, other than in strains of conversation, in connecting on some rushing wavelength. i find you very grounded in that regard. you remind me of layers of the planet that i forget about, but that everyone traverses. this time in life is very floaty and lived-in-the-head. i am a crab meandering up the beach. everything's bizarre and unlabeled.

i think i despise my own body to such a degree that i disconnect somewhat from the physical experience of it. maybe enjoying that would mean i'd have to reconnect. or i'd have to believe something about it.

i really hate it.

and here i thought i hated nothing. being invisible might be a happy thing. i look at attractive men, and i don't wish i could be them, but that i could feel what i feel looking at them when i look in the mirror.

i like that you like me but i hardly get it. everything's alien.

it is strange because i find you so beautiful. the day i started talking to you i wrote a poem with this line:

"and jean marie leprince beumont,

who told a joke about me."

that's... referring to the author of beauty and the beast. it's a sensical seeming thing to me. you are frighteningly beautiful and i frighten myself. 'FRIGHT' is a funny word. like FRIG! FRIGATE! FRITATA!

'hurdles,' says the charismatic marine, and i think of buying taquitos at 7-11. strange association. i liked that guy. there's something about brain-connecty military types that i find reassuring.

it's like the bright physical fact of you puts me up against light, and i should not see the light of day (he thinks, hypothetically). to be seen is a terrible thing. i feel judged and humiliated just in the fact of walking around. blahhharghhgharghbargh! my friend from Michigan came out that he was bi, and no one believed him. they thought he was joking!

i guess i too would feel okay if i believed in some modicum (summaudikam) of beauty for myself

belief is everything but it's. so. damn. difficult.

belief is faith in the self.

belief is a choice.

etc. yada. blah.

sound. fury.

I grew up around Taiwanese people, so, uh, I dunno. They were not the GPA-ceiling ones... well except one, who had a 4.5... yeesh.

i had a work ethic once. i want it back. (it didn't go anywhere, Dara)

i had a taquito. i want it back. (you ate it!)

actually i don't want a taquito. i want a Toyota Prius.

i want to nap with you. watching tv and bumming around eating and laughing is like, the best thing in the history of ever. (nerd)

use the inhaler, luke!

gross yoda! i require more minerals.

"The sun sets on the war, the day breaks, and everything is new."

the cosmic questions are quiet. tinkering with the controls in relative silence.

heart you. hand you heart you eye you ear you.

you.

I wish I could forget I ever watched Star Wars, Indiana Jones, LOTR, Jurassic Park, movies like that. So I could watch them again and get that first-time experience.

apply to Davis! just for application's sake.

Mars changed me.

If I had to be a character from Rent, I would be Mark or Collins. Or maybe Joanne.

hungry? hungry history headache.

ding dang dong. dormez-vous.

PHANTOM SMELL

rawrawr

heart.

Dara

p.s. GONK! i am thieving a staple from your trusty stapler.

i am secret stapler kleptomaniac.

Feel My <3 beat

HUGE LINES

I am making this my sleepy and loveydovey pastiche in celebration of VOUZ. Now, to learn French. Japanese, Hindi - maybe Ukrainian, if we can be bothered. When Raymond is banging on his father's bathroom door, I teared up. I pictured my father dying and I wanted him to know... well, I wanted him to... well, no. I just wanted to say to him that I loved him, in that instant. Whether or not he knew it is not up to me... it never has been. I would be content simply having said it. And then I knew that, for me to let him go without regrets, I would have to ask him, no, to TELL him, to tell me how and why and how much he loves me. He has never said anything to make me believe he does - it is all silent, it is in his provision & his shelter that his love beats, and even then it would probably be too little too late, if he were to tell me on his deathbed. Maybe I should ask him now, so he doesn't remain a dead cluster of nerves in my mind. I wonder if his response would break me. His refusal to say as much is likely - but if he did, that's its own special danger. Loving my father has always hurt the rest of us in the family, because he is so neglectful and so uninterested and we can only command his attention with failure. I stopped loving him. If I said to him, "I don't love you anymore," it would be true. It isn't the right thing, to withhold love for a parent until they're in mortal danger, but it is a kind of necessary protection. My mother says that, emotionally, my father is a 6-year-old boy. I have never seen the vulnerability and wide-eyed fear of love that my mother claims he has, but I believe her when she says it is there, because there has to be something wounded there beneath everything. Something that damaged him. His brother was raped by one of the older [rest of letter has been lost]

3/13/06

FURY'S HOMEWORK

For Tues.

- Mary Wollstonecraft's "Vindication" (163-192)

- "On Being Cautioned Against Walking on a Headland Overlooking the Sea Because it was Frequented By a Lunatic" (34-35)

- "Casablanca" (815-16)

- "Love's Last Lesson" (1037-40)

- "The Rights of Woman" (27-28)

For Wed.

- Frankenstein, Vol. 1

Truth, liberty and love.

3/16/06

Cindy -

hahahaha Heffner is the funniest teacher ever. I must take another class with him before the year's out. MUST! I forgot to mention that Davis emailed me yesterday and my app. status is in... but the system was totally bogged so I don't actually know what it says. I'm excited. I wonder if it's the same email Chau may have gotten. Terrible feeling... I know it well! My pants are too big.

"I'm very fond of you." <--- you'll see this movie soon.

V for Victorian Romance Novels.

"You'd think we Aaron Burr from the way we droppin' Hamiltons!" - SNL gangsta rap (about Chronicles of Narnia) which then led to Natalie Portman gangsta rap.

CHERTOFF is the next DHS secretary!?!

CHERTOFF!?

Oh my god. I haven't been this offended since... since... since the last time I read anything about Chertoff! Maybe it's time to dig out my old dream of majoring in International Relations and writing piercing articles with sweeping lingual aplomb.

- powell out.

- rice in.

"Rest in my arms / Sleep in my bed / There's a design / To what I did and said" -Surboard Stevens

- Dara

A hand held in holds out holds on holds nothing and seldom takes things that it likes; a hand hanging high waving flags in the sky for the jetlines to land for the rockets to fly. A hand soaked in honey turns into a hive and the bees in my fingers work long through the night. The bees in my body make sweetness and light and sting me at once when they find my hands tied. A hand on my lover is searching, splayed wide (as the chime of a bell or an unhindered smile) - it lusts to align all the discs in her spine. My hand when it dies will have nothing within it but while I can breathe I'll take everything with it.

I'm not worth your love. Get close and my flaws will come into glaring focus. There's an ugly person underneath my veneer. I don't like nothings and silences and walls. I try to be open. Everything's weird and I rarely succeed. How do we navigate each other? Why does your love belong to me? My love is not that great. My capacity to love is new; infantile. "wants and insecurities." I definitely have these. I try to reconcile them with who you are - I suppose that's a slow process. I have a comfortability with heavy and negative feelings and I like, I believe in, bringing them to light - in the truth of myself. But that's a very dangerous thing to just heft off on someone. "Capricious." good word. I miss being written to. I feel a communicative distance in us and I wonder what we'd be if everything were suddenly said. I contribute more coldness than I'm good for. I'm afraid of what I'd say. It's easier to be numb. I'm really shut down right now. I don't deserve your love because I cannot yet love you in a way that you deserve. You deserve a knight and a worshipper. I am an academic in a feudal place. I can write pages and pages of things going wrong. You have On-the-Surface Cindy. I don't have On-the-Surface Dara. Inner Dara takes up too much room. He's slow and sick and war-weary today. He's consumed with Inner Cindy. Isn't it strange. There is so much heaviness in my mind and I feel lighter every time I speak any piece of it. But it's not something you want, I don't think. Is it corrosive? Corrosive to you, cathartic for me. I've confused your role. Yours isn't to be a bowl for my bad blood. There's no way to properly assure you that I do this out of a positive sense of sharing. Other than the facts of your own inner world would be exciting to know. I am a dark force. I have a dark pull. I fear I'll destroy you with the constant upkeep of my heart & mind. There ought to be some delicate matchmaker/switchboarder who bypasses uncomfortability and hooks us all the way up. Who knows. I worry that we in trying to love each other would damage each other irrevocably. I end up waiting for your acknowledgment, your approval. If I feel I have lost it I feel frostbitten. When I have it I feel warm. Is this part of learning love? Controlling my emotions has been a lifelong thing. Alone, I can regulate myself with ease and precision. With close proximity to another, I'm not sure how it's supposed to work. I'm not sure I should ask the berth, the patience it would require, but then, how would I ever learn? If I become consumed, then I forget myself, and then I lose what made me feel wonderful in the first place! So quickly, so fast we can fall into each other, or at least I can fall into you, I know that. Write me more letters. Am I prideful? Prejudiced? My pride comes from a place deep in my soul, from a sense of self that used to be clay, that I have sharpened and fired and transformed into something that seems like an obsidian spearhead. I have never had a weapon against the world until now, and still I have seldom used it. My sense of self is my spear. My underused anger is my shield. I have began to feel capable, in the last year, of doing for myself things that feel authentic and adult. I want time to stop. I want us to go on only after having taken good long looks at each other. Who are you? I sometimes want to ask. But more pressing is when I have to ask Who Am I? What if I wanted a constant intellectual challenge? I don't like little jabs & banter nearly as I like a fired discussion of the tangle of art/emotion/humanity that I feel so bizarrely comfortable with. The sun's all over my face. I'm bathed in it and there's nobody here and I feel like myself. I notice the world again. I notice the smell of the wind, the pink flowers planted outside the offices. The sun comes under a cloud briefly and I am reminded of sitting at the beach, writing like this. That woman has a yellow outfit. That actually Means Something right now. Maybe love is hard for me because I am so in love with myself. Being in close relation with others brings up parts of me that aren't necessary for a solitary person. Everything these days is a whirlwind. Everything is tinged in uncomfortability. I don't like Coffee Society. I remember my opinions. I remember why I love NitsOkland and not anything Jonathan plays in his car. Maybe I'm not ready for love, giving love to another. If I held you in such high regard as I held myself when I am alone, well, you'd be in a constant shimmering waterfall of light and silence and soul warmth. I sit on this bench and the world belongs exclusively to me. I'm in love with the world here. It fills me up completely. I look at my hand. "Cindy <3s Me."

I wonder if Cindy can love me if my first love is myself. I don't feel shut down at all right now. i feel like six million dollars. I just don't know if I will still be that when you emerge from that door? Because it's you or the rest of the world. I tried to make you the world. You aren't. I am.

English & PoliSci. Sounds like a buff combination.

The Literary Approach to Politics.

We'd be happier if I put myself first. You've got your priorities sorted. I forgot mine too quickly.

I want you to love yourself as fiercely as I love myself. That's the single thing about you that needs to change.

I don't write for romance. My best work is hardly sweet, because I can detect sweetness in the ugliest places. Depressing songs are often uplifting in my ears. The median point of happiness vs. depression is too high on the scale. Happiness is a choice. I believe that and yet I've scarcely been living that way. So back up, babe. It's me first. My hands are made for pulling the shroud off the human experience. I am the world around me. I'll share THIS self with you. THIS is how we can be happy. I'm going to do exactly what I want, when I want to, and if you'd like to be there when I do, then hooold the fuck on! "When this baby hits 88mph you're going to see some serious shit!" When I'm myself, I remember everything about that I like. Epiphany? Who knows. But what I want, for certain, can't really be an epiphany. I always knew. Give me the OldeIndianWedding idea of love. Let's get together and be happy. Let my love come when my bones know it, not when my mouth does. That's what I'm offering you. I may not take all the same classes next quarter. I've got things I'm interested in. Recalibrating myself. If I can always remember this, I'll always be discovering you. You'll always be new to me. Because the world is always new to me, when I remember it. Lately I have forgotten. This is my great mistake. No More! I will push and state and challenge.

PoliSci next quarter. I wasn't preparing to love you. I was preparing to love myself. A relationship is a committed compromise? Well, sure. But here's something in myself that I compromised before you could make any alterations. Something that never should have been compromised. Let's have fun together. I'm waiting to see how I'll feel when you emerge. Will I keep this golden cube of sense in my mind? Will I hide it in my pocket when I see you?

Don't fill up my world - I can't navigate you. Alone is my fundamental state - the reason being that there is so incredibly much of me. I have to think like I'm alone. Otherwise I can't remember! I'll drink this loneliness if I have to.

Are people like me so rare?

What would I miss?

"The loneliest people were the ones who always spoke the truth."

The problem isn't that I don't know what I want. The problem is that I know far too well what it is I want.

3/23/06

DARA UPSIDE DOWN

Cindy.

The Notwist. band playing right now. used to love them. now they're okay.

I'm tired and my brains blank from earlier. I wish I had more time to hold you. I felt a little abandoned last night, too, you know? [---> We're not careful with each other.] I just had this sudden thought while you were taking your midterm... is your love comfortable? Because mine has been ecstatic and miserable both, but never comfortable. How could I keep this up if I were uncomfortable? This is unfamiliar territory and I am flailing trying to find a foothold but your heart's attached. It's dangerous. We're dangerous to each other. That's why I want to be slow and comfortable. Otherwise our future is a spiral down into some untold damage. I'm not loving you in a stable way right now, but I think I can. Can you see why I'd want to pursue that? I have felt joy with you. I have felt known. I've felt caring for you, I've felt a need to provide joy for you. I can feel a certain future. I feel a lot of things, I've trusted you with my body, I've tried my best to take good care of yours. ^ All of which is good - and under the umbrella of love - but love means something more to me. Loving me like this is hurting you. We fall prey to each other's moods. So much silence. So much uncertainty.

What is your love?

Tell me exactly.

Are you going to be here if I'm always searching, stretching, flailing? If something's missing, is it in me? what are you missing? Nobody has ever found it easy to love me. Not a single person. Because giving love is so alien and new to me. What's your love, Cindy? How do you give it? If you wrote me everything you have never said to me - what would it look like? I'm not generous. I'm selfish and self-absorbed. When you still cared for Arjang I felt stepped on and ignored and I can't love that way. Now we're better but I wish we talked seriously more. How else can we readjust to each other?

MY GOD IT'S FULL OF STARS

UPON A STAR

WISH

Maybe I find it difficult because it's hard to relate to someone who isn't like me. You're more detailed, more multifaceted, less easy to read. Tell me always who you are and why you are.

Remember when I said I was between two different kinds of love? I still am. I'm still searching. But my ideal of love seems not to fit you. I wonder if it would fit anyone. I wonder if it's just a female me. I have to find you and encase you in some sort of love that I am happy to always give. Don't you want that from me?

What makes you happy?

Aren't these important questions to always be asking someone?

I want us to work properly.

I'm so sorry that I said what I said when I did. I am tactless with my honesty. I sometimes forget myself when I am bursting with something needs to be said. Love myself? I'm not happy with myself right now. Alone, I can trust myself to always do the right thing. I'm trying to find my footing in a relationship.

Too heavy, too thinky... but this is my. The day of your show, I railed off ten unparagraphed single-spaced pages in Word in like... an hour.

[I'm so inept at this particular style of love, you know?

I'm awful at change unless I enact it myself, and usually at first at a snail's pace.]

You have lots of experience of how to love, how to be with someone, and an idea of what love is to you. And I, for all of my self-reflection, my stillness gained in aloneness, have none. You are the first person I could say I have felt any love for. It's uncharted.

If I'm still worth it, given all of this... do you want me to be the last person for you? Then... we have to do it right.

I want to take you back to bed and hold you and sleep. Do you have time for that? I want to try at... everything. I meant to speak to you this morning about why it hurt so much that you went to see him. Then when I had time to think I just... I dunno. It didn't matter. You made your choice. I still want to understand that choice... beyond as much as I already do. Familiarity, solid ground, ancient friendship... but is an ex ever just an ex? I believe he is just that, to you. I really do. My doubt in you is more or less zero. It's just that it was remind me of all the other times, especially at the restaurant that Friday in Milpitas. But - I'm never going to leave you cold in bed again.

THE NEXT TIME I TELL YOU I LOVE YOU IT WILL BE FROM EVERY BONE IN MY BODY.

Soft Animal

Sometimes, oh, I don't know. If someone would make two simultaneous scrolls of our thoughts, what would it look like? Would it match, much? I want it to. I share thoughts. I share truths. This is a way in which I can learn love, show affection. The truth of myself is something I treasure above everything because it's the only thing that has guarded and protected me in life. It's not retracting anything and loving myself instead - I have always been inclined to love myself and then to slowly improve until I'm worthy of my own self-respect. I don't think I stopped loving myself... just tried loving you the way I loved myself, which doesn't work, because you're not me, nor do I want you to be. real good honest love for another, from me, is something I'm learning, something that will exist in tandem with my ability to love myself. I have retracted nothing, Cindy - only reevaluated my priorities. My admiration, respect and fondness, my joy and desire for you, are all unchanged. It's only the labels I'm changing. Sometimes I feel like I've just been born. Sometimes I feel as old as time. I want wonderful things in my future and you are unequivocally a wonderful thing. No, my best letters are not to me, the really romantic ones. They're truthful ones, and this is my truth. You are new to me. You're different from what I'm used to think love would be. You've hurt me at times. But you are LIFE. You are WONDER. Maybe you don't fit into me in a way I know how to accommodate, but we're going to change each other. Just listen to me when I need to slow down. And talk to me when I'm letting you down. And reply to my letters, and ask for things I haven't given. I exited a cave and found you, but the way to walk out in the world is still unfamiliar. Remember to hope and give me some faith. I believe that I will be forever changing and growing. If we're going to grow together,

["I go through all this before you

wake up, so I can feel happier

to be safe again with you."

bjork

hyperballad

think of me in this song.]

then - I have to mess up before I can do it right? So I can deserve the love you give - first by understanding it. I wonder about the day we can share all the ways we've hurt each other so far... and then forgive what we can, and work on what we can't. I don't think that would kill us.

Who are you?

A strange question... but do I really know? The only thing I know is myself, and I take good care of that knowledge. Introduce yourself both gradually and in great torrents. Do you want me? You have to break the door down, sometimes.

I only feel really lost in moments of locked silence. And sometimes I am perfectly... incandescently happy. And sometimes I believe that I should kneel prostate and worship you. Unquestionably a beauty myth... a myth that walks the earth and drives a red Corolla. "We'll try harder," you said when we got back together. I'm trying the best way I know how. "How much more will I have to sacrifice?" you ask. Start by sacrificing nothing. Appear before me as you are and I will do the same before we begin to make any alterations. Is your love hurried, or did I just pull it out too fast? I keep saying go slow but I'm going to really try and say as much when it's too fast. I'm still learning. I'm so sorry that loving me has to hurt this much. Hence the speed. We have viny thorny forests to navigate through. We're wounding each other without ever meaning to. So let's begin to speak and let's not stop.

Share with me because it's how I love. I'm not fragile with anger, with doubt, with honesty. I don't fear to talk of harmful things. Not ever. Not ("I'm very fond of you as well, Lee.") As long as it's shared. See this and hear this: I want you.

Because you're loud and quiet both. Because even shipwrecked and impossibly messy you would walk up the shore with no less beauty in you. Because you sing in a voice that belongs so exclusively to you, is anchored so fast to your soul, that I can do little but delight when we know the words to the same song. Because you seize the world in a way that I admire in my gut. Because you know what FUN means, when few have but an inkling of it. Because I'd like to grow old hearing your laugh. Because you walk, every day, into the terrible mess of life, and because you survive, because I cut my teeth on the human fact of survival. Because you've shared joy with me, heaped it upon me in great bucketfuls. Because you see so much in me. Because I'll one day succeed at love and I want it to be with you. Because you defend yourself in instances when I freeze up. Because my body belongs to you and I want it to have one owner. Because I think we can be luminous if we help each other out. Because you are a vital member of a close family and I respect that so much it makes my heart ache for the vast silence of my house. Because your history is something that strikes a chord in me. Because you know how to connect with everyone when I can barely connect at all. Because you wanted me. Because as much as I know you, I feel I've only scratched the surface. Because I want your cheeks and the beautiful inlays in them. Because, instead of running away, I'm letting my life story start now. Because, as much as I completely doubt my closeness to everyone, I doubt less and less that you're worth the pain of everything; because the joy of you is voluminous and sustaining. Because I want to see why I love the word sustain. Because I think if we hold hands and believe in the same fairies, happiness won't be a myth to us.

Because I'm a fuckup and you have believed in me. Because that belief is priceless and ought to be honored. Because you'll change me for the better. Because we have a tenuous shot here. But it's a big beautiful shiny shot. Because you're shiny.

And one day, when I'm ready for it,

when I can mean it, all of this

will mean Love. All of this and

books more. My bones more. I promise you that.

Dara