Don't Look Too Closely 'Cause Nobody's Perfect.

Home home home home.
Let's write for days.

<3b0omur

There's fingerprints on my computer screen.  We laughed and smiled and threw air punches.  You laughed and smiled back and ducked with each shot.  We high fived and pointed and blew kisses.
<3b0omur

The tears dripped down my face, and the icecream melted down the cone into the napkin and across my wrist.  I scrambled to wipe it away, lick the sides of my cheeks, the cone.  The icecream kept running, the tears kept coming and I couldn't keep up.  The free hand swiped at my face, dragging itself across my nose and eyes. It could have held a hand, gestured at a thought, or covered my heart in laughter or shock.  But what a sorry scene, dripping face and icecream, walking home from Ici alone. 
How salty, how sweet.
<3b0omur

Press your nose to the window, baby, and talk to the people passing by.
You and I are in the same boat
'Cause they don't understand a word I say either.
They just keep on walking.

My fingers were fat slugs, sloppy and silly, flopping across keys.  My mind, my mind drifted from one phrase to the next, weaving in and out of the bars and notes.  It dipped below the clouds, gliding for moments above ground, and then soared up into the atmosphere once more out of sight.  Amidst the muddle, resemblances of Bach, Beethoven, Greig, Gershwin, my dear, dear old friends came to visit me, as we played, played through the night.  A small laugh, or was it bigger? escaped at each pause, each stumble, each grandiose arpeggio and cadence that somehow translated from thoughts to movements to sounds to music. 

<3b0omur

Even after the car stopped spinning on the shoulder of Highway 5, my mind continued to tumble, tumble, tumble from blinkers and that white Toyota pickup truck to the one lane, two lanes, three lanes, then the guardrail, so close, all of the sudden too close, contact.  Breathe, breathe, breathe, cry.  I held my body - my body was whole, that was all that really mattered.  The music kept playing on the radio.  The air conditioning softly ruffled my hair.  18 wheelers barreled toward me.  And there I held myself on the shoulder of Highway 5. 

<3b0omur

Sprigs of lavender lay on the bedside table, reminders of a summer day spent soaking in sunlight.  Sprigs of lavender watch from the bedside table, remembering a time when bodies brushed them by and hands grasped them, sliding up their flowers, pulling, reaching for their essence, traveling from fingertip to fingertip, from nose to nose, the way those bumblebees buzzed amongst the rows and rows, from bud to bud.  From nose to nose, fingertip to fingertip, hand to hand, cheek to cheek, sprigs of lavender lay on the bedside table still smelling, though faintly, of stolen kisses and magic. 

<3b0omur

I'm starting to believe that there is more to the regression effect than just statistics.

<3b0omur

I know there's no excuse, but in my defense, I'm just not as black and white as you.  And I don't mean that in the wrong way - your potential for expressiveness exceeds my very imagination.  In truth, it's not even that you're black and white, it's more that, well, I should have been there with you - that's black and white.  The rest, my murky cloud of excuses, swirls about me so thickly that I'm surprised you would even have me on this bench before you.  Let me thank you for taking me as I am, whoever I am, whenever I am here.  That's a rare thing these days, you know?  And I probably never gave you that much credit in the past.  But you deserve it. 

Now that I think about it, you're not black and white at all.  In fact, it was with you that pride and humility met, holding ambition in one hand and failure in another and threw both of them to dust - was it mediocrity that grew from that dust or merely a general understanding of my own expectations, capacity, dreams?  And flirting with pride came passion, the tempest who stormed the temperament of control, of a small but strong voice that has a canny way of ringing through a hall, only to flow slowly down the walls like butter.   From rigidity sprang pliability, as I bent, twisted, even sometimes distorted every inch of your being, but you stood tall.  And not only that, you never left me. 

It may seem like I left you, but know that every time I come back to this place, I do it for you.  I do it to dispel the thin layer of dust, to remind you that I'm still here, even if I'm so very far away, so incapable of running my fingers over your body and bringing your being so deeply into mine.  I do it because for so many years, you watched me, guided me, and understood me like no one else.

<3b0omur

"But Crevette, one day you won't have all these different worlds.  You won't have a Berkeley world, a Houston world, a French world.  Someday they will all have to be one."

<3b0omur

Wide awake, yet unbelievably tired, I can't shake the notion that I've begun to resemble the Bill Murray character in Lost in Translation (sans beautiful Scarlett Johansson).  Wandering through the streets of Toulouse this afternoon, I felt entirely and completely alone in my island of language and culture, of place and understanding.  Ironically, I travelled 8000 miles to be with the man I love, yet in the hours that he's only a mere 20 minute away, dutifully crafting his future, I feel the lonliest I've felt in a very long time.  

Hush, the realist says to me, stop being so fucking melodramatic.  It's just two weeks.  Shouldn't you be enjoying and taking advantage of this wonderful opportunity, this city of culture, literally at your doorstep?  You've waited all this time to be wth him, to see his world, and now you're afraid to even step foot out the door?  Surely you can do better than that.

Then I say to the realist, If you're right then quiet the shadow that follows me like a petulant child, the uncomfortable weight that sinks into me when I try to sleep at night while he breathes steadily and deeply beside me. Then I will be happy, happy to be independent, to be adventurous, to be ready to take on a new language, a new city.  Tell me that somehow we will figure a way to make our two worlds fuse together the way I am so wholly connected to him.  If I know that, bring it on - all of it.

The realist rebukes, Stop thinking so damn much.  Curl up in bed next to your boyfriend while you still can, and seriously? Figure out some jetlag remedies.

<3 b0omur

Dave Matthews Band
The Kooks
Jason Mraz
Jack's Mannequin, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, Death Cab for Cute aannndd...
The Killers!

I love living in the Bay Area. What a semester.

Are we human or are we dancer?

<3b0omur

"To whom thus also the angel last replied:
This having learned thou hast attained the sum
Of wisdom.  Hope no higher, though all the stars
Thou knew'st by name and all th' ethereal powers,
All secrets of the deep, all nature's works
Or works of God in Heav'n, air, earth or sea,
And all the riches of this world enjoy'dst
And all the rule, one empire. Only add
Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add faith,
Add virtue, patience, temperance, add love
By name to come called charity, the soul
Of all the rest.  Then wilt thou not be loath
To leave this Paradise but shalt possess
A paradise within thee, happier far."
-Michael in John Milton's Paradise Lost

<3b0omur

I wanted you to know that you are good enough for me.

Lonestar, where are you out tonight?
This feeling I'm trying fight,
It's dark and I think that
I would give anything
For you to shine down on me.

How far you are, I just don't know
The distance I'm willing to go.
I pick up a stone that I cast to the sky,
Hoping for some kind of sign.

Lonestar, where are you out tonight?
This feeling I'm trying to fight,
It's dark and I think that
I would give anything
For you to shine down on me,
For you to shine down on me.

"Lonestar," Norah Jones

<3b0omur

I gripped the knife in my hand as the sharp tip lightly touched the surface of the skin.  My heart wavered for an instant - nostalgia pulled at me, but I shook my head.  Forward movement, I thought, it's now or never.  Stemming my flow of doubts with staunch resolution, I thrust the knife into the skin.  The flesh met the metal with resistance, but I pushed and pushed and pulled the knife, deeper, becoming more deft, more at ease.  Liquid seeped out with each thrust of the knife and the line that obediently followed slowly revealed itself.  I pulled the knife out, and grasped the base.  From deep within I heaved, the incision fighting the fibers that so desperately clung together.  They finally gave out, releasing their power to me and the knife that weakened them. With my gaping hole made, I dove inside, relinquishing all squeamishness, digging deeper for innards and thrusting them out.  I scraped and clawed at the inside, entrails flying forth, veins bursting.  I pillaged the inside, leaving nothing in my wake.  I paused for a second, wiping the sweat from my brow.  By now, I was elbow deep, and there was no turning back, no neatly patching up the hole and walking away.  My knife was dulled, my hands soiled, and the only possible movement was forward. 

In that moment, though, before I plowed ahead, I briefly allowed myself to settle back - back home, back to my driveway, scattered with newspapers.  The surrounding pavement was cluttered with pumpkin goop and seeds, and I crouched next to my dad, eagerly awaiting the next step.  The evening mix of humidity and northern winds mingled together, whispering of a fall long past due, as we, together, began to carve our pumpkins.  "Always cut away from yourself," my dad would tell me, and as I obediently and fervently nodded my head, he'd ask "Now, what kind of face should we make?" 

I peeked inside my pumpkin, hollow, clean, empty.  And then to the face - or lack thereof, and the potential it held as I grasped my knife and began to contemplate the fantastic yet daunting task of carving out a new life. 

<3b0omur

In 500 years, things haven't changed.

     "Biting my trewand pen, beating myself for spite,
      'Fool,' said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write.'"

<3b0omur

"Oh don't worry," I said as I gingerly gathered up the pieces of the broken frame, "it's nothing a little Krazy Glue won't fix."

<3b0omur