There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.

I prefer by far the warmth and softness to mere brilliancy and coldness. Some people remind me of sharp dazzling diamonds. Valuable but lifeless and loveless. Others, of the simplest field flowers, with hearts full of dew and with all the tints of celestial beauty reflected in their modest petals.

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier.  The way it actually works is the reverse.  You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.

I feel it cloy at my skin again. The familiar terror that for a while was so unfamiliar and distant has returned.

Why is it that as soon as I start to live my body starts to die?

When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold.  They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.

Empty is
the sky before the sun wakes up the morning.
The eyes of animals in cages.
The faces of women mourning
when everything has been taken
from them.
Me?
Don’t ask me about empty.
Empty is a string of dirty days
held together by some rain
and the cold wind drumming
at the trees again.
Empty is the color of the fields
along about September
when the days go marching
in a line toward November.
Empty is the hour before sleep
kills you every night
then pushes you to safety
away from every kind of light.
Empty is me.
Empty is me.

Respect whatever pain you bring back
from your dreaming
but do not look for new gods
in the sea
nor in any part of a rainbow.
Each time you love
love as deeply
as if it were
forever
only nothing is
eternal.

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.

What a day to be young and alive!!
The world is at my feet, moist and glistening, like a new born taking its first breaths, thrashing away the placenta and looking at life through a virgins eyes - possibilities, adventure, danger, excitement!
Oh to be young, have raven red hair, pierced ears, a posse of die hard friends, and a reason to live!
I love this day, never let it end!

some day i'll be dignified.
today is not that day.

i feel all out of wack, like my internal clock gave up the ghost and is sat their twitching like a dead rat waiting for a battery change. it's 3.45am, and i've slept from 6pm till 2am, missing swimming, planned night of TV with my mum and the chance to talk to K that i'd been waiting for all day.


the thing is, and i've thought long and hard about it. i don't actually want a boyfriend, or at least to say - i don't want K. my friends tell me that i should meet him and see what he's like in person, but mentally i know i'm not ready. i'm still in lust with C. i'm enjoying the head games we play with each other. it's like playing cat and mouse with something neither of us can have. we couldn't work as a couple, this much is obvious to us both, but the hopeless futility of it makes the chase more appealing.


i hope he will kiss me and see how important i am.

love

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish it's source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.

just me.

Ah, what difference a week makes. It's nice to write a normal entry here for a change instead of something I have to drag up from the depths of my soul. Luckily i'm not all intensity and bleakness and occasionally even a smile escapes my lips.

This week can only be described as incredible. Madness. But a beautiful, intense, thrilling madness that makes my gut tingle with anticipation. This was the week I discovered Henry Miller, 500 days of summer, The Smiths, Florence and the Machine, The Kinks, Black Books and An Idiot Abroad. It was also the week I got to know a really nice guy who can only be described as everything a girl should want - kind, good job, funny, cute. Maybe this is my lucky week. Maybe everything is slotting together and fitting into place at last...

Why one writes is a question I can easily answer, having so often asked it myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me—the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own like a climate, a country, an atmosphere where I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That I believe is reason of every work of art. We also write to heighten our awareness of life. We write to lure, enchant, and to console others. We write to serenade. We write to taste life twice, once in the moment and once in retrospection. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak to others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled or restricted or lonely. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.

I’m getting less good at faking it. People in my family are noticing and asking what’s wrong. My friends give me invitations to talk, to cry. I love them for their caring, but I want to run from it. I have lost their language, their facility with words that convey feelings. I am in new territory and feel like a foreigner in theirs.

This week ticks by so slowly. The drib drab of another day seeping through the sand timer, and what do I get in return? A few more words written on a virtual page, tucked away in an obscure corner of the internet.

I wonder when did words stop being enough? I wonder how words were ever enough in the first place. As if symbols on a page could ever hope to make up for a reality at odds with everything i am.

I dont want to JUST write anymore. I don't want to JUST do anything. I want to eat all corners of the cake. I want the whole thing for myself, not just the corner labelled "writer". I don't want my destiny at the exclusion of everything else life has to offer:

sex, drugs, fire, passion, love, career, friends, family, music, art, literature, property, piercings, travel, experiences.

Funny really, how wanting everthing is the closest thing to wanting nothing.

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. 
You leave the same impression 
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.

Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.

I feel myself getting smaller and smaller. More and more disposable. How long will it be before I disappear altogether?