filtered mania

There is a real danger that comes with blogs. Sure, that may have been the lamest sentence I have EVER WRITTEN, but that's just the way it goes. Anyway, DANGER. This blog is dangerous! You think you may know me intimately through my words, yet there are filters. I know there is an audience. I censor. I shield. And, weirdly enough, I am actually flesh and bones, not just Times New Roman. (Okay, so I think Her Fog and Pearls is Arial, but that's less poetic. And I call the shots around here!)

Before I become too obnoxious, let me say that I am flattered people read and appreciate my words. It's tremendously humbling. Thank you. HOWEVER. However, I am not here to be anyone's manic pixie girl. What is read on a screen is a tiny fraction -- and a distorted one -- of who I am. A concept I am not.

I hope this ain't coming across as too self-absorbed, but I fear that it is. Well, fuck it. No more people pleasing! I'll say and do and eat what I want! I'll go where I want and love who I want. Whom? Fuck it! I'll use whatever kind of grammar I wanna use!

Holy Moses! So apparently "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" is a term coined by the critic Nathan Rabin, who said, "The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures."

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Ugh.

shift

I am in a mourning period, but do not worry because this is closely linked to rebirth and renewal. It is a cleansing process. My psyche needs to flush out a few things (and people and places) in order for it to approach and embrace what is on the horizon.

I mourn my home. I mourn my first love. I mourn my childhood best friend. I mourn the religion I knew when I was young. I mourn the people I once was and could have been. I mourn the disappearance of innocence and the emergence of cynicism. I mourn the open space and the clouds between my toes. I mourn the flesh.

I embrace what is. I embrace the beating of the bones beneath the earth (even if they are just ghosts). I embrace the fear that comes with shifting landscapes. I embrace the repulsion I feel towards embracing things (and people and places). I embrace all that I mourn.

If somebody gave me a hand to hold, I'd hope that I would recognize it as my own.

(ephemeral)

I need
my own
secret
language
so I don't
have to
write in
the margins
in the
cracks.
I need
to not
fear
my own
language
so that
margins
don't matter,
so that
cracks catch
what can be claimed,
without apology without boundaries without
a self to censor.

Decode the raised veins
(an ephemeral riverbed)
and then name these hands.
Forget the lines;
my palms are present.

heavy as a feather

It may be called Borderline Personality Disorder or perhaps it's a type of bipolar disorder, but whatever you want to call it, do not call it order! The moods I go rapidly through and the people I draw in tightly and then casually let go with little to no emotion seems a little odd and not terribly healthy. Also, that last sentence contained one too many adverbs! This post is beginning to contain one too many (so far: two! wait - three! four! five! six.) exclamation points. My point is, I am mad as a March hare, but in April. April hares bring May mad hatters and May hatters bring June birthdays and June birthdays bring me one year closer to a total meltdown. Maybe a total meltdown will bring me closer to my art? What a pretentious and cheesy thing to say. Speaking of cheesy and meltdowns, I just now thought of a store that I will never open called "Meg's Meltdown." It will be a place where people of all nationalities can come together to eat grilled cheese sandwiches and then have pillow fights using down pillows that explode in a fury of feathers. World peace, one cheese-stained pillow fight at a time.

Stick around. Pay your dues. Come back often.

banana, hot dogs, boobs. and jell-o. worst post ever.

The slightly chilly, rainy weather IS MY FAVORITE FOREVER. Blue sky gives me the blues, but clouds astound my senses.

Imagine having all of the money in all of the world to get all of the tattoos of hot dogs, for you and all of your friends. And while you are imagining that, imagine if Santa Claus was real.

I give up on people too easily. Whooooopsie.

I am tired tonight. Ohhhh so tired. I think I will go eat Jell-o right now in front of the boob tube. I don't even know anymore.

listen. it's been a while.

If I could have it my way, I'd be a beautifully tragic starving artist. Except I wouldn't be starving. I'd dine on alligator meat and wash it down with dreams dreamt on a tall pile of top hats. If I could have it my way.

Why not?

love and noodles

I am so happy these days. Why? I can narrow it down to two things. And by "things" I mean "people." They are not objects! Bless their hearts (they've got huge hearts) because they have saved my life more than once. I wonder if they realize how guardian angel-like they are to me? Probably not. I should let them know.

I should also let my family know how important they are to me. We have our faults and sometimes we don't communicate well (or at all), but lord oh lord we are genuinely gentle, good people who want each other to be oh-so-happy. I love them. More than ever.

And now here's a picture of a Sophia Loren eating spaghetti:

rich

A VALEDICTION FOBIDDING MOURNING

by Adrienne Rich

My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.

They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.

I want you to see this before I leave;
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said;
my bleeding is under control.

A red plant in a cemetery of plastic wreaths.

A last attempt; the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed; hair, glacier, flashlight.
When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say; those mountains have a meaning
but further than that I could not say.

To do something very common, in my own way.

prime time

Why is it that thoughts can no longer form in my brain and then leak out onto the page? What's going on here? Wuz up wit dat? I wonder if it is a vitamin deficiency or lack of sunshine or carbonation or not enough wine or too much whining internally and externally and eternally we will be stuck in this blogosphere and Twitterverse and Facebook-Hall-of-Mirrors and where is the magician with the magic hat to pull us out of our constantly distracted stasis?

I am confused by my last paragraph. And by life in general. And why some people are generals while others are sergeants and why sergeants is spelled the way it is and sometimes things just are the way they are and we need to breathe and buy into something so we can wake up in the morning and lie down at least semi-satisfied at night.

Lately I have been very interested in ghost stories.

Through evidence and reasoning and assuming and so forth, it seems as though Thursdays are lonely nights for the general public. But isn't Thursday night a good night for prime time? While all of the sitcoms are on break for summer, we (meaning me and the television gods) should change the spelling of "prime time" to "pryme thyme" and see if anyone (meaning EVERYONE) notices.

And this is an example of how my brain has stopped functioning.

mirror

"Full Moon and Little Frieda"

by Ted Hughes

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket

And you listening. A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch. A pail lifted, still and brimming – mirror To tempt a first star to a tremor.

Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm wreaths of breath – A dark river of blood, many boulders, Balancing unspilled milk.

“Moon!” you cry suddenly, “Moon! Moon!”

The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work That points at him amazed.

pain won't kill you

taken from a 2011 commencement speech given by Jonathan Franzen at Kenyon College titled "Pain Won't Kill You"

"What love is really about is a bottomless empathy, born out of the heart's revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are."

"...pain hurts, but it doesn't kill. When you consider the alternative -- an anesthetized dream of self-sufficiency, abetted by technology -- pain emerges as the natural product and natural indicator of being alive in a resistant world."

"When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there's a very real danger that you might end up loving some of them. And who knows what might happen to you then?"