Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won’t know for twenty years. And you’ll never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and ( Read more... )

There was the smell of jam and sadness.

In our family runs the thread of melancholy and dark humor. Of seeing to the bone of things, of not averting our gaze. I am only tempered by the joviality of my father's side, where conversation is a defense against loneliness. Jove, Saturn.

In the kitchen, I am 27. My mother is 55. There is a quilt of ( Read more... )

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This journal has seen better days. I'm not sure who reads it anymore, and I'd like to be all dramatic and claim that it's haunted by the past, but, you know, it's the internet, that's silly. But it is true that I don't like to come here much anymore, and I don't know what to write or how to write it. I'm going to keep it, mainly as a placeholder ( Read more... )

Hawaii
Some sort of prolonged reverie; the sort of quiet, ominous sublime that hovers over a David Lynch film. Five hour sunsets, deep waters, disappearing. Friends; fiercely. I couldn't breathe, literally. What does that mean? Cold tile and the sort of pain that made me see colors for which there are no names. Insignificant, invisible. Longing, a ( Read more... )

Last night found me curled up with Favorites on a blanket under a tiny grove of fogged-in redwood trees, listening to Will Oldham sing with a guitar, kazoo (now mine!) and friend.

We showed up to the Library 'round 3, which lies across the road from the edge of the continent, in Big Sur. We settled on our blankets in front of the tiny stage and ( Read more... )

i. sometimes i will be somewhere and i will hear a song and i will think softly to myself: "this. this is the first song of the rest of your life." sometimes this happens in a store, like the snack aisle of a safeway at eleven pm on a saturday night. the flourescent lights dim for a moment, and i will sneak a look around to see if my fellow aisle- ( Read more... )

Sometimes I can't help but suspect that my absolute favorite song of all time ever is 'Good Vibrations' by the Beach Boys.

What is yours?

I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more for that one.

-Thoreau, upon leaving Walden Pond

I am entirely in love with Penguin's Great Ideas series after having stumbled upon them at the Henry Miller Library a few weeks ago. They are slim volumes, usually no more than 100 pages. I've worked my way through the first series and am designing an interdisciplinary course around them that will be taught by by three teachers from english, ( Read more... )