Thoughts

Wilderness With Words

in

i saw it put by Dani Shapiro that writing is a way “to forge a path out of [our] own personal wilderness with words” - a way to both exercise and exorcise our most fundamental insecurities. 

wilderness with words.

i do so often feel like there’s a wilderness inside of me.
i’ve been told that there’s infinity inside of me.
but that dredges up accossiations with order and some sort of straight and narrow organization, direction and clarity for some reason. but wilderness, wilderness is what i most often feel to be inside of my heart and head. endless mazes of trees and unnavigatable landscapes filled with my innermost thoughts that i so often cannot untangle from one another. 

i cannot read or look at an article, book, magazine or movie, without logging away some sort of thought/idea/plan/sentiment i feel like i absolutely must remember and use at a later date. i feel so filled to the brim with the information i constantly, not only take in, but want to keep in. keep in until the right time to put it back out into the world in a new forum, inserted into this writing or that idea, or that creation, or that project or this conversation. i feel that my mind is always always always whirring and humming away. idea after idea scrolling across my frontal lobe, begging to not be forgotten, to be expanded upon, to be recorded, remembered, noted.

i do so best work things out in the written form.
and so, since there's a wilderness inside of me, i suppose it's okay to attempt it's navigation with words.  

especially because i haven't found another outlet to be quite as helpful as this one.
at least not yet. 

Moonchild

in

i'm a child of the moon
dancing on
asphalt underfoot
in the light
waxing and waning

She's Made Up Of

in

she's made up of:

denim. yarn. sail cloth. leather journals with misc mashed together let’s-save-this-too pieces of paper and important memories. blue. gold bangles and poorly made toe rings. booksbooksbooks. donuts. that butterfly-in-your-stomach-feeling. drift wood. that song that comes on the radio. rosemary. sun faded globes. back issues of vintage magazines. clipboards with torn this-inspires-me-right-now pages. words said in late night parking lots. green doored apartments. dormant type writers. unsnapped photos. that now-or-never sentiment.

With A Knife

in

she stirred her coffee with a knife.
not because it was altogether more efficient than another pre-assigned utensil, but because there were always extras of them. 
knives, filling up and out weighing the utensil tray.
taking up more than their fair share of space.
not-used-as-much.
not-as-needed.
and so she put them to use.
she made them needed.
she stirred her coffee with a knife.

Friday Girl

in

i was never one for those all-smushed-in-the-middle days of the week.
i was a friday girl.
a sunday-then-monday girl. but never a tuesday girl.

tuesday through thursday generally go unnoticed and overlooked in my mind and by my attentions. and saturday, well it’s smushed between friday and sunday so i don’t have too much attention for it either. 

if i had to choose one though, it would be friday. 
you have the whole weekend to look forward to, and the whole week to look back on.

Those People

in

sometimes people come into your life at very specific and necessary times. 
to teach you something. 
so you’ll teach them something. 
to lead you somewhere you wouldn’t have otherwise gone. 
to help you through something you needed help through. 
to say something you needed to hear.

but those people don’t always stick around. 
sometimes they’re friends. 
sometimes they’re acquaintances. 
sometimes they’re significant others. 
sometimes too they’re family, and their not sticking around is often the hardest to cope with. 
and sometimes those people won't not be around but instead they'll be in and out of your life, for different times, different seasons. 

but sometimes, they’re meant to just be there for a time, and then after that time has come to an end you have to learn to move on. you can’t keep hanging onto the what-ifs and the might-maybe-mays. because you’ll never give yourself the opportunities you deserve to grow and move and be into the person you’re meant to grow and move and be into. 

those people don’t know how you like your coffee. 
those people don’t know what to say when you’ve had a bad day.
those people don’t know whether you’re going to break out in song and dance when that song comes on the radio, or change the station.
those people don’t know that dancing is your way of unwinding, letting go, being free.
those people don’t know that you never really liked _____and you were just pretending to for their sake.
those people don’t know about that big scary-all-the-way-through thing that happened to you.
those people don’t know about that extremely-wonderful-over-the-moon-amazing thing that happened to you.
those people don’t know about these people.
those people don’t know about the book you read that made you feel that way that made you do this.
those people don’t know about that place that you went and what you did when you were there.
those people don’t know that you’re stronger than you’ve ever been in your whole life in so many ways and you love the person you are and are becoming as a result.

and those are altogether not necessarily the most important things in the world… but think about the people who do know the answer to those things about you and how those people no longer know.

and that maybe there’s a reason they don’t.

Watered Down

in

“I see this beautiful, gorgeous, girl who has these big and amazing dreams and she won't tell people what she wants. I think you use filters when telling me what you want. And so you feel alone, because I don't often hear you fully, because what you're saying has been filtered and watered down so much”
////

These are words someone said to me once. 

I’d written them down in an attempts to remember them.
In hopes that they would sink in, in the way you want good advice to sink in, and that I would come to some resolve afterwards to take action against their subject, however conscious or subconscious. 

The subject being, to not filter what I want. 

When I came across these words recently I realized, that it's been quite some time since I heard them but also, more importantly: I am not that person anymore. 

Or, at least, I haven’t been for the past year or so. I’ve slowly but surely built up that assurance in myself (whether it was conscious or subconscious is unknown) and my desires and convictions to state, really-truly-all-the-way-out-loud what it is I want. 

With the exception of lately. 

Lately there’s been a certain area in my life where I haven’t been all the way clear about those things. I've been watering things down. It’s mostly business related, but, without going into detail, I've been noticing that it’s leaked into other areas of my life as well.
However, I have no desire to revert back to that person that I once-upon-a-time was.

And so this is a reminder to myself today.

Don’t water down your dreams.
Your ambitions.
Your wants.
Whether they are larger than life desires, or in the moment small needs. Because you’re a person with value and substance. Your wants matter. Don’t be shy about them. Be bold and speak out. 
No one's going to know what you want unless you tell them. It's not a guessing game. Don't treat your dreams so lightly. Give them the voice they deserve.

Don’t leave them watered down.

Write To Me Always

in

write to me always. 

in words of mutual confidence, despair, joy, frustration. write to me always of the feelings that i do so have a hard time putting into all-the-way-making-sense trains of thought.

write to me of the poetry i attempt to live but so often cannot write or verbally express. write to me of our late night thoughts that come about on star lit rooftops. in parked cars. on light-dim-dark dance floors. on mussed beds from long evenings of lying about in wonder at the events that brought us here.

because yours is a soul that resonates and responds with mine in a way that is at times baffling and unexplainable but something i not all-the-way need to understand. simply because i am content in our bond and working on the canvas that we now mutually share.

so write to me always.

Know Yourself

in ,

I just want to remind you to know yourself.
And if you don't feel like you know yourself, get to. 
Spend time with you in varying situations and places and circumstances.
Comfortable and uncomfortable.
Alone. With people. With strangers. With friends. 
Be honest about your loves and likes and dislikes.
Stay true to them when you find them.
But also be okay with them evolving and changing with you as you evolve and change. 
Don't be ashamed of the quirks and inconsistencies and wrinkles and bumps and imperfections.
Whether they be physical or emotional.
Be unwavering in embracing who you are.
The world will notice that. It's what's most attractive about people.
The embracing of their whole entire selves, flaws and all.
The openness, rawness and realness of being intrinsically human. 
If you currently feel like that, open, raw, and in a state of mess and struggle, embrace it.
Be there.
Be all there.
Because it's beautiful.
And you'd be so much duller, flatter, and unattractive without those pieces of you.
Because those pieces help refine and shape you into being a person worth knowing.  

//// Thanks Emily for modeling for these portraits.
I love that you know exactly who you are.
Keep knowing that.