Love or a lack of.

I don’t feel loved here in my parents’ home. I feel fragmented and harassed and under constant attack. Little attacks, but I’m always on edge, waiting to be told that I did something wrong, that I have to do something that I don’t want to do. My life is made up of little moments of dread. I expect the worst. Always. How can it be love, if I’m stifled and broken and failing and falling apart?

I don’t know how to give love other people, and I’m afraid to love other people, because I have such a skewed sense of what it means to love and be loved. Love seems to be an obligation, something I have to work desperately hard to earn, something that is always in the periphery, just out of my ability to see clearly or grasp adequately. Yes, love has always been something I’ve had to earn, not something I’ve been given freely. I had to do right, I had to be perfect, I had to make sure the other person was entirely happy, entirely pleased in every aspect of their life that I could affect before I could even think of being loved. And I think that by love I mean even the mere acknowledgement that I existed.

I just feel that everything I have is something I’m now in the process of paying back. For example, I feel as though I owe my parents thousands and thousands of dollars for all of the money they spent in raising me. I feel as though I am a bad person because I don’t have money to give them. At the same time, I have this acidic anger lodged in my stomach that just wants to lash out and scream at them for being horrible people and doing everything wrong in raising me. And this makes me feel even worst, because it all then becomes double guilt. Like I was a very expensive mistake who doesn’t deserve anything that she has, and never will.

These thoughts make my heart hurt. Literally, I get chest pains that ache up through my left chest, shoulder, and neck when I think about these things.

So, I’m 25, financially in debt about $5000, and believe that I owe my parents extraordinary amounts of money, so I’m emotionally in debt about $100,000, which I’ve been paying for the last 20-odd years in guilt, depression, existential crises, tears, headaches, stomach, and muscles pain.

And this is such a hard place to be, taking responsibility for myself, for my emotions and behaviours, without blaming. I feel like I’m blaming my parents for ruining my life, and then I feel guilty and sick about that , like I’m a horrible person for even considering that they could have had any kind of impact on the person that I grew into, which makes everything just topple over that much further.
The thing is, my parents have, unintentionally, made me into themselves, and neither of them can see this. Neither of them can recognize that all of my fears, pains, and breakdowns are pieces of themselves that I am showing to them. That I have picked up and grown into. They think that what I am, what I have become over the years has to do with me and my experiences solely. They are too afraid to see just how fucked up and unhappy they are.

I think that, from the moment I was born, I’ve been trying to make my parents happy. Desperately trying, and nothing, ever, nothing I could do took away the pain and suffering, the deep unhappiness that welled from inside of each of them and flowed and pooled, caking over all of our lives. And I internalized the fact that I couldn’t make them happy, which meant that I could never do anything right. I was in, and continue to be in, a completely no-win situation. My parents are not happy people, and it’s not my fault. But I believe that it is. Each of those times when I did something, who knows what, thousands of attempts at making them happy, or in other words, trying to get their love, I was fundamentally rejected. I experienced small trauma after small trauma, which embedded themselves in my emotional core, in my intellectual mind, in my survival instincts. I am a failure because I failed to be lovable. If my parents couldn’t even purely love me, than obviously there was something inherently wrong with me.

Their love was always tempered with sadness. Myself as child interpreted that as being my fault. I was always too aware, but didn’t know how to interpret what I was experiencing.

I’m listening to one of my favorite songs, “Streetlight” by Tom Mcrae, and the lyric that always hits me is “and every night I breathe her in, feel her sink into my skin, still I feel I am envious and obvious and desperate for your love, I am shattered by and criticized and still I crave your touch”. Which pretty much sums up my life. I scramble and struggle to fit pieces of myself back together, to hold delicate fragments together with any kind of glue or masking tape or blood that I can find, but that all of this work is completely undone by my need to be loved, and my inevitable failure at it.

So no wonder I feel this almost unidentifiable nausea/sadness/heartburn/utter exhaustion/failure when I think of love. That is what love is to me, that is what I’ve learned it to be. No wonder I have so much difficulty in being a friend, no wonder I find it impossible to be in a relationship. It hurts less to not let anything in rather than be faced with failure again. And the anxiety… infant fear of parents not caring enough to protect me, childhood experience of emotionally and physically being rejected by my parents.

Being shown that there is something wrong with you is a very different experience than having it implied. When I was 9, my exhausted parents decided that I was an unreasonable and emotionally uncontrollable child, and after seeking help from one ( one! Only one! My mother, who is the queen of third and forth medical opinions!) psychiatrist had me locked away on the psych ward of childrens hospital for 6 weeks. I was pathologized, rejected, medicalized, and treated cruelly and coldly by my parents and a number of health care workers who were supposed to be healing and helping emotionally damaged children. My parents abandoned me, and told me it was my own fault. That’s the love I know. Blame and abandonment, baked with a lovely sugary icing of guilt. Sure makes me want to go out and find more of it. At least my fear of abandonment is justified. I guess.

Untangling all of these things is such a process of repetition. Repetition has such a negative connotation, but sometimes, it is this act which brings a certain sense of clarity, especially emotional clarity, that is hard to discern elsewise ( elsewise being the non-existent replacement word, interchangeable word, for otherwise.). What else is writing, but finding different evocative ways of saying the same things over and over?

Just to say

That I am blessed to be surrounded by astounding and extraordinary people. Artists. Friends. Who write, and read, and talk about writing and reading what we write. And cry. And dance. And drink. And console me when my body malfunctions and my brain stops working. If you're reading this, you probably know who you are. Because you read this a lot. And I mention you a lot. And I love you a lot.

Ps. Everytime someone says " I love you" to me it's a struggle not to burst into tears. Knowledge. Is this sad? I don't mean pathetic. It just happens. It's overwhelming, and part of me doesn't believe it, and part of me believes it too much, and I think we categorize love too much, and have become so enamoured and obsessed with the one true love thing that we can't experience the romance and love of everyday things and all relationships, not just "romantic ones" ( which are also ridiculously important in their own right).

Poem for miss j

Joann asked me to write a song about/for her. I can't remember which. Always turns into both, anyways. So I sat down at the piano and wrote a song. Hopefully it will cheer her up, not make her feel sad. It's not really a sad song. But maybe it's more of a poem. Who knows...

There's no need to stutter again
or hide what you've been looking for

on the edge, ribbons and dresses,
a vixen, a wisher, a planet

stones crumble up against your feet
hear the contours turn on your tongue

seven leaves slip through the tea
a future of blooms and words undone

Leave your corset untied and
let the laces drag on the ground
behind you

followed by birds
magpies toughen the hem of your skirt

it's fine to be in tatters
leaves spaces for a heart to mend it's edges

photograph a figure not slighted
your toes turn away from the lens
in the distance

into the night
you gather the embers
and throw them to the trees

Burning up
the roots you were granted
holding the ashes aloud
you clear yourself of him
and begin

you keep the moon
in the planes of your bones

listen hard.

Just a poem

Distance is in our blood tonight
Capture three drops and squeeze it
Between thin glass slides
To see the spaces
Past microscopic
And into the trails of seashore
Ribbons again

Not an emptiness of time
Vacated and hollowed of air
Palm prints on all the sugar canisters
Lines nearly followable, just
A second too fine for proof

Don’t worry
I’ll deny that I know more
Than one taste
My sweetness isn’t coveted
Until I select the granules
To be distributed through
Ancient wires
Back from their rusting days
Of use
And selected with a clean breath

Alleviating perfect
Until she rises to the top
Of the allocated pile
Her tongue twists to the left,
Unsure of how to form unfinished words
Her mouth follows pace by pace

I open my palms to read their etchings,
Cool bowls of drinking water cup open
To the floor
Splashing on fading tiles
Diagrams of lifeless love
Bleeding their inkiness into the foldings
Between.

Particles find their way in.

Rub the back of my right hand along my mouth
Leaving a lipstick story to be read
By bold passerby
Who stop to stare
And take themselves holy
With a streak of red
Dyed in now to
Flaming
Lips run aimlessly bright

Sea wed
Wreathes from her arms
An underwater marriage
Floats lightly to stream
And hands with cluttered skin
Can be entwined with fine weeds
Bones to dry
Are left behind
To shiver themselves
Into sand.


*point of interest-as I was writing the last stanza I had completely forgotten I'd used sea imagery earlier. Nice subconscious circling back. I love it when that happens....*

breathe. again, please.

The only part of studio work that I miss, this moment now, is the breathing. Any number of us, lying around the room, breathing, eyes closed, giving over to the breath. Doing nothing but breathing. Not working hard to meditate, not trying to be anything, other than a room full of people breathing. Breathing alone is so different, there isn’t that deep sense of importance and connection that occurs when a significant group of people are breathing with themselves with others.

Such a space in a room, the blur of energy and life slowing and widened. It becomes as if even our bones are full of air.

I don’t want to back into the studio to create, to produce something, I want to go and find a quietness with others that I can’t find on my own since my silences are different, and become a new, brightly skewered thing in presence. The grace and importance of one simple gesture repeated, focused on, becoming nothing more than what it is, yet infinitely becoming more than what it is.I want that level of focus, that point of respect for the body, in its space, in its time, coming down to the point of truly listening to the mumbling and burbling thoughts that sprint through veins and push them selves skyward through skin.

There is also the sanctity of a studio space, of a space reserve for time out of time, other realities and could bes. I just want my arms to be arms again, recognized as such, as much as they could be. No more distance from my body because I can’t be bothered to breathe and fall into the motions.

I do miss being in creative spaces with other creative people, in the stages of pre-creating, or rather, within the stages of self-reflection, of aware and unaware kinaesthetic awareness. The point at which kinaesthetic awareness truly becomes about responding to the energy, to the movements, to the lifeblood of all the other people in the room, being in a momentous and complete relationship with someone you wouldn’t otherwise have any words to share with, just by breathing and listening with your body. And responding. Accepting and responding. I miss that.

I don’t miss the pressure to be creative, to have creatively driven away from me by the rules of learning, by the rules of the theatre, by other people’s rules cry out so loud that I couldn’t determine my own rules anymore.

But I such miss the company. That underlying thread of connection that webs through the room, unnoticed but a part of everything. That is what I miss. The depts. Of connection that occur in exploratory creative times and moments. Not the creating of things. What we make ourselves, of ourselves is what is beautiful.

Empathy

I read a book. It was called “Empathy”. It was written by Sarah Schulman. “You are suffering from empathy” one character says to the other at one point. The disease of caring. More than one meaning. Empathy isn’t valued as highly as it should be, the encouragement to become thick skinned narcissists is a strong draw. To function adequately in a world where the best ideas and minds are primarily used in situations and actions that create mass amounts of pain for mass amounts of people, to have empathy is in fact to suffer. To give yourself over, pass yourself along to others, hands open, palms wide, is asking for pain. But offering kindness shouldn’t be viewed as a request for pain.

You suffer from an illness, it afflicts you and affects your body, your perception of the world. Empathy, caring for others, becomes something bad, something to avoid, something that only brings wrongness. The act of empathizing is often solely associated with being with someone in their pain. As if you can’t be with someone in their joy, calm, contentment.

At many glances, through windows, heart, life is, and can be suffering, so much. If the word is suffering, is painful and awful, then to empathize at all, with anything, with anyone, with any situation, is necessarily suffering.

But I have to hopefully disagree, and say that there is empathy beyond sadness.We just don’t recognize that shared beauty is an experience of empathy. Yes, some might view my ongoing bouts of empathy as unfortunate and unnecessary. I say they keep me sane and whole, while boundaries and barriers of ice are shocks that don’t need to be so sharp.
Anyways, “Empathy” by Sarah Schulman was a great book to read, a surprise book, because I didn’t actually think I’d be able able to make it through it-I’ve been having trouble with the book reading lately. Headaches and can’t focus, no interest. So, to find a book that is poetic and realistic, more than a little gut wrenching, and yet inherently easily readable is an astounding thing. It’s a novel, but not. It’s a love story, and a lost story. It’s important and lovely. And there are some good essays and prefaces in it, too.

time

It is very difficult to slow down time. To increase the counts between heartbeats. So many seem to constantly be seeking ways to quicken the pace, to get life to open up under the strain of the pressure of speed. I just want to be able to sit and listen to a whole piece of music, instead of listening to half a song haphazardly and unfocused before moving on to a new song. I can’t hold on to anything. Not in a grabby way, but things seem to slip through before I even have an impulse to reach for them.I want to be able to see time stream by like finely breezed fog ribbons.

I feel like I’m jumping from point to point, rather than taking steps. I walk toe to heel, not heel to toe. I make more of an imprint when I walk heel to toe, and the sound of my footsteps are louder. Which I always thought was embarrassing and inconspicuous. Keeping myself off balance was safer.

Now, I want the patience to recognize a full foot on the ground. I want my mind to be clear for one minute, for the headache fog to lift and allow me just a thought that is clarity.
This requires me to slow down time. It’s possible. Put the clock away and turn off the alarm. An extension of minutes. It’s all about breathing.

Sometimes, I just don't like making eye contact. And a piano.

I sit down at the piano. I’ve never been one much good at lessons, at the learning of things, at giving myself time to learn things. If my eyes to my brain to my hands can’t immediately interpret and do whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing, then I won’t do it. The lazy approach, maybe, the distracted way, the inability to fully concentrate aspect.

When I sit down at the piano, it’s almost too much. At least ten things could be happening at once. That’s too much, too much is expected from the piano, from piano music, the history of the instrument, and those who have played it before me.

The first instrument we all learn is our voices, and it’s also the first to frighten us away from using it.

I took recorder lessons when I was five. On a one note instrument, expectations are different. Simpler, which doesn’t mean less, but there is almost a purer sense of focus, it’s more direct and less splintered out into portions.

I played the flute, an extension of recorder woodwind thing.

I played the violin, and was awful at it. Should’ve played the cello.

Tried the guitar. I can’t play bar chords. My hands are too small, and my wrists won’t reach quite that way. Never really made sense to me, either.

Took piano lessons, loosely termed, for about five years. Serious and not serious. I like to play, I just don’t like to read music and practice practice play. I’m not so good at the repitition. I tend to zone out and lose track of what I’m doing. And I’m a perfectionist, so it’s stressful to try to play something perfectly.

The piano is an instrument with way too much history and magnificence surrounding it. The symphonies and concertos and whatever pieces that have been written on and for them. Ten notes at once. Ten! That’s a lot of harmonizing.

I should start writing songs on the glockenspiel or something. Would it let me be ok with the fact that I will never be a glockenspiel virtuoso, or when I sit down, little glockenspiel mallet in hand, will I wither at my complete lack of originality and inability to be the best and most respected glockenspiel player in the world. Who is also the most amazing piano virtuoso ever. Who is also the most amazing singer ever. Who is also the most extraordinary accordion player ever.

Why is it never enough? I don’t even want to be a virtuoso. I don’t want to dedicate the time, and I know I don’t have it in me, I just want the words. I just want the recognition of being good at something, instead of being half-hearted at way too many things. I am not actually full of this drive, I want to be happy just sitting there a glockenspiel in front of me, little mallet in hand, happily making up three note songs about trees and the shapes of leaves and our lips of imperfection. Yeah. Lips of imperfection, no idea where that one came from, but it demanded to be said.

It’s interesting though, because when I imagine myself having achieved this astounding level of success, the daydream isn’t about the creation and presentation of something extraordinary. And it’s not just about hollow recognition, either. It’s about existing in this state of meaningful beingness, and knowing I can do something. And it’s about the people I am surrounded by, and talk to, and have relationships with. I daydream about the people I could meet, these amorphous, foggy shapes that I can’t fill in, not knowing who they are or what they do or what they have to say. Only that they do something important. And I do something important. And we are all important together. Not overimportant, or full of ourselves, though. Just doing things that do something. Something.

I just can’t stand face to face, and look eye to eye, because I feel like I’m not doing good enough. Not not being good enough, but not doing good enough. This world of drive, of ambition, of accomplishment, of product, these are the only things that can be actively, or rather, easily, shared in a minute of fast and disinterested conversation. You can’t pass along the essence of a moment of silence, or introspection, or distilled happiness from stillness in a few moments of bar chatter or party talk.

And I’m all about the introspection and the essences. That’s why I’m an introvert. It even says that I like “introspection and the essences of things” in various breakdowns of my personality type. I’m an introvert. I love talking to people, but not too many. It’s difficult for me to meet new people-not the act, but the experience. I can’t sum myself up in simple gestures and speech. I always feel like I have nothing to sell in the shopping mall of being well-socialized.

Socializing is a little bit like playing the piano, I guess. When it’s kept simple and without unreasonable expectations, it’s fun and interesting and lovely. When it’s trying to be all fancy harmonics and witty conversationalist, just so much yuck. So much yuck. I like to be the girl at the party who tags along with all her nifty friends, and can kind of hide, until something not too scary or overwhelming interests her. Or better yet, just bring a small party to my house, and make sure I know at least half of the people who are there. So, if ten people show up, and I know 5 of them, chances are that, by the end of the night, I may have actually spoken to at least 2 new people. And probably only if they speak to me first. Shyness and introversion cross over into each other’s court, unknown queen. They’re different, but I have both.

I just don’t like feeling defective about my temperament and behaviour. Which I do, when I compare myself to my extroverted and well spoken friends. Which is almost everyone I know. I’ve managed to surround myself with the most outgoing, well socialized, amiable people ever. How did I manage this? A case of I attract what I want to be? Which is fine. As long as you don’t tell me I’m boring, or predictable, or uninteresting, or unsuccessful, or ridiculous, or cumbersome, or anything else that falls into any of those categories because I don’t behave the same way you do, and say no to going out places, and don’t want to live a chatty, wild, adventurous life of more of everything. That’s just not me. It’s not boring to me. I just hate that snarky, judgmental, glassy look that people give me when I don’t live up to their expectations of funness and excitement. The dismissal. I don’t need to be dismissed by anyone, I already started ignoring myself a long, long time ago. I really don’t need help.

And I realize that this is not most people I know personally, and am close to. It’s more of a grand social scheme to make me, and every other shy person in the world, feel bad about ourselves, and insignificant. And I don’t like that. At all.

Hmmm….that was all a bit angry and ranting-like. Good.

Sort of Apocalyptic poem #1

I’m talking myself around. In circles. Not around to any one particular place or point of voice. I’m restless and unproductive. Not that I’m necessarily a big fan of productivity, but I like to be able to write at least at little bit each day, at least a blog entry or something. But here, even though my brain knows I’m not right back where I was, sitting here, at this computer, in this house, everything just lodges, and gets stuck in a stupor of blah. The only word I want to type, the only word I even want to say is blah. It’s not even malaise or ennui, it’s just pure blah.

Numb blah. I sound like a really exciting person with a really exciting life when I say that.

I’m just having this pull towards wanting to create/not wanting to great. All of my energies all tangled up into expectation again, with this whole school thing. Yes, the school thing. What am I doing?

I feel like I’m making a huge mistake, I feel like I’m not doing enough, I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. Which I don’t. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m so afraid to be in debt.

I’m listening to Charlotte Martin’s “Veins”.

So, the debt thing. My brain makes this connection, seriously, this is how I think: school=debt=no money=having to work a crappy job=not able to work crappy job=being unemployed=not having anywhere to live/having to live back at my parents house=being sick all the time…and actually, I’m not entirely sure about the logical thought pattern continued, but somehow, it ends up with me either dying of some horrible disease, the end of the world, being violently murdered in my sleep, or being singed and painfully disintegrated by nuclear weapons in an apocalyptic third world war. Not to mention plain old heartbreak.

Negative thought patterns?Hmmm…

Seriously, does everybody think like this? It’s pretty unconducive to living a day to day life, so I have to assume that I’m of a relatively small minority of those with constant crazy brain.

And school. The only kind of school or material that I feel I should be studying is basic survivalist methods. The “how to live in the woods with only a knife and a well memorized encyclopedia of all of the non-poisonous edible plants of North America” kind of survival. Oh yeah, and maybe some self defense too. I can’t justify being a scholar, being a teacher, being a lawyer, I can sort of justify being a nurse, or a midwife, or a doctor, because those things have an immediate, emergency related impact. But anything else. Useless waste of time that I should be using to get prepared.

Crazy brain, I know. It’s embarrassing.

Who else wakes up in the morning and wonders if they should dress for wilderness survival, just in case. Who has this fear based sense of living where getting and being prepared for, literally, the worst that could possibly happen, is the only possible way to be.

I get that other people have anxiety. But it seems to be contained within the mundane. Not that the fear is any less, not that the feeling are any less, whether it’s worry about a paper, or a date, but answering each possibility with “ well, it doesn’t matter if I do that anyways because the world is just going to end horribly”, is just a little dramatic. Gets a little bit annoying.

Makes me sound really crazy. So I wrote a poem. Because it’s ok to be crazy if you’re a poet. It’s all in the name of art. I can be a winely lush then, too, and it’s all ok. Except for the liver. My poor over used, prescription chemically abused liver. Come on, liver, regenerate!

Sort of Apocalyptic poem #1

Caught by the wing
Pulled from the tree
To my nesting spot
Upended roots
Can I kill this bird
With a rock
Though the air
To the ground
And over the fire
No matches, no matches
My hands burning thin

Wearing my clothes
For seventeen days
Jeans dirt thick
Shoes speaking endeavored steps
Mouth to the ground
Listening for shoots

What’s ruined is left behind
Shoulders tensed to the wind
Bring ashes, bringing ashes swinging

No trees
To run to now
Rocks dropped on bones
Smashed the stones to dust
And the only repairs will be
Volcanic ones

A moment with my hands
Deep in the dirt
No breathing
No stillness in the sun
We only drink from the rain

And left all thoughts of mercy
In the pockets we sewed up
And left in shifting closets
A simple folding door
Unhinged

All veins have been suspended
And pipelines burst
As we have spread ourselves along
A wonder,
Which ground you are in
And whether you’re solid still

I’m barely here, for long.

9 years on and a song that's not about that big term...

So, this one is a song that I've revisited after about 9 or 10 years. I recorded an earlier version on a cd I made at home when I was 17 ( it's the second to last track on the cd, those of you who want a melody and sound reference point. Adriana-you may be the only person who has this cd.). I think I may have also performed it at the grade 12 fashion show at my high school.... I wore a pretty dress and a fluffy pink sweater, and had a real live piano, no crappy keyboard. But, actually, I may have played another song.

Anyways. I was writing this morning, inspired by one of Adriana's blog posts ( isn't it nice to have points of artistic inspiration that come from a known source, rather than a merely distant one?), a poem called "Redeemed". Now, I'll take a wild guess, and say this is attached, emotionally and thematically to Charlotte Martin's "Redeemed", which I too have been listening to obsessively and devotedly for the past while.

You'd never know that this one concept, this word is what triggered a re-write after ten years, additions of complexities and switches in meanings. I'm fascinated by the word "redeemed", in the non sin related, non consumer related sense, but I've always had trouble coming to grips with, and finding my way about the term and act of redemption. It's interesting how to forms of the same meaning, the same themes affect me so differently.

I think it's that I associated redemption with being a big scary biblical term, whereas redeemed seems smaller and has possibilities outside of Judeo-christian thought patterns and processes. It feels more organic. I don't know, really, I don't.

However, none of this is actually noticeable in the song.

So, here's quick and quiet song #5

Cm-A flat

The sense she depended upon
but knew would never come
as she pasted petals into her book
and closed the shelves

The sound of some clearer voice
she waited for nine years to hear
and time and time and time
waits up

To put it in fierce terms
she would stand rigth straight for hours
moving only her joints
but her bones wouldn't follow

E flat-Cm-Fm-A flat-Cm

Standing in that green dress
she roots down into a tree
and is left ( calm?) ( stranded?) (unknown word...)

Cm-A flat

Isabella light sleeper
all our gifts run dry
who'dve though we'd be sitting here
no hillsides and no distillations
in our palm lines

they hold themselves
so strangely in my body
the placement of words
along limbs and exhalation

E flat-Cm-Fm-A flat-Cm

Transitions between form and tense
lie different on more places
than the tongue

E flat-A flat

I can't bring her back
I won't bring her back

Cm-A flat-E flat -Cm-A flat

To this failure
of broken and stuttering time
without.

tv? Really? Hmmm...maybe a book will make me sound smart.

I have tendencies of being prolific and then being quiet. Break the spell and I'm even unproductive. That's not new. So instead of writing, I'm watching episodes of Wonderfalls. Great procrastination fodder. Truly. I was going to write about an extraordinary book I just read, "Empathy" by Sarah Schulman, which is about, yeah who would've guessed, empathy or the lack of. But, I'm not in the mood to get all essay-ee I'm still too tired. Vaguely blurry and almost hallucinatory. That's right, I'm not hallucinating, I'm being hallucinated. That's how all weirdy exhausted I am. And twitchy eye is still there too. Less, but still making itself known. I need tylenol.

sleep

I am so tired. So so tired. That's really all I can say. So tired that my left eye is twitching, and my equilibrium is off. I feel like I'm falling over whenever I'm standing up, and my brain is in a complete fog. Sleeping not so well lately. Too much waking up all through the night, alarms in the morning, schedules and stress...insomnia is not good for me...wrecks my body...so I'll sleep all day tomorrow and hope all is better

The "how come every melody I write sounds the same" song

I have problems with melody. It's such a scary thing, trying to write a meolody, and I think the music part of my brains shuts down when I attempt to write melody, because I put so much expectation on it to be catchy and interesting, and melodic. And like everything else, when I get to that stressed ou tplace of unreasonable expectation, the creativity shuts down.

So I just write, and sing, and write some more, and sit at the piano, and write and sing. And if it's crap, it's crap. And if it sounds exactly the same as the last song I wrote, then I need to find some small change to make it sound at least a little different. And if it sounds like some song that's already been written, well, every melody possible has probably almost been written, so the pressure of extreme originality needs to be placed to the side. I make myself sit there until I have something, even if it is a rough poem and a couple of chord changes that I like.

My word starting point came from an e-mail I received this morning from Lucia, and an astounding blog entry that Adriana wrote today. So, I'm in this song, and they are too. Conclusion I've come to: people don't write enough songs involving relationships other than their primary relationship ones, and there is so much possibility in every kind of relationship, and in every person. Although, that is just a sweeping comment based on popular music, more than anything else...all sorts of writers write about all sorts of things...

D-F#m-G-D

She wrote a letter
all typed out lightly
grainy print from the memories
that we ache to lose

Bm-A-G-D

Swept from her bed
a wild pool of spring
spitting up roses
full out to form

F#m-A-C-A

Follow me a swallow
willow tree burns by the hill
paling structures intertwine

F#m-Bm-D-C

referenced by fear

D-F#m-G-D

Bring her back
from her closed islands
our strength twists
smoother to the joint

Bm-A-G-D

We've become
no further than this
our hands quite thin
our wrists imprinted

F#-A-C-A

and wading into water's
been true
our stories call to themselves

Bm-D-C-G

from the spinnings of shore

A list, a first try at compilation of musical memory thoughts

I wrote this for my Last.fm journal, but it's worth a cross post, I think.

A list for myself, I have tendencies towards forgetfullness. I imagine that if something I listens to stays around long enough, then it becomes something to me. No explanations, just notations back to the brain and heart. No order but the one I remembered in. Importants. If I had to summarize my life in music. With many memory blockages and mishaps, probably.
Over the Rhine-Drunkard's Prayer
Tori Amos-Boys for Pele
Noe Venable-The World is Bound by Secret Knots
Charlotte Martin-Veins/Stromata/On Your Shore
Terami Hirsch-A Broke Machine/To the Bone/Entropy 29
Tom McRae-Tom Mcrae
Hawksley Workman-Treeful of Starling/Last Night we Were/Between the Beautifuls/My Little Toothless Beauties
The Dresden Dolls-Dresen dolls/Yes, Virginia
Queen Adreena-Taxidermy/The Butcher and the Butterfly
David Gray-A Century Ends
Joanna Newsom-Ys/Milk-Eyed Mender
The Chameleons-Script of the Bridge/Strange Times
Jennifer Terran-Full Moon in Three/The Musician
Me'Shell NdegéOcello-Bitter
Lhasa de Sela -THe Living Road/La Llorona
Regina Spektor-Begin to Hope
PJ Harvey-White Chalk/Uh Huh Her/To Bring you my Love/Rid of Me
Sigur Rós-Takk
Veda Hille-Spine
Hem-Rabbit Songs
Beirut-Flying Club Cup
Zoë Keating-One Cello x 16: Natoma
Kate Bush-Hounds of Love
Nick Cave-The Boatman's Call
Sarah Slean-Night Bugs/Day One
Arcade Fire-FUneral/Neon Bible
Nina Simone
Bruce Springsteen-Born to Run

Hopefulness, of a slightly estranged sort

I am a little lost to the sensation of balanced ground right now. I just moved back in with my parents for a month, after house sitting, and in two days I house sit again, with a lovely garden, but many many plants to water. And a cat to be fed.

One day with my parents and I am already just barely tip toeing the sanity and healthy existence line. So much anger, so much unhappiness, so little awareness of each other’s space, of what each of us could be possibly feeling. I’m not much in the mood for being trampled upon these days, this previously quick withering spine of mine seems to be steeling itself quite brazenly. So, being within physical proximity of the people responsible for so many of my traumas, albeit of the less blustery emotional kind, and unnoticeable to those who don’t know what to look for, it’s just too much.

I’ve had two days of no writing. I’m listening to Sigur Ros to repair the damage. If I had to pick one band/musician that epitomizes damage repair, or maybe even things like the delicate repair of the spines of old books, whether with fancy tools, or a bit of a scotch tape salvage operation, it’s Sigur Ros. I’ve never been a very hopeful person, but their music is a beginning lesson in hopefulness, and it makes me kind of pukey. In a good “I don’t really understand what I’m feeling, but I’m just happy to be feeling anything at all” kind of sea sickness way.

I listen to Terami Hirsch to be comforted and less lonely, to Charlotte Martin when I need to feel sad or full of strength, to PJ Harvey when I need to be angry and righteous, to Sigur Ros when I need to learn how to be hopeful.

Is hope the opposite of fear? When I’m afraid I ‘m in a place that is distinctly grey and walled in, fear to me is the absence of future, and hope is future based. Most of my moods are sullen and shaken ones, moments before I fall asleep when I worry if this will be the last time I every get to sleep peacefully, if the world will be ruined and I will be shattered when I wake up. I fear going to sleep because I fear what will be when I wake up. I fear boredom because it means I am wasting my life. I fear speaking because I am afraid of looking silly and foolish, unintelligent and uninformed. I fear starting anything because I will never be able to finish it. I fear pain. I fear being a useless human being. I fear meaninglessness. I fear intimacy because I fear rejection. I fear making the wrong choices. I fear being alone for the rest of my life. I fear isolation. I fear war and violence and torture. I fear that I and the people I love will never be happy. I fear confrontation. I fear making eye contact with people. I fear speaking my true thoughts aloud. I fear letting myself be beautiful because if I’m beautiful, then people will no longer reject me for being ugly, and will instead reject me for who I am. I fear disappointing people. I fear being loved because I’m not sure if I know how to love in return. I fear feeling things. I fear being numb, because I have been.

My brain stem is in constant hyperdrive, and I know it’s survival mechanisms based upon a seemingly irrational fear of imminent death that drives these thoughts. I know what is chemically happening in my body to make me feel afraid, and how this muscle tension and panic causes me to form such wild and frustrating thoughts, which in turn create more bodily anxiety. I understand the science of it, even though I explain it badly. But it’s frustrating that I can’t pinpoint the exact reasons why I react so strongly in ways that other people don’t. Why fear has taken so much root, why my tree is a massive mess of twistiness and strange pain.

Even though I have not experienced what most people classify to be major traumatic events, my body and brain react to almost every experience as life-threatening and logical brain shutdown worthy. It’s not that I’m not capable of logic and reason, it’s just that when I’m expected to perform, or prove that I’m fully capable, I go into survival mode, and the entirely logical part of my brain tunes out, leaving me a babbling mess of foggy feeling attacked. Any kind of criticism, even potential, leaves me shaking, as though I’m having my ego and true self pulled apart into unrecognizable and unworthy fragments right in front of me. So, it’s easier to believe that I’m stupid than to subject myself to such intense seeming scrutiny, even if that’s not what’s actually happening.

At points in my life I’ve seriously considered that being alone in a small house in the far off woods would be the best thing possible for me, the only way for me to go on living. Sometimes I think that that’s the only way I could cope, to shut myself off from any kind of interaction other than with art or music or books. Every conversation I have with anyone is strewn with unintended verbal insults or minute physical rejections. I read body language, facial expressions, and vocal intonations too well, and I take everything as rejection or criticism. What happened to me? I know that everyone doesn’t go through life experiencing being dragged apart and bones picked clean and cracked by everyone she looks in the eye, or shares a word with. Intimacy is agony because it doesn’t exist for me. A horrible statement, I know, and one that isn’t completely true, but in my bitter and weakened places it’s where I go. I don’t trust anybody not to hurt me, and I don’t like feeling so alone and defensive. I hate that I can’t let people in, and that I keep a relatively thick piece of sheet metal between myself and even my closest of friends.

I hate that I feel as though I don’t have the right to speak. I hate being so melodramatic. I hate that other people aren’t so melodramatic, because we should all be able to let go and let it out all together, and then it wouldn’t be such a vulnerable and scary thing. I hate being vulnerable, and I hate that I work so hard not to be vulnerable, because I respect and cherish vulnerability so much. I hate being a doormat. I hate that I don’t understand myself. Sometimes I hate my parents for failing to be strong enough to accept that they had a part in how fearful and fucked up and broken I am. Sometimes I hate my friends for not wanting to listen to me scream and cry and babble and lash out at the world. Sometimes I hate myself for not speaking up when I have the chance. I hate the world for not wanting to hear those of us who are in pain, and how emotional pain is belittled and pushed aside.

I hate being broken and fragmented and poetic and so thin skinned with such a barren multi-chambered heart.

And I hate feeling guilty. For living, breathing, existing, speaking, taking up space, for feeling hateful. For being brought up to believe that I ruined my parents life, beliefs given to me underneath sweet word of affection. I wasn’t born feeling unworthy, somewhere along the way I picked it up.

Now I’m angry and vicious, with a belly full of burning loathing that I just want to forgive and forget. I just feel so guilty harboring so much anger towards my mother, when I can see how much pain she’s in. How upset I get when she talks about the cruel ways her own mother treated her that she doesn’t realize she’s actually inflicting upon her own daughter. How she can’t see her own cruelty because she sees herself as such a victim, such a wonderful, loving, kind person, when she really is constantly lashing out at everyone around her, and overwhelming me, pushing all of her ideas and fears on me.

So little of this is my own. I learned how to hate myself from keen experts who have no idea of how negatively powerful they are. Now, it’s so hard to separate these webs of harshnessess from my own strong and kind self. And I feel like a truly horrible person for even perceiving and articulating these long aching joints of cruelty passed generationally. So, how do I become myself without causing them pain?

I separate.

Morning song #3 ( the crappy and difficult one)

Today's song was a little tougher. Instead of the hour or so I gave myself for the past couple of days, it's been about a four hour song. Today was big judgment, a tough one. I have to keep telling myself that I'm not trying to write good songs, that I need to reserve judgment and taste for later, once I can record them, compile them, listen, and start picking out sections that I like, chord changes I want to play with. It's definitely work, not that I didn't think it was before, but now that I have some ability to actually sit down and focus on something for more than five seconds, I am beginning to see how it's possible to work at something.

This is the point at which I really want to give up and say that I'm a crap songwriter and never touch a piano or pen again. And maybe some people are instant perfection ( why oh why aren't I instant perfection? Why do I have to live under this burden of needing to be instantly perfect), but maybe I'm one of those people who has to write a hundred crappy songs to even get close to one half decent one.

It's so hard for me to fail, and learning to scavenge out sections of the failure that could become some sort of success or possibility is such a painful idea for me to face. I'm so used to such intense failure that I wouldn't even be able to come face to face with success and see it, or understand what was happening.

All I know, is something is cracking and snapping a bit inside, shifting. Creating is a good passtime.

Song #3

G-Bm-F#m-G

There are no marigolds
on the rooftop
I climbed out the window
to watch the sunrise
after a night full of tears

D-C-Bm-A

A cut clear through the 15th
chamber of my heart

D-G-A-Bm

Don't you pretend to know me still
I'm not some quiet girl
waiting to forget herself
in the waves I've tasted salt
become so pure

G-Bm-F#m-G

In my bed I'd forgiven sleep
she stayed up long past
when I should've been dreaming
and she twists my thoughts
so I can't understand
the layers of breathing

D-C-Bm-A

A cut clear through the 15th
chamber of my heart

D-G-A-Bm

Don't you pretend to know me still
I'm not some quiet girl
waiting to forget herself
in the waves I've tasted salt
become so pure

What words have not been before, but will be soon.

A well made house. A word. A song.At a certain point I have to step back and ask myself why I write. Because I can’t speak quick answer.it’s gets everything out of my head. I don’t feel so alone. I don’t understand the world, and it helps me simplify things so I can begin to understand them. How I experience the world is very different than how other people do, and writing it down makes it more real and less fragile.

I become real when I write. if it’s all inside, the n no one can see what it is, what I am, and even if no one else reads what I am, then at least I have a written fragment of what I am, what I want to be, what I mean to be, what I could be.

I’ve spent most of my time writing how I am, and how I have been. The avoidance of years of making myself reality has been condensed into a period of intense writing about it now. Of wondering what could I have been.

Like many artists, like many girls, like many boys, I am still trying to break my way out of the silence that I imposed out of safety. Writing is a way to break out from behind that harsh grey wall that had become all I was and all I saw. This wall is still there, and it severs my tongue so much of the time. If my tongue won’t work, then maybe my hands will.

I was having a conversation with a friend last night, and she asked me “So, what have you been writing about in your blog?” And I was shocked and stumped and kind of insulted. Not because I expect her to spend the time reading what I had to say….actually, yes, I do expect someone who calls herself a very good friend of mine to read what I have to say. It’s not asking that much. I love reading my friend’s blogs, and the little poetic love letters we leave each other on facebook. I understand and respect the fact that we can say things in writing that we aren’t easily able to express in words. Conversation doesn’t usually tend to the instantly poetic, especially mine. So, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a friend to take five minutes a day to read the words that I am currently devoting myself to.

To be asked to speak in a reductionist, condensed way about what I’ve been writing about is such a brush off. It’s a sign that the person doesn’t understand, and most likely, doesn’t seem to care why I feel the need to write, and why I choose to express myself in ways other than conversation.

I am not a storyteller. I keep and thrive on images, and memories, sounds and sensations. Having a conversation about a colour, a particular shade of blue, and how it almost has a taste is not something that comes up often. How I experience the world, the language that I’m fascinated by can easily come out of the mouths of very few extraordinary speakers, those wise few who write with their tongues instead of fingers.

I don’t know how to get what I need from conversation. I’m not interested in people’s wild and crazy stories all the time. I want to know what their hearts are saying, and how the sound of loud traffic out the living room window affects them.

Sometimes writing is as difficult as speaking ,sometimes I don’t have anything to say, in any situation. Others, I have a mouth that will not be stopped, saying everything that is fleeting through my mind, the strangenesses and quirkinesses alike.

I like people who speak oddnesses, even if it is not at the depth to which they are capable of going. My two roommates, Jo and Amanda, are oddnesses, and although we don’t sit around philosophizing, we understand each other in a strangely fundamental sort of way. Our senses of humor match.We don’t judge the things that come out of each other’s mouths, because we appreciate the individuality that each of us contains, and that we are willing to put out in the open.

Each day, as I go on, my life gets further and further from the downtown of the city. I live within the city boundaries, but my cities is becoming different than the one I have always known and disliked.I refuse to go to clubs, and I do not want to go into bars. The noise, the closeness of people, so many lonely and strange, loud loud people is something I can’t even pretend to tolerate anymore. I’m 25, and while most people are out living their crazy twenty something years in a haze of glorious sex and way too much alcohol and an assortment of other party favors, I’m sitting at home ( well someone else’s home) on a Friday night writing about how bars aren’t my scene, but writing is.

What I can’t seem to get across to some people is that my dislike for intensive socializing doesn’t make me boring and predictable, doesn’t make me a waste of this youthful life, but it’s how I choose to live. I’d be much happier on a farm somewhere, with a piano and a garden, a couple of close, good friends nearby, and I coffee shop or two in town with live music most nights of the week.

I love people, and I love being around people that I click with, people that understand where I’m coming from, and don’t spend all of our time together looking perplexed and uncomfortable. I make people uncomfortable, I bore people. I’m not witty on command, my words come out all jumbled all the time, and if someone doesn’t have the heart and time to focus the beautiful mess that I am, then I don’t want to be around them.

I’ve spent so much time feeling inferior to people, and I have a couple people in my life that I always feel inferior to, people whose very presence instigates a judgment of myself. I feel no acceptance when I’m with them, just unfulfilled expectation that I’m not even interested in pursuing. But I’m o good at saying goodbye. I’m no god at hurting other people, at hurting myself.

Then I start to fear being alone my whole life, having nothing but my own words to come home to, to comfort me. Such a fright. A quick flight, a long bus ticket to god knows where to get myself away from myself. I forget that I’ve been alone all this time, and that it’s only been in those moments when I’ve felt guilty and strange about being alone that it’s been unhappy. That only when I live under the mysterious expectation of needing a man, a husband, a wife, a woman, a lover, that I’m unhappy.

I want all of these things, but I want them as myself, as my quiet and brave, fierce and bold self, not as some vapid bar star who can’t even find her own way home in her bikini wax and too high heels. I don’t want to change myself for fake love.

When I refused to go out to a bar, for the hundredth time, my friend called me predictable, which I put into the same category as boring, no fun, loser, has no life, socially unfortunate, lifeless, pity worth. I’ve seen myself as all of these things, but I don’t need my so called friends to use my vulnerabilities against me.

I’m looking for kindness, for a space in which I can sit with myself quietly, and feel as though my life is as full as it could get, while knowing there is so much more.

Sometimes I sound like a self help book. I’m often redundant. Nobody wants to hear about our traumas in conversation. It’s not polite to talk about our huge harsh feelings. So, either I talk out loud to myself all the time, which I do, while wondering up and down my fabulous pacing hallway, or I write it out, repetitively and both wistfully and cathartically.

I love to dance, but I like to choose the music I dance too. I don’t like most techno, dance music. I have a very particular taste in hip hop that doesn’t usually get played in clubs. I like being in place where people dance for joy, not to get noticed. I love to dance with a group of friends in my living room, impromptu dance sessions, or well articulated processions of oddly choreographed movements that speak out bright.

I like other quiet people who come alive in small spaces, who haven’t found their right places yet, who struggle, and live in the struggle. Alone, in my home, with my words and songs, I am strong, I am learning to dictate myself back to myself.

I’m just not ready to be in the world at large. I’m having my cloistered moment. I walk down the street and feel strange, feel like everyone is looking at me. Judging me, finding me strange and uncomfortable, ugly and stupid. Dorky and unflattering, the kind of person that nobody wants around.

This is why I write: at the end of the day, I want myself around, and have to find a way not to lose myself in it all, in all the sinking quicksand, the drowning pools of not good enough. The hipster lives shrugging off vulnerability, the business kids out to play with numbers they don’t even like for the sake of being normal. I want to keep my strangeness, I want to define my strangeness, my hope, all the things I shut away and let die. I’ve been dying for 25 years. On the porch of death, drooping daisies held upright, nearly. Every time I was in the word was a thick stab to my gut, a twist and watch me bleed until the bruises have swollen up each broken blood vessel unable to reduce again. I’m quite bright with scars. If you know how to see them.

Little morning songs Two

Today's song ( i cheated a bit-I wrote it between 12:00 and 2:00, but took time away to write up yesterday's song on here, to make more tea, hang out with the cat. So it's still simple and quick, given to as little judgment as possible, very unedited).

I do have a very specific inspiration behind this mini project- Terami Hirsch's description of working on her latest album, " A Broke Machine"- http://www.thebreathing.com/words/abrokemachine-album.html
She uses the words "quickly and quietly", and spoke about the spectre of perfection and judgment.
Musically, a song from her previous album, "Memory Picture" inspired me when I saw the written out notes for the song, how simple, and the gorgeousness of such a simple song, which is quickly becoming one of my favorites of hers:
http://www.thebreathing.com/words/memorypicture.html

Actually, Terami Hirsch is probably my biggest musical/creative inspiration, as an independent artist making her own music her way. From her very lo-fi, home made sounding "All Girl Band" to, four album later, the still home made but intense and kind of crazy A Broke Machine", all of her work is extraordinary and well worth exploring.

http://www.terami.com/

Today's song:

(obvious waltz tempo)

C-Dm-Em-F

I turn on the stove
three quarters round the dial
fill the pot with cold cold water
and stare out the window for awhile

The cat's in the sunshine again
chewing on the leaves of her favorite plant
and I really really want a cup of coffee
but I'll settle for tea

I let my mind lean on perfection
but I'll never get there
and that leaves me near broken

G-Am
F-G-Am (C)

So I drink drink my tea
waiting for the phone to ring
alone in this house
the mail is never for m

C-Dm-Em-F

Leaves are spinning from the trees
and I don't know where the woods went
cut down a century ago
what has each trunk become

G-Am
F-G-Am (C)

A house, a table
a well worn bed
sheets unmade each morning
threadbare and slightly stained

C-Dm-Em-F

Three cups of green tea later
one cup of hot chocolate snuck in too
the cat is sitting in the closet
and Shakespeare by the door
is lifting his book to me

G-Am
F-G-Am (C)

But i don't read his words anymore
my eyes just drift from the page
prone to distraction
So I do what i do best

Drink drink my tea
waiting fo the phone to ring
alone in this house
the mail is never for me

Little morning songs

I have this tendency to set very high expectations for myself. In my behaviour, in my relationships, in my art, in my academic life. My general philosophy around creating things is that if it's not going to be the most amazing and significant piece of art ever created, then there's no point in even beginning any act of creation. Which stops me from beginning anything. Or if I begin anything at all, I tend to judge it as unworthy and toss it out as being stupid and unnecessary.

A significant part of my problem comes from the fact that I appreciate and even revere the work of extraordinary, hard working writers, musicians, and artists. For example, my favorite songwriters are Tori Amos and Hawksley Workman, who are ridiculously hard working, well trained and disciplined composers and musicians. When I sit down at the piano to just play around and write a song for fun, which I do every so often, I can't do anything at all, because if I expect the first song I've written in five or more years to be up to the intricate quality of a Tori Amos song, then I'm automatically setting myself up for failure. I'm not going to be able to write some amazingly complex song right out of the blue, but I feel that if I'm not going to be extraordinary then I shoudn't even bother doing it. And so, I'm a failure before I even begin.

So, what I've decided to do is set up alittle project for myself. It's called " Little Morning Songs".
Every morning, or afternoon, really, depending on when I have time, I'm going to sit down at the keyboard and write a song, without judging, without striving for perfection. With as little editing as possible, keeping it simple. Not tryng to write a poetic masterpiece, but just words.

Writing each song in under an hour, and not obsessing.

Yesterday's song:

Dm-Am-F-G

I lost my voice when I was
three parts into this girl
standing chest cold
against an x-ray board
uncovered to glass and light

Dark room developed bright
photographs just chambers
inside

Am-Em

Growth not right
too slow too undefined
this is not the past
she gives me now

Dm-Am-F-G

And I've been in rooms
that could never be mine
no curtains, and windows
for everyone to see
and I learned that screaming
is just another way
to get locked in

My heart became severed
murmuring word to the walls
unheard
my roots pulled up
so many knots left my hands
calloused

Am-Em

This girl
this girl
cut clean (x 3)

Am-G-F

All through the day.

Books..boring....books

I’m giving myself away. Elaborate and unfettered, but burdened nonetheless.

Cooped up and kept in, although I could go out for a walk. See the thrift shop down on Broadway, look at odd clothes, slightly ill fitting, and piles of books, dusty but wanted for the secrets of the world they may be hiding away between their covers. I like books, but sometimes I think that I like the physical reality of books more than the words and stories located and held within their pages. There is so much possibility in the idea of a book, carried in its first line or in a well written back cover description.

There is also so much disappointment in the discovery that a book is not perfect. I’m in someone else’s apartment surrounded by packed boxes, many of which are filled, I’m pretty certain, with elegantly stuffed piles of well read books. Books that look well read, but also books whose print has become faint from fingers tracing along their lines, and embedding the words in invisible ink all along each and every sight to image pathway in the brain.

I am not a good reader, I don’t remember what I read, and can’t regurgitate it. It’s a question of focus, a notion of speed and the directions my mind gets itself distracted while interpreting print. Individual words make themselves known to me, and sometimes even a complete sentence, but paragraph or page retained and transferred from hand held to eyes read to brain embedded is unlikely.

I enjoy what I read, I love language, but it tends to flow through me as the images contained within, as colours and sensations, rather than concepts and ideas. I’m not much of a concept person. This is probably why I can read books multiple times and still be surprised: I can never remember what happens within a book. The skeleton basics of a plotline, but not the intricacies or moments.

And then there’s the whole matter of what I read. I often find my brain all heavy and fogged up, and reading tends to give me more of a headache, so I often spend time listening to music instead of reading. Sometimes it’s the opposite, I get a terrible headache from almost any kind of music, and so I try to watch a quiet movie, or read a simple book. Which is why I have a significant history of reading books considered trashy or childish. Classic literature always tends to give me a headache. Although at one point I was actually pursuing an honours degree in English, the idea of having to read all of those thick, reason and intellect filled books gives me a headache. The very idea of it.

Now, short poetry I can handle. If it’s more than two pages long, I don’t even want to begin. I don’t have the patience. And I get too many headaches.