"Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share."

--Mark Z. Danielewski (House of Leaves)

nothing else fills

"nobody dies a virgin; life fucks us all."

--kurt cobain

“I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.”   

--Neil Gaiman

“To live alone is the fate of all great souls.”

- Arthur Schopenhauer

hips and breasts and lips and heat and sweat and fat and greed

flesh is heretic.
my body is a witch.

i am burning it.

yes i am torching
her curves and paps and wiles.
they scorch in my self denials.

how she meshed my head
in the half-truths
of her fevers

till i renounced
milk and honey
and the taste of lunch.
 

i vomited
her hungers.
now the bitch is burning.

i am starved and curveless.
i am skin and bone.
she has learned her lesson.
 

thin as a rib
i turn in sleep.
my dreams probe

a claustrophobia
a sensuous enclosure.

how warm it was and wide

once by a warm drum,
once by the song of his breath
and in his sleeping side.

only a little more,
only a few more days
sinless, foodless,
 

i will slip
back into him again
as if i had never been away.

caged so
i will grow
angular and holy

past pain,
keeping his heart
such company

as will make me forget
in a small space
the fall

into forked dark,
into python needs
heaving to hips and breasts
and lips and heat
and sweat and fat and greed. 

- eavan boland

Demian

Reading Hermann Hesse is like having a religious experience. Hesse is as close to an incarnation of god and enlightenment as anything on this earth has ever been, I think. Sorry, Jesus/Mohammad/Dalai Lama/Buddha/whoever else there is that would be offended by such a statement (I doubt Buddha would be all that offended, though, that's why I like him). I don't mean to blaspheme, but Hermann Hesse is it.  I am more spiritually moved and inspired by his words than I have ever found myself by any religious text or sermon.

"I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself."

terrible horrible no good very bad day

I need to learn to meditate. Seriously. I'm in an absolute, frenzied panic right now, and my mind is moving about a million miles a minute, but the rest of me is at a standstill, in figurative quicksand, completely confused as to what the hell I'm supposed to do. My first stupid post is feeling incredibly relevant right now. I want a do-over. omfg I need to learn to sit with all the anxiety and the energy and then let it go. An impossible task. Woe is me.

Usually my anxiety comes from overly internalized issues. I inadvertently bring it upon myself. I know this, and that's why the never-ending battle is so incredibly frustrating. Today, though, I feel like I'm being railroaded by a shit-ton of external crap. I can't decide which kind of anxiety is worse: the obsessive-compulsive meaningless anxiety that gives a semblance of structure to an otherwise shapeless life, or other people's bullshit. The essence of my issues revolve around a desperation for control and shape and meaning; I have absolutely NO control over other people's goddamn bullshit. And I have absolutely no tolerance for it, or for them. I guess that's why I find myself perpetually alone.

i'm done for the day now. seriously.

bitte ein kuss

nonsense, just plain nonsense

i think i could have loved you once

i really don’t know why

you could never want me back

(… that thought still makes me want to cry)

youre so vivid and so vibrant

so daring and so real

beautiful bad and brilliant

with an awesome senseless zeal

im just a pale pretender

young (and old) and so unsure

marred by self-inflicted wounded-ness

for which theres not a cure

in addition, im emotional

and arguably mad

(in the head, at the world,  

t’wards all things secret soft and sad)

you are radiantly sinful

reckless, bold, and slightly wild

i am worldly-ish in some ways

but, in essence, still a child

we’re divided by stark contrasts

far too frightful to ignore

yet your presence never fails to sway

my heavy heart to soar

we’re paradoxically perfect –

woefully wrong and wonderfully weird –

struck by shards of sideways glances,

unsaid words and long-lost chances

(forgone because im filled with furtive fear)

but if i was so foolish as to honestly confess

(in my delusion) all would change

into a blissful mess

and in that mess we would be quite contented just to lie

bright ephemeral stars against a dark and spiteful sky

inspired by the meteoric wonders passing through

we could be such a wonder, lonely me and lovely you

       (you believe in nothing

           and i believe in you

 isnt that all we really need?

            something simple pure and true ?)

Missed Connection

Okay, day one of this whole blog-thing and I just keep coming back; I'm destined to be an obsessive, annoying blog fanatic, I can feel it. But this time I actually have something worth saying!

So, I tend to ricochet back and forth between the realistic and romantical. Despite my cynicism, part of me is an incurably romantic dork. And, as such, I read missed connections on craigslist. Fairly faithfully. Wow, that's painful to admit. Most of the time they're utterly stupid, it's true... but they're fun.

And GUESS WHAT?

I got one today! This guy who checked me out at Whole Foods posted one for me. I thought he was so adorable and I loved his glasses and we flirted very coyly and then I left and was all sad because I didn't even know his name and would never see him and all his cuteness again. But now we have reconnected... via missed connections... which is horrifically lame and yet maybe kind of cute, especially if we hit it off... I love funny little things like this.

story of my life (in a teeny-tiny nutshell with a bunch of holes created by invisible, gnawing demon-bug-things)

i like:

sylvia plath (for whom my blog is named);

dr. house (i only seem to fall for jerks; house would be the love of my life);

books and libraries (museums are cool, too);

psychology (i'm cray-cray... really, though);

holistic nutrition (mind-spirit-body connection is fo' reals, yo);

school (college is the shit);

my german professor (silver fox) and his precious t.a.;

thats pretty much all.

i don't like:

cilantro (it can ruin anything);

big crowds (because i don't like people. too many at once is excruciating);

fighting (i'm a good arguer, though);

anything mathematical (numbers are the devil's alphabet);

scientific nonsense (it's usually just extemporaneous information);

being bad at yoga (i'm bad at anything that requires balance);

the fact that i cannot play guitar (i have no patience);

the fact that i have used personal pronouns 13 times so far in this post;

and a lot of other things.

"i'm a realist

i'm a romantic

i'm an indecisive piece of shit

and that's about it."

- the cribs

it fucking sucks

when you realize

that you screwed up

and you can't fix

that which you so carelessly

broke

when i was little,

whenever i erred,

i'd have anxiey attacks;

i would beg,

please, god,

give me a "do-over"

i'm older now;

i'm still erring;

i still have the anxiety attacks 

(only worse now);

and i'm still desperate for do-overs,

even though i know there's no such thing