27 Sep 2009

what i remember:

18 cupcakes (18)

balloons of kings cigs (23)

wuthering heights (25)

macdougal's alehouse (30)

and today alone.

always remember what died 

each time

you hoped.

always remember what happened

when you thought

the water was yours.

always remember 

your thirst

made others salt.

Shades of Memory - 1

sipping vodka and remembering

the chocolate milkshake 

that magically turned fresh bruises

back to mocha.

no more bruises

my blood is now watered.

Loneliness

Walking down a street that you've walked for the zillionth time, not taking it in, looking at everything but seeing nothing, hearing people talk and laugh but listening to silence, sitting alone at a bench in the middle of the divider, watching sparrows and squirrels, not thinking, thinking...

Listening to the same playlist on the iPod, trying to drown thoughts, but the same song keeps playing over and over again, and the same thoughts rise and fall with the music.

Looking at the phone time and again, trying to remember what the ringtone sounds like, wondering if it does ring,  what would your own voice sound like when you say hello? 

Buying things you don't need just so that the person on the other side says, 'cash back?' and you can get to hear yourself say 'no'.

Playing the guitar till your fingers bleed, or till you get sick of your incompetence, whichever happens first.

The lamest thing is to drop hints to someone you hope will understand, and then realize what a mistake that is... that you really don't have someone.

2AM

...and I'm still awake writing this song if i get it all down on paper its no longer inside of me threatening the life it belongs to

and i feel like im naked in front of the crowd cuz these words are my diary screamin out loud and i know that you'll use them however you want to

- Breathe, Anna Nallick

On (Not) Writing

1. Why can't I write?

Nothing can be said about what goes on in my head when I write... when I used to write... It is a kind of madness that breaks out without warning and possesses you and drains you of life word by word, and sometimes leaves you stranded mid-sentence, word, or comma,... what torture.

Writing takes a lot of nerve, to think that you have something worthwhile to say. To hope that you may be healed if only you use the right words. Write and be whole, write and be damned forever. For once written, you don't exist, only words do... at least the one sentence you have saved to be the noose around your neck... or fingers.

Why should I write? Because I must.

2. But why can't I write?

Stuck. It is some form of fear that eats from inside out. The disease starts in a brain clogged with duties  unfulfilled, that loan you'd have to pay in 7 years but have no idea how,  the assignment you don't see the point of doing anymore, the people you don't want to talk to but have to. You  don't  attend parties bcuz your dejection may seep through all the alcohol and substances you imbibe and people may notice, you attend parties bcuz people may also notice your withdrawal, so you restrict your public consumption to 3 drinks, and return to the stash in your apartment... 

Stuck. And yet the diseased brain recognizes the blank page, that thing which obsesses  you to fill it with words - only now, you are afflicted, you obsess that it will remain blank. 

3. Why can't I write?

To write well about something, you need to believe in it. Belief. And hope. In words. For the unbelievers and the hopeless. Words are for all those in need of it, to soothe, to scar, to burn, to love...So why is it that when you are in the depths of despair, you sit silent, so wordless in a corner? Is it cuz when dejection first started creeping in, you  hurt someone with words when all you were asking without asking was their help to survive before the darkness hit?

If there is nothing to believe in, if I believe in nothing, how can I write? How can you write about your dreams if you don't dream? And if all you have are your nightmares, should you write about it? For to write about your nightmares, your fears, is to bring them to life. 

And so the world was made from nothing - with a few well-said words.  

4. Why can't I write?

I don't have anything to say. But then one late night the radio plays U2, Bono belting out 'with or without you'...'and you give yourself away.....' and it all comes back to you in a flash - the nights you locked yourself in a small room with  only bottles of the cheapest vodka and cigarettes for company... writing. Writing because you couldn't sleep until the words were torn out of your daytime silences, writing bcuz it was a madness you used against the other madness that was always so close. 

You hear a song and like a recovered addict crave for the words...except now you have to try harder, longer and require more for the same high. You can't write because of the pain of self-induced silence, and the doubt that the other darkness may have swallowed your words forever.

5. Why can't I write?

Maybe I should. Write that is. Just the same stories that have all been told before. Maybe in the re-telling there may arise something new.

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

Song of Myself - Walt Whitman