i've travelled far to get here. a long, winding path to get to the point i'm at currently. but i know i have a long way to go to be where i want to be.
home is where the heart is. should i set up my tent in my ribcage? or focus on the blood pumping in my wrists and neck... and what if i left my heart in san francisco? and what of when my heart skips a beat? or when the heart is indecisive and jumps around from person to person. am i nomadic?
i can't think straight when i can't sleep, and it's hard to sleep without you here.
there is no rule book for how to survive. there are no guidelines, no road map for what the next step is. i make lists. compulsively, i list out "things i need to do" "people i need to re-connect with" "pairs of socks by colour" "places i can go to in a snow emergency". stupid lists, but i need order, i crave a clearly defined set of rules, guidelines, whatever to be able to better comprehend things. the hardest part for me, bar none, has been what happens next. because i can't list it out, i can't map out where i will be in a year, in a month, in a day, in an hour. i just have to hold on and struggle, strive to be where i WANT to be, who i WANT to be in that time. the hardest thing is accepting that i have to make the choices. and sometimes, that means asking for help; sometimes that means taking four steps back to take one on the right path. sometimes it means completely turning around to find out i was where i wanted to be fifteen steps back, and how do i get there again? sometimes it means saying "i'm over it". sometimes it means striving to mean it.
i just wonder why. that's the root of humanity's problem right there. we question. everything. nothing can be taken at face value, we never accept the extraordinary, we run and fight and argue until the extraordinary is plain and simply defined.
i wish i was different. more flexible and accepting of the faults in myself and others. more understanding of the world as a whole. more easy-going and laid back. i wish i could be less strict and ordered. i wish i could survive without definition. but i can't. and while a part of me resents my need for order, a part of me loves it. that part of me that hopes to be the person you see in me. the person you love. the person you want around. i know i can be better, but there's a part of me that is happy right where i am, if the person you see now is a person you want to be around.
we all fight our own expectations of things. the world, people, ourselves. it's human nature i think to rebel against our limits, to push until we break through our barriers and come out the other side, past what we thought was the possible. some people are content to sit at the line of their abilities, to accept the status quo and love their own personal limit. some people are happy to push and set the bar higher and higher than they know they are capable of reaching. some people set no bar.
i want to be that person who stops expecting things to turn out a specific way. i crave chaos and spontaneity and disorder. and when met with it, i am terrified and demand structure. you see a side of me and make me meet the things i'm scared of. you hold my hand through the dark and the parts i hate about myself and force me to deal with it another way. i miss you being there to constantly ruin my schedule and order, to force me to be more easy-going. part of what i love about you is your ability to bring out a better me. how selfish does that sound...and yet it's true. you're very nature, everything about you is undefinable. and i love it. i can't understand how or why, i just know it.
maybe thats the very idea of love though. maybe we are supposed to find the person we can't understand because it make it that much more magical and confusing and horrible and wonderful all at the same time when we need to adapt our very definitions to try to understand another. maybe the people we're going to be happiest with are the people who inspire us to stop setting expectations for others and start loving the confusion.
and i may not understand. i may never understand. i just know, if home is really where the heart is, i want to be home with you.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
regarding sailing
people can help you.
doctors, surgeons, lawyers; these people can save your life, your very existence. and they have studied, and worked, and tried so hard to get to a point that they can spend the rest of their lives helping others. they have spent countless hours laying awake at night working, worrying, struggling to reach the point they are at now. it takes a special kind of person to do something so time consuming and stressful on a day to day basis. waking up and being responsible for someone's life, that takes effort.
but what about the rest of us? it dawned on me today how much we as humans rely on interaction. maybe there's only one person, maybe there is a network, but we throw our selves on the mercy of other people. instead of thinking we can love ourselves, we search for someone to loves us and to love in return. instead of smiling, laughing, we seek ways to entertain ourselves, we hunt for something to cause joy.
and some people, we rely on to save us. we hold at them, clutch them, climb and fight to stay near them in times of need. some people we run to crying, we yell at, in an attempt to save ourselves from pain, from heartache, from reality.
and it must be stressful. it must be hard to wake up and know that someone loves you, wants you, needs you. it must be trying to be someone's entire support system.
i try hard not to sink. i buy water-wings, and take lessons in an attempt to keep myself afloat. sometimes, i get hit by a tide that knocks me under. and when i do, i hate accepting a life raft. i struggle and kick against the current on my own, even when i get sucked deeper.
i spent years and years getting pulled to the very bottom of the sea, refusing the hands that were offered until i eventually got so deep i couldn't see them. i became a creature of the dark, yet fooled everyone who saw me into thinking i was swimming fine.
i have learned. i know that no one can stay afloat forever. i know, deep down, that at times the current will sweep you away if you don't have an anchor. and sometimes, it's good to have a million anchors keeping you solid in a storm. i know that the waves will get so rocky you need to hold on to a boat, any boat, just long enough to see yourself through the storm.
i heard somewhere once that no one should ever be ashamed to cry; from the very beginning it has been a sign that you are alive. and yet i still turn away, i still scrape furiously at the emotion which can come from me. i still refuse to let people see me down.
and i am trying. i am forcing myself to hold onto you through this, though i know it is unfair to you. i am forcing myself to be open and let it out, though i know deep down that is probably not what you want.
people need to be human. and i am trying to be better at it.
doctors, surgeons, lawyers; these people can save your life, your very existence. and they have studied, and worked, and tried so hard to get to a point that they can spend the rest of their lives helping others. they have spent countless hours laying awake at night working, worrying, struggling to reach the point they are at now. it takes a special kind of person to do something so time consuming and stressful on a day to day basis. waking up and being responsible for someone's life, that takes effort.
but what about the rest of us? it dawned on me today how much we as humans rely on interaction. maybe there's only one person, maybe there is a network, but we throw our selves on the mercy of other people. instead of thinking we can love ourselves, we search for someone to loves us and to love in return. instead of smiling, laughing, we seek ways to entertain ourselves, we hunt for something to cause joy.
and some people, we rely on to save us. we hold at them, clutch them, climb and fight to stay near them in times of need. some people we run to crying, we yell at, in an attempt to save ourselves from pain, from heartache, from reality.
and it must be stressful. it must be hard to wake up and know that someone loves you, wants you, needs you. it must be trying to be someone's entire support system.
i try hard not to sink. i buy water-wings, and take lessons in an attempt to keep myself afloat. sometimes, i get hit by a tide that knocks me under. and when i do, i hate accepting a life raft. i struggle and kick against the current on my own, even when i get sucked deeper.
i spent years and years getting pulled to the very bottom of the sea, refusing the hands that were offered until i eventually got so deep i couldn't see them. i became a creature of the dark, yet fooled everyone who saw me into thinking i was swimming fine.
i have learned. i know that no one can stay afloat forever. i know, deep down, that at times the current will sweep you away if you don't have an anchor. and sometimes, it's good to have a million anchors keeping you solid in a storm. i know that the waves will get so rocky you need to hold on to a boat, any boat, just long enough to see yourself through the storm.
i heard somewhere once that no one should ever be ashamed to cry; from the very beginning it has been a sign that you are alive. and yet i still turn away, i still scrape furiously at the emotion which can come from me. i still refuse to let people see me down.
and i am trying. i am forcing myself to hold onto you through this, though i know it is unfair to you. i am forcing myself to be open and let it out, though i know deep down that is probably not what you want.
people need to be human. and i am trying to be better at it.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
regarding giraffes
sometimes i feel like an exception.
not exceptional, but an exception. the rules do not define me, i am not an easy read, this is not like riding a bicycle. most people get tired of it quickly.
i often wonder why. people are not simple. humanity as a whole is a vast and confusing group. we love, yet fight. we preach, yet judge. our values are an ever changing, constantly circumstantial set of morals. someone once told me humanity is the exception to every animal law. does that make me less human?
people can surprise you. a man you have known your entire life can turn into someone unrecognizable through their actions. a woman, a mother can turn her back on her own child. an infant can learn to read.
and sometimes, people can follow a pattern. people can become predictable. the man you love can continue to be the same person you fell in love with. the woman you live next door to can continue to live next door to you as she always has. and that predictability can be safe.
"i love you" he says. "you're most beautiful when you smile, but you're beautiful when you worry, or when you're sad"
emotions will happen. it's a guarantee that something in life will be un-planned. chaos theory dictates it. murphys law, everything dedicated to the study of predictability says "guess what? we know jack-shit".
but i think that's the trick. the only thing predictable is un-predictability.
we as a species rock. we are capable of intense emotions, empathy, love, malice, pride. our bodies are built with such finesse, such incomprehensible structure. and yet we still fail. a lot. in fact, there is yet to be a human on the planet you doesn't succumb to their body's weaknesses at some point. such strength and perfection contained in something so weak and perfect.
i have an appreciation for bones. any kind of bone, but human bones in particular. rib cages specifically, and the vertebrae of the backbone. there is nothing like us on the planet. and yet everything like us on the planet. humans are so unique, yet so so common. our structures are the most confusingly beautiful example of how not to operate, and yet we share dna as everything else on the planet.
there is no perfect line in nature. no straight point, no perfect curve, no smooth, unbroken, 90 degree angles. yet everything follows a golden ratio and can be compared to everything else.
and even that perfection is unpredictable.
i guess what i'm trying to understand is the massive contradiction of humanity and the world in general. no, understand is the wrong word.
love.
not exceptional, but an exception. the rules do not define me, i am not an easy read, this is not like riding a bicycle. most people get tired of it quickly.
i often wonder why. people are not simple. humanity as a whole is a vast and confusing group. we love, yet fight. we preach, yet judge. our values are an ever changing, constantly circumstantial set of morals. someone once told me humanity is the exception to every animal law. does that make me less human?
people can surprise you. a man you have known your entire life can turn into someone unrecognizable through their actions. a woman, a mother can turn her back on her own child. an infant can learn to read.
and sometimes, people can follow a pattern. people can become predictable. the man you love can continue to be the same person you fell in love with. the woman you live next door to can continue to live next door to you as she always has. and that predictability can be safe.
"i love you" he says. "you're most beautiful when you smile, but you're beautiful when you worry, or when you're sad"
emotions will happen. it's a guarantee that something in life will be un-planned. chaos theory dictates it. murphys law, everything dedicated to the study of predictability says "guess what? we know jack-shit".
but i think that's the trick. the only thing predictable is un-predictability.
we as a species rock. we are capable of intense emotions, empathy, love, malice, pride. our bodies are built with such finesse, such incomprehensible structure. and yet we still fail. a lot. in fact, there is yet to be a human on the planet you doesn't succumb to their body's weaknesses at some point. such strength and perfection contained in something so weak and perfect.
i have an appreciation for bones. any kind of bone, but human bones in particular. rib cages specifically, and the vertebrae of the backbone. there is nothing like us on the planet. and yet everything like us on the planet. humans are so unique, yet so so common. our structures are the most confusingly beautiful example of how not to operate, and yet we share dna as everything else on the planet.
there is no perfect line in nature. no straight point, no perfect curve, no smooth, unbroken, 90 degree angles. yet everything follows a golden ratio and can be compared to everything else.
and even that perfection is unpredictable.
i guess what i'm trying to understand is the massive contradiction of humanity and the world in general. no, understand is the wrong word.
love.
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