Currently Reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Penguin Classics) By James Joyce see related

Eyes Wide Shut

Free association. Sitting in the digital dark of the digital darkroom, my mind is blank and my eyes weighted heavy with the morning light, flourescent and harsh upon my retinas.

 From breaking the “normal habit” as if this feverish log of my life in prose consists of a normal activity, I’m writing one long run on (which is really reduntant) for indeed a run on is naturally long, leading us to believe it “runs on”.

As if that could be so. It is most unlikely that I would put a period, or method of pausing leading my sentence there, but easier to believe if you consider that life does not always consist of periods, but sometimes semicolons; We collect our thoughts and continue dribbling them on, like a small child drinking a milkshake, until there ’s puddles on the floor and unhappy infant with no more milkshake, left uncerimoniously in the high chair
until someone has pity and hands over some Cheerios, not the equivilant to the milkshake, but in the youngster’s hunger, doesn’t really know the difference, only knows that it seems as though it might be milkshake, and if they give it a chance it may prove to overall, be better for them : They need nourishment to grow, unceasing,
much like this stream of conciousness that finds itself soaking into my paper, like a bleeding heart into the bedroom sheets after the idea’s brutal and spastic murder.

Perhaps I’m merely wasting space, but I could continue at a later date. What are we wasting our time for here, sitting in a corner with a total unrealistic view of the world and typing, typing, typing on my blog and staring at the glowing, dying printer, disconnected from reality and hoping that the silence will be golden,
but now it has been tarnished, sallow, dim and still, melting on the fixtures and dripping on the floor. Foot steps in the glimmering puddles of wealth, leaving scraping heel marks on a Berber carpet.
And then the tick on many keys, twenty six and then some, problems arise and a finger stumbles to the colons or a number, and soon backspace is so often used that the label is oily and rubbed away to b…k…p.e…
no longer found and no longer needed, since surrender has been accepted and the white flag has been raised.
This is not so much nonsense as it is the workings of my brain when nothing else excites it, when the world is not worth my wonderings and I am tired, oh, so tired, of all the drama and the doldrums of
my school day, and then look at the clock again, again, seconds and a
minute and I’m on my way home, but what did I do today?

 I woke up and went back to sleep, eyes wide shut.

Currently Listening What Is Love For By Justin Currie see related

Jacob Have I Loved

But Esau I have hated, 'cause he didn't send me flowers. Dumb jerk.

What a pathetic, shameful excuse for a holiday.

Ok, ok... before I get a slew of hopeless romantics who wish to stone me for slaying Aphrodite and all that is sweet, heart-shaped and wrapped in plastic, but allow me to explain my negative expression.

This holiday was once a celebration of a Saint, many centuries ago.

Then, when the peasants of 270 AD got over disease, famine and LSD-laced bread, they realized that the few meager earnings they had could pay for their material expressions of love, such as "ye olde flask" and "ye olde moldey candey confectioneth". It used to be about love, even when the shillings had run dry and the disease returned to their neglected, germ-riddled hovels.

And today? Slap some cash on the counter and you've bought yourself some love.

As Francis Bacon says, "It is impossible to love and be wise."

"Love."

It doesn't exist. Sure, we can claim it's the "reason for the season" and give all our affection to the one we "love" the most. But what happens when Valentine's Day is our only excuse? The rest of the year we ignore the needs and emotions of others, but as long as we buy those carnations on Valentine's day, our lack of love the rest of the year is pardoned with a standing ovation.

Don't get me wrong, handing out flowers every day of the year won't make every day a day for valentines, but we should keep that same mindset. Why only have one day to love people?

Besides, we don't know what love means anymore. People date, throwing "love" out in the open and two weeks later break up and feel like life ain't worth living. Uttering a word will not change emotions or expressions, it only proves we are ignorant to what it truly means. "strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties" and "unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another". Love doesn't have to be a romantic, swooning overdrive of the soul. But we use it like we use any other word: without thought and without understanding. Too often we use it, thinking we know what it means and how it feels, but we are almost always wrong. Love is not an emotion: it's a state of the heart. True love, not the fluff that we lace into so many conversations, is not shallow, stingy or simplistic. Love is no where near that tingling we get in our stomachs when our adored person of choice comes down the hall. Love is the soul deep affection and compassion for others that cannot be replaced, cannot be formulated no matter how influenced your brain is by it. Love lives for others, and not itself. Love is forgiving. Love is selfless. Love has been destroyed by society today.

I guess the other problem that irks me with this cursed materialistic spend-a-thon is the fact that that's ALL  IT IS. It has become such a money waster... no one even knows the true origins of the holiday. I would know: after all, I DID look it up on americancatholic.com (LOL). We try and reduce consumption and wasting resources through idiotic environmental summits and extreme measures. Why not cut down on the four month long production of overrated, uneeded holiday garbage? What ever happened to a simple rose or a word of grace and affection? If we as humans are unsatisfied with simplistic measures, which we are, we have huge problems. As quality of living goes up, our concern for others and need to spend money grows, like an overbearing monster of such greed that consumes the soul.

Now, I switch. Call me a hypocrite, but I'm not going to shun any gifts because I feel so strongly about this. I will show that love to others that I try and display every other day of the year beyond this one. I will accept the show of affection from my friends, for it has become a nature, and many of my school friends give gifts as their expression of love. But just as Sweetest's Day has become an excuse for spending money. Do you really think Hallmark wants you to show love to others? Not really. They want you to buy, buy,buy and help them grow, grow, grow, and we fall in the pit as if we'd been standing on quicksand. Marketing experts are geniuses. Look at how they have won!

So it has been said.

Currently Listening Cicadas and Crickets see related

Cricket's Song

A lone brown cricket

Sawing out a gruff love song

Upon a rusty pair of strings

A dream without wrong

In the dark of prairie grasses

The fiddler crouched, soft stroke against him rings

A lover he seeks out

To bear his cricket affections

For so much into the song he brings

Sweet tender words

Uttered endless into ages of space

Melodic echoes of the stars he sings

Amidst the thicket

Unnoticed by the sullen moon

The shadow player strikes, worthy of kings

Such passion born

Concentration chiseled on the face

No note in vain into the darkness flings

A lone brown cricket

Faithfully enduring for so long

Folds away his fragile, tattered wings.

© Hannah Yanega 2007

Currently Listening Josh Groban By Josh Groban see related

Twas Almost One, And Sleep Evaded Her

How are we ever going to decide what we are doing with our lives?

For so long we wander the dusty paths of time, a splintering cane sprouting from one fist and a tarnished locket, flowing chain and latch in the other hand, twisted around the gnarled fingers shaped from so many nights of merely hoping, gripping to the wicker chairs and banisters of the only memories we have. Hoping that the next twist and turn in the garden we pace might lead to the sea, a fresh breeze lifting our hair and stinging our blurry eyes. For inside the locket lay understanding, and its picture was whipped away in its last viewing. Another heeled footprint and tripping over stones, the sky is darkened and we see not the storm that dost approach, but within the tempest, our very selves.

We feel the wind, and all that we know is fire and Heaven and our own two feet stumbling along the cliffs. Sometimes, we long to leap, knowing that somehow we shall fly beyond it all, knowing how to stretch the wings now blooming from our shoulders. Or sometimes, we watch the surf from high above, let the gulls serenade into submission and lay down upon the bracken and watch the soft clouds of fall shape and somberly shift as the wind changes, turning its ethereal face towards the sound of winter's voice. When winter is silent and fall is dead, we smell the lavender blooming beneath us and stand up into spring.

The midnight hours beckon with a ivory hand, whispering soft secrets in our ears, the darkest we ever will know. As moon is veiled by inkblot stars, we watch the nothingness and find in it our greatest longings, and all the answers that wracked our tormented brains until we tore out our hair in frustration. Nothing was our answer, but with that we could never be satisfied. Nothing is intagible and unfufilling, warming the soul as embracing a block of ice might do. Yet still, we cling to anything, even if it be Nothing we end up finding with the early marches of twilight feet.

For when we fall to nothing, it becomes our brother and our friend, for better to have Nothing than for Nothing to have Happened.

And in my own, these midnight hours, I let my mind out to wander, its ponderings so soporific that I can only dream of their masked truth. For what is truth but interpretation? What defines the limits of the mind at midnight?

Only time and slumber.

Currently Listening Prison Break (Original Television Soundtrack) see related

Breaking Out

They don't want you in the stupid building, but when your only aim is to leave, they won't let you go.

I had a school camera (signed out UNDER MY NAME) and tripod and was waiting for Ben to show up so I could do my photo project.

I had express permission to stay in Usher's room until Ben arrived, and even Mrs. Lokar knew this. I have needed to do this project for weeks and have, admittedly, put it off. But I had the right to be there.

Well, Ben shows up and I tell him to come to the photo room. I admit, that was stupid of me, I should have just met him outside. I just didn't know where to meet him yet.

Bum bum BAH! He gets caught. I'm fine with that. The janitor comes to unlock Usher's room, sees me there, and asks if Mr. Usher had been at school today. I tell him yes, he left a few minutes ago, and I had permission to be there and was leaving. He had to stick around, understandably, to make sure I wasn't going to do anything suspicious.

And then he spots the camera. Is that a school camera?

Why yes, I replied.

Uhhhh... I can't let you leave.

The guy was clueless and didn't care that I had checked it out, he didn't care that I had permission to have it, and he didn't care that I was willing to call Usher to confirm that this was all legal... because he didn't want the loss of school property on his hands.

LET ME CALL THE MAN!

I can't let you leave.

WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO, STAY HERE ALL NIGHT? The camera is my responsibility and I need to do this project!

I'm sorry. I can't let you leave.

This is where I would have rather stormed out than to have started crying frustrated tear, but the latter was how it happened. So of course, then we have half the janitorial department down in Photo, both of us without our freaking student id's, and the guy on the bike tells me to calm down (I wasn't  that upset) and hears my story, has common sense and says that the other guy just didn't know what to do. We left.

I don't care if it's the world we live in or just our administration trying to "keep us safe", but when I only want to get out of the building and they make me stay, I laugh in the face of hypocrisy. Not just that, but for the reasons. I have never been so furious.

Curse this school, curse the world, and curse this joiner. I'm done.

Don't try and get back in the building: You might have to sell your soul.