Joss Whedon is awesome. Buffy is awesome. 

Music is awesome. 

Joss Whedon’s Buffy musical episode is…well you know.

Hilarious. Witty. Engaging. Moving. Yes. It’s so 90’s and I don’t care. It’s great.

I grew up on this.

(Source: Spotify)

But I have things to say, and they’re important. And it matters, if only to myself. 

When it hurts to not be able to write to speak and unload your mind

get it off your shoulders, your chest, the weight which presses

against your lungs, letting you choke on your own words. choke on nothing. 

even the most minute and inconsequential things.

When you have too much to say, and too little breath to speak it

because your thoughts won’t allow it. Like chains on every fiber of your being. paralyzed.

the words won’t form on my lips 

but with letters, in scribbles and scratches, pushed on paper or on line

Because there’ll never be enough. anything.

enough people who care to listen, to read

it doesn’t matter

if we can see our own mind, physical, visual, splayed out in evidence

then we have something. we have ourselves. so we don’t get too mixed up. fucked up.

and disappear in all the confusion. in all the nothingness. in all the everything.

And then we can burn it, destroy it, or leave it behind, outside and apart from us

and be able to move on. 

Paramore- The Final Riot! Live In Chicago- Hallelujah- Track 14 (by ParamoreOnly)

The intro is awesome. I wish I could hear the rest of it. Not that I don’t like the rest of her song, but the beginning leaves me wanting for the rest of that song..

I wish I went to this. I wish I went to concerts…

“…well it goes like this, the fourth the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift…”

It’s been sitting there for years, untouched, unopened, unread. A film of dust encases it. But there is a ripped post-it paper stuck in it, presumably a notable page or a place last left off. A bookmark never returned to, marking a different me.

I’ve never been overly religious, because I’ve made up my own mind about religion. But there was a time before that. In my youth I went to CCD like most of the young Catholics in my neighborhood up until I was Confirmed and didn’t have to go anymore. I never cared much about what we did at CCD. It was a bore. I don’t remember really learning anything except enough to pass whatever tests we might be taking. But honestly, the tests had nonsense easy questions that you could answer if you were even just remotely awake in class, ever. 

We’d sit and read passages from our text-books which were shoddy and didn’t even really look like serious texts. They were more like thick magazine coloring books with their soft flimsy covers and colorful pages. 

I spent most of my serious religious thoughts outside of CCD. I ruminated on what it all meant when I was alone. Or at church, because my parents made me go every Sunday and still do… much to my dismay. And I’d sit or stand there, and listen to the same homilies, the same lessons, parables, etc. every year. It was all very redundant and predictable, and I soon wrote the church off as something nonessential. It was for other people who needed an allotted time to think and reflect on religion, who needed prompting, and lecturing.

I used to pray every night. I used to say little prayers throughout the day for everything I worried about or was afraid about. I went through a period of reading the Bible at one point…probably the last time I touched that post-it. Back when I used to go to CCD, I used to take Confession seriously. I would get all worked up about it, and felt guilty for things I wasn’t even sure I should feel guilty about. I’m not like this anymore.

Back then, every so often we had confession. All the CCD classes would line up and pile into the church filling it pew by pew in classes. I could see no one really took it seriously. We fooled around making furtive eye contact and whispered to each other, because these were the rare times all the classes saw each other. 

It was supposed to be serious. We couldn’t even sit right next to each other in the pews so we would be less tempted to talk with each other. So there’d be a student and then a gap and then another student and so on in every pew. We were to be silent as we thought about our sins and what we were going to confess. We were to be silent and respectful in God’s house. Of course most of us still found ways to talk or gesture to each other as we one by one got sent back to the confession boxes…booths? 

I’d talk and gesture and fool around with the rest of them…all the while still seriously thinking “What am I going to say when I get back there? What are my sins? I can’t say nothing…I need something to say…What makes the list as a sin?…” etc. etc. And I’d finally get into the booth, and I’d choke up. Embarrassed. Even though from the sound of their voices…most of the priests didn’t seem to really care about what we were saying anyway. They sounded tired and like they’d listened through too many mindless children in too quick succession who didn’t care either. And yet. I would wrack my brain for something to say. And in my head I’d go through all the things I’d done, weighing it to see if it was worth a sin, if it was something I should say or could say. 

And I’d end up feeling terrible. They’d tell me what prayers I should say for my sins to be forgiven. But I already made myself feel terrible about it and it’d stick with me. I don’t know why I took things so seriously. Most of the other kids would say they said the first silly stupid things that came to mind so they could be done with it and get back out to talking with their friends.

Today, it would go differently. I wouldn’t stress so much. Not that I ever go to Confession anymore anyway. But, my “sins” are mine. They aren’t for any other human being to forgive or absolve.The things I do and the decisions I make in life are also mine to judge whether it was right for me or not. We…or most of us…have the ability to judge right from wrong, good from bad, and that should guide us -not whether or not the bible or the church says it’s a sin or not.

I’ve seen fanatics, and people that stand on corners, on sidewalks, condemning the rest of us for our sins. They stand for hours preaching and yelling and telling “the word of God,” and it leaves me puzzled. That here, right in front of me, were such fanatics. Wars are fought over religion. I know. But still, I find it so hard to believe that these people could really think this way, and behave in such a way that that was their whole life. Preaching and condemning. It makes me sad. Certainly this can’t be what they were meant to do? It just didn’t feel right, and it was weird that they couldn’t see how wrong it all felt. But I guess they would feel the same about me and the way I live my own life…It’s all very puzzling. But I won’t take a megaphone and go yell at them for it…

I admit, I wasn’t a good student at CCD. I don’t even remember what CCD stands for. I never read the Bible too thoroughly or in depth. I don’t know much about the history of the church, or my religion as a Catholic. But I’d decided I’d think my own things of religion anyway. And I’d come to the conclusion that it’s all too much and too confusing to ever really figure out. And if God as an idea, or a presence, or a being existed and he’s as grand and great as we all make him to be, then God is too much to ever be truly understood. Too much for any one person to really wrap his mind around or to decide anything too concretely about. And we should stop trying to. 

Members of the church, the pope, priests, apostles, the people who wrote the bible, etc, are all human beings. And we are fallible. And unreliable. And who’s to say any of us has got it right. So we should stop trying to say we really know anything about religion. And we should think about it for each our own selves.

I believe in good. And maybe God is good or good is God. But if we all just try to be decent people, and decent to each other than I feel like that should be enough. (Even though as I’ve heard at church before… it is not.) Well oh well then. Maybe I’m wrong. But maybe we all are.

I like this. No. I love this.

And I love the movie this played in, Midnight in Paris.

I went into it not knowing really anything about it, and I got absorbed into the story, the feel, the characters.

It deals with feelings of nostalgia and a wanting for another time and era. But we find that we can’t keep chasing after something so impossible. We might think that another time is greater than our own. We might want to live in a time of the people we admire. But if we stop looking back and out of our own selves and time, we might find that the best time is now…that we can be the people others look up to in a later time. 

We’re too involved in it now to know what our time is. Our time can only be defined once it’s done and passed, but it is our responsibility as inhabitants of it to do and create in worth while ways that’ll define it. To create our own unique and memorable zeitgeist.

Midnight in Paris - Directed and Written by Woody Allen

Gertrude Stein: The artist’s job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.

Zelda Fitzgerald: Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.

(Source: Spotify)

So I’ve recently started using my old typewriter again. An old beige Royal. It’s been a few years since I last used it often. My ribbon is slowly being used up, and the type fades with every letter. I need to get a new ribbon.

There’s really no practical use of it, but I still like it.

If I really want to do anything with what I write, I’d probably have to retype it again on my laptop. 

But it feels nice, to literally pound out words and thoughts. Very concrete. I can’t so easily backspace and get rid of the things I’ve already typed out. It sort of forces you to be more committed to what you write. Sure you can go back over it with white ink. Or cross it out later. Or start over. But it gives you more time to really look at what you’ve written once you’re done. And you can see the changes you’ve made, literally. Because a white ink ribbon isn’t really a great backspace. And if you start over, you have physical proof of what was the original.

I’m also convinced that a lot of the quirky or unique ways old poems look in format, punctuation, and sometimes word spelling, are because of typewriters and how manual they are. And how difficult it is to go back and fix mistakes or typos. And it’s fun to control each line, pushing it to where ever whim takes you.

Ok. Maybe that’s not really why certain poems look the way they do and these are just my feelings on typewriters. But maybe? Haha

ahahahahah

(Source: drake-ramoray)

thesharkinthespongeee:

Saddest Calvin and Hobbes strip ever.

Breaks my heart. 

amandaonwriting:

On life’s constant little limitations

Calvin: You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don’t help.

On expectations

Calvin: Everybody seeks happiness! Not me, though! That’s the difference between me and the rest of the world. Happiness isn’t good enough for me! I demand euphoria!

On why we are scared of the dark

Calvin: I think night time is dark so you can imagine your fears with less distraction.

On the unspoken truth behind the education system

Calvin: As you can see, I have memorized this utterly useless piece of information long enough to pass a test question. I now intend to forget it forever. You’ve taught me nothing except how to cynically manipulate the system. Congratulations.

On the cruel reality of commercial art

Hobbes: Van Gogh would’ve sold more than one painting if he’d put tigers in them.

On the tragedy of hipsters

Calvin: The world bores you when you’re cool.

On the tears of a clown

Calvin: Isn’t it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humour? When you think about it, it’s weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it’s funny. Don’t you think it’s odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us?

Hobbes: I suppose if we couldn’t laugh at things that don’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of life.

Calvin: (after a long pause) I can’t tell if that’s funny or really scary.

On the falling of sparrows (or providence’s lack of a timetable)

Calvin: Life is full of surprises, but never when you need one.

On why winter is the cruellest of seasons

Calvin: Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottery.

On the gaping hole in contemporary art’s soul

Calvin: People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world. As my artist’s statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and is therefore full of deep significance.

On playing Frankenstein with words

Calvin: Verbing weirds language.

On realising God is more Woody Allen than Michael Bay

Calvin: They say the world is a stage. But obviously the play is unrehearsed and everybody is ad-libbing his lines.

Hobbes: Maybe that’s why it’s hard to tell if we’re living in a tragedy or a farce.

Calvin: We need more special effects and dance numbers.

On why ET is real

Calvin: Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.

On looking yourself in the mirror

Hobbes: So the secret to good self-esteem is to lower your expectations to the point where they’re already met?

On the future

Calvin: Trick or treat!

Adult: Where’s your costume? What are you supposed to be?

Calvin: I’m yet another resource-consuming kid in an overpopulated planet, raised to an alarming extent by Madison Avenue and Hollywood, poised with my cynical and alienated peers to take over the world when you’re old and weak. Am I scary, or what?

On the truth

Calvin: It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy…Let’s go exploring!

I forever love and have loved the Calvin and Hobbes comics. Glad to have grown up with them.

It’s 5am. It’s always in these hours, the is-it-really-late-or-really-early hours that I feel invinsible, that I feel clear.

Like I know, and have figured something out. 2am, 3am, 4am…

And I think I’ve finally got it.

That I’ve taken a breath, and it’s actually filled my lungs. Fueling me with real air, real life, real conviction. Instead of the shallow empty breaths I usually take.

The breaths that leave me gasping inside for more. That leave me feeling like I’m slowly suffocating and there’s never enough.

In this time, I am daring, and wanting, and driven, and decided. I am nearly fearless. Which says a lot considering…

And not in the way I pretend to be. Not in the scared wreckless way my fears drive me to face it in the day.

These are the hours I find myself wandering, searching through the night. 

Find myself on rooftops, parking lots, sidewalks and streets devoid of the usual bustle. It’s eerie, and different and I like it. For its change. Refreshing.

I know that’s not how it really is. Because by later morning. By the time I can define the time. I start to get weary, and sleepy, and weak as the sun rises. And the world wakes up.

The life drains from me, and I drift to sleep. And forget what I found.

Forget what I knew. Forget what I decided.

Or remain awake. In a dream-like stupor, distracted and distant. Trying to remember something I’d lost.

I’ll find it someday, and remember it the next.