i had an amazing week. robin's family was incredibly good to me. still, i missed my family like a crazy person (imagine that). i'm not even sure what to say about the trip - there is so much.

marriage is a scary idea. (i'm not sure why i made that a new paragraph. i guess i want to pretend like those ideas are unrelated. i'll leave it like that.)

lately i've been thinking.
if i buy a house, i'll only be a homeowner.
if i have a child, i'll only be a parent.
if i get married, i'll only be a wife.
if i become patriotic, i'll only be an american.
if i go to school, i'll only be a student.
if i get a degree, i'll only be a graduate.
if i get a job, i'll only be an employee.
if i give my life to God, i'll only be a christian.

decisions feel impossible. when you make a decision, you're resigning yourself both to experience something and to not experience something. and it's funny how it makes no difference that i'm aware that this is the worst way to look at life. it's normal to not want to miss anything. it's abnormal to carry that so far that you miss all of life.

a flawed brain creates flawed thoughts.
i hate the way the roads fork.
it hurts to grow up.

if i write, perhaps i will fail. and i'm growing more and more comfortable with that type of failure.

today i appreciated things about god that i had never before appreciated.

jesus had no beginning. he always was, and he left god to come save us. and you know what? i felt the holy spirit. i felt it inside my lungs like something more than oxygen.

and i thought, this is it.

today is the day i get my faith back, and i'm strong enough (weak enough?) to admit that everything i do is selfish and everything i say is wrong. today i get to feel god again.

funny things happen when the sun sets. there are things in my brain that nobody can see.

and she never got better
and nobody knew

is not how i want to end every poem, but when i scribble things, that's how it's been going.

all of this time i've been wanting to die, and i should be dying to myself.

i love god again, everybody, if i ever stopped. and i accept that he loves me.

if jesus christ is truth, then i am mostly lies.

if jesus christ is love, then i have failed to try.

if jesus christ is life, then please just let me die.

i was just thinking today
about how i have been
quite literally flushing
perfectly good opportunities for a baby
every single month since i was eleven.
[how's that for grotesque forthrightness.]

well, that's pretty much it.
i guess other things happened as well.
i've been in intense thought since i
woke up, and now that i'm looking
back on my day in preparation for
bed, i'm realizing that i didn't
actually do anything.
should
thinking replace
doing?

who knows.
i guess i'll think about
it. there's really nothing i can do.

contrived contrived

i can't write much, so here's so
mething that i have consist
ently found to be beau
tiful.

i shared my thoughts
with those less fortunate
in exchange for information
on my whereabouts
they pointed me
in three directions
i stood still
and still
i stand
[saul williams]

happy birthday, kurt vonnegut.

“I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one and another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ day is not.

So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.

What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

And all music is.”

(from Breakfast of Champions)

is veterans' day sacred? my father is in the navy. everybody knows that (except mick wright, who in fact knows nothing about me). i'm proud that he is a military doctor - not because of any prestige associated with serving in the military or being a doctor, but because it is what he loves to do and he does it well. i worried for a long time about whether my father was part of The War Machine. i have decided (because it is the truth) that he is not.

however, in this minute i am thinking of honor, courage, commitment, and peace.

where is your brain, idealistic girl?
have you flattened like a box
to align with a narrow planet?
don't deny the smears
on the folds of your mind.
bury your yes light
in a perhaps capsule, idealistic child--
return when your dish is empty pink.

what color still is color?
i mind you have no sea to see.

the death toll in pakistan hit 73,000 on wednesday.

why isn't anybody talking about this?