Dear Journal

I have my days of worshipped dreams; wishing, living in New York’s lights, Europe’s sacred grace. But today in Phoenix wasn’t so bad. Phantogram in concert was more than anything I have ever experienced before. It was trance-like. In a small urban venue, I closed my eyes and swayed back and forth to the local beats that grazed each ray of light—in sync with the crowd’s pulse. Tonight I felt okay, more than okay, I felt healed. It’s been a long time. I danced how I wanted to dance. I was alive, crazed, one with the music, one with the moment. Encore and all, however, it had to end. I gripped my leather jacket and braced for the new cold that has finally found the Arizonan desert and called its fall. My ears were numb from harmonized souls, but there I was, throbbing in a high of something utterly unforgettable, something I could finally call an experience worth something. 

There is breath in the things you cannot see, in what cannot last

Where do moon tides dream when you lie beneath homemade stars? Deep inside, wear off the devil inside, and just breathe. It comes in waves now, that pulling feeling to go back, back in time. The streets curve as you move. There we all are. Moving, trying not to slip and break the liquid glass. Mirrors to another place, another universe. And we think, we are fragile. This is all fragile. Tiptoeing hesitance, cutting the blade in a perfect figure eight. Who’s keeping count? Landing on our feet, we are the edge of the water’s sleep. Nothing more than autumn leaves breaking with each footed grace, pumpkins lining the streets, young faces painted in midnight disguise. A revolution of its time, before the snow covers summer grass and fallen color, and skies darken with the bitter cold. The desert doesn’t seem to know so much of a season’s passing. Time slows and dust settles in a velvet cloth. Mountains are to be climbed, endless roads have to end somewhere. To get there. To rest there. To watch there. Away from those lights and those people. To just lie there with open eyes screening stars so real and far away for some message of salvation—some message just for you and that magic carpet.  A wolf’s call can sound there in the calm of the night without fear or danger, just wary like us. And loyalty. Oh, where we just question and they just breathe. Where they act; weightless, breathless, firelight free. Dust passes in a divine trance—quickly enveloping above, frozen, thick and muddy within. We turn to one another, each a ghost in some slow and precise dimension. Our voices, a muffled dance; our ears, a symphony  ablaze with a droning hum. We etch our name into the white sky, hoping to paint the sunset somewhere above us. To feel again in that moment, alive. Like we are the only ones that made it out from some broken apocalypse, under siege. Maybe everything follows a flight plan. Plane after plane landing and leaving, never breaking off-course into a new city, a new year, a new you. Every person following one another, hoping for something better, scraping the dust of far above stars, just breathing together.

Sure there are things we cannot see, but that doesn’t mean we cannot feel what is free. I wish I could feel it all for you.

Published writing

My writing was just recently published in NASTY Magazine's September Light Issue. Here's the full piece, if you want to check it out go here--it starts on page 45!

I was also named as an editor for the magazine, and helped write some of the previews for the issue:

Someplace away from Home

Finally posting about my roadtrip this summer. Taking the grapevine down LA.

There was something about this place that touched my very soul, cleansing, healing. The water swayed as it spoke, and I broke like the waves and the sun's setting gaze. Closing my eyes, I said to myself: this, this is what letting go means. I think we are all worshippers of the sea. Pulling, tugging, returning. We can all move on, but we can't all go back.

Hearst Castle.

This is divinity.

Me with Janey. And then again with Jackie.

 These are my best friends, Jane and Jacqueline. I'm going to college with Jane in Arizona, but Jackie is off in New York. They're like my sisters, and I miss them dearly.

Main street, Disneyland. The sky was unreal, just like its surroundings.

Home I go. South on the steamboat. 

Palm Sunset. Pismo Beach, California. This is where peace is.

The tea cups can spin us out of our own misery, you know. Blur our surroundings until we are left with only ourselves and the people we love. 

 California Adventure rave. Bathed in indigo, bathed in light. And we were brought together. Who would've thought, strangers from around the world; one.

 Santa Monica, California

 Here we all are. Though Eeyore is my favorite, I always loved Tigger as a kid, too. He was light, bouncy, and had a way of leaving everyone else around him a bit brighter. I always wished to be a bit brighter.

And then it was done. Just like my favorite series. My childhood. Gone like the last page, with tears streaming down my face, a plane dragging me farther away from my home, friends, family and everything I ever thought to be permanent.  Riding down sunset strip, riding the clouds, the mountains, the sea. And I couldn't do anything about it. And all I could think was just that.

It all ends.

Eagle Spirit, are you strong enough?

I don’t see any painted sky. Why does it have to be so blue all the time. I look each way for something new; my compass has no news of golden treasure, rains of enlightenment. There are things I have to be doing. This map doesn’t let up, I tell you. I know that it will hurt when I break away from some dotted line. But I can’t see you cry anymore. I can’t hear the disappointment anymore. I can’t hold your weight anymore, or watch the lines crease your face anymore. It’s the same old, same old. And where’s my news? Who’s reporting for me. It’s not timely. Books crowd my head. The christmas lights hang low, reminding me, taunting me of times, safe, and alone in my bed of green. I’ve lined these pictures and they grow old too. When will things stop growing old? When fire meets skin, and I blow away into the wind; blowin’ in the wind. Watch from the watchtower, won’t you? I’m not sure what I expected college to be like. Independence, new friends, variety, possibility. But there’s not much new but an old new town and dirt roads that now pave into palms and cacti. The bunny mountain isn’t so big no more, camelback’s not that small. I’m still waiting for power in crystals, and wolves with their mother moon. Luna, la lune. Native American legends in adobe mountains and sedona’s vortexes heal, you know. But I don’t know. I can’t feel. I want to feel. Young and used, I’d sit in the back of an old red firebird, my head resting against another window that trapped me within circumstance, and I’d watch those painted skies change each way. A compass that finally moved somewhere other than North. I wanted to melt with it all, like the sky with the heat, know the map and the treasure. ‘Cause fuck, it gets tired always searching. I wanted to just be, or know that there was something that followed after me too. Skies of maroon and gold, and magenta too. It was beautiful. It was heaven. It was homemade circumstance. And the past didn’t end, but danced in ritual’s hands of fire and sand. Dust storm take me away; wash my skin, cloud this view, make mud out of my sense of direction. Am I strong enough yet, blowin’ in the wind, burning in your eyes, El Dorado’s dusty Hidalgo? Look up towards the sky, and turn, side step, work your magic shaman king.

College

Due to the haze of what seemed like an ending, and yet, never ending last summer at "home," and a new wave of debilitating emotions over my move to college in Arizona, I haven't been able to post much of my writing lately. 

However. 

I did get back from a roadtrip at the beginning of August with some friends to Socal, and I have a lot of pictures and various writings/journals that I will post soon!

So don't leave. 

Strength in Broken Shells

Great danger, they let their guard down.

There was tank fire. There was artillery. There were airstrikes.
It was hard to navigate—tank fire, artillery, airstrikes.

How could this happen? Who is this man, the self-image of an African “king of kings?”
The latest news read:
Not a single sentence makes sense!

A loudspeaker blared, “we will remain,” in revolutionary refrain.
With a weary smile, the men were terrified.
Rebel fighters kneeled on the ground, belts of ammunition draped over their chests, and, prostrated in prayer, they recited: “God is greater than what I fear.”

Not by choice, the youth had begun to lose hope.
Human—an old man with a wrinkled, sagging face, muttered baffled and embarrassed.
“He is just a man. This will come to an end, finally.”

To an end, flat and open, shouting at the top of his lungs: “How long can we stay like this?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03Libya-t.html?pagewanted=1&sq=1943&st=nyt&scp=6

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/lynsey-addario-its-what-i-do/?ref=world

So this was a found poem I wrote for a new york times contest. Thought I’d share.