“I make my world close, I put the sign up on the door and rest myself there as I pull threads until I unravel. I make myself smaller until I am invisible within it, even to myself, and I am happy here, with no-one and nothing. I feel desperate for the solace and I curl within it like a comforting blanket, under the layers of my mind. I know people see me and my eyes are open, but I am closed, and the signs are there. I will it and I seek it behind this melancholy door, unsure of what hour or for whom I will ever open.”
“So you open up the butterfly doors. There’s magic that travels thru the air that we just leap to breathe, we skip the breaths and they escape us, runs to a louder catcher. We carry our disappointments and we create our disappointments, trying to make our mark in infinity and in space but eventually the weight that comes with it begins to close at its zenith, and then we have to make a climb before we’re abject ashes waiting for another life”
“It’s so quiet here, but I press my cheek against the wall and feel the vibration of your words. My heartbeat is an echo and reverberates in return. Everything is distant and it’s safe that way, and I wonder if I’m capable – of opening the doors, and even what this means. How do you find the a magic in a breath, in a moment? “
“We’re all capable, we’re just not honest enough to kick start commitments to life, its too tiring. But you can’t jump life and then come apart in darkness, all that will remain of us afar our tarnished names- is the old memory, the old mistake that we’re worried about. Now, I’m not saying there’s no fix, there’s always the substantiation of moderation that wavers on the movie screen, while you gobble popcorn and then sleep early for the big meeting at work, but maybe the magic is in the tragedy that we sing about so often”
“But why do we sing about tragedies so often? Is it because our hearts memorize those songs the best? That it’s they that possess the best salt and the zest of our lives? Those tattoos that we live to regret but we love to reflect all the same…. ”
“Do you ever get this feeling, where everyone you know is happy. It’s a snapshot, basically. It won’t last you smiling. But everyone remembers everything that you do, and they love each other for their importance, for their stories, for their being. And then there’s someone for you. And you stretch that smile into your soul, you don’t know any other time, no moments flee, this time seems like a ghost, and you are a ghost, but you’re not fading, you’re in a ghost town. Tragedy exists. It makes happiness more real, it sort of trims the overflowing expectations so you know when to cherish, when to celebrate and when to just misunderstand and close your eyes.”
“Sometimes I get the feeling that it’s easy to trim the edges of happy so brutally that the only bits of happiness I may have kept for a smile are discarded casually, like junk-mail or spam. Deleted, and my inbox empty just like that. Sometimes it feels like tragedy is my second skeleton and my best backbone. Like without it I’ll collapse onto the floor, a ghost like you say, translucent skin and lifeless body. Tragedy keeps me awake at night and when I see all the happiness I feel like I want to prickle it with a pin to see if it’s real. See if it will survive if I prod the artificial material or if it’s melancholy disguised in a flimsy dress”
“So you know what I mean? Well you almost know. Nothing compares to the knowing of truth, if you do then you’re God or whatever variation of it is the figure whose name I take in troubled minutes. But all in all, life isn’t that hard, right? Tell me if you think it’s good, I’ll be happy to know I’m not mad to think that it’s all going to look good somewhere or someplace I will be. Soon, hopefully”
“You know, I think life can be easy if we let it. If we notice how there is a glittering stone in the dirt, how that tree grew leaves that are so impossibly lush and glossy and it didn’t even have them yesterday. How our eyes are always beautiful even as our faces contort with emotion and age. Those things are there for free and for anyone to see. The only contribution we have to make is noticing. Taking our minds from the clutches of yesterday and tomorrow and all the could and should and tears and sore hearts and just let ourselves wander in the open and lavish and expansive arms of today. Dancing, moving, laughing. Even in the micro-moments among everything else. That’s what freedom feels like to me. Putting down all my baggage and my luggage and feeling all the everything of the right now. And not caring if people or even myself think I’m good or kind or beautiful or strong. Just putting all that down and finding my actual skeleton, my first one, the one that is me”
“Hmm. I guess I never thought of it that way, the good way. I mean, I did once say that maybe we have to accept peace within chaos, and now I think we do. No one knows how long we have, so we work toward extracting parts of each other and each day. And that’s when death becomes so terrifying, because there’s no gravity to it’s meaning, no rainbows to its reasons, it’s just an endless sleep onward and on”
“There is not much more intimate or salty than the topic of death – well, perhaps you could argue that sex and religion are on a relative par, politics for some people too I guess. Death as an endless sleep… when it’s said like this I nearly find it inviting. A nothingness empty of expectation. A silence that is enveloping, dense, complete, lonesomeness that is uncomplicated. Sometimes I see it as terrifying but every now and then I wonder what it might feel like, say in that moment when you have just been hit by a car, and you know it’s about to happen. What would that moment be like? I don’t know if it’s normal to have these thoughts, and I never confess them, but here they are”
“I don’t know. I’ve always been against loss. It never made sense to me, it seems hollowed in a way that is unique to humanity. If nothingness is the climate of our mentality, then we’re witness to doom. I know its maudlin, but its true. We spend fractions of our life in shedding our shadows, and stepping into sunlight, but sometimes it feels that we just survive in a world that nakedly tolerates us. And if you jump the existentialist secrets and transcend generational wisdom, then you’re in a place close to silence, but its not death. I guess, all we calculate is our backwash, and we remember the worst possibilities, and that beats us into these factories of dismal defeat”
“I think I was always against loss too. But you know, when you’re in a situation where you feel you have nothing left to lose, the fire escapes and the panic buttons start looking more like legitimate options. Like fitting endings to your tragedy. It starts feeling like it’s the extreme measures that might save you, so you put the closed sign up and you start gravitating to your darkest thoughts. And you know, it’s self-indulgent and it’s weak, so you listen to others and you take the beautiful hands offered to you and hold them to your heart. You also take the medicine because you know you have to and you have no choice”
This was my Anna Karenina!! I don’t think I can say the same for her (In Mind and Out) she probably has better pieces. This is a conversation of poetry that begins with her, and then we alternate until it ends with her too. This was probably one of the pieces I’ve been proudest of, and I love love love what Rachel did with it. I’m not being kind, I’m being honest. Seriously, just read how she manages to belt out one beautiful anthem after another.
Celluloid Trances 