#83 || TO THE MOON AND NEVER BACK

( you are all the colours in one, at full brightness )

Trust Disregard the darkness inside you and the loss of innocence without losing your purity. It might seem ingenuous to let yourself believe you are more intuitive than you tell yourself you are, but I promise it's okay and it might even probably be real. Sometimes the un-happy-ending you envisaged is inevitable, just like you knew it would be, but it's never the end until it's the end. And you'll know. Nobody, no-one ever deserves to be situated in the shadows and for all the heavy-heart-ache, I would never wish a reciprocation upon anybody   I don't understand why the overwhelming gratitude comes in waves, why can't it be a constant? But then I've always believed that emotions ebb and flow for perspective, so that you can appreciate the disparity for all that it's worth, for the dull ache, for the thrill and to not forget what it's like to want to keep going when you want to give up.

The same goes for hope, the hope that my mother tells me not to lose but it doesn't seem as simple as ironing on a transfer label with "if found, please return to my full name here>" on it like we used to. But lately I feel calm in the waiting and even more calm in the unknown, because you can manipulate the future and fashion anything you like. The details in the exterior, the particulars of your environment aren't anything if you aren't a dream from within - and you are already everything that you love. 

Love, A x

P.S. \\ I think you bring out the realest real inside of me, the child, the candour, the coy and the calm. The latter is something novel. Sometimes it's the stormy sea in calm but that seems to be what you surrender when you want to experience something a little more acute than ordinary. //

#82 || { IT TAKES AN OCEAN NOT TO BREAK }

LE DÉBUT.

Three decades later and there is a strange serenity in the air. Perhaps this is the calm before the storm, the ebb before the flow, the waning of the moon. I still bite my tongue in an attempt to quell the blood boiling within my veins when nothing is as perfect as I can imagine it. I still dare myself with the challenge to keep my secrets safe. I never used to believe in keeping secrets, and perhaps that still remains true, but sometimes the shame of my own recurring woes gets overwhelming and I can't bear the thought of being a burden. I am guilty of disguising my disgrace as drollness, perhaps it's often easier to make a joke of one's misfortune rather than confess that you care too much. When there was no way to confirm the acknowledgment of a transmission or trace the timestamps of your interactions - was that medieval love? It might be archaic but I wish I could elect a love stripped bare of read receipts, twin (plus some) ticks in between comebacks and beaucoup conversations giddy as if you are one too many red wines deep but you are not even.

In contrast, I foolishly urge myself towards an idyllic solitude, if such a thing exists. I move through moments of placing a lone wolf atop a pedestal and imagine myself as a superextraordinary superhuman unencumbered by mortal demands and desires. Sometimes all the memories, great and grand and small but significant, flood back in succession and I wish I never knew anybody or anyone ever so that nothing had to matter so much that it seemed like everything all at once.

And at the end of the day, I don't know what lesson I have learned here, other than the art of perseverance and patience in combination with the essence of empathy and sometimes even a touch of indifference. I wish some things didn't seem so important. Some sentiments seem like they're balanced at the end of the world, they're feelings so magnificent it feels like life or death.

LA FIN.

DEAR UNIVERSE,

RIGHT NOW, I FEEL LIKE A PRODUCT OF PERSUASION.  ONCE UPON A TIME I WAS THE SPIRIT BIRD IMPELLING THE LIFELESS TO LIVE BUT TODAY, IN THIS INSTANT, I FEEL VOID OF INSPIRATION. THE VAST DEPTH OF THE OCEAN, THE RIPPLE EFFECT, THE IMPACT OF MISJUDGEMENT, THE TRANSIENT CHAGRIN THAT IS SIMULTANEOUSLY INFINITE: SOMETIMES I WONDER HOW IMBALANCED I MAY HAVE BEEN AT SOME POINT IN THIS LIFE OR IN THE PAST, TO BE ON SUCH A CONSISTENT COURSE OF DESCENT. 

TO LIVE FOREVER IN THE WAITING, TO FOREVER HOLD ON TO INTANGIBLE HOPE AND TRUST THE TIMING OF LIFE, DO YOU PINKY SWEAR THAT ONE DAY IT'LL ALL BE WORTH IT? I DREAM OF A SINGLE MOMENT OF CLARITY, A BRIEF INTERMISSION WHEN THE SECOND-HAND STOPS AND I REALISE THAT THIS IS THE LIFE I ONCE PRAYED FOR, I DREAM OF A DREAM COME TRUE.

 THE SINGLE THING I AM CERTAIN OF IN THIS UNPREDICTABLE EXISTENCE, I HAVE BEEN BLESSED AS A RARA AVIS; A WONDER, A RARE BIRD, AN ANOMALY. FOR EVERY METAPHORICAL MINUTE IN THE GUTTER, FOR EVERY HEARTACHE OVER EVERY LOSS, EVEN WHEN I THINK I COULDN'T POSSIBLY COPE WITH ANOTHER:

 I AM THE SUNSHINE. 

DEAR UNIVERSE, FUCK YOU.

Yours sin-cereal-ly,

A.

#81 || "And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth."

O.  09.19
Soon, it will feel like you were a dream (or a ~sometimes nightmare~). I wouldn't pinky swear on it, but time does cure ~most~ heartaches and will crush the lust into dust one day at a time. Because I truly believe, that in several seconds or perhaps several seasons, I might forget how wretched it was when it felt like I was losing everything I loved. Again. The penetrating fear of cherished comfort dissipating into a void of nothing, back to my default equilibrium of indifference and impassivity - perhaps metaphorically for one last blurry recollection of red wine and cigarettes and wishing the night would never end. For it was, and always is absolutely perfect, just as you are - flaws, fractures and all.

La Science des rêves (The Science of Sleep)

• Stéphanie: So I get it, so you don’t want to be my friend anymore?
• Stephane: No! I don’t want to be your friend anymore! I don’t want to be your friend anymore! Do I have to nail it on your door? “I don’t want to be your friend.”
• Stéphanie: No, you can’t, you can’t stop being my friend. It’s not something people can decide.
• Stephane: Oh yeah, they can. People have an argument and they stop talking to each other.
• Stéphanie: Okay, then let’s have a date or something and we can talk about things if that’s what you want.
• Stephane: What’s the point? you’ll just want me as your friend and then you’ll have a really nice boyfriend and that will kill me.

-O. 08.09
Once upon a time, when I was a little girl, my mother told me she didn't believe in pride, that it manufactured ego and arrogance and you could only ever be ~happy~ for somebody but never proud of or praised for anything, ever. With that fostering came a heightened sense of place and belonging, in every state and circumstance that I would find myself situated in. In the thick of a crowd or even when I'm all alone, I feel the weight and presence of my being in the air, my aura and energy pulsating through and out of my fingertips back into the earth. I try not to take anything for granted, the ecstasy is emphasised and it seems consecutively I am trying to exercise complete and utter gratitude for the moment, impress every detail to my memory and clasp my arms around that very instant and never let go. Once upon a time I used to think that the chance of one rhapsodic moment was a privilege that wasn't to be taken for granted, but now I want more, I want that magic to be part of my every day. Is that too much to ask?

I. 10.19

Let's start this moment on a rooftop bar in Los Angeles with wet hair, truffles fries and a glass of wine. The appreciation for everything, the every day love, the kindness and the compassion, it comes in waves and I am so utterly ashamed at its whimsy and my inability to recognise your benevolence all the time, at every moment or every day. I am so, so, so lucky - and perhaps for every time my heart feels like it's shattering into a zillion pieces, I am blessed with an instant so inexpressibly extraordinary I wish I could melt into the moment and become one with the magic. When we were flying down the freeway en route to Milwaukee, the best pumpkin spice lattes in the world and the biggest bottle of red wine you ever did see, sharing cheesecake with iced lattes, watching the sun rise and set on the rooftop and when the climax of a song strikes you right in the centre of your heart. Maybe it will only ever be the little moments that hold it all together, whilst they simultaneously threaten to make it all fall apart at any moment. I don't know if it's because often I don't feel like I really belong anywhere, that I feel both at home and displaced just about everywhere.

home is where i feel the every day love
home is where my sister is
home is where the sun shines
home is where i can see the sea
home is in your voice
home is when i miss you

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long."

I'll see you on the other side of the rainbow. Love, A x

#80 || ~~ FONDLY, BUT FROM A DISTANCE ~~~

LA FIN D'AVRIL [for etta and ever ever]
We often forget the significance of someone or something's presence until the presence of their absence. After sunset, after the golden hour when the air is chilly and the stars are hiding behind the clouds - that's when I miss her the most. Sometimes during the day when it's quiet and the trees are still, I can still see her; her head is cocked to the side and her eyes are sparkling and for a moment I can't remember if I'm in a daydream or reality because it doesn't seem fair real that she isn't on this earth anymore. But still, after sunset, after the golden hour when the air gets chilly and the stars are hiding behind the clouds, I feel like it was all my fault. When my mind has nowhere else to wander, I miss her more than I thought I could miss anything, ever.

My first thought was to celebrate life, to love harder than I ever have and to treasure everything, because everything is temporary. But I can't help but appraise things in loss over gain, I keep forgetting the meaning in everything and simultaneously everything seems so serious and important and overwhelming ... yet, not at all. What's on the surface right now, is only the surface. There is a whole entity and existence underneath it all, under the layers and layers of emotions and opinions and heartache, it seems, there is only heartache. I'm so sorry, my little moonkitten, I miss you so much. 

LE DÉBUT DE JUILLET [for tori, forever ago]

It feels like the start of the end before the beginning, if you know what I mean. The variations in my every day, like the waves, my emotions ebb and flow and wax and wane with the moon so inevitably that it is almost ~predictably~ inconsistent. I revolve through lunar-like phases of surrender, of tolerance and rebellion, of displeasure and love and ecstasy and sheer terror. Several mornings ago I woke up and it felt like the world was ending, there was a tiny little inkling of pre-apocalyptic unease deep within my bones and I couldn't seem to determine if it began in a dream or upon waking. Then for a moment, just after sunrise, I felt so loved and almost ashamed of any prior instance where I thought the world deplored me and my existence. But by lunchtime the oscillation ended and I felt the okay-kind-of-normal, but only for a minute, and in the early afternoon when everything went quiet, I began to feel lonely and that feeling only escalated as the sun went to sleep and the stars hid behind the clouds.

Maybe it's just July. Do you always remember your Mondays? I remember mine - it's my favourite day of the week. Last lundi I was bleary eyed and barely dreaming, The Night We Met in the middle of the night, 4.a.m. coffee and uncontrollable emotions [isn't that my every day??] with the only girl in the world who ever argues with my anger. Do you remember last winter, or the winter before that? Maybe I have romanticised winter every year since 2011 but in reality I think this time of the year is the saddest  because the silver lining blurs into the grey of the sky and you're lucky to see a sunset. 

The ache of loving too much, the illogical shame that accompanies feeling everything beyond sincerely and likewise the chagrin in feigning flippancy because you've convinced yourself that caring is demeaning and loving is plebeian and it's always easier to pretend that you're out of touch with everybody and everything. Is that just me? I wonder what happens if you keep everything inside ... - do you implode? Explode? Does it excude from your fingertips? Does all of the choked-back love filter through your voice or is it emitted from your eyes whilst you watch the world pretend like they know what they're doing? I wonder if they can tell, I wonder if it's obvious or completely camouflaged that I care so, so, so too much. I wonder if they know they're always on my mind, I wonder if they know they broke my heart and that they hurt me or that they pulled me back from the edge or that they made my day. I wonder what would happen if I said all of this aloud. Let's keep it our little secret.


[i still dk.]

Love,
A x

# 79 || - - - “Somewhere between emotional and emotionless.” - - -

And before I even realised it, my imagination had run away without the rest of me, leaving my legs and logic and my reason and rationale behind.  I've always been this way, through both nature and nurture, my tendency to overthink and over-anatomise can be out of control sometimes. I fall in love with people after one solitary exchange, without knowing a single fact about them, in the same way that I resent people after one observation out of the corner of my eye, forgetting that we all, as individuals, are a hundred million different personalities at any moment of any day.    

Maybe always but especially now, the bar I have set for my own cloud nine is astronomically high, perhaps as high as heaven itself. It is a blessing to be so sure of one's personal preferences but simultaneously it is a curse to feel a twinge of dissatisfaction lurking in the shadows of every experience, like the devil itself it leaves me always wanting more, wanting to feel more, wanting more love, more light, more ... something. Nothingisasperfectasyoucanimagineit, nothingisasperfectasyoucanimagineit, nothingisasperfectasyoucanimagineit.

My remedy for this infernal discontent, is that instead of comparing and cursing my own [and the] inadequacies [of everything around me], is that perhaps we can celebrate the unparalleled qualities that make each individual different and exceptional beyond comprehension. Maybe we shouldn't limit ourselves to one single celebration, but encouraging the distinctions between us all. My singular resolution for 2019 was to rein in the shame that trembles in the hollow of my head, the mortification of being different, the conviction that I am feeling things deeper than I should be, but still short of the wisdom or courage [or both, even], to become the best possible version of myself. 

( "some of you haven’t spent countless hours thinking up a whole universe in your head to escape to and it shows" )

idk.
idk.
idk.
idk.
idk.
idk.
idk.
idk.
idk.
idk.

"This morning with her, having coffee."
- Johnny Cash, when asked for his description of paradise.

Love, A x