breathe deep against your whalebones

2010-06-25T09:37:00.000-07:00

leaving this journal behind, bye everyone xxx

2010-05-28T14:33:00.000-07:00

2010-05-27T17:51:00.001-07:00

Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, and it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can't imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him.

- Nancy Mitford

2010-05-17T17:58:00.000-07:00

The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing

2010-05-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

Evelyn Nesbit (December 25, 1884 – January 17, 1967) was an American artists' model and chorus girl, noted for her entanglement in the murder of her ex-lover, architect Stanford White, by her first husband, Harry Kendall Thaw.~

Pale Marble Movie

2010-05-03T11:47:00.000-07:00

The room had a high Victorian ceiling and there was a marble fireplace and an avocado tree growing in the window, and she lay beside me sleeping in a very well-built blond way.
And I was asleep, too, and it was just starting to be dawn in September.
1964.

Then suddenly, without any warning, she sat up in bed, waking me instantly, and she started to get out of bed. She was very serious about it.

"What are you doing?" I said.
Her eyes were wide open.
"I’m getting up," she said.
They were a somnambulist blue.

"Get back in bed," I said.
"Why?" she said, now halfway out of bed with one blond foot touching the floor.
"Because you’re still asleep," I said.
"Ohhh . . . OK, she said. That made sense to her and she got back into bed and pulled the covers around herself and cuddled up close to me. She didn’t say another word and she didn’t move.

She lay there sound asleep with her wanderings over and mine just beginning. I have been thinking about this simple event for years now. It stays with me and repeats itself over and over again like a pale marble movie.

One Afternoon in 1939.

This is a constant story that I keep telling my daughter who is four years old. She gets something from it and wants to hear it again and again.
When it's time for her to go to bed she says, "Daddy, tell me about when you were a kid and climbed inside that rock."
"OK."
She cuddles the covers about her as if they were controllable clouds and puts her thumb in her mouth and looks at me with listening blue eyes.
"Once when I was a little kid, just your age, my mother and father took me on a picnic to Mount Rainier. We drove up there in an old car and saw a deer standing in the middle of the road.
"We came to a meadow where there was snow in the shadows of the trees and snow in the places where the sun didn't shine.
"There were wild flowers growing in the meadow and they looked beautiful. In the middle of the meadow there was a huge round rock and Daddy walked over to the rock and found a hole in the center of it and looked inside. The rock was hollow like a small room.
"Daddy crawled rinside the rock and sat there staring out at the blue sky and the wild flowers. Daddy eally liked that rock and pretended that it was a house and he played inside the rock all afternoon.
"He got some smaller rocks and took them inside the big rock. He pretended that the smaller rocks were a stove and furniture and things and he cooked a meal, using wild flowers for food."
That's the end of the story.
Then she looks up at me with her deep blue eyes and sees me as a child playing inside a rock, pretending that wild flowers are hamburgers and cooking them on a small stove-like rock.
She can never get enough of this story. She has heard it thirty or forty times and always wants to hear it again.
It's very important to her.
I think she uses this story as a kind of Christopher Columbus door to the discovery of her father wen he was a child and her contemporary.

Lint

I'm haunted a little this evening by feelings that have no vocabulary and events that should be explained in dimensions of lint rather than words.

I've been examining half-scraps of my childhood. They are pieces of distant life that have no form or meaning. They are things that just happened like lint.

2010-04-16T20:08:00.000-07:00

INTERVIEWER: love seems to be the engine that drives your art. how many times have you been in love?
ELLIOTT SMITH: real love? once.

INTERVIEWER: how did you know?
ELLIOTT SMITH: i just knew. i knew it when it was there.

INTERVIEWER: can you ever truly stop being in love with someone?
ELLIOTT SMITH: it just changes into a different kind of connection with someone. people make a distinction between being in love or the kind of love that really just means they are strongly connected and care about someone. i think you can slip out of being in love with someone and just become really connected with that person and not really realize it while it's happening.

INTERVIEWER: are you in love right now?
ELLIOTT SMITH: no, not really, uh…it's a really good subject to talk about, but i'm afraid it's going to bum someone out.

INTERVIEWER: do you believe, as the poets say, that love is the only thing that gives meaning to the universe, and that without it, we are just a bunch of molecules bumping up against each other?
ELLIOTT SMITH: yes. love or some kind of creative act.

INTERVIEWER: aren't you terrified by the possibility that you may never find true love again?
ELLIOTT SMITH: if i was sure that love was not coming my way again, i wouldn't see much point in doing anything. it's a distinct possibility, but, you know, stupidity tries.

2010-04-07T18:45:00.000-07:00

2010-04-07T18:44:00.000-07:00

The Double-Bed Dream Gallows

2010-04-06T18:24:00.000-07:00

ஐBoo, forever.ஐ

Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I'm haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.

ஐ30 Cents, Two Transfers, Loveஐ

Thinking hard about you
I got on the bus
and paid 30 cents car fare
and asked the driver for two transfers
before discovering
that I was
alone.

ஐLove Poemஐ

it's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more.

ஐRomeo and Julietஐ

If you will die for me,
I will die for you
and our graves will be like two lovers washing
their clothes together
in a laundromat
If you will bring the soap
I will bring the bleach.

ஐXerox Candy Barஐ

Ah,
you're just a copy
of all the candy bars
I've ever eaten.

ஐI Live In The Twentieth Centuryஐ

I live in the Twentieth Century
and you lie here beside me. You
were unhappy when you fell asleep.
There was nothing I could do about
it. I felt hopeless. Your face
is so beautiful that I cannot stop
to describe it, and there's nothing
I can do to make you happy while
you sleep.

ஐThe Beautiful Poemஐ

I go to bed in Los Angeles thinking
about you.

~ all poems by richard brautigan ~

2010-04-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

molecules dissipate,
disperse and recoagulate.
breathing in and out,
there is nothing more.
i am mist, you are steam
we are clouds.
we are drifting away.
in one of many heavens
blue light prevails
we dream perfect music,
we hang from our tails.
in one of many hells
we sharpen up our horns
plotting our revenge while
waiting to be born.
particles of light and particles of matter
come together for an instant, then scatter

2010-03-25T18:51:00.000-07:00

i don't know how it happened or why or how i came out of it but for months i was in a very very dark place and now i am not so none of those questions matter i suppose. i just know that i don't want to be there again and if i am i don't want to keep it all under lock and key. i am proud of myself if that's okay for me to say.

forever

2010-03-25T18:27:00.000-07:00

2010-02-23T05:45:00.000-08:00

a time it was
and what a time it was, it was
a time of innocence
a time of confidences
long ago it must be
i have a photograph
preserve your memories
they're all that's left you

2010-02-16T09:38:00.001-08:00

~ formspring ~

2010-02-16T09:15:00.000-08:00

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."

And the roses were very much embarrassed.

"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose."

2010-02-16T09:07:00.000-08:00

the quiet way you leave
and just forget it all
just takes my breath away

2010-02-09T09:55:00.000-08:00

+ spending weeknights in bed drinking lemonade and reading for hours, finishing three books a week
- you, disappearing from me

2010-02-04T09:25:00.000-08:00

chewed lips/moon eyes/
marshmallows for breakfast and peach ice tea for dinner

to flow

2010-02-04T09:14:00.000-08:00

2010-02-02T03:57:00.000-08:00

things to bake in february ~

~ banana oat muffins
~ iced cinnamon swirls
~ fortune cookies
~ natural marshmallows
~ strawberry jam
~ macarons
~ cinnamon bread
~ rosemary bread
~ raspberry sorbet
~ vegan ice cream sundaes
~ cinnamon blondies
~ brandy snaps
~ white chocolate gingerbread bars
~ cinnamon roll cookies
~ vegan soft pretzels

2010-01-26T06:34:00.000-08:00

there are never enough hours. silver packages, ghosts waiting on unprocessed negatives stuffed under my mattress. necklace of kisses.

to do ~

2010-01-22T05:37:00.000-08:00

* process the rolls of film of things i have been making
* find the photographs i have been asked to be put in exhibitions and send them to relevant people
* sort out and sell dresses
* put pictures up on walls
* start journaling on a regular basis again
* find a babysitting job
* book flights to new york and maybe the riviera if i have enough money
* bake once a week
* finish making dress
* zine zine zine
* start writing letters to grandma and grandpa on a regular basis

and no excuses anymore please.

love, rianna

2010-01-18T09:03:00.000-08:00

The Moon Versus Us Ever Sleeping Together Again

2010-01-13T03:03:00.000-08:00

I sit here, an arch-villain of romance,
thinking about you. Gee, I’m sorry
I made you unhappy, but there was nothing
I could do about it because I have to be free.
Perhaps everything would have been different
if you had stayed at the table or asked me
to go out with you to look at the moon,
instead of getting up and leaving me alone with
her.

-Richard Brautigan

2010-01-07T07:55:00.001-08:00

"There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love."

2010-01-01T06:26:00.000-08:00

demeter

2009-12-29T07:18:00.000-08:00

it will be okay

2009-12-23T05:12:00.001-08:00

2009-12-22T07:27:00.000-08:00

nature more

2009-12-18T08:02:00.001-08:00

"there is pleasure in the pathless woods,
there is rapture on the lonely shore,
there is society where none intrudes,
by the deep sea and the music in its roar;
i love not man the less, but nature more."

— lord byron

p.s. i promise i will show the things i have been making soon, they got a bit buried in the chaos

2009-12-18T05:59:00.000-08:00

it seemed like everyone i knew was dying
i looked in the mirror and i was on fire
somebody yelled out "hey, stop, drop, and roll!"
i said "that might save my skin, but it won't save my soul.
that might save my skin, but it won't save my soul"

you swallow hard and you bottle it up
try to pretend you're a half full cup
believe what they're feeding, you're eating it up
while i'm reading books about how they're corrupt
i'm reading books about how they're corrupt

he says he protecting us but he's a liar
i know deep down that it's down to the wire
my heart will stop if i put out the fire
as long as i'm burning
i'll keep on yearning
to save the world
not sure how but i'm learning

~

2009-12-15T09:19:00.000-08:00

when i'm walking out between parked cars
with my head full of stars
high on amphetamines
the moon is a light bulb breaking
it'll go around with anyone
but it won't come down for anyone

pink milk

2009-12-04T05:50:00.000-08:00

i had a lovely bath last night in candy cane bubbles. i am excited because i am going to a masquerade ball on sunday.

it'll make a whisper out of you

2009-12-01T10:24:00.000-08:00

sometimes i can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives i’m not living.
~ jonathan safran foer

toffee apple teeth

2009-11-25T08:39:00.000-08:00

cosmia whirring round and round and round and round

born with roses in her eyes

2009-11-25T08:29:00.000-08:00

2009-11-13T06:16:00.000-08:00

luna

2009-11-13T06:04:00.000-08:00

window cake, the old wooden elevator in liberty, sparkling curtains and glittering deers, lockets stuffed with star sequins, bears made out of tiny stitches, war museums and whale museums and crystal caves and gold and white fur slippers that make me feel like sara crewe, here is a promise to show you all of these things very soon

how to move the moon

2009-11-04T04:44:00.000-08:00

deeds of green thrilling light
with thinned newfragile yellows
lurch and press --in the woods
which stutter and sing
and the coolness of your smile is
stirring of birds between my arms

2009-11-03T08:03:00.000-08:00

ohhh plans, plans filling up my brain like tiny clouds - gold thread and watercolours and silhouettes of polar bears and needles - everything is going to change soon and you will see it - playing with blurry sequins for hours, singing about whiskey

celestial

2009-10-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

candy bracelets
venus
crystal rainbow rooms
good witch glinda the glitter frosted queen
pink silk dresses with silver starry buttons
hidden wings
frothy cake skirts
the crystal room at the natural history museum
upside down roses
glow in the dark ceilings
polar bear paws
hot strawberry milk in a flask
watching the swans
teeth necklaces
glittery bubble explosions
whispers
a peach
antique peter pans in ivy covered windows
gold walls
whales whales whales

and you will wear lace ribbons in your hair and you will rebuild

lashes

2009-10-29T09:39:00.000-07:00

it was a real whale, a photograph of a real whale. i looked into its tiny wise eye and wondered where that eye was now. was it alive and swimming, or had it died long ago, or was it dying now, right this second? when a whale dies, it falls down through the ocean slowly, over the course of a day. all the other fish see it fall, like a giant statue, like a building, but slowly, slowly.

spearmint

2009-10-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

bravery has been on my mind very much, perhaps because of the days i have spent tangled up in war and astronauts. there are lilies in all the corners and so many stars on walls and lamps and mirrors. i have realised how many forms bravery comes in, and how many people i know who are brave. maybe i will give them chocolate coin medals. and one for me.

will-o'-the-wisp

2009-10-01T07:53:00.000-07:00

have you ever had a witch bloom like a highway
on your mouth? and turn your breathing to her
fancy? like a little car with blue headlights
passing forever in a dream?

rows and rows and rows

2009-10-01T07:39:00.000-07:00

"at times the world can seem an unfriendly and sinister place. but believe us when we say there is much more good in it than bad. all you have to do is look hard enough. and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events, may in fact, be the first steps of a journey."

2009-10-01T06:39:00.000-07:00

have you ever had a witch bloom like a highway
on your mouth? and turn your breathing to her
fancy? like a little car with blue headlights
passing forever in a dream?

a dark dream

2009-09-24T05:26:00.001-07:00

seabirds

2009-09-24T05:03:00.000-07:00

all my bones they are gone, gone, gone
take my bones, i don't need none
cold, cold cupboard, lord, nothing to chew on!
suck all day on a cherry stone

dig a little hole, not three inches round
spit your pit in the hole in the ground
weep upon the spot for the starving of me!
till up grow a fine young cherry tree

well when the bough breaks, what'll you make for me?
a little willow cabin to rest on your knee
what'll i do with a trinket such as this?
think of your woman, who's gone to the west

but i'm starving and freezing in my measly old bed!
then i'll crawl across the salt flats to stroke your sweet head
come across the desert with no shoes on!
i love you truly, or i love no-one

orca whale

2009-09-19T16:54:00.000-07:00

but we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. i know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started.

*

2009-09-19T02:41:00.000-07:00

a long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a princess who dreamed of the human world. she dreamed of blue skies, soft breeze, and sunshine. one day, eluding her keepers, the princess escaped. once outside, the brightness blinded her and erased every trace of the past from her memory. she forgot who she was and where she came from. her body suffered cold, sickness, and pain. eventually, she died. however, her father, the king, always knew that the princess’ soul would return, perhaps in another body, in another place, at another time. and he would wait for her, until he drew his last breath, until the world stopped turning…

"it's ice,"

2009-09-19T02:37:00.000-07:00

i have emotions
that are like newspapers that
read themselves.

i go for days at a time
trapped in the ‘want’ ads.

i feel as if i am an ad
for the sale of a haunted house:

18 rooms
$37,000
i’m yours
ghosts and all.

richard brautigan

2009-09-18T12:27:00.000-07:00

cinnamon sugar gypsy bread, hot milk and blackberry picking. oh autumn i am so pleased to see you.

so the little prince tamed the fox. and when the hour of his departure drew near —
“ah,” said the fox, “i shall cry.”
“it is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you …”
“yes, that is so,” said the fox.
“but now you are going to cry!” said the little prince.
“yes, that is so,” said the fox.
“then it has done you no good at all!”
“it has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the colour of the wheat fields.”

sweet monoceros

2009-09-16T16:30:00.000-07:00

milk eyed

2009-09-16T16:21:00.000-07:00

2009-09-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

i am trying very hard to be glad for things but it is becoming harder and harder to do. today i was glad for waking up in a cloud with a grey day outside and putting on a special fleecy dress and cotton tights to welcome autumn

atrum tempestas

2009-09-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

micropsia

2009-09-01T16:16:00.000-07:00

we do not grow absolutely, chronologically. we grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. we grow partially. we are relative. we are mature in one realm, childish in another. the past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. we are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

2009-09-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow
flat on the wall.
the dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.
you had not expected this,
the bedroom gone white, the astronomical light
pummeling you in a stream of fists.
you raised your hand to your face as if
to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light
streamed straight to the bone,
as if you were the small room closed in glass
with every speck of dust illuminated.
the light is no mystery,
the mystery is that there is something to keep the light
from passing through.

starswirl

2009-08-19T14:31:00.000-07:00

what we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream.

honey dripping beehive

2009-08-15T19:10:00.000-07:00

sometimes we caught sight of tattered knee socks rounding a corner, or came upon them doubled over, shoving books into a cubbyhole, flicking the hair out of their eyes. but it was always the same: their white faces drifting in slow motion past us, while we pretended we hadn't been looking for them at all, that we didn't know they existed.

bubble gum angels swooped from top margins or scraped their wings between teeming paragraphs, maidens with golden hair dripped sea blue tears into the books spine, grape-colored whales spouted blood around a newspaper item listing arrivals to the endangered spieces list. six hatchlings cried from shattered shells near an entry made on easter. she had filled the pages with a profusion of colors and curlicues, candyland ladders and striped shamrocks.

*

2009-08-14T10:19:00.000-07:00

this week i have revolved almost entirely around perseids, the backs of my eyes have been a permanent night sky. every night stumbling across the dewdrop fields, dizzy from looking upwards and singing songs to make them come to us. last night it was just ursa minor and i in the house so we filled bowls to the brim with neopolitan ice cream, i wore my new skirt that looks like the starry sky and we sat patiently until the clouds melted away. my sweet boy's face looking up to the celestial, open mouthed. i'd miss all the meteor showers in the world to keep him this way forever.

only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. only you can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the coms and petticoats over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth, thou shalt not on the wall, and the yellowing dickybird-watching pictures of the dead. only you can hear and see, behind the eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams.

from where you are, you can hear their dreams.

hexes

2009-08-10T07:20:00.000-07:00

2009-08-08T17:02:00.001-07:00

"it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

castles

2009-08-07T07:54:00.000-07:00

today i have been thinking about a special childhood friend who made easter plays and star biscuits and fairy letters with me. she was always the first person i told when i found a tiny letter from one of the fairies, we spent hours crawling between the hedges in my old secret garden leaving tiny plates of jelly and biscuit crumbs. we drank bottles of pink lemonade and jumped on the bed laughing at the noise of the lemonade inside us. i remember alot of things about this lovely girl but my favourite memory is sitting in her white cottage bedroom in pink and cream pyjamas looking through the windows of her dollshouse at all the tiny candles and cakes and she was singing, because she loved to sing and she had a sweet angel voice and she was singing this song

'there is a castle on a cloud, i like to go there in my sleep, aren't any floors for me to sweep, not in my castle on a cloud. there is a room that's full of toys, there are a hundred boys and girls, nobody shouts or talks too loud, not in my castle on a cloud. there is a lady all in white, holds me and sings a lullaby, she's nice to see and she's soft to touch, she says "cosette, i love you very much." i know a place where no one's lost, i know a place where no one cries, crying at all is not allowed, not in my castle on a cloud.'

and from then on i fell in little girl love with her, because every little girl falls in love with another little girl at some time, and she was mine, ocean eyes with ribbons in her hair

sometimes books make me sad because they make me wonder where all the wendys and dorothys and cassandras and tiger lilys and elsies and frances of the world are hiding

dewdrop sugar

2009-08-06T18:09:00.000-07:00

she said she thought that most geniuses were lonely. i said i thought everyone was lonely. that even the moon is lonely, and that's why it pulls on the tides

i told you that they have been running around my bedroom at times when animals and humans should be sleeping. i have been sitting next to the window all day watching the rain dowsing our flowers and herbs like an overexcited friend who wants to tell you all their news in one mouthful and watching all the little drops running eversoquickly down the glass, i think they don't know where to go so they just keep going and hope to end up somewhere better. i tried to have a long walk in the rain but instead thought better to watch the rain from the other side of glass and eat stacks and stacks of fairy bread, leaving little rainbow freckles on my lips.

butterscotch

2009-08-06T16:35:00.000-07:00

lucy and her wardrobe are making me yearn for winter, toffee apples, red cheeks, snowy shoes, glittery apples sitting between the branches of the christmas tree, frosty windows, frozen milk, cinnamon toast, warm beds and glowy rooms early in the morning when the sun hasn't yet risen.

supernovae

2009-08-06T16:24:00.000-07:00

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

2009-08-05T09:13:00.001-07:00

new gold ribbons for gold shoes; lots of new potions that smell of sweets and spices; collecting lovely recipes; collecting secrets from my spell book; putting hundreds of white carnations into glasses for grandma; paper bears and deers and unicorns running around my bedroom, keeping me awake; rubbing mint and lavender between fingertips; your looming egyptian scent; mama's red velvet cake drifting around the house; quartz; nebulas; everlasting rainfall

a very sad sad zoo

2009-08-03T16:19:00.000-07:00

tiny deer stitches and edible pearls, glitter fingertips, covering up my thoughts under mountains of snowy frosting, i wish to be swept away by some very strong wind or something similar

the sylph, ten of cups

2009-08-02T16:05:00.000-07:00

wuthering

2009-08-02T15:36:00.000-07:00

before the distances they pin evaporate,
weighting the pale sky with a soldier color.
but they only dissolve and dissolve
like a series of promises, as I step forward.
there is no life higher than the grasstops
or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
pours by like destiny, bending
everything in one direction
i can feel it trying
to funnel my heat away.
if i pay the roots of the heather
too close attention, they will invite me
to whiten my bones among them
black stone, black stone
the sky leans on me, me, the one upright
among all horizontals
the grass is beating its head distractedly.
it is too delicate for a life in such company;
darkness terrifies it
now, in valleys narrow
and black as purses, the house lights
gleam like small change

dreamcatchers

2009-08-01T07:39:00.000-07:00

"it's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. it's far, far away. behind the moon, beyond the rain."

2009-08-01T07:33:00.000-07:00

can't you sleep little bear?

2009-07-29T18:27:00.000-07:00

caramel cinnamon waffle ice cream, painting tree trunks gold and covering the kitchen floor in glitter. trying to be silent, buttoning my lips with milky buttons...

i was living in a castle-like place for a while, i'm back now (almost) but i want to keep those words for my memories

pearly wings

2009-07-29T17:34:00.000-07:00

2009-07-26T16:57:00.000-07:00

i'm riding recklessly though a thick and humid
jungle growing anxious with the deep
and primal yearning that stirs
deeply pulsing up toward the surface
like sap rising or honey or tar

my temples have been pounding all evening, it's the constant switching between hot and cold my mind and body swings between, i can't decide if i want it to rain forever or just spend my days wrapped in patchwork

of daydreams

2009-07-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

i have been climbing mountains and swimming in resevoirs and turning tiny sugar mountains into warm pink melting dreams, tasting different waters and breathing different air, walking barefoot and sitting in airports in the hope that somebody will buy me a golden ticket to a different kind of wonderland, stitching fabrics together to the disdain of my fingertips and using watercolour paints so i can carry around my friends in my notebook glitter on my nose silver on my knuckles

my girl's tall with hard long eyes

2009-07-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

if i have made, my lady, intricate
imperfect various things chiefly which wrong
your eyes (frailer than most deep dreams are frail)
songs less firm than your body's whitest song
upon my mind - if i have failed to snare
the glance too shy - if through my singing slips
the very skilful strangeness of your smile
the keen primeval silence of your hair

- let the world say "his most wise music stole
nothing from death" -
you will only create
(who are so perfectly alive) my shame:
lady whose profound and fragile lips
the sweet small clumsy feet of april came

into the ragged meadow of my soul

honey springs

2009-06-23T19:33:00.000-07:00

my mama bought me a lovely old book called "home notes" which was published in 1894 and i have spent all today reading it in the garden

it gives very old fashioned advice on etiquette, health & homemaking

also recipes like apple snow and candied violets and beautiful drawings & poems

have you ever heard of the wonderful land
the dear land of make believe
where the rivers have beds of golden sand
and the clouds al day are rainbow spanned
where every good girl at a world's command
may summon a beautiul fairy band

why sweet little fairies with silver wings
wearing satin slippers and diamond rings
and, they say, every time the south wind brings
good boys and girls the fairy queen sings

and takes them down to the honey springs
if they never never decieve
but then, if the children become bad
the fairy queen grows silent and sad
and folds her feathers to leave
after tying the bows in her apron strings
in the land of make believe

in this wonderful land far over the seas
in the land of make believe,
they have toffee horses and toffee trees
and the sugar cows are taking their ease
lashing their tails in the peppermint breeze
or standing about right up to their knees
where the cocoa billows heave

there the kittens all fly - they never climb
everything has a magnificent time
as happy as adam and eve
and every story comes as you please
in the land of make believe

twinkle toes

2009-06-22T19:30:00.000-07:00

there is a constant ticking in my legs to walkwalkwalk, i go around in shiny shoes and sunday dresses with toffees stuffed in my pockets as if i am going to meet someone special who will make me toast with marmalade and read to me, but it never happens. a stranger asked me "penny for your thoughts," and i didn't dare say that my thoughts are thin as paper most of the time and my mind feels like the world when it has snowed and nobody has set foot on it yet. i need a father figure so badly.

2009-06-18T19:09:00.000-07:00

this evening i had a strange feeling i have not had before. walking across endless heathland, feeling slightly scared that dusk was looming and having given up on finding deer i came across a herd of does and their fawns. the fawns ran away from me and into a dark patch of forest and i followed them and when they started running away further into the forst i started running too and my heart was pounding and i had a feeling that was not a thought but if i had to put it into a thought it would be "there is nowhere i would rather be and nothing i would rather be doing at this moment than this". after the fawns and i had parted ways i started to think about how wonderful it would be if every day had a feeling like that, where you have not lusted after any other environment or scenario, that every day had a moment that was exactly where you wanted to be doing exactly what you wanted to be doing. how wonderful to say to the people you love every night before you sleep "today was everything i wished for it to be".

i don't remember a night where i have slept before the sky starts to turn blue. i feel so very small now, i am trying to think of tomorrow when i will paint shoes with gold glitter and bring home a mountain of turkish delight,

≈

2009-06-16T18:10:00.000-07:00

i have been planning my days meticulously, trying to make the most of every one, filling them with adventures and ending them with yawns and tired feet. i have stayed here longer than i needed to, but it is funny that the things i have been doing have been escapes from the city. last week i went to queen's wood and highgate wood. queen's wood has a lovely café that is in a wooden lodge and i sat on the veranda for a long time looking out at the wood and feeling annoyed whenever i heard a police siren that reminded me i was only in a little slice of forest in a big grey pool. today i went to hampstead heath and sat on the famous bench with an apple then walked all across the heath and through the woods, watched the people swimming in the pond and wished i was doing that too. all the floating pollen that looked like little fairies made my eyes itch, it makes me sad that body rejects the nature of summer with watering eyes and little rashes when i love it so muc

another place to escape to is primrose bakery, so many beautiful cakes and lovely girls who give you free lemonade

p.s... i am bored and sorry for the bad digital pixel pictures all the time, i am too poor to get my films processed but i will be able to soon as i have a job as an arts and craft monitor at a summer school to teach foreign children english. i am excited because i will be living in a manor house with a swimming pool and eeeeeeeeeeee

2009-06-15T06:53:00.000-07:00

my feet ache constantly from concrete, i feel so detached from nature and people. dreaming about people i am still in touch with and overwhelming dreams of people who i'm not. all i think about is being in a forgotten forest eating peaches and drinking honey wine and softly stroking each others hands with little lights and bundles of flowers and herbs everywhere.

lulla-byes

2009-06-10T18:53:00.000-07:00

this morning i was awoken by the sound of a rainstorm. i decided to go out straight away since i was already awake so i went and wandered around an antiques market in the rain and went into some really lovely shops that sold linen and lace and victorian nightgowns and dried rosebuds, then i walked around a lovely bookshop that looked like an old library with wooden staicases and balconies and vases of flowers on the tables, then i went around an organic food market and by then the rain had seeped through my tights to my feet so i went into a sweet café with pretty murals painted on the walls and i sat with my tea, apple and cinnamon danish pastry and strawberry cupcake and read my book. it was raining a moment ago but now it has stopped and i'm disappointed because i love the sound of rain through an open window whilst i try to sleep. it's funny how the thing that awoke me this morning feels like the only realistic thing that can put me to sleep.

2009-06-08T10:29:00.000-07:00

some of the lovely things that are going into my colour book

star-gazer's log of summer time crime

2009-06-08T08:09:00.000-07:00

so many nights we have curled up to sleep underneath the sea with the coral between our toes and bubbles on our chests, i don't know why it makes me feel so sunken that we won't be like that again. we've marvelled at the moon when it looks like a tooth, big and yellow and spherical and been puzzled at the sound of fireworks at eight a.m. we have made stories in the light of false constellations and played games about time machines and being children. whilst we peeled our oranges in unison i thought about how the homes we have tried so hard to piece and glue together are going to dissolve and crumble away from us. home is where the heart is there's no place like home home sweet home. where is my home?

come on home, the poppies are all grown knee-deep by now
blossoms all have fallen, and the pollen ruins the plow
peonies nod in the breeze and while they wetly bow, with
hydrocephalitic listlessness ants mop up-a their brow

and everything with wings is restless, aimless, drunk and dour
the butterflies and birds collide at hot, ungodly hours
and my clay-colored motherlessness rangily reclines
come on home, now! all my bones are dolorous with vines

(thankyou for the pictures to sophie for always documenting our fun together with such sweetness)

2009-06-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

i have been poring over my new book over breakfast for the past few mornings and becoming familiar with the different types of flowers, birds and animals i am going to be seeing when i go home. the book is called "the country diary of an edwardian lady" and it is the journal of a woman called edith holden who lived quite close to where my home is and it is very lovely. it goes through every month of the year and documents the natural changes in the months with really lovely watercolour paintings and drawings, poems, quotes by other people about nature and little sayings about the different months. it says in the back that she died as a result of drowning in the river thames whilst collecting buds from chesnut trees. i think that is a sad but very apt death for someone who loved nature so much.

this particular june entry made me very excited because these places are right next to where i live!

june 25th~
went for a long country walk through catherine de barnes, hampton in arden, bickenhill and elmdon. everywhere the lanes were fragrant with wild roses and honeysuckle and the breeze came to us over the hedges laden with the perfume of the clover fields and grass meadows. the grasses of all kinds were lovely, all along the wayside. i found the meadow sweet in bloom in many places, gathered self-heal and great burnet among the meadow grass and dogwood and the white, waxen blossoms of the trailing rose from the hedges. we picniced under the hedge with pink and white clover bloom and tall grasses nodding round our heads while a pair of excited robins chattered and fluttered in the bushes round us, evidently very curious as to what we were about down in their field corner. saw a great number of beautiful little dragon-fields, pale blue with black markings at a wayside pond, and yellow water lilies in full bloom on elmdon park pool

vipereus

2009-05-29T13:20:00.001-07:00

we saw this tree on monday and felt happy and free and comfortable all day. now the syrup of worry is creeping back in. on tuesday an old woman was shouting "please help me" out of her window, i went to her and she was crying and saying that she felt very lost so i offered to come and sit with her until her son, who was supposed to be visiting arrived, he never arrived. i went up to her living room, filled to the brim with artificial flowers, religious ephemera and newspaper clippings and stroked her back while she cried and shook with worry and loneliness and it was one of the saddest things i have ever seen. and now this news of you, with your ways as twisted as this tree, trying to crush and snap this happiness and freedom and comfort that we have built around us, trying to brush the aura we have worked so hard to repair with your pungent, punishing tar.

2009-05-21T05:36:00.000-07:00

i drift through rooms full of girls with names like cherry and cotton and notice the daylight creep through the curtains as my fingertips beg my pillow for sleep. take turns to treat each other like children. i read fairytales on the train and stare at your work shoes, you all look mouse eyed and dissatisfied and i wonder how i fit. foxes running away from me. i will smother myself in another thick coat of vanilla but the things someone said and did are always at the back of my mind.

picture of us playing the flying game by lovely sophie

stuck doing people things not knowing you have wings

2009-05-19T19:04:00.000-07:00

silver pink ponies flying over me
you may feel strange, well, you are an angel

i had the nicest evening on monday. dan and i went to see kimya dawson in a chapel in islington and it was so beautiful, the perfect place to see someone like her play. everywhere was lit like a rainbow and there were lots of children there. afterwards i gave her arm a little stroke and said thankyou to her, i think that you should always thank someone when they have done something you really enjoyed. i didn't take many pictures because i was too busy singing/lalalaing/being mesmerised but here are some that show you how lovely it was.

2009-05-16T15:07:00.000-07:00

moonshine
(achillea yarrow)

beloved by butterfies and bees, this flower is named for the great greek warrior achilles. according to myth, this yarrow grew from the rust achilles scraped from his own spear, and he used it to heal his soldiers' wounds. in love charms, it allows the harvester to glow like a star through the darkness. strewn across a threshold, it keeps out evil. covered with fluffy white or brilliant yellow foliage, it is stronger than it looks.

hot cinammon muffins, breakfast tea and a good book on a rainy morning, knowing that all the difficult work is over for the year is a wonderful feeling. i thought i would talk about the book i am reading at the moment as i am enjoying it alot. it is 'be with you' by takuji ichikawa and it is about a man whose wife dies and returns as a ghost a year later, but she isn't transparent or scary she is just as she was before she died, except she has forgotten everything about her life and does not know that she has died. so her husband has to teach her the story of their lives and their son's life and the fall in love all over again all the while the husband knowing that she might leave again at any time. i am only 137 pages in but it is the best book i've read in quite a long time. i was talking to my friend the other day about how japanese fiction has something that other fiction doesn't. everything i have read by a japanese writer has a really beautiful, magical feel to it but whereas western writers tend to dramatise magic and surrealism, japanese writers seem to do it in such a clean, simple and believable way. banana yoshimoto's books have the same appeal as this book, in that magical things happen and the senses are delighted, but you don't have to try too hard to imagine them. it's nice to use your imagination when reading sometimes, but i think that books involving magic and spirits are more satisfying when you can link it into every day life. so i very much recommend this book and any of banana yoshimoto's books (kitchen or asleep are good starters).

my mama, auntie, little brother rowan and cousin zoe have been visiting today and it has been lovely. i came back with my bag full of fresh fruit from the market and a beautiful old book about butterflies, although i won't show you it as i think i might have bored you with all my new books.

itsssssssssss bedtime xxxxxxxxx.x.
glassy little eyes

2009-05-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)
tumbling-hair
picker of buttercups
violets
dandelions
And the big bullying daisies
through the field wonderful
with eyes a little sorry
another comes
also picking flowers
clothed in sealace
appeared to me
your mind drifting
with chuckling rubbish
of pearl weed coral and stones;

2009-05-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

lovely breakfast of crumpets with lavender and honey and elderflower and raspberry tea

i feel kind of ........

apple peach apple peach apple peach apple peach

2009-05-05T13:31:00.000-07:00

my new little unicorn friend who guards me when i'm sleeping

i acquired a lovely fresh stack of zines at the symposium on sunday, i had lots of vegan cake and saved a confused baby mouse, i hope she is okay and still zooming around

shiny new shoes! i am so pleased about the first pair, i went to a swap shop today and took a few things that i really didn't want anymore and got these along with lots of fabric, lace, a cardigan and a skirt for freeeeeeeeee, they look like bon bons i think!

a word or two about the things i bought at the symposium...

i have wanted this book for a long time and i wasn't disappointed, lots of useful tips on planting things and making natural products yourself aswell as being very beautifully put together with the handwritten text and lovely drawings

sugar paper zine! amazing! perfect! lots of nice things to make and do and recipes and free casette with one and friendship bracelet materials with the other. wonderfully put together too!

shebang zine, again amazing! wonderful old textbook type covers and paper texture, lots of interviews with good twee bands and pretty drawings aswell as an article about treehouse living which i loved

2009-05-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

nothing more than an empty house, the warm hazy weariness from a day spent setting strawberry runners in the sun, a glass of cool sweet milk, and a shallow dish of blueberries bathed in cream. now i know how people can life without books, without college. when one is so tired at the end of the day one must sleep, and at the next dawn there are more strawberry runners to set, and so one goes on living, near the earth. at times like this i'd call myself a fool to ask for more.

this is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

2009-04-26T19:29:00.000-07:00

i had a very nice day in portobello this week falling in love with all the pastel houses and when i looked at what i had bought everything was the colour of them pastel pink, pastel yellow and these pastel blue pajamas

i thought i would show you some of the lovely little gifts i recieved on my birthday..

lavender soap, pretty flower handkercheifs, little trinket box full of pearly buttons, coconut and lime biscuits, rosy shopping bag looks like stained glass, white satin ballet slippers, chamomile and lavender seeds, and red popping corn

sweet little shells of violet, lemon, raspberry, orange blossom, rose and pistachio

and some lovely books too, hans christian andersen fairytales from dan and another alice in wonderland for my collection from mama

and my most favourite, a constellation globe that shows a map of the stars when it is off and sparkles them everywhere when it is on eeeeeeieieie

2009-04-26T19:17:00.000-07:00

my birthday was very wonderful i saw lots of lovely boxes and pendants at the museum and went to ladureé and took afternoon tea then went and visited peter pan, fairies and little mice and at night had girl talk and dancing and water balloons

i have been quite nice to myself lately and have bought lots of beautiful books, i want to be an astronomy genius

2009-04-24T16:29:00.000-07:00

-"i am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger than reason. i am so thirsty for the marvellous that only the marvellous has power over me. anything i can not transform into something marvellous, i let go. reality doesn't impress me. i only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, i escape, one way or another. no more walls"-

sleepy little butterly had a nap on my toes

niña bruja

2009-04-17T17:59:00.000-07:00

morning strawberry sky dusted with white winter powder sugar sun & nobody to munch on it with a kiss about apple pie a la mode with the vanilla creaminess melting in the pie heat a kiss about chocolate when you haven't eaten chocolate in a year a kiss about spotlights fanning the sky and the swollen sea spilling like tears all over your legs i remember how we spent our days together we had picnics with the dolls on a red-and-white-checked cloth in the garden ate off their china tea set drank homemade lemonade from seashells we filled the birdbath with rose petals and watched their reflection on the water we painted our faces with rainbows and wore giant heart-shaped rings and wings of gauze we went to the library and read books about baby animals searching for their mothers we sang songs of tiny stars lambs cakes she a purple black african-violet-dark butterfly and i a white moth what shall we do all of us? all of us passionate girls who fear crushing the boys we love with our mouths like caverns of teeth our mushrooming brains our watermelon hearts wish on everything. pink cars are good, especially old ones and stars of course first stars and shooting stars planes will do if they are the first light in the sky and look like stars wish in tunnels holding your breath and lifting your feet off the ground birthday candles baby teeth i lie awake in my bed in the tower room my cigarette becoming ash the moon looks too big like a belly full of blood i lay on the bed in the dark touching the bone basket of my ribs the bone bird of my hips