Put your ear to the ground.
I want to fall asleep on books and newspapers. I want to wrap myself up in magazines. Glossy covers. I want to sleep with words surrounding me, underneath my chest, against my heart. People are filling me with self doubt. The written word isn’t so noble anymore. I’m surrounded by people wanting me to trade in my fancies for something practical. I am a victim of people who prey on fancies and dreams. These are phrases that cannot be uttered because I am surrounded by people who swear they never told me anything along the lines of how I should give up on something because the odds were not in my favor, because it wasn’t practical, because I couldn’t make a living off of it, because of a thousand things. I’d love to know when the odds were ever in my favor. When have I been anything but the last place girl? When have I ever in my life felt like I was so good at something, that I knew I could do it better than you and you and you? I can’t remember if a time ever existed and I’m going to close my eyes and pretend I’m everything I ever dreamed I would be at 25, and when I wake up, construct designs to make it happen.
There’s never enough time.
Between this summer course and work, I have no time to update, which I absolutely loathe. I keep wanting to write more, to dust off that pink typewriter (in a figurative sense since I’m too anal retentive about it to let it actually collect dust). Write. I want to write. I wonder if I’m meant to be a writer. What am I doing? I’ve never been exceptional at anything, I thought the one thing I was good at was this. What is a writer that doesn’t write? I’m nothing at all. I’m filled with uncertainty. I’m full of trepidation. I’m teetering on the edge of a curb, unsure to cross the street or go in the other direction.
My birthday is tomorrow. I feel the same, I look different. I miss my free time. My life is currently all about Human Bio. I want to learn French. I miss painting and sketching. I miss you, but most of the time I hate what you’ve turned into.
Last night I saw Toy Story 3. I cried twice. I wonder if I feel most vulnerable in a dark room full of strangers or if I can only understand people through a screen.
Anonymous asked: Who are you, stranger? What do you stand for? What do you like, and if it’s not me, then what does move you? What DO you look up to?
-s
Last semester I had a professor who asked us to fill out this sheet about ourselves, and everyone wrote a few sentences or paragraphs in response to the last question. Who are you? I said I haven’t gotten it all figured out yet. Certainly I have a picture of myself, and to an extent I know who I am and am not- but the question is so final and all encompassing. It almost feels like a trap to answer it, as though it has to remain static once I figure out whatever that is. I am not sure who I am, despite how headstrong, opinionated and stubborn I can be. I am a procrastinator, I often speak without thinking, I am headstrong, I am sometimes quick-tempered, I love the color pink and lace and bows, I like wearing jeans and t-shirts but I am not a fan of sneakers. I like flats and wearing my hair down or in a messy bun when it’s hot, I love ice cream more than anything in the world, I love painting my nails, I dance around my room to songs I love, I wish I had more time to read, I don’t watch much television but I love watching films. Those are all things about me but surely it’s not really who I am, though I feel like those sorts of answers are expected. I’m not what I like or don’t like. I’m not a certain person because of these material and frivolous things but they are the easiest ways to paint a picture of myself and I use that as a crutch occasionally- but you did ask what I liked (which I just noticed right now, so there’s that). Who are you, S? I wonder if you do move me. I’m moved by words and celluloid and film. Films often make me cry, in stark contrast to how rarely I cry otherwise. I cry when I’m frustrated and angry and I feel helpless, not when I’m sad. I look up to timelessness, and I envy it. I look up to people who go out and do things, to those who make and create change, to those who can take a sentence and make it something profound. I could go on but this is a lengthy answer as it is. Thanks for asking a question.
05/2010
Anonymous asked: When is too much actually too much?
Too much is too much when it hurts to breathe. When thinking about something gives you that feeling like you’re underwater and you’ve been holding your breath too long and you wonder how much longer you can go before you give up. When the cons outweigh the pros. When you realize something’s not worth the energy you’re putting into it. When you cry out of frustration over something. When you think about running away. When you actually run away. When you have elaborate fantasies about your ideal situation. When you wish you never ever had to grow up.
Dear J,
If I can even call you that. For all I know you might hate that, but I’m looking for some kind of subtle way of writing this letter, though only one person will know it’s meant for them. My response to your rambling and apparently slightly inebriated confession was not meant to provoke an apology. I am a firm believer that alcohol mostly functions as a truth serum- though occasionally it is also a crazy serum, depending on who’s drinking it, but I digress. I can’t sleep. It’s around 6 AM and I haven’t checked my blog in ages so I have no idea when you sent me what you did but let it be known that the delay was not intentional. Let me tell you a secret. Well, you and whoever is reading. I think I’ve only been in love once, and it was with someone I never even met. I’ve never been able to fall in love with anyone else, not that I’ve tried. I feel like the biggest cliche these days is a girl looking to fall in love, searching for her other half. I don’t see the merit in things like love. This may make me a cynic, or perhaps it just makes me well-adjusted. You make the call. I find that these desperate measures and lengths for love are often short-lived and rewarded with some manner of emotional turmoil and I’m quite fine without it. I was at a movie last week and I saw a trailer for some movie which was the equivalent of cinematic junkfood- the kind of film that requires no extraneous thinking, no real moral, a very superficial story, etc— and boy, does the media love to portray women as a whole as crazy and clingy and desperate and needy for companionship. Christ. You’d think there was no point in living without taking someone else’s last name. I don’t know. That was a long tangent. Let’s work our way through this. You mentioned my writing is terse, and I’m guessing it’s the journalism classes and that one professor I had that had a personal vendetta against unnecessarily flowery adjectives, and adjectives in general. Take heed and notice how much prose is considered well written because it’s flowery and long-winded. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy long-winded flowery things from time to time but why do some people feel the need to convince the world they’re worth something by cramming as many words into a sentence? Kind of like that one. Let’s be pen pals. You can email me directly at cri@crilauren.com or keep using the ask feature on my blog. There was more I had to say about your note, but I’m currently lacking the coherence required for such a task. You did however manage to find a way to effectively communicate with me. I’m not easily freaked out and if I were to be, it wouldn’t be by the written word. I am enchanted by thought processes and thoughts and did I mention thoughts? Perhaps there will be a part two to this. For my next trick, I will attempt to get 4 hours of sleep in. Can she manage such a feat? By golly, I’m going to try.
GPOYTh.
Too much shit on my plate right now. I have things due left and right, and dealing with family related issues. I don’t have time for other people’s hang-ups and issues until I’m done wading through mine. Please, please, please. Understand that sometimes words are just words, kindness is just kindness, and that not everything has subtext. I don’t have subtext. I have text. I am me. I’m not who you think I am. I’m as fucked up as the next unique special snowflake fluttering around this snowglobe we call a planet. Uniquely similar. I want simplicity. I need time to breathe and space to evaluate. Fuck fuck fuck.
My typewriter needs a name.
Playing catch-up.
I guess it’s never more timely than to resolve to do things than the present, regardless of the actual date. January’s almost over and I’m deciding to be better. There are a lot of things this task requires but mainly the first order of business is falling back in love with writing. We’re like old lovers and now everything is awkward and fumbled. To many scribbles on paper and I backspace long rambles about the things that really matter because I’m too worried about being judged on my words and how infantile they seem to me in comparison of what I was once capable of. I’m putting my nose to the grindstone. I’m tired of making promises to other people that only mean something to myself. I’m tired of indulging the selfish whims of strangers. This is my selfishness. I want to move mountains with my words and realistically speaking the odds are never in my favor. I’d like to be truly good at this before I keel over and die. It’s all I ever really wanted in my entire life. More than anything else, more than love (which, really, is an overrated comoddity that is closely linked to your willingness to learn to be happy), and more than anything. Really. I’m reading more and writing more and I’m filtering out the things and people that don’t matter in my life. This is my new rule: if you want to be important to me, then we’d better be important to each other because these hands are small and tired and I cannot keep trying to scoop bucketfuls of seawater out of a sinking boat.
I’ve known this for a bit but never got around to posting about it. My short story was published, and though I’m sure no one will really read it, I suppose it’s worth noting.
Whiskey w(v)eritas.
I can’t write from the gut unless it’s spontaneously. Never let myself think too much about the phrasing and just charge in unprepared like a child with a gun thrust into his hands and told to shoot if he wants to survive. This is warfare, the kind birthed from new thoughts and no direction and I’m just the instrument to get the job done. I can’t imagine what it’s like any other way. Too much thought muddles every little thing. If I think too much, I can think my way out of anything. I can think my way out of opportunity, longing, lust, love, and you. It’s devastatingly easy, and I’m better at it than anyone you know or haven’t met yet. I’ve never wanted something I couldn’t live without or let go. This is what we call survival. I can untie the strings that bind us and while the marks might remain against pale flesh, they won’t be there forever, and that is a comfort to me.
What am I waiting for? I can’t tell yet. I used to think I was waiting for someone or something to tame me, to break me, to make it so I needed someone but that’s not it. Someone to keep up with me? That’s more likely. Someone to make me feel something real, something deep. Everyone says love is like something gentle and beautiful, but I see love as a fire. It burns and will consumes entirely. It will eat you alive, and leave raised scars of knotted flesh that will never heal long after it’s gone. I haven’t been burned yet. Some people translate that into being lucky. I always assume it’s more tragic than anything else. I’m the girl who doesn’t feel. I wouldn’t know a scar against my skin even if I saw it in the mirror. I’d just think it was part of my face.
I wrote this a little over three years ago.
If you ask her what her earliest memory is, she’ll tell you it was white. Cold white blinding snow in an abandoned parking lot near the old church in the middle of the city. Spinning around trying to catch some on her tongue, dizzy and laughing until she fell down and stood there very still. She never tells anyone she thinks it might not be real. The memory, that is. The church and the parking lot are still there but sometimes she thinks she imagined it, her mind playing tricks on her. If that’s not her first memory then what is? What happens to people who just don’t have one? They’re a little less real than the rest of the herd. A little less genuine and a little more dead than the rest of them.
So she keeps her fingers around makeshift memories that make her childhood appear happier than it was. That’s what’s beautiful about the mind. If you tell it enough lies, they become truths. They become the same in the darkness of your mind. So she remembers being loved and being told she was pretty. She imagines her father is a handsome man who has aged gracefully as opposed to the faceless monster in her dreams. The man who takes pieces of her until she’s left with nothing but an echo of his face. Eyes that belong to her and a nose she just can’t place. Demons so familiar she takes these things out on herself. Cold white blinding truth. This is the way she kisses ghosts when she thinks no one is paying attention to the ways that she haunts herself with things that will never change. Tortured ideas of how permanent this is.
You can’t change this, girl.
You’re unwanted.
He never wanted you.
You don’t exist.
The make-believe girl has three half-sisters and they all have names prettier than hers, even though she came first. Exotic names. Madison is the spoiled rude one. The one that knows she’s beautiful, the one that scoffs at compliments and doesn’t know the invisible one exists. She wouldn’t care, anyway but the girl without real memories sometimes wonders what it would be like to have a sister, like on those sitcoms where the daughters share rooms and talk about boys and do each others makeup. Those fantasies are as real as the man who left without her name. He’s turned into folklore. Someone made up, a monster to scare her away.
Away from what, she isn’t sure. Away from this. A way to get raw edges mended. Some wounds need to be cauterized in order to heal. Seared flesh feels like lies against her lips. Like the unspoken truth that everyone knows but no one says.
What else is there to do, then, but wish for snow?
I’m made of the best intentions and the worst execution. I only long for the things I know I cannot have. I only love what I know will be lost. I only know how to lose myself to the point where finding it again is impossible.
Streetlights on the dark streets remind me of driving through the Lincoln Tunnel as a young girl and knowing the tight grip of fear around my neck that the walls would crumble and we would all drown. A coffin on four wheels. This will be where they bury me.
Slow asphyxiation is like loving you. You don’t give but you take. You lock yourself up in that box but won’t give me the key.
This time I will be the air that you miss. I’ll turn on my heels when your arms are outstretched and when you try to pin me somewhere between the backs of your lips and your hollowed out lungs, I will not be caught. This is the start of the chase.
