i looked for poetry today

i looked for poetry today on a sleepy five o’ clock bus

trying to ignore the lean ache in my stomach (i forgot my fork, of all things

and curry doesn’t travel well on fingers)

but i didn’t look for long

concentration crackled by rumbles and yawns

(on my feet for ten hours

not really an excuse for sightlessness, but still)

my head drooped

knocked (soothingly?) against the window

my eyes roved up

and there, tucked under an olive cap

short blond hair

the kind that peeks out in little hanks

that curl right and left and make fingers twitch

for a brush of shaggy softness

For Your Coffee

there’s a man who always smiles

and slips me a single bill from his change

with an overseas accented “for your coffee!”

 

i don’t tell him

i’m not a coffee drinker

 

i slip the paper into my pocket

and grin back at him

as he explains how a little bit of something

(even a cup of coffee that i’m not going to buy)

can help someone get through their day

 

and it’s true

even the hypothetical thought

of caffeine

smooths the day out

just a little

breathing

Hello hi howdy *inhale* how do you do?

I’m still breathing, heart still pumping, yada yada. Much of these facilities are being put towards school work. Some of it towards writing (about balloons) and a grand part towards cooking (tackling pho some time this week, I think). And like the jammed up tape I am, I am sorry sorry sorry for not updating, but that’s life, right? Especially for the procrastinative. I’m planning on returning (aren’t I always?) because I’ve been scrawling away (when I should be studying) and I really need a place to put things again.

So look out (or don’t; I know i’m not that exciting) for a bit of me in the future. If school allows it. If I don’t eat myself into a coma. If I don’t browse through my notebook and ruin everything with tears of disgust.

Rummaging

I was rummaging through some of my old writing in search for motivation (and, I have to admit, to distract myself from my piled up math assignments) and I stumbled across this:

I feel that my womb does not rest in the average place which is to say somewhere in my abdomen but instead it lives in my head and stretches down my throat and arms to my fingertips. This womb is more than gently used and I am the bearer of a plethora of thought-children, some born in solitude and others in multitudes, and most all from different donors whose seed was taken in by many different vessels of which the ears and eyes have the highest count.

I am by no means a stellar mother, no, many of my thoughtlets have withered with neglect and malnourishment and whichever ones began to flourish were quickly dug up and preserved and never will they grow. The ones birthed from fingertips and graphite die the fastest in violent smudges.

If I were to say which ones have most succeeded and received the nourishment they needed to become robust they would be a select few that have breeched my lips. Those ones always leave the nest quickly as they move into foreign ears and are carried to distant places to mingle with other thoughtlets. I do wish I could see those ones more often.

The mourning song of a train whistle has just thrust its way into my womb, but that will surely only produce a stillborn, as it has done many times before.

I could turn to contraception and stop the mangling of these innocent muselings but I am selfish. I do not want to walk blindfolded with earplugs stuffed deep and ice packs on my skin to numb sensations, tissues stuffed permanently into nostrils sensitive to sensational scents. I take pleasure in widening my eyes to the sensual lights and colors of forests and junkyards, perking my ears to the eroticism of the songs of the rain, breathing in the sultry air of tidepools, and prickling with goose pimples at the caress of soft summer breezes.

I see feel hear smell these things and I know I will never stop. The dead and crumbling children of my mind would not wish for me to stop, I don’t think, for they are a species unique to me and without sensation they would go extinct.

So I implore the world: invade me. Force hideous beauty into my retinas and penetrate my ears with cacophonous harmonies. Infiltrate my nose with putrid aromas and assault my skin with smarting tickles. Please, I beg you, don’t let my womb run dry, don’t let my little thoughtlets fade, because then it is I who might die.

–

I wrote that more than a year ago. And I miss writing like that, my darwin I do, even though that’s just writing about writing. I think I’ve found the motivation I need (s’pose I should thank my past self or something.)

Is it alright if I amaze myself sometimes?

In my absence from this blog I’ve actually been far more productive than I’ve given myself credit for.

First and foremost, my college GPA has been higher than my high school one for these first two quarters. Let’s hope that holds solid for a while.

Much more interesting, though, and certainly more tasty, is that I’ve been cooking. A LOT. Almost every day I’ve been cooking something up from scratch, and it’s wonderful. And it’s very experimental cooking, lots of it, due to my lactose-intolerance, health-freakness, and mostly-vegan diet. I made an apple cake the other day with silken tofu. Should’ve written down the recipe because it was fan-fucking-tastic.

I talk about food a lot, don’t I? But that’s alright, I think, because I have an inkling (a nice, solid, strong inkling) of what I’d like to do in the future. Perhaps it’s not a career, but I think I’m going to get started on a cookbook (although I have tons to learn before I can make expansive recipes, of course). I’m also tinkering about with a food blog, and if I manage to get it nice and pretty I’ll tell you guys about it (then this blog can be less food-centric and more… well, me-centric, I guess).

But this post is food-centric. And so I shall continue waxing on about the wonderful food I’ve made lately (is that gloating? I don’t think so; the food was tasty, after all). In spite of having nearly no food in my cabinets I managed to make a pretty kick-ass quinoa-onion-potato soup today. I’ve also made some gluten free muffins (though they turned out quite flat), salted PB cups, and the creamiest oatmeal that has ever graced my tummy. Also soups galore. I love soup. It’s delightfully simple and pretty fool proof.

Talking about food is making me hungry and I really ought to conserve what little I have right now (no job at the moment… though that might be changing soon!)

Get thee to a nunnery upon thy weak hams!

Apologies for the random title (or not, because I enjoy it quite a bit). I’ve recently re-read Hamlet for my British Lit class. Which sort of leads into the point of this.

I haven’t been writing much on here, it’s true, but in all actuality I have been writing quite a bit, both for school and (sort of) for myself. The second classification of my writing might not actually be considered writing by many because I’m mostly writing stories with characters that already exist (yes, I’m talking about fanfiction), a notion which I think is complete and utter bollocks, preposterity, what have you. And apparently preposterity is not a word, but that also helps me shimmy into the point of my writing this.

I’m already in love with words. I have been for ages (as I believe I’ve mentioned a time or two before), but recently I’ve begun falling for language itself. I adore the way it twists and changes, I adore the differences between spoken and written grammar, the ability to create words that don’t exist but that are readily understandable (preposterity, for instance, though perhaps that’s only understandable to me because I’ve gotten not a wink of sleep). I’m hardly an expert on language, incredibly far from it in fact, but I’m desperate to learn more about it. In my British Lit class we read a few bits of stories in Old English, and I’m captivated with how vastly the English language has transformed itself. Somehow it went from a liquidy yet harsh and very outrightly Germanic/French conglomeration of words to this, which admittedly is still quite the linguistic smorgasbord but now very classifiable as, simply, English. 

And so now I am faced with the overpowering want to yet again study something that will likely not supply me with a stable career. I want to write, I want to cook, and I want to scrutinize syntax. What, oh what, shall I do?

Spinning Yarn

I need to start spinning yarn more often. Not fluffly soft thready yarn, but knitted word yarn. In plainer speech I really should be writing more, on here and in my notebooks and just in general really. I feel bad when I look at the empty pages of my multitudes of notebooks. I am an incredibly unfaithful writer. 

So perhaps in a month or so, once the new quarter of college begins and I (hopefully) have a bit less of a workload, I’ll attempt the 100 themes writing challenge for the third time. Or maybe I’ll make one for myself.

Although I have been collaborating with a friend, and so I guess I really have been writing quite a lot, but that’s going to come to an end eventually and I really don’t want my words to go stale. So that’s the plan. Writing it here as a reminder and because I really should update more often.