empty room.

I'm in a certain place. And maybe I'm alone in the middle of this empty room, or maybe its just that for once I have room to breathe and now that it's empty i can hear each inhale and exhale and feel my chest expanding. either way, i'm here, and i don't hate it, and i'm even willing to embrace the circumstance and not just because there is nothing else to wrap my arms around. i see the others and i smile because its good, there is no mourning for what isn't mine. its floating and it's music and it's silence and i'm free. it allows for thoughts and things and strings of words and dreams to curl like smoke into the atmosphere. i am a little bottle in the middle of the vast cold floor and i'm compact and small. and when you finally curl your fingers around and bring me to your lips, we will change and swell and grow too large for the space to contain us.

gustav.

(gustav klimt)

gustav klimt... his patterns and the detail in the clothes, jewelry and hair... the beauty is that his paintings are so evocative of decadent fashion illustrations, even when his female subjects are nude. klimt's work was the first that really captured and moved me, at an age when I thought most paintings and museums were dull and has continuted to be one of my favorites through all other art that i've encountered.

pane.

mmm yes please right now.

i spy.

antique shop in maastricht

i spy 3 rolling pins, a hanger, 5 clocks,
a cross of wood and a tie with red dots.

a yellow clay pot and three silver spoons,
a delicate glass bottle made for perfume.

an old record player, a book with blue spine,
some vintage clothes i wish could be mine...

these lives.

"Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you've never been to, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground."
- Judith Thurman


a whiff of perfume, a song through my headphones, the sight of a tree standing brilliantly against a clear blue sky - makes me reminisce about places i've never been but that i am sure i know very well. sometimes i am transported to a a tiny street where i can find a dusty cafe playing jazz music and serving red wine, other times it's a glamorous world of cool marble foyers and high ceilings and open windows looking out across an ocean. sometimes it's rolling hills and olive trees and the smell of burning grass and running and climbing and tumbling... sometimes it's a room with a fire and creaky wood floors and the smell of hot cider and the feel of wool blankets and snow outside for miles and miles. sometimes i long for the scenario so badly it aches, like its something i once had that has since been ripped away from me in some tragic turn of events.

***

a large majority of my life has been based around these fantasies of what i imagine that life is like, or could be like, in different places, countries, houses, jobs, different scenarios, with different people - influenced by stories read when i was 11, thick books of stock photos of exotic places and houses i would pour over when i was 14, or songs i listened to at 17.

but which scenario do i pursue? is it possible to have and experience them all? each of these lives are possible if fully pursued, but how do you pursue a desire that literally changes with the wind, with the sight or smell of something new?

***

and yet during all this, i am living another life, the one that is my "reality", the one i've created that includes little pieces of all these dreams and childhood picture books and stories and songs. life is a little bit of all these fantasies, but at the same time it is never fully any one, individually. is it possible for ANYONE to be completely satisfied and fully involved in the life currently being lived without ever dreaming or fantasizing of another?

there have certainly been many times of sublime contentment, weeks while traveling, days exploring a new place, moments while surrounded by good friends or people i love, where i have thought YES, this is exactly where i want to be, exactly the life i want to be living right at this moment. but for the most part, we move forward, striving towards something we dream of, that may or may not be.

then again, our physical reality is viewed through the individual lens of our mental reality. as on that waterslide in Ohio, am i not exactly the person that i feel that i am, living that life i imagine, even just for those few moments?

schiele.

(egon schiele)

in a weird mood today. i feel a little anxious and annoyed and bothered and little things are frustrating me that shouldn't. got some good news yesterday, but didn't react to it like i should have. it could have made my day but it didn't really phase me. i just feel a little... blah.

memory.

10 years old. visiting my grandmother in ohio, we all went to a large outdoor pool, with a twisting waterslide with very high walls where for five glorious seconds there was nothing but sun beating down on wet hair and water surrounding a slippery body sliding down, down within the walls of this plastic tube where for a moment, it was possible to be anywhere that this scenario could exist. shy and alone, my first experience on the slide was affected by a loud boisterous boy a year or two older than me singing "i believe i can fly" who slid down in front of me, splashing and laughing with his friends. there was something attractive about the skinny freckle faced child and the whole situation and when i heard his name i rolled it around on my tongue and whispered it aloud to myself in the five seconds of solitude as i slid after him, tumbling and falling. there, for those long five seconds i relived over and over until it grew dark, i was not in ohio, i was not with my family, i was another, away, across, in love, someone confident and assured and i flipped my chlorine hair and shook my sunburnt shoulders and said his name again and again.