life is better purple

It would be so nice to swim. 

I want to drive on a six-lane highway with the windows down.  I want to feel the sticky heat of summer on my neck and back, to let it sit and simmer until a breeze lifts— I feel so much cooler this way.  I’ll take an exit with an unfamiliar name and drive and drive, through strip malls and gas stations, past antique shops with men smoking out front, men older than the furniture inside.  Past abandoned store fronts and diners that long broke their promise to make the Best Shake In Town.  I’ll leave all of it and get on a dusty road, kicking up red clouds of dirt as I drive, and I’ll follow this road until buildings turn into trees turn into sand. 

And then I’ll walk across boardwalks and dunes until shells cut the soles of my flat feet and the sun’s beating is too relentless to bear. Only then will I hear the water’s siren song, the sweet lapping of waves against the shore.  I’ll go cautiously, tiptoeing on wet sand, scrunching it between my toes as the first waves kiss my ankles and bury my feet.  And I’ll think I’m perfectly content right there, but something will push from behind.  I’ll feel the shove that makes me stumble deeper and deeper in, coercing with the same rhythmic pull of the tides. 

I’m completely submerged and I kick and fight, but the water won’t let go.  It takes over every sense: my eyes burn, I taste only salt on my tongue and in my throat and hear only waves thrashing in sync with the rush of blood in my head.  As waves punch me in the gut and make me fall to me knees, I know I am no longer in control.  The water has won, and I should feel helpless. But instead I feel free. 

I let the current take me where it will until I am surrounded by blue-grey, until the distinction between sky and earth is lost and every drop glitters under the sun.  Then I dive, headfirst and eyes wide open.  Every worry thought dream fear memory I ever had rises to the surface, where it evaporates into salty air.   I belong to the water, where I can swim.   

today, i decided to sit on my porch and read.  i’d never done it before, and i don’t know why because it really was wonderful.  the air was cool and still had the smell of rain that had fallen earlier.  a couple of birds chirped, neighbors drove by, dogs were walked.  it was all really idyllic and i kept looking up from my book to just reflect on life and the Meaning of it all.  real deep stuff.  

and then i saw the bunny rabbits.

i’d heard of the rabbits that roamed my neighborhood.  my parents didn’t like them.  they snacked on our hibiscus plant and perennials and anything else they could get their large front teeth on.  but when i saw the first one, i smiled.  how could anyone dislike rabbits?  they were cuddly.  they were the subjects of beloved picture books.  they wrinkled their little noses and had whiskers.  what bad thing ever had whiskers.  

and so i took a moment to put my book down and watch the rabbit.  i watched it scamper into the neighbor’s yard, another rabbit following close behind.  oh, how cute, i thought.  bunny buddies.  i glanced over at the house across the street.  two more rabbits.  in the yard next to that. another rabbit.  and that is when i was hit with two thoughts:

1. rabbits’ famed ability to reproduce at an alarming rate
2. the phrase ‘rabid bunny rabbits’

these two thoughts, terrifying on their own, combined into a short horror film that played out in front of my eyes.  i saw bunnies, everywhere.  covering manicured lawns, climbing on trees and mailboxes and abandoned swing sets.  i saw them hop onto my porch and swarm around me, their whiskers tickling my toes.  i saw hundreds, maybe of thousands of rabbits, undulating in waves, creating bunny mountains and valleys on my suburban street.  

and if this wasn’t enough, the rabbits then sprouted demon fangs and red eyes. foaming at the mouth, they crept up my legs, white fur covering and smothering.  i felt their whiskers brush against my cheek and their big teeth sink in and their furry little hearts beat with mine.  i couldn’t cry out or whisper or even breathe in my mind-film and then i really couldn’t breathe.  

i put my book down and ran inside and remembered why i’d never been so fond of nature.  

i had a sing-along with some of my favorite people today. aren’t sing-alongs the greatest?  there was a point in my life when i was a really good singer, but like most of my once-talents, i let natural ability wither away under a fear of not being good enough.  but sing-alongs make me feel like i can sing.  sing-alongs make me feel like i’m hitting every note (i’m not) and i know every word (again, no).  but i go for it anyway, belting notes and saying ‘lala-uhh-mm’ when i don’t know the line, putting up my diva hand and throwin’ it all over the place, mariah-style.  

and to sing with other people, to hear their voices blend with and grate against your own, to try and match yours to theirs, that is how songs are meant to be heard.  there is a beauty in listening to music by yourself, of course. but your basic connection to a song, to its words and whatever meaning you derive from them, is amplified when filtered through your own shaky vibrato and the lilting riffs of others.  it’s the exaggerated emotion you sing with because yes, these words are so true; why, they’re poetry, and you’re going to sing them with the gusto they deserve.  it’s joy.

we were singing along to lana del rey’s ‘video games.’ and i know, she’s inauthentic and manufactured and her dad’s rich and what’s so great about her anyway.   but god, i really thought heaven was a place on earth for a few minutes, if by ‘heaven’ lana meant a car stuffed with college-aged girls on an empty charlottesville street.

i’m so confused by time right now.  what month is it. what year. how is it already spring semester of the second year of my undergraduate education.  when did november happen.  my birthday was in november, but i don’t recall november happening.  every month seems to bleed into the next here, like augsepoctnovdec, each month not having much significance on its own.  i don’t remember much from last semester, maybe a few moments here and there and a general feeling, a sense of what that semester was.  but i can’t pin down each month and what it meant.  weeks fly by and i can’t even remember what i ate the day before, can’t distinguish one weekend from the next. can’t mark any accomplishments other than succeeding in not failing (which is not the same as succeeding). i’m not documenting enough, i’m not taking enough pictures or writing or changing.  i want to be harder better faster stronger just like daft punk and kanye say, but i feel utterly the same.  the same as last week, month, all the way back through decnovoctsep. i’m coasting along on plateau after plateau, but this is a time of exponential growth, or so they say in the guide books.

maybe i’m doing it wrong.  

today i bought myself a pretty notebook to write pretty things and maybe not-so pretty things.

i’m not big on material goods.  i realize i have more than a majority of the globe, but in relative terms, i don’t spend a whole lot.  i buy clothes but only if they’re on sale.  my ipod’s outdated and my phone was free with the contract.  i rarely buy things: books, jewelry, knick-knacks, electronics, decorative things for my wall. but a few days ago, i decided i wanted a pretty notebook, and not one of the six-pack for a dollar notebooks my devoted frugalist of a father constantly buys from office depot.  i wanted one for no good, practical reason except to have a pretty notebook.

i don’t know what i was expecting from buying the notebook. i didn’t get an immediate rush that shopping addicts report feeling.  but i felt happy.  i bought something i wanted.  i looked through the aisle, sorted through different designs and colors and paper qualities, and bought a notebook. and it wasn’t even the most expensive one!

it sounds simple and shallow when written like that, and it is, but i’m fine with being a little simple and shallow.  it would be great if all my happiness was derived from doing charity work and eating healthy food and reading literature and organizing my closet.  but sometimes it’s nice to have nice things.  and if all it takes to make me happy is a five-dollar notebook, i think i’m doing okay.        

yesterday, while listening to ‘someone like you’, i realized i’ve been misunderstanding one line of lyrics.  

i hate to turn up out of the blue, uninvited

for as long as the song has been out, i have been misinterpreting that line.  i have been pretending that the comma does not exist, that adele is actually referring to an object uninvited that is the color blue.  

it doesn’t matter that there is no such thing as a ‘blue uninvited.’ that’s how my ears heard the line.  i didn’t question it, didn’t wonder what exactly an uninvited was, how it could be blue, how exactly that fit in with the beginning of the verse.  any sort of inquiry on my part would’ve led me to the conclusion of blue-comma-uninvited much faster.  it wasn’t until i was singing the song loudly and obnoxiously with a friend that i comprehended the meaning of the line after hearing the short pause she made. i honestly don’t know if i would’ve ever figured out my mistake by myself.

i’ve never been a big lyrics person, but it did bother me a little that i was able to so quickly accept a phrase that made absolutely no sense and continue singing on my merry way. it made me wonder what else i just conveniently ignore and brush over for the sake of my own contentment.  i thought about this for a moment but then got over the little hiccup of cognitive dissonance and played the song again because god, it is so great to belt out adele songs in your empty apartment.

mondaymuse:

by lifeisbetterpurple

But the regret

Oh, the regret

Goes straight to my thighs

[wrote this for this musedays prompt, and formatted it wrong, again.  ONE DAY I WILL LEARN HOW TO FORMAT SUBMISSIONS.]   



Don’t fuck this up, Dan.
 
I gave myself the usual pep talk I used before any major life event: first job interview, first day of college, first time doing it.  The velvety black box sitting in my pocket felt both incredibly weighty and so light I kept absently patting my pants to make sure it hadn’t sprouted legs and bailed.  
 
Don’t be your usual namby-pamby self.
 
I had no reason to be nervous.  I mean, sure, she could be a little unpredictable.  Sure, she did things like show up at my apartment with two plane tickets and a B&B reservation, completely ignoring my reasonable qualms about going to Toronto in fucking January, of all months.  But that’s why I loved her, right?  Because she dragged me into living when I would’ve otherwise spent my weekend watching Entourage DVDs and playing Spider Solitaire. So I followed her to Toronto and froze my ass off while she dipped into boutique after boutique.  And it was while holding her hand as she picked out yet another painted figurine that I realized this was for real.   

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