nature, nurture

Reach out, reach up. The sky is blue and wide and open,

the clouds are smiling on your soul.

Our souls are free, not meant to be confined

in human made walls and limits!

Open your eyes to your heart,

look at who you are, what you want and where

you stand.

Reach past what you know or can find easily-

embrace the challenge

and then run.

watch me

Nobody can stop you, nobody will stop you

from growing, from blooming, from blossoming.

You decide your life

You don't need their permission or approval

It's all you.

Your choices are your beliefs,

show the world how you feel, who you are.

(Because you are beautiful

and the world could always use a little more beautiful)

"My life is my message" said Ghandi.

What do you want to show the world?

What do you have to teach?

Live your message.

People will stare, will stop, will pay attention:

you will change lives.

rainbow dreamer

Dear secret painters, hidden writers, pretend illustrators, imaginary artists everywhere!

This is your call. This is your reminder.

You love the feeling of the wood between your fingers, the colors falling onto the page.  You love the scent of the paint, smearing it onto the canvas, blending and stirring. You love the way the words ring out after you've written them, the way they send shivers up your spine.

Go out, go forth, create!

The world is filled with destruction, with hatred, with malice,

it is up to us to overcome it.

To build over it, to shut it down

by bringing the beautiful up.

Create! Today is the day.

Create something beautiful!

city by the bay

Dress up just for fun. 

There are people around you who are tired of the monotony but paralyzed by fear. 

They can't do it themselves.  But you can inspire them.

Every place needs a trendsetter. Not in the norm, but in the way that pushes buttons and boundaries.  That makes people question and debate.  That prods open their droopy eyelids.

You know the type of person you want to be.  What is seperating you from being that person?  Visualize the obstacles, give them faces and bodies.  See their taut skin or bony shoulders. 

Now kick them down.  You are a skilled fighter, punching them in the face, kicking in their knees, bruising and beating them until they fall to the ground.  The concrete caked earth swallows them. 

And you are set free.

Dress up in clothing, in silky fabric and strands of pearls.

But also dress up in your life. Do something unexpected, whisper a complement to a stranger.  Each day is a manequin, waiting for you to dress it.

Be daring and different, but most importantly

do what is difficult.

some kind of wonderful

There was something beautiful and strange in vulnerability, she decided. In the moment when it felt as though every occurance in the world, every tiny interaction and experience was drilling into your skin, the feeling when you believed you were the entirety of mankind- Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders.

The peculiar blossoming pressure in the gap between your spine and shoulderbones, a weight where wings should grow.

There was a relationship to be had in self-reflection, in those times of existence when consciousness was filtered and drained through a lense beyond ones own, a lense of the intermost soul.

She knew her own emptiness, the bones in her that were still blank slates, awaiting their fate to be etched in by time.  She decided she was glad she didn't know what the words would be. 

The faint echos of the music that would trickle into her future was playing somewhere, softly.

She let a finger fall into her reflection, sending out tiny ripples that fluttered and shook the image. 

Just like that, she thought, it all could change. 

When the pieces floated back her image shone like she had never seen,

 the sun had slipped into the right place in the midst of the chaos.

trust in the world

There are more beautiful people in the world than there are bad people. You don't hear about them on the news, their faces aren't pasted on the fronts of magazines, but they are there. Maybe you know one. And now imagine, that that one person knows one more.  And one more. And on and on it goes.

Sometimes the beautiful in people is hard to find. In those people, remember that they are probably struggling with something invisible, intangible, indistinguishable to you or I, but to them it is a constant fight. They are using all their beautiful in that fight at that moment, so you can't see it. But it's there.

I remember one year I met a boy who was angry all the time. My most vivid memory was when he went into a fit because a group of us were playing cards and he was delt a bad hand. When we asked him to calm down, he screamed as though he was dying.  It was a hidious, horrific sound-the kind of blaring noise that twists your insides and makes your heart afraid to beat.  He knocked over a jar and the glass shattered everywhere.  He kept screaming.

Three years ago he began coming out to people, telling us he was gay.  Today he is one of the sweetest people I know.  He explained to us what had happened with his old rage one day, telling us that the screaming was his struggle. It was a fight he could never win, because he was competing against himself. Trying to change himself.

Half of him constantly winning, half of him constantly losing.

Beautiful people are everywhere.  They are your companions as you walk down the street, they are the man serving you your coffee, they are the person holding the door.  Be a beautiful person.  Do something more for these people today.  Smile a bit bigger, give away some spare change, call an old friend and remind them you love them.

Believe in the world. It is a beautiful place, abundant with beautiful people.

paris 1959

When I feel lost I look to "Howl" that I have pasted on my wall.

I twist myself into the words, get dizzy from all the thoughts that are flying by my face.  I open up my Kerouac and thumb through the pages, catching snatches of phrases here and there. 

Everything so free, so free.

When I'm done I feel more lost than when I'd begun.

But so much more free, so much more free.

And I remember that is all that matters.

knowledge

Open up your heart, open up your mind, open up a good book.
Learn something new and talk about it.

Talk with with doodles in a notebook,

talk with your hands, talk with your friends.

Talk until you understand,

until the awe of it brings you to silence.

"You can only see as far as you think"

Think farther. See farther.

Let the light shine into your minds, onto your thoughts.

Spread your mental wings

and soar.

you asked me about praying mantises

I can't get this poem out of my head.

Maybe because it's so simple but so true. Maybe it's because I'm scared to death I can't be with you in this life, but I haven't given up hope on the next. Maybe it's because I read this right after we talked about praying mantises.  Maybe it's because now that I know the answer I don't think you care.

Maybe it's because that's how poetry should be.

The words should stalk your days, the ideas coiling around your dreams.

An Entomologist's Last Love Letter, Jared Singer

dear samantha
i’m sorry
we have to get a divorce
i know that seems like an odd way to start a love letter but let me explain:
it’s not you
it sure as hell isn’t me
it’s just human beings don’t love as well as insects do
i love you.. far too much to let what we have be ruined by the failings of our species

i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night
i know you would never DO anything, you never do but..
i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night
did you know that when a female fly accepts the pheromones put off by a male fly, it re-writes her brain, destroys the receptors that receive pheromones, sensing the change, the male fly does the same. when two flies love each other they do it so hard, they will never love anything else ever again. if either one of them dies before procreation can happen both sets of genetic code are lost forever. now that… is dedication.

after Elizabeth and i broke up we spent three days dividing everything we had bought together
like if i knew what pots were mine like if i knew which drapes were mine somehow the pain would go away
this is not true
after two praying mantises mate, the nervous system of the male begins to shut down
while he still has control over his motor functions
he flops onto his back, exposing his soft underbelly up to his lover like a gift
she then proceeds to lovingly dice him into tiny cubes
spooning every morsel into her mouth
she wastes nothing
even the exoskeleton goes
she does this so that once their children are born she has something to regurgitate to feed them
now that.. is selflessness
i could never do that for you

so i have a new plan
i’m gonna leave you now
i’m gonna spend the rest of my life committing petty injustices
i hope you do the same
i will jay walk at every opportunity
i will steal things i could easily afford
i will be rude to strangers
i hope you do the same
i hope reincarnation is real
i hope our petty crimes are enough to cause us to be reborn as lesser creatures
i hope we are reborn as flies
so that we can love each other as hard as we were meant to.

tough love

She was beautiful in a way most wouldn't understand. They could see her symetrical face, they could observe the graceful indents of her waist, the arch of her back and curve of her hand, but that all meant nothing because they couldn't see her.  It was as though she lived in the awkward pause of existence between being and not, as though the society was her sea and she was constantly struggling to come up for air.  She could accomadate this world, but not live comfortably within its bounds.

Perhaps it was because she was too harsh.  People couldn't understand her honestly, couldn't take in her bitter flavor, couldn't swallow her words that seemed to be drenched in alcohol and lit on fire. Her casual conversation was most people's 3 am drunk phone calls to a detested ex-husband.

But she didn't know how else to exist.  How else to be human, how else to survive. It was her honesty that made her beautiful, she decided.,  When she looked in the mirror she knew exactly who she was looking at.  Her sculpted arms, the sharp dash of her collarbone-there was never a question.  Looking in the mirror gave her answers.

But she was the only one who would ask the questions.  She filled her life with wants and needs, lists of goals to fufill and clothing to buy.  She stoked her closet with corsets and lace, with dresses that fell upon her hips like waterfalls, and heels that punctured the earth mercilessly.  But they did nothing for her. Everybody looked, but nobody cared. And eventually she stopped caring too. And forgot why she had begun collecting in the first place.

Collecting things because she couldn't collect people. 

 And all she ever really wanted was to be loved. And for somebody to say so.

But nobody dared to say those words

to a person they couldn't really see.

fly away

"I always wonder why birds choose

to stay in the same place,

when they can fly anywhere on earth.

Then I ask myself the same question."


Where do you dream of traveling my loves? 
Now, how will you make it happen?

i love people

I want to meet the world.

I think everybody is just so incredibly beautiful.

I can't help but love everybody. I can't help but see the good in them. 

And I think everybody can see that good.

But there are people who walk their entire lives without knowing the good inside them.

There are people who walk their entire lives unloved

because nobody's told them otherwise.

Tell them. Speak up.

There are people out there that need to hear your voice.

They need to hear what you already know.

That they are beautiful.