I am amazed

"At the next song switch, I hang back. I want to see this as well as be a part of it. I want to remember it for what it is. I am amazed by the love I feel for so many people. I am amazed at the randomness, the comedy and the faith that brings us all together and makes us hold on. I open myself wide to take it all in. The scene plays out like a rhapsody."

―Boy Meets Boy; David Levithan

let's be still

when I travel

"But as always when I travel, there is a palpable excitement to get home. Just a short plane ride away is my New York, my girlfriend, my dictionary, and all the other things, small and large, that make life so enjoyable. Some of them alphabetised."

—Reading the Oxford English Dictionary; Ammon Shea

xxxxx

i remember asking for art. and so, pain, little blossoming acid ticks, ants. and it's a fault in my wiring, fault of mine. i'm sucking on a muesli bar, biting skin off my lips, and the worst pain that doesn't translate, isolates.

like a cold sweat from a steaming kettle, feet too warm, painful teeth, sunlight on an empty stomach.

and none of it matters. none of it is seen. i asked for art and my guts are risen. i can't even crawl out of this playlist.

and all the bizarre fucking truth of, in a few hours, i am not even alone. i am in love with my soul mate, in my charming house, with a new job role, and i have an axe wound in my very centre. you don't get to be sad when you're happy.

there's too many ways in.

keepsake

"keepsake (n.) The fake feather that you found, now in my wallet; incomplete creature, completed by memory."

—The Lover's Dictionary (Unabridged); David Levithan

every single morning

"Every single morning is beautiful. Chipped china, fresh juice, the hum of blankets, intricate hugs. Late trains, the riptide of graffiti, against mesmerising sky, mushrooms through bitumen, engraved glass. The toothache, the too soon, the thoughts about tomorrow. A warm song, the whole world shot in reverse. The birds, all of the birds, the leather boots. The words and the arrival, every drop of love. The single firecracker of this moment, before. Every single morning is beautiful."

—Ian William L.

little ode on st. anne's day

"You're growing up, and rain sort of remains, on the branches of a tree, that will someday rule the Earth. And that's good, that there's rain. It clears the month, of your sorry rainbow expressions, and clears the streets, of the silent armies, so we can dance."

—Little Ode On St. Anne's Day; Jim Carroll

a beautiful mess

"She is delightfully chaotic; a beautiful mess. Loving her is a splendid adventure."

—Steve Maraboli

on self judgment

"When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn't get enough light, and so it turned out that way. And you don't get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying, 'You're too this, or I'm too this.' That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are."

—On Self Judgment; Ram Dass

express domestic delivery

"My head swims, stupidly, drunk on a Monday morning on loose strings, spotproof and anger, a limp of silence. But for an old Asian lady, cloudily, trying to record the phrase "express domestic delivery", reading napalm on a businessman and how pretty those characters are, though, struck upon a folded page. Then the sky tasted, tarpaulin across the tips of my drifting synapses: how you become your own once-called empty armies, so long before, so you need.

So you need to do a headstand, or a crown of bone. You need an insect bite and to crush the insect between pulpy fingers and suck against acrid, acidsweet guilt. You need to sweat ice cubes, to think of rashes. You need, in scratched glass and soft lines, a message: I am so fucking wrong. All my kindness with shrapnel. All my labours of and, alien of love that, this is.

This is the morning wires, the way, one machination evenly and remote, a day, preternatural of broken timbers, skinned knees, little stones. I am gorged on the lightness."

—Ian William L.

the diary of frida kahlo

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world. But then I thought, there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true, I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.”

―The Diary of Frida Kahlo; Frida Kahlo

the seed, the soil

“I like to write. I like to choose the right word, I like to write the right sentence. It’s just like gardening or something. You put the seed into the soil at the right time, in the right place.”

—The Guardian; Haruki Murakami

oils (redux)

"But then a small wind, a shivering light bulb, an ocean lapping against your tongue. And this sweat, like a bullfrog splayed, and muddy snowflakes, the guts of the day, and fingertips. And you are not entirely okay, because you were just great. And now your thoughts click like a telephone, the heavy kind, a nickel pressed to your forehead, and then removed."

—Ian William L.

the typewriter even now

"On that piece of white paper Sam wrote, 'Write about me sometime.' And I typed something back to her, standing right there in her bedroom. I just typed, 'I will.'"

—The Perks Of Being A Wallflower; Stephen Chbosky

luce

"When we finished high school, Luce, we knew less than a hummingbirds-wings' amount of anything. We knew less than nothing about nothing. We slow-danced, felt all moon and magnolia, all hip on hip and hot on skin. But we were kids who ate the tinned soup our parents simmered, who spent our summers just—just—just hanging out. I can't count the things we didn't know. Things about working—about the persistence of working—the way it never stops. About really being alone out there. About how you can pack up and leave. Or come back. About what it mans to be poor, Luce. Or, as well, what it's like having money—what it's like to order drinks and appetizers and desserts and just do it.  Lucy, we didn't know. We knew cricket-wing, moth-wing, less than paper. We knew zero. So how the fuck, Luce, did we find each other? That's what I want to know. Luce, I love you and that's what I want to know."

—Sean Michaels; Said the Gramophone

anautumn

"Sitting on a bench in a park on one of the last days of autumn. Leaves falling like snow. A soft meteor strike. Thick pin-pricks of afternoon. The light shining through their bones. I wish I could pen each one to the page."

—Ian William L.

love

"One day we will look at the past with love."

For your mix tape or infinite playlist; file under:
Hope Sound

Listen to the whole Hope Sound mix tape:
http://open.spotify.com/user/1231033109/playlist/2pUTGe6fm6nx326iicnLqQ

dust, maybe, never mine (redux)

"This picture I keep blurs into gasoline, burns until I nurse a blood nose and I am singing. I smile, and it stings, and I name the shapes, really, just chasing them back to smaller bones, thumbing at rings of so many taller trees. I hear autumn, my car keys, your lighter fluid and your eyes. Still, I have tried, to understand your sparrow pieces, and how they chip at mine."

—Ian William L.

say it, just say it

File under your mix tape or infinite playlist:
Driving Sun

Listen to the whole Driving Sun mix tape:
http://open.spotify.com/user/1231033109/playlist/2nYbaXpg8S7SlAJZY006Ys

a woman of war

“As women, when we're children we're taught to enter the world with big hearts. Blooming hearts. Hearts bigger than our damn fists. We are taught to forgive—constantly—as opposed to what young boys are taught: revenge—to get "even". Our empathy is constantly made appeals to, often demanded for. If we refuse to show kindness, we are reprimanded. We are not good women if we do not crush our bones to make more space for the world, if we do not spread our entire skin over rocks for others to tread on, if we do not kill ourselves in every meaning of the word in the process of making it cozy for everyone else. It is the heat generated by the burning of our bodies with which the world keeps warm. We are taught to sacrifice so much for so little. This is the general principle all over the world.

By the time we are young women, we are tired. Most of us are drained. Some of us enter a lock of silence because of that lethargy. Some of us lash out. When I think of that big, blooming heart we once had, it looks shriveled and worn out now. When I was teaching, I had a young student named Mariam. She was only 11 years old. Some boy pushed her around in class, called her names, broke her spirit for the day. We were sitting under a chestnut tree on a field trip and she asked me if a boy ever hurt me. I told her many did and I destroyed them one by one. I think that’s the first time she ever heard the word "destroyed". We rarely teach our girls to fight back for the right reasons.

Take up more space as a woman. Take up more time. Take your time. You are taught to hide, censor, move about without messing up decorum for a man's comfort. Whether it's said or not, you’re taught balance. Forget that. Displease. Disappoint. Destroy. Be loud, be righteous, be messy. Mess up and it's fine—you are learning to unlearn. Do not see yourself like glass. Like you could get dirty and clean. You are flesh. You are not constant. You change. Society teaches women to maintain balance and that robs us of our volatility. Our mercurial hearts. Calm and chaos. Love only when needed; preserve otherwise.

Do not be a moth near the light; be the light itself. Do not let a man’s ocean-big ego swallow you up. Know what you want. Ask yourself first. Decide your own pace. Decide your own path. Be cruel when needed. Be gentle only when needed. Collapse and then re-construct. When someone says you are being obscene, say yes I am. When they say you are being wrong, say yes I am. When they say you are being selfish, say yes I am. Why shouldn't I be? How do you expect a woman to stand on her two feet if you keep striking her at the ankles.

There are multiple lessons we must teach our young girls so that they render themselves their own pillars instead of keeping male approval as the focal point of their lives. It is so important to state your feelings of inconvenience as a woman. We are instructed to tailor ourselves and our discomfort, constantly told that we are "whining" and "nagging" and "complaining too much". That kind of silence is horribly violent, that kind of insistence upon uniformly nodding in agreement to your own despair, and smiling emptily so no man is ever uncomfortable around us. Male-entitlement dictates a woman's silence. If we could see the mimetic model of the erasure of a woman's voice, it would be an incredibly bloody sight.

On a breezy July night, my mother and I were sleeping under the open sky. Before dozing off, I told her that I think there is a special place in heaven where all wounded women bury their broken hearts and their hearts grow into trees that only give fruit to the good and poison to the bad. She smiled and said Ameen. Then she closed her eyes.”

—A Woman of War; Mehreen Kasana