notes_i_don't_remember_writing raze "crooked baby corn nose." 220706 ... tender_square "if we give ourselves to it, it gives itself to us" 220706 ... raze "her writing reads like it's been inked with a pen she carved from her own heart. not bloody, but as close to being inside what she feels as words will allow." 220707 ... raze "i'd rather be overlooked than overexposed." 220708 ... raze "everything else i think is okay." 220709 ... tender_square “i am learning how the sun positions itself at the front of the house, as the earth adjusts its axis, as the days shorten, it sets it’s golden intention, casts its shape across the floor in new patterns.” 220710 ... raze "carnation white sauce evaporated milk" 220710 ... tender_square "i am aware of sounds, but am i aware of silences?" 220711 ... raze "hand me my bathrobe; the cow is in the orchard." 220712 ... raze "she said his name. or maybe she laughed it. does it matter? of course it does. it all matters." 220713 ... tender_square "what part of me is so starved for this love?" 220713 ... raze "eight cruel things to do before i die" (the name of a list i never wrote, or an unused song title? i'm not sure.) 220714 ... raze "i hold the hand that holds the pen that holds your heart. the ink is just an afterthought." 220715 ... tender_square "life as poem, not of words but of acts, which connotes something transcendent of action; you always feel in accord with the universal." 220715 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I've probably got a few, but I've forgotten where I've put them :) tender_square, I love the note you recorded here July 10. My dream mind figured you were artistic about sunlight streaming through windows! (re blatherskite_dreams) 220715 ... raze "heating up the beans." 220716 ... tender_square "blow the embers as i will-o-wisp." 220717 ... tender_square [e_o_i: i remember being immensely flattered when you posted about that light dream and i intended to write something on that blathe in response and never did--my apologies!] 220717 ... e_o_i No obligations for that! And dream minds are funny, turning writing-art into craft-art and such. Anyway, here's a note I don't remember writing at all: Object-related boredom 2444 220717 ... raze "i was aiming for pathos, but i just ended up sounding constipated." 220718 ... tender_square "YOU ARE WORTH TAKING CARE OF" 220718 ... raze "melchoyr is a norse god in training. when the moon is full, he rides atop a crimson horse and his eyes glow, twin embers in the crystalline night." 220719 ... tender_square "are there quiet places anymore?" 220719 ... raze "i've never known a vampire who was a vegan squirrel." 220720 ... raze "in southern england, thirty bridges span the river thames." 220721 ... tender_square "a pigeon flying over passengers, picking popcorn from the carpeted concourse." 220721 ... epitome of incomprehensibility evidently I meant to post this on blather, circa five years ago: Misheard: She was talking abt. how she was dating this guy, and he kept bringing her toes. 220721 ... tender_square "love is a loss of control." 220722 ... raze "stepping on a spider's dance." 220722 ... raze "dudes in pelican shirts cannot be underestimated." 220723 ... tender_square "realizations like raindrops stuck to leaves and shook loose after storms have passed." 220723 ... raze "dormant magnolias." 220724 ... tender_square "work in my favor—but i couldn't dig deep enough (then move into soles throb)" 220724 ... raze "the way you know the phone in the sky's ringing is the clouds start to shake." 220725 ... tender_square "maybe i’ve just accepted where i am and with that acceptance comes the realization that there are small things i can do to change my mindset. maybe i’ve been needing to internalize that mantra that i am enough. i am also trying to tell myself that i am enough *right now.* it’s okay to be ambitious, so long as that ambition is not tied to feeling like i need to do more to be respected, admired, etc. that’s a recipe for never-ending dissatisfaction." 220725 ... raze "get rid of the guy with keys at the door in the beginning. stretch the start of the spinning wheel a little to compensate." 220726 ... raze "all our crooked hearts." 220727 ... raze "rip my heart out of my chest. call it early christmas." 220728 ... raze "this building has a very cute mouth." 220729 ... tender_square "why is it so hard to be still? what am i moving away from? is this anxiety about aging or death or something? it is movement against the feeling of uselessness or helplessness? what am i trying to distract from?" 220729 ... raze "if you want to come to the show, come. if you don't, don't. if you want to bring the person you're in love with but afraid to tell, or your crazy stamp-eating uncle lance, or everyone you've ever known in your life, that's cool too." 220730 ... raze "the trail of pine needles leads to one more bloodless body drained of all things that fed it" 220731 ... raze "the selves we sell our lies." 220801 ... raze "throw soul confetti at us, if you dare." 220802 ... raze "somebody still loves you, samantha mathis." 220803 ... raze "am i right? am i right about the swooning?" 220804 ... raze "fingerless gods." 220805 ... raze "dear airplane: don't let me die in your arms. save your wreckage for someone else's ending." 220806 ... raze "scratches on the doorframe. superficial corneal abrasion." 220807 ... tender_square "we walk the same circles, see the same sights, with tiny variations." 220807 ... raze "i think it's safe to say anything beautiful about it grew out of missing you." 220808 ... tender_square "flying into nothingness, blank sheet so white my eyes are snowblind. do we exist in this emptiness? i see no bottom, no top; are we floating, unmoving, suspended in the sky? will a large hand reach out to us from the possibilities and grasp as a toy plane? i imagine my words across the sky, the ink marking the white, it running in places. how big is this canvas, the world's biggest poem." 220808 ... raze "mountains move in." 220809 ... raze "so, they just played a father_john_misty video on muchmusic. never mind the 'why were you watching the flaming dung heap now known as muchmusic in the first place?' questions swirling through your mind. here's what's important: the words 'christ' and 'came' were bleeped out. so, invoking the last name of a simple carpenter named jesus and making a passing reference to an orgasm isn't considered appropriate for a general audience, but kanye humping a naked kardashian while riding a motorcycle is okay. is this the world we're living in now?" 220810 ... raze "if there's a duality within me, i think it comes not from a desire to travel (which seems to have left me years ago after a not-so-great vacation experience), but from the dividing line between a waning desire to connect with people and the temptation to stay in my cave. i guess that comes from spending a good chunk of my life reaching out just to get blown off or ignored most of the time. the genuine moments of connection are usually worth the frustration it's taken to get there, but rejection gets pretty old after a while, no matter what clothes it's wearing when it shows up." 220811 ... raze "it's a long way back to a washed-away scent." 220812 ... tender_square "i cut each word, i deconstruct every excuse, rearrange the words into something that tries to explain but always falls short." 220813 ... raze "you smell of studied treason." 220814 ... raze "she showed up in a dream for the first time in a while. she was sleeping in my house, in bed with her boyfriend, but i didn't know they were here until i walked in on them. i tried to drain the awkwardness from the moment by making my eyes droop, babbling, acting the way i thought i might if i were sleepwalking, and turning back around." 220815 ... raze "regret sharing so much with so many. share more with less." 220816 ... tender_square "i have difficulty focusing. i am breathing in fetal but lose it. my mind is tired but doesn't quite feel empty. after, i see visions in my heart that my brain has no business cashing." 220816 ... raze "my life's work is a pamphlet that hasn't yet been tainted by being read by anyone." 220817 ... tender_square "sometimes when i am this still i worry that i am wasting time--but isn't this the true joy of existence? of stopping, of absorbing our surroundings, of keeping still?" 220818 ... raze "have you ever wanted to thank someone you don't have any good feelings for, who doesn't really deserve thanks, for something they didn't intend to work out the way it did? it's a funny place to be." 220819 ... tender_square "sometimes agreeing to do the same thing is a way to avoid uncomfortableness within myself, because i don't have to think about the 'rightness' of my stance--having people agree erases the need for emotional wobbliness or feeling conflicted, it also creates that social harmony i want." 220819 ... e_o_i Something in my unlined pink notebook/sketchpad as I was falling asleep - this was after a 2020 panic attack and I was calming myself with automatic-ish writing: ...And then thank you. K. not unlearned, mostly; unscathed, by touch; by sight, besieged. For the silent and/or confusing vowels - onward! 220819 ... raze "what's soft in the center won't be worth the dig. all impenetrable fortresses are pretty much the same." 220820 ... raze "you sing like a train." 220821 ... raze (turns out there was more to that last one than i thought.) he said: "you sing like a train that's never gonna show." she said: "i know i do. i know." 220822 ... raze "try wendy's bacon portobello mushroom melt. (i did, and it was surprisingly pretty good. then, of course, they stopped making it. because people liked it. and it was making them money. it was another promotional gimmick where a business introduces a successful product and then abandons it, just to prove they can, i guess.)" 220823 ... raze "this giant pile of nothing. burn it into something." 220824 ... raze "keep your head on a swivel." 220825 ... raze some advice_to_self found_in_a_notebook: "love this skin you're in. there's no telling how long it will be yours." 220826 ... raze "hashtags make me want to kill." 220827 ... raze "humming a half-remembered refrain. that's where they get you in the end." 220828 ... raze "who am i, and why?" 220829 ... raze "prince's original recording of 'how come u don't call me anymore?' swallows alicia keys' cover whole and shits out a diamond." 220830 ... tender_square "i am afraid to cross the street, i am fearful for others who cross against the light in wet darkness--are they seen? this is an ant colony and i am part of the system, working working working." 220830 ... raze "what are you afraid of? there's nothing i could tell her about you that's any worse than what you've already shown her." 220831 ... raze "it's hurting all our saviours." 220901 ... raze "the day is young. couldn't say the same about the stars. they're arranged to show you where you are." 220902 ... raze "a streetcar named revulsion." 220903 ... tender_square "to be who i buried under band names, buttons, converse, and vintage clothes, iconic shirts, glasses, hyperbole, exaggerated statements and claims, pop culture and gossip over ideas and values." 220903 ... past a very (very very very) rough floor plan, with existing layouts in black ink and proposed changes in blue. it's not a place i've ever lived, but after wracking my brain and seeing the notes before and after (the power of respect_des_fonds in real life!) i can place it. somewhere we bid on, near the bagel shop. it wasn't perfect but it would have done, with some work. but of course at that time things were going absolutely bonkers. i think it went something like 50% over asking. 220903 ... raze "he's a humiliation to the human carnage." 220904 ... raze "the next time i'm on a train, i aim to write a book. it will be called 'i wrote this book on a train'. it will be six pages long. that is all." 220905 ... raze "it's a long walk that's a relay race with no finish line in sight, where the baton isn't passed but held between two hands." 220906 ... raze "you are the opposite of everything you ever thought you'd be." 220907 ... raze "timeshares, tacos, and used cars." 220908 ... raze "the cruelest kindness was visited upon me." 220911 ... raze "november spawned a monster. his name is barry. he makes balloon animals. he's the cutest." 220913 ... raze "been trying to sell my soul for a while now, and i finally found a buyer in the big city willing to pay a good price." 220914 ... raze "the missing link eludes me." 220916 ... raze "my shallow existence is siphoning liquorice from my skull's apprentice." 220917 ... tender_square "in your twenties, everyone is interesting. in your thirties, everyone is boring or annoying." 220917 ... raze "from whom do you purchase your borrowed time? i'm in need of a new supplier." 220918 ... raze "that there's a praying man, 'tis." 220919 ... raze "i spent most of my early life chasing one person or another. all i ever got for my trouble was a sore throat and an empty stomach." 220920 ... raze "a true work of art does not slouch to meet your expectations." 220921 ... raze "he's allergic to strategy; it makes him break out in hives." 220922 ... raze "no, i don't believe it ever will be all right again." 220927 ... raze "according to the march 2009 issue of wamm magazine, i am: - a prodigy - an enigma - a local legend - famously tongue-in-cheek yeah ... but what about my penis?" 220928 ... raze "best not to fuck with history." 220929 ... raze "i'll wash my hair if you work on your enunciation." 221008 ... tender_square "at-capacity bars with the snaking tongues of bodies lolling into the streets." 221008 ... raze "now they're using sex to sell milk." 221009 ... raze "attempting to write in a self-made language before you have much more than a tenuous understanding of its intricacies can lead to some pretty interesting rough translations." 221010 ... raze "grow some hair around your nasty little heart." 221011 ... e_o_i I remember this enough to know that I was testing whether pens and markers worked and that evolved into a dedication to odd two-word combos, sometimes: Testing - OK Testing - not ok? inconsistent. sporadic. INTERNET PIGLET DANCE bulletproof coffee credit panel credit pencil furtive sylph doo doo doo sed iti ous parks! uni- ball? we wonder. écrit sombrero pastiche, high-speed interpreter, gargoyle shield, felicitous gangrene, effervescent mitochondria 221011 ... raze "she hates with a passion you mistake for love." 221012 ... raze "you sing of violet and navy blue. you feel they carry domestic connotations." 221013 ... raze "quality is a relative thing. like velvet fibre. it's all in the elbow thrust." 221014 ... e_o_i In the margins of a notebook I use for "lists and accounting" (usually about what I sold at craft shows): Heaven has clouds that are made of the thought bubbles of deceased comics. 221014 ... raze "you're a purse filled with rocks. i can't carry you no more." 221015 ... raze "i don't have any answers. i just watch." 221016 ... raze "it's an isolated place, just off the edge of nowhere. the streets are always cold, even in the sweltering heat. this is where dreams slip into questionable clothing. i love it here. i wish i understood why." 221018 ... raze "until a stray dog revives me through deliberate and excessive urination, i bid you goodnight." 221019 ... raze "a river of possibilities." 221020 ... raze "a stopgap thing to ease the pain of waiting." 221024 ... raze "stupid woman. stupid man. stupid people. stupid plan. stupid." 221025 ... raze "nothing human has ever rested in that space." 221027 ... raze "things were really murky and fucked up for a while. but now that i'm off the sauce, that's starting to clear up a bit." 221031 ... raze "you can kill a man, but you can't kill a thought." 221102 ... Soma "They are playing all their songs a little slower. It’s really throwing me off lol it’s just funny to me because I’m like THIS IS THE WRONG PACE It’s like watching a video on 0.75x" 221102 ... raze "ugliness and cleanliness don't coexist just yet. but they will." 221109 ... raze "janet reid, literary agent." 221110 ... raze "first i was him. then i was me. now i'm him again." 221111 ... raze "she's surprised by my patience." 221112 ... raze "rain was promised here too today and didn't come. instead there was sun, and wind, and just when it sounded like there were some hoofbeats in the clouds that could have been thunder, it was just more wind." 221119 ... raze "typical politician. talks out of both sides of his mouth and his asshole too, and has no idea what any part of him is saying at any given time." 221120 ... raze "trying to imagine the people who lived in houses that weren't mine. wondering who they were and what they thought about. i couldn't conjure anything. but the wondering and not knowing was compelling to me." 221121 ... raze "her eyes were antiquated chestnuts. brown as brown can be." 221122 ... raze "there was something cold and claustrophobic in the sound that appealed to me." 221123 ... tender_square "the surprise of snow-capped waves." 221123 ... raze "if i knew then what i came to know later, i might have settled for holding onto nothing and dropping to the bottom of the ocean." 221124 ... raze "the silence tucked inside the noise." 221125 ... raze "retinue. now there's a good word." 221126 ... raze "we're an asylum." 221202 ... raze "very few people are anything like what you allow yourself to believe they are." 221204 ... raze "a few weeks from now, you'll be fornicating in the bear bed." 221205 ... raze "from the skylight in my bedroom, i had a perfect view of the full_moon, hugged by a blanket of clouds. it felt like the perfect ending to a good night." 221206 ... raze "i'd watch that movie just to listen to the commercials." 221207 ... raze "a romantic felled by rum." 221208 ... raze "what do i actually need to do?" 221209 ... raze "we're leaving the self-perpetuating marshmallow fortress." 221213 ... raze "i fear her showing up, but she won't be coming. she knows he won't bring me back to her." 221214 ... raze "i guess maybe there's room in the world for all of us. i just can't fathom how some people can sleep at night." 221215 ... raze "while you and i stand agape with horror, everyone else says, 'this is awesome! take my money!'" 221216 ... raze "a compromised lothario." 221217 ... raze "there's an itch i need to scratch in the shape of all my best laid plans." 221218 ... raze "sleep is often the unwelcome cousin of death." 221219 ... raze "letters of love, hate, or bewilderment can be sent to the following address." 221220 ... raze "some people spray spit all over your face when they have something to say that's relatively sibilant. i wear a saliva-proof mask to catch the worst of it." 221222 ... raze "2018, you kissed my face clean." 221223 ... raze "the lusher language of pretension lingers." 221224 ... raze "when you're trying to be inclusive with a ghost, not much gets accomplished." 221225 ... raze "i think that's one of the problems with social media. for all the good it's done, it's made it easy enough to connect that some people take it for granted and don't bother to put any effort into connecting or communicating at all. they're more interested in showing off pictures of what they ate for dinner than having a meaningful conversation with another human being." 221226 ... raze "let your horses loose to tear up the town." 221227 ... raze "rod stewart said every picture tells a story. and we all know what a liar he turned out to be. but what if several pictures really did combine to tell a story — one that would shock and awe even the most shock-and-awe-proof mind?" 221228 ... raze "this is what is. not what will be." 221229 ... raze "insanity, thy name is 'doing all that shit on your own repeatedly'." 221230 ... raze "i'd like to buy that font someday." 221231 ... raze "you cleaned up your dog's shit, while he watched the manchester sky." 230101 ... raze "mutual pit plate." 230109 ... tender_square "feeling guilt and selfishness. feeling the shadow of grief. feel myself reaching towards life with all that i can grab. i feel weak. i feel foolish and unwise." 230109 ... raze "there is cause for trepidation." 230110 ... raze "time gives weight to that which once seemed mundane." 230111 ... raze "the scene doesn't get to turn around and reap the benefits of my existence after the way it treated me. it doesn't get to say, 'he's one of ours.' i'm not." 230112 ... raze "happy hollow days." 230113 ... raze "for whatever reason, i seem to remain literally the only person in this city you can't be bothered to show up for. and that's not a distinction i'm interested in. i have a limited amount of time left in this world. i'm not wasting any more of it on people who care more about being seen at public events than sharing space with someone and trying to have some sort of meaningful interaction." 230114 ... raze "what was the acting i complimented? natalie said it was lady gaga level shit." 230115 ... raze "you gotta make a flood of me." 230116 ... raze "in layers of six, from the top down." 230117 ... raze "i recorded pieces of things here and there, but nothing that gained any real traction." 230118 ... raze "drive-through inferno." 230123 ... raze "the abstraction of an ending." 230124 ... raze "i guess i shouldn't eat cereal after midnight. it impedes my ability to assist." 230126 ... raze "throw the children on the fire. their ashes will rise." 230127 ... raze "there's hope here, to be sure, but there's ambivalence too." 230128 ... raze "i tried that pitch myself, but i looked like a twin out of my body with discord on my mind." 230129 ... raze "i don't like the idea of people who couldn't be bothered to show up for you in life showing up after you're dead to paint themselves as more meaningful allies than they really were." 230130 ... raze "cubes of squash, not carrots." 230213 ... raze "i'm sure i had dreams about people, but all i remember are the squirrels." 230214 ... raze "here to leave. here to be gone." 230215 ... raze "we're all blind atoms hurtling toward mediocrity. aren't we *all* going the wrong way?" 230224 ... raze "i feel like fucking groucho marx with a pen in my mouth." 230319 ... raze "as a creature of passion, it's difficult trying to get through to a creature of logic." 230322 ... raze "one thing i'm noticing: wordy as it is, i'm not forming half as many images in my head with this book as i tend to do when i'm reading something. so that's a thing." (i'm not sure what book i was reading at the time.) 230412 ... e_o_i In my pink notebook, I think about micro-dreams I don't remember having: -Celine Dion was a "young, black American singer" until she was 12, when it was discovered that she wasn't black. Sylvia Plath and Sophia Grace. "All races are brothers." -Different ways to cook/eat fennel 230530 ... raze "i need friends like that like i need a nail driven through my nut sack." 230615 ... e_o_i Romanian movie - "Police Adjective" (I have no idea what the hell this is about. It's next to some notes about the Sanskrit verb root "smr," to remember. If there *is* a Romanian movie called Police Adjective, then...go Romania, I guess?) 230701 ... raze "'screaming unheard into the void' has pretty much been the theme song of my life." 230719 ... raze "our lives are our own. chance and choice butt up against one another and determine what things are going to look like, and then it's up to us to decide what we make of the picture in front of us. we don't tell other people how to live their lives. no one has the right to make us feel inferior just because we've chosen a path they can't appreciate or wouldn't have been brave enough to walk themselves." 230720 ... raze "that's my story — a quest for love and glory that ends in bloated allegory." 230722 ... raze "competition is like taking a leak on your own leg: so very wet and unnecessary." 230731 ... e_o_i Government position: Minister of Fanfiction 230801 ... raze "meaning and shape can shift over time." 230815 ... raze "clinical depression isn't always a chemical imbalance in the brain. sometimes it's just an outgrowth of life and what it does to us." 230825 ... raze "everyone thinks humiliation is great entertainment until they're the ones experiencing it." 230905 ... raze "sometimes i like to follow a book that really moved me with something a little lighter. and nothing says 'light bedtime reading' like a graphic novel about literally going to hell." 230915 ... e_o_i "Rosh Hashanah" on today's box in my upstairs calendar. That's Jewish new year, so maybe it was a reminder that Lia might be visiting her other aunt this weekend? But did I note it apparently weeks in advance?? (Perhaps because a new year in early fall makes sense? Rosh Hashanah is my second-favouritely-located new year, right after Nowruz (the Zoroastrian_Purple holiday). Apologies to the so-called western world, but the Gregorian calendar's turnover time just doesn't cut it, season-wise. Even the winter solstice would be a more sensible cutoff point.) 230916 ... e_o_i Re my note noted 230701: there IS a Romanian movie called Police_Adjective. It's more action-packed than Judge Conjunction, if less suspenseful than Paramedic Preposition. 230916 ... raze "just remember: the longer it is, the more it needs to take a piss." 230917 ... raze "i guess life gives you the lessons you need, and not the ones you hope for." 231026 ... Soma A single line ran the width of the window, softly glowing with a vaguely ominous untitled note "It was blue green and kinda terrifying" 231026 ... raze "green olives like bobby pins." 231027 ... raze "if it floats, send it to me on the stomach of a nun." 231110 ... raze "there's a sense of urgency embedded in childhood and adolescence. or at least there was for me. when you're that age, everything feels ... more, somehow. bigger and bolder and louder and more painful and more beautiful, and almost too much. but in a good way (at least some of the time)." 231119 ... raze "i am air-drying the hair of a surly porcupine while juggling frozen fish sticks." 240302 what's it to you? who go blather from