panic; lyrics; tacks and nails May 10, 2008

That’s when you stutter something profound
To the support on the line
And with the way you’ve been talking
Every word gets you a step closer to hell
No, I just can’t help if you say what everyone else is thinking
Let me state the obvious again

P!ATD - Nails for Breakfast, Tacks for Snacks

Words I never understood yellsung by high-pitched boys. High-pitched boys I never understood, stuttering second hand wisdom. Boys, wisdom, my new goal if writing–once a day everyday no essays, no personal statement–it is all personal, it is all statements, or none is personal no statements to be had–

all or nothing, I realized long ago. it’s all meaningless or it’s all meaning-full I decided I realized I knew. Categories I can’t stick into boxes, into multi-pliable pigeonholes

knowledge

belief

hope all the same–

the way at the bookstore settled beneath ritzy antique dolls and yuppie bakeries, every corporation categorizes these three as if they were the same–

religion

philosophy

inspiration

same. Some neuron is missing in my brainhearthead that keeps me from differntiating, Rumi and Baptists and aciddrunk hippies and hipsters all speak gospel to me, equally profoud and fecund and blaspheming–back to the boys. all spoke wisdom love I want you desire, nurse priestess of mine and oh god I tried. I spent my heart into debt I still can’t get out of and still they come, asking all hurt eyed soldier magicians who magicked my good love away, heal heal heal and I cry can’t can’t can’t until I need someone to heal me–for three years love was a lion tamer and in a quick kiss downfall it was the void, it was humilation and so many cheating girls I can’t look in the eye. smug bitches smoking and heartbroken as me, I can’t help forgive all of them, lion boy and snarl cat and the poor neon child who begged for black spells to bewitch his mind into the hell we’d both gone through.

For once, I said no.

religion, hope, belief, inspiration. I’m colorblind, I’m categorized, I’m trying to speak clearer than I ever have before.

–

new goal: a freewrite a day keeps the poetry drought away.

BADD - Blog Against Disability Day May 2, 2008

Disability: literally “to be apart or away from ableness”, as compared to Inability: “without ability”. That distance makes all the difference. The schism felt between “disabled” and “abled” is ridiculous, put there by some Puritan ideal of stoic-ness, some idealized overbearing work ethic–work through your pain, your blindness, your hand, the bone cysts on your feet. Malformity ” To be badly formed i.e. unlike the majority of the population”; “Defect, deformity” - distance away from normality, from invisible rules put down by suppressed forefathers and oppressed foremothers, ruling what NORMAL or ABNORMAL–ACCEPTED or UNACCEPTABLE is 1500 years later.

I don’t know exactly what I’m trying to say, really–that we need widen our ideas of normality, that I’m tired of people giving me shit for taking the elevator to the second floor, that people need to start acting out of love and not fear, that I hate it when my roommate says “You mean you can’t do that? But it’s only… but it’s only… but it’s only…”

It is only my health, my self, my understanding and love for my entire being, that holds me back from unzipping that dress or taking that walk. Some part of me has chosen to twist my immune system, and I trust that once my body had a perfectly good reason for doing so. My dis-ease is another defense mechanism, the walls around my heart and psyche extending to my lymph nodes and lymphocites. On days when I can’t get up the stairs or on the shoes or up the good-love spirit that floats around us like water, on those days it takes strength to say “It is okay, I love you, it is okay, I love you”–in a way my disability has given me more spirit, more depth than I would have had if I was “well”. How many people say that to others? To themselves? And truly mean it? Let’s take a wild guess and say “Not nearly enough.”

It’s also an explanation–why my heart gets too big for me to hold it all, this longing for love of all kinds, read: why I was such a “weird” kid. While admitting disability/disease–especially at my age–is hard and tactless and scary, saying “I am a highly sensitive person who feels things way too much sorry for blahblahblah” is a bit harder. So for that, I am grateful to the Universe. Also, if it weren’t for the idea that movement is supposed to improve your joints (though it is hard as HELL some days), and my mild anemia meaning I eat like a pregnant woman, I would have a much harder time propelling myself to get things done. Pain keeps me grounded, pain keeps me in this world, and for that I am thankful.
—

I learned about this day at Daisybones’ blog.

YOU can learn more about it atthis post.

and also probably at the But You Don’t Look Sick website.

spring May 1, 2008

My desk is cluttered with evidence–bottles of tea, scraps of paper, neon post it notes, more medications than I can count, empty pillbottles, necklaces strewn like prayer beads… the walls advertise arthritis relief, yoga, study abroad sheets, quotes of Rumi, appointments, dried lavender. These are what is running through my head, this is all I’ve been running on–pills and tea and old jewelry and scribbles and beautiful breath.

I am running, I am one of the fleeting doe girls who only stops to type and dream and even then my mind is running at full pace–both to and from, with both fear and destination driving my head.

She-wolves chew my hair and women lovers stroke my chakras awake, friends pop up like mongrel dogs all intelligence and poetry and new, the activists want my time, poetry nibbles at the already tattered edges of my heart. The surface is unsure but near the ocean floor there is a layer of cool water like wind never drifts, my acceptance of zen and love and universe and despite all that fear of death I remember since I was three, I know know know that the Universe wouldn’t break me like that, I no longer equate death with stopping. Fierce women character my songs and everything I read is filtered through that ever-broadening perspectivee. I how the conversation will flow, if this cocktail will relieve the pain, if in time it will all come down to few things: whether my feet will fail, if I can untangle these stone necklaces, whether I can get past the artful survival mechanisms of the heart to let myself heal.

Some day I will come to this blog, or another, because I feel that I need to tell someone bigger than friend-lovers and my beautiful girl dog. It’s coming soon; maybe when I move away from this desk, transcribe the scraps of paper that are manifesting in the corners of this lovely joyous fleeing.

Who doesn’t like WP so far? April 1, 2008

This girl. I don’t know, maybe I need a different page layout, but something is not right… It’s kind of hard to use, too. Maybe blogspot? I actually don’t know about any other blogging sites (besides LJ which don’t even count).

 To explain the username: A friend of mine missaid my email, the littlest gypsy, as “the little hippie that could” because the keys are like, right next to each other. Trying to be more positive means cutting “little” and changing “could” to “can”. Three cheers for self-esteem later, we have thehippiethatcan! Which is also cool if you think about the idea that hippies are just blasted do-nothings who b**** about the state of the everything and don’t take action unless it involves, well, acid.

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