i say it feels unreal, like a dream - but only because it feels like it has been some strange dim night for the past two weeks or so. it has swept through like a dream, feels transcient and fleeting like a dream and the only way to recover is to realize that you've been forced to grow up, to realize things about yourself, to realize things about you and other people, and who they are, and where the good people are and what they look like and who is worth really hanging onto, and who felt you aren't worth hanging onto. we all need work. and i wonder if i've been choosing to not callous or bruise, thus remaining slow and half-healed, because i've realized as soft as i want to be, the world is brushing and rushing against me and that's exactly what it should be doing. i can't list everything i've realized, and sometimes i like to think that it would just be different if i had a mom to ask about it, if she would know, but then i realize that she too has been swirled into her own part - she is the chemical reaction created by light filtering through the silver and dye in photo negatives, as they are put in old projectors and shined onto the walls that i'm standing in front of, trying to manipulate her image, i want to call it a reflection, but the actual term, which is so heartbreakingly true, is that it is a projection. this aside, i want to tell people i love them, and that i miss them, and want to hold their old shirts, and childhood photos, and little things they have left behind in my arms and curl up with them in some strange sublime summer night and not even care if time is standing still or walking decidedly forward. i still say it feels unreal, like a dream, where suddenly you think you see someone but it is someone else, the cast is strangely fluid, and your secrets become known but for some reason its ok, it's all right, you don't think twice. maybe that's the trick - deciding your decisions and never questioning them, so maybe stop bending your will for the sake of others, but this would also exclude forgiving - or thus being forgiven. i think that i am living in some place between those two - accepting apologies and asking for them, simultaneously, from everyone and myself.

these lyrics

have made me want to cry for...years now..i guess


" all those evenings on the back deck of our first apartment
they meant everything but the wind just carried them off
and we can't go back now, just a passing moment gone "

it seems like people never grow up like you want them to, or at least like you think they should


for matters of the heart are increasingly ambiguous

i'm trying to remember an adventure that hayley and i had...and it seems like i have a million hayley stories and memories but maybe not of just her and i.

i remember swinging around on the tire swing when sarah g. accosted her for losing her glitter handle silverware. i remember when erich saved rose petals with the unfortunate idea to spread them on my bed, which i immmmediately shut down and was grossly offended by because 1. my bed is not, nor was not some stupid add for a romantic getaway, a honeymoon suite, or a lover's play place 2. i hate roses and was mad and sad that he hadn't figured that out yet and 3. who the fuck does that??

anyways after i had shut down the gesture, because, i am a bitch, erich and hayley giggled and ran around in the yard throwing the petals everywhere, and i stood on the porch laughing and screaming because i had just raked the entire yard and now there were rose petals all over it and i realized that i kind of had kids, though one was my roommate and i was dating the other one. but i guess we were all just kind of kids that summer.

i remember being in the car in canada and hayley found the cookies that rachel had baked and made a huge deal in telling us that we were NOT to eat them, she was saving them for her friend. nonetheless, hayley managed to paw one away, and as we crammed into ali's car to sleep in snowy canada, all drunk beyond repair, hayley lay face down munching ever so quietly her stolen treat, then decides she doesn't want it, grunts, and throws the cookie. i never laughed so hard.

ali and i have a million stories, on the other hand, of things that we've done, trouble we've gotten ourselves into.

i'm trying to remember what it was like, living on haven street, not being able to drive, having to be in at a certain time, living in between the most passive agressive man in the world, and my mother, quickly still becoming the thing that makes me the saddest. anyways, i'm trying to remember what it was like then, when ali threw pinecones at my window to wake me up and show me her haircut, when we forged a path between our houses, when we would slide into the pool naked and giggling because it sounded hilarious, when we would sleep night after night in sleeping bags on the trampoline. i came home once, deflated from hanging out with someone, and there was a note on the door saying, "you had a bad night, i know, meet me on the trampoline."

once, i think on my sixteenth birthday, ali and i were reduced to wandering about and we went into some houses that were being built on our street and stood and explored the hollow skeletons that now have become structures that people will connect to and find refuge, or have a home in. that's a weird thought - being in a house, someone's a home before it was every really formed, when it was just lumber and nails...and then what do houses do when they grow up?

i'm trying to remember what it was like before i ever had sex, how holding hands seemed so much better than
i'm trying to remember what it was like before i ever had a panic attack, a migraine, cried over a friend, cried over a boy, cried about my mom, or what it was like before i ever missed home because i had never left it. what was it like when i lived with no internet no cell phone and couldn't drive or leave the house

what was it like before i had any independence?

i remember not knowing north from south, literally not knowing north from south.


what was it like to be fifteen?

1. do not be crazy do not be crazy
2. do not be worried or nervous
3. do not make fun if that kid in class AKA punmaster 8000
4. attend class
5. I CLEAN MY APARTMENT FOR NO MAN
6. weekend weekend
7. do not space out in jazz class
8. do not think about moving or leaving
9. do not get sick
10. stop being tired!

remember monkey freeze?

was that question rhetorical or to no one

when i close my eye covers im back in california, on the ferry, on 29, and i smell jasmine and my skin is prickly and warm and i hear laughter in the distance and the sky clears and breaks and opens and cries and burns and then i think about all the house numbers

29
1964
1323
3548
2579
1122
what do those mean