washing smelly dogs
no time for a cigarette
hm, I have to pee

a solar eclipse is proof that though the sun may never be out-shined, it certainly can be hidden, if only for a moment.

Hooray writing something no one will read! I need to figure out a clever way to attract readers. Hm, maybe actually updating would be a start?

I'm working on something right now. As far as I know no one on the art site I'm actually active on has read it, yet. Maybe somebody will stumble upon it here? I've found that livejournal has only been useful when I post comments on blogs.
 So, here it is, the teaser page for

(working title) "Tied by Strings of Pixie Laughter"

This was it, Warrior Poet could no longer stand it. Things were too intense between them. At first, she really did believe she could have her cake and coffee at the same time. But now she realized that she couldn't shove a bite of cake into her mouth and be sipping from her coffee cup at the same exact time- it would all go dribbling down her chin onto her shirt.

Things had started innocent enough, she mused. He was too young for her, after all, so she never imagined she could fall in love with him. But here they were, talking about past lives and unlived futures together. It didn't matter that they'd never even hugged or held hands; it was like every conversation, their brains were having dirty, kinky sex; every moment alone together, their souls were engaging in heavy petting. It didn't look like cheating, but it felt like cheating.

This was it, Warrior Poet was going to have to confess.



Warrior Poet is the name of the protagonist and it's about a love triangle with her older, vegan-poet boyfriend on one side and a four-years-younger-but-older-than-time boy on the other side. I guess it explores things like age and maturity, cultural values, and indecision. Or it's just a romping good story filled with all the usual trials and tribulations of adolescent-turning-young-adult love. Yay for high school!

Today I am sad.
I am moody and afraid and worried about my own self control.
I have been told that feeling like maybe you're insane is a perfectly rational, normative train of thought in this day and age. That the sane person questions her sanity.
But I wonder.
Sometimes I get so afraid of death that I can barely breathe. I think about how easy it would be for me to die. Or for someone I love to die. Or for someone I barley know or don't know to die right before my eyes. I think, 'What if I wake up and he's not breathing and I'm alone and I have to call his mom and dad and the hospital?'
That's part of what makes me want to elope under the State. I don't think the State has a right to tell me that my love is valid or invalid. But I do think that maybe with a piece of notarized paper I would feel safer or surer. In case he stopped breathing. Or in case I stopped breathing.
People sort of smirk when I let them know I'm engaged. I've seen myself that even a ring (which I don't have) is no guarantee. But I know and he knows that we're spending our life together as long as is livingly possible. 'Til death do us part.

Even with him sometimes I still feel very, very alone. That's another thing everyone is supposed to feel. I feel like crying more often. I think that maybe it's the hormones. The pills I take. Maybe they're what's making me act crazy. Because I don't think I was this crazy before. But maybe they're just a convenient excuse.

This is something they should talk about in those maturity videos about puberty that they show young children. As your body matures so does your cognitive reasoning and conscious awareness. This makes you feel all sorts of dark and evil things. Like there's seaweed, all slimy and salty and grim, that's tangling around inside of you.
That's the image I had as I slept last night and woke up this morning; that was the metaphor. I felt like there was a patch of tangling, growing seaweed inside me, all dark green and nasty. It moved with my inner juices and made me feel complicated.
I often feel complicated and female. Utterly female. Which I used to try to fight and now I'm not sure where I stand on that. There are so many lovely things about being female. But there are so many horrible, stigmatized things, too. Like being crazy because of hormones. Like being "weak" or "sentimental." I hate HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE that.
Today, I feel sad.

None. I'm bi. I'd go with a man or a woman or a transvestite or... whoever. Sex is an extension of something bigger for me. Biggest male crush? Johnny Depp. Biggest female crush? Zooey Deschannel.

Adorable
Bodacious
Cabaret
Dangerous
Electric
Functional
Gregarious
Humane
Intense
Justifiable
Kick-ass
Lively
Messy
Naked
Oblivious
Purrrrrrfection
Quirky
Radical
Slinky
Televised
Ubiquitous
Verified
Wily
Xenophanean
Youthful
Zen.

WHY ARE PEOPLE SO OBSESSED WITH LABELS? Have we really all shamelessly accepted this idea of being a product, only? Why are we all intent on selling ourselves?

I dislike introducing myself as a writer, now. When I was in high school, I dropped that everywhere. As if maybe it would get me credibility and hot babes. Like maybe saying that made me a little better than the people who thought they were better than me but didn't know where they were going in life except the next party or the new trend. As if maybe being a writer made me cool.

I am not cool. I am just me.

Senior year I stopped dreaming of living in poverty with a type writer and fingerless gloves, trying to sell short stories for food money while I worked on my novel that would become a best seller. I started dreaming of changing the world. Which is the most cliched, Miss America, plastic ideal ever. But it's also true.

I have seen a lot of people hurt a lot of other people. I have hurt and been hurt. But it's gotten so old so fast. I don't want to add to that complete level of suckiness. I don't care if I'm better at something than anyone else. I just want to live and watch people smile. I love seeing little kids smile. Those smiles aren't hiding a bitter grimace and those smiles aren't expecting the next big disappointment in life.

But sometimes I still say I'm a writer or an actress or whatever because it's easier than letting someone get to know me better. Except that's too fake and turns my stomach.

I decided that I want a cooler label than that. From now on, I want to introduce myself as being a narwhal. They are the unicorns of the sea and they are fantastic. "My name is Brooke and I consider myself to be quite the talented narwhal." My username for most things is already "writerfish." I'm a narwhal with literary abilities.

Sometimes I feel like I'm too unique to call myself unique. I mean, my tastes are so eclectic that I'm maybe just an average human being. I listen to both Maureen Sill and Blink 182 and also lots of other bands that don't fit together at all. I tell people my favorite band is Pink Floyd. My only real band shirt is for the pulse tour. They are the band whose CDs I have the most of.

But, honestly, I have a lot of other music.

Then I listen to these obscure or underground bands and I love what they say or their style and  think, "This is so cool." Then I feel guilty about listening to something that maybe is cooler than me. I have self esteem. I think I'm pretty groovy, actually. I like who I am. But by listening to things that are sort of "unique" does that make me a pretentious ass hole?

No, it probably doesn't. I don't think I would care too much even if it did.

I'm going to go do narwhal-y things and listen to my mismatch music and read "Choke" by Chuck Palahniuk and drink water and think about the world.

Everything you do has meaning. It doesn't matter whether you're in a crowd of a million, hanging out with five of your friends, chilling with your family, in a room alone with someone, or all by yourself. Every moment of your life counts.

People go through life with this idea that either everyone's watching them or no one is. It hardly ever works that way. When you think everyone's staring at you, chances are good no one is. When you believe no one's paying attention, chances are great someone is.

This is why one must live life to the fullest. I don't just mean living it up. I mean we have to fill every second of our lives with truth and beauty. If you fall into the habit of thinking that life happens to you, you'll never learn how to happen to life.

Believe me, you do happen. You will probably never have a clue how many people's lives you change within your life. You could be reading this and thinking, "How could I ever change anyone's life?"

Think back. How many people have changed you in some way? Even the smallest thing. I started drinking Mountain Dew only because someone I had a crush on drank it. He will never know he's the reason I started drinking it. But I love Mountain Dew, now, and it later gave me a point of commonality with my current boyfriend. Would I have gotten as close to my boyfriend as I did without that similarity? Probably. But it made talking to him easier.

It could be an even smaller difference than that. One you maybe didn't even notice. Like, someone smiled one time at you and you felt good the rest of the day. Because you felt good that day, you didn't say something really mean to someone and so you avoided a potential fight.

Your attitude is important to everyone. It's important to those around you, those around them, those around those people, and so on and so on. It's also important to the future. It may sound like bullshit, to say that a ripple makes a wave, until you realize how astonishingly true that metaphor is.

Don't feel so guilty when you mess up. Everyone messes up. EVERYONE. Everybody does something embarrassing at some point. Jesus was human so he probably farted at awkward moments. Buddha started out as a naive prince who knew nothing of the suffering of the world. But they gave their lives meaning and purpose. You live and breathe, you're not always perfect or always amazing. But you can always give yourself meaning.

The key is finding a happy balance. You can't treat yourself as a god and you can't treat yourself as less than dirt. You have to see that you are important and that there is a reason to your life. Many reasons.

Acknowledge your mistakes and faults, learn from and correct them, then move on. You'll do no good to yourself or to anyone else by dwelling on something you're over. If you're not over something, take some time to figure out why. Then learn how to get over it.

Don't whine about it. The only reason you can't is because you don't want to. Just because your problems aren't solved the next day doesn't mean you're not doing it right; it just means you're tackling something substantial and real. Things can take years to work through and that's okay. It's okay to fall down sometimes. It's okay to feel like you're not going anywhere. Even that is progress because you're aware of yourself. But you have to admit to yourself when you're trying and when you're slacking off. Most things that are worth doing are difficult, take a long time, and you will probably quit trying at least once during the process.

Recognize your limits, though. I qualify: The only reason you can't is because you don't want to, unless you're not supposed to.  If you are not meant to be an astronaut, no amount of training and trying is going to send you to the moon. Celebrate your defeats as much as your triumphs. You usually learn more from disappointment and things not achieved than you do from success. That learning experience alone is sweeter than success.

You have to start by loving yourself. Your body is a temple for your soul. You need to treat it like sacred ground. Be constantly conscious as to what and who you let into your temple. Also, pay attention to what comes out of your mouth (the exit to your temple) and what you look like (how you decorate your temple). I don't mean worry about your weight or if you're attractive. I mean what clothes you wear and the faces you have on.

Once you learn how to love yourself, you know how to love other people. Truly love, I mean. This isn't some abstract, adolescent ideal. If you love yourself, you want what's best for you. If you love other people, you want what's best for them. This will help guide your actions.

I love all of you. I want you all to be happy and healthy. I want you all to live long, content, interesting lives that are filled with lots of laughter and good times. I want you all to be able to get through your troubles with grace and a hand to hold.

True love is the kind you want to share.

Embrace yourself, embrace the world, respect the life you're living by respecting all life.

Start right now.

Love Forever. Let's change the world for the better instead of just talking about it.

Puppies. That breathe fire. I died.