'Tis the season...

. to look my procrastination in the face

. to fold sweaters and wrestle mannequins every night into the wee hours

. to have a hoodie pulled over my head at all times

. to have the annual nervous breakdown over the phone while my mom (so graciously) tries to toe
the line between stern and soothing

. to watch old favorites like Pride and Prejudice a thousand times while I paint, taking pleasure
in lines such as, "Oh, the glories of nature. What are men compared to rocks and mountains?"

. to dream of the coast and make plans for a spring road trip

. to never really catch up on sleep until mid-January

Are we there yet?

an unfavorable vanitas

My dear friend and soul sister, Hayley, recently posed the question of "where do you put your anger?". What a beautifully complex and personal answer everyone must have to this one. While she likes to clean her room from top to bottom, scrubbing as a coping mechanism, I do the complete opposite. It is easier for me to purge outwardly, whether that be deleting Facebook friends whose posts are too painful for me to look at, ignoring texts, or just plain turning my nose up at things I find distasteful. Inwardly, I pine for everything lost. That layered mess you see up above is my own personal avoidance of the responsibility to keep myself composed and orderly. I've spent the months since summer in an absolute daze. Despite some moments of precious lucidity, I've scattered clothes and thoughts alike all over without any consideration as to when I'll need to come to a conclusion. It's at the point where I'm extremely uneasy when anyone enters my room, and I'll urge them towards the door with as much subtlety as I can muster. To glimpse the inside of my room is to peek at the maelstrom swirling in my head.

That painting in the background? She's probably my best yet, but progress is coming along so slowly. I can feel the cracks in that collapsing house. I don't want my brush to slip and eliminate that legitimacy.

For someone making books about coping mechanisms, I feel like I am more so emboldening a question mark than forming hypothesis.

Some Kind of Nature

(lyricz by gorillaz)

I've been having a blast digging through advertisements from the 1940s-1960s... so much insane imagery they would never dare publish these days.

Undelivered Compliments (Way Past Due)

A man stands in front of the microphone and raps about Jesus Christ, his right hand rigidly enunciating each syllable. "He's the one that wants to get your soul out tha blenda." That red face is going to burst with concentration. The flypapers hanging from the wall are full of black spindly creatures.

I'm self conscious of these words as I write them down. I cover them with my hands so that the honest looking boy next to me doesn't judge me the way I am judging the man rapping into the microphone.
"SEE YA LATA, HATAS."

The honest one turns out to be Bjorklund from Iceland, and as he plays his guitar and sings about coming home to an empty house, I decide I am his. By the time he returns to his seat, we have already spent years together, had our fights, made the choice of failed fate. I've decided I hate his haircut. We are through before I lean over to tell him his words were lovely.
"Serendipity is the theory that you can choose your own fate."

In another life, my love and I gripped each other and moved about as a single entity in the coldest room of the tallest building in North America. Boulevards stretched out for hundreds of miles in front of us like glittering veins that summer night. I felt like I could reach from Chicago and touch someone in Joliet. Everything my eyes could see was for me to have. In the middle, I thought I'd found my soulmate. In the end, these lovers needed lawyers. He tried to reach for me, but I rolled out of bed, gathered the secrets and memories I had flung about, and tiptoed out. I don't believe in soulmates anymore. I smiled at someone I scorned long ago. I held hands with another and walked the same haunted path, pretending to be a stranger. These glorified others never lasted. High school lovers don't know how to adjust to these altered landscapes.

I will smile at these men who sing their autobiographical lyrics like I know them.