Like the sunshine

"Joely?" :: Clementine

"Yeah Tangerine?" :: Joel

"Am I ugly?" :: Clementine

"Uh-uh." :: Joel

"When I was a kid, I thought I was. I can't believe I'm crying already. Sometimes I think people don't understand how lonely it is to be a kid, like you don't matter. So, I'm eight, and I have these toys, these dolls. my favorite is this ugly girl doll who I call Clementine, and I keep yelling at her, 'You can't be ugly! Be pretty!" It's weird, like if I can transform her, I would magically change, too." :: Clementine


[kisses Clementine] "You're pretty." :: Joel


"Joely, don't ever leave me." :: Clementine


"You're pretty...you're pretty...pretty..." :: Joel

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

"Change your heart.
look around you;
change your heart
it will astound you."

Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime :: Beck
video

There are a million reasons why I relate to this movie so much, and why Clementine resonates with me so deeply. This scene, and the conversation they have, is one of the biggest ones. There is this near constant undercurrent of insecurity that plagues me incessentally. Most of the time I can manage to ignore it, or if it isn't disregard, it is that I'm so used it being part of my make-up that I just plod along with it in tow. It does not seem to affect my daily life much, and I've learned to push through its naggings, especially in the realm of work and parenthood, and just tell myself that I'm good at what I do. I'm a good employee, and I'm a good mother, these things hardly come into question for me.

But, that internal beast of insecurity is impossible to shut up when I let myself care about someone. I have typically such a thick wall around me when it comes to relationships, and love, that the insecurity tends to sleep, or turn off, when I deal with things like dating, or talking with someone who I deep down know there is no potential with. But, the few times I've let the walls down, and let my heart get into the picture, and fall for someone - well that insecurity is shaken violently awake and all the years of hurt, pain and rejections - those ever-echoing feelings of never being enough, or being too much, come front and center, poking at me, making it impossible to ignore.

That's when the over-thinking starts, and the doubts, and the questioning everything I do. I feel like I start to ready myself for failure, feeling as if I screw up anything that really matters to me, and that I am just going to mess it all up again. It is so defeating, so painful, so heartbreaking to feel this way and I truly hate it, but I don't know how to stop it. I try to breathe through it, but my breath gets caught in my throat, choking me. I find myself (even more) sleepless. I start to feel needy, and irrationally sad. And then I start deciding that things are falling apart, even when they are not at all. Around this time I shut down, go quiet, sink lower than anyone ever seems to really notice.

The only buoy in the water of all this self-doubt is the need to be reaffirmed. I'm an honest person, and I try to be open, so I will usually try to reach out - try, not always succeeding. And it is then, in those moments, that I am at my most fragile. It is then when I truly need to be held and told that I'm alright just as myself. But that - that part - feels so impossible to ask for.

It really hurts, somedays, to be this way.

re-blogged from an earlier incarnation of my writing - seems appropos to my life and resonated with me today.

Tonight's Train

"Nothing at all, in my head, to say to you,
only the beat of the train I'm on.
Nothing I've learned all my life on the way to you,
one day our love was over and gone."

Train Song :: Feist & Ben Gibbard

video
song

The carnival train is leaving
every night at revolving times.
You can tell by the tinkling of ice on glass,
that the bar is still open for business.
So, you run to the platform,
suitcase in hand and a half-cocked smile.
Board and go, darling.

For those of us who brave the night air,
well, we take what we can to get by.
Sometimes its a tune played a degree too loud,
enough of a noise to drown out the asperity tinging the air.
Block out the way his eyes glass and redden (again),
as his voice sharpens itself into a dead cruel point.
Time to run, darling.

Other nights its a book of jokes and a box of tricks pulled out,

humor and laughter and fast movements

anything to distract the beast.
Make sure he is constantly looking around, averting his eyes,

harder to hit that way, aren't you?

And sometimes, yes sometimes, the loud gaffaws carry him,

until he's passed out cold.
Poison the water, darling.

But tonight, we will get on the ride, hop that train,

go off into the rainbow land of never-ever.

Take a bag of oranges and a thermos of cocoa,

smile at the elephants and clowns 'round the back.

We'll read books with bright pictures, paint the side walls with recycled decay,
and tattoo on our pale skin the girl of a thousand days.

Ride the rails, oh darling, darling.

Fill yourself with quarters

"You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends,
when you pass them at night under the silvery, silvery citibank lights,
arm in arm in arm and eyes and eyes glazing under.
Oh you wouldn’t want an angel watching over,
surprise, surprise they wouldn’t wannna watch,
another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults.

Make up something to believe in your heart of hearts,
so you have something to wear on your sleeve of sleeves.
So, you swear you just saw a feathery woman,
carry a blindfolded man through the trees.
Showered and blue-blazered, fill yourself with quarters.
Showered and blue-blazered, fill yourself with quarters."

Mistaken For Strangers :: The National

This song is amazing, cathartic, and somewhat timely and relatable; though I think part of me realizes that for years and years, possibly a lifetime, it is me who has mistaken myself for a stranger.

Do we fill ourselves with things to become recognizable, defined, a little less strange to everyone around us? Do we even know what it is we fill ourselves with anymore? I want to know what I'm filled with, what I'm made of, and what those around me are pieced together with. Tell your story, fill yourself with song, and keep your heart in tact.

We are all strangers to someone. We are all beloved to someone. We are all filled with so many somethings and someones.

Well I've been here before sat on the floor in a grey, grey room

"Have I still got you to be my open door?
Have I still got you to be my sandy shore?
Have I still got you to cross my bridge in this storm?
Have I still got you to keep me warm?"

Grey Room :: Damien Rice

intro
live
9 version

There are brief moments that touch our lives, and people who appear for a short time and connect with us, that change the ways and hows and constructs of who we are. Perhaps we don't realize it at the time. The days are so muddied up with places to go and be, and the anxious circles of nonesense that we string ourselves up, and get lost, in. We run from point a to point b, a countdown of hours and weeks and pay periods; we wait for phone calls, texts, acknowledgements that we matter, that we exist, and that this race we are stuck in has a purpose. And then, out of nowhere, a breeze blows in - sometimes it is followed by dark skies and rain, other times a carnival of clouds parading above our heads on a stage of bright blue, and then there are those times when the ground shakes, the universe daring the pavement to crack open and pull us in. But even in those times, when the earth moves, sometimes we fail to even notice.

And then later, sometimes so very much later, we sit alone and remember. What ever those moments were, and whomever those people are to us, they appear then, tossing around in the confines of cold, grey rooms - sleepless, middle of the night times, we've all had them - and we realize we missed it.

Is it the consequence of the pace we keep in our overwhelming, falling over the edge, full but empty lives that cause us to not recognize the things that are worth keeping? The people worth hanging on to? Do we stop, at the moment of realization, and try to gather it back to us? Do we shrug our shoulders, fill another corner of our soul with sorrow, grab for yet another cigarette, another cup of coffee, another pill or drink or meaningless night in an unfamiliar bed? Do we run to the shore of the ocean, to the tracks of an already passed train, or to the crossroads of past trips and given up dreams, and just let it go? Do we make a phone call, pen a letter, text a message, dedicate a song, buy a drink and say "you are the one that got away"? Or do we learn how to open our eyes more, say what we mean more, notice the days and the hours and the moments and the ones who matter?

Is it only on the cold nights, in the grey rooms, that we miss this? Is it the loneliness that creeps in, that we usually chase away with crammed filledh ours and miscellaneous substances, that suddenly can't block it out anymore? Is that when we remember the sound of the ocean? The creak of the bathroom door? The light peeking through, our hair damp and falling clumsily out of damp, haphazardly wrapped hotel room towel? Is it only then that we remember warm arms and laughter, making love to the whir and hum of the air conditioning in the middle of Summer, and some late night black and white movie in the background? Is it then that we long to return to some brief moment, or lover, from before.

Sometimes, though, the door closes for good. But it isn't the latest earthquake that took it all away, it is time passing, the neglect, the cruel art of forgetting, and the echoing chorus of all the sad songs we play in days and nights and rooms like these. Sometimes all we can do is learn, let go, and try to make something good out of regrets, and these nearly forgotten memories.

"This kind of forgetting does not erase memory, it lays the emotion surrounding the memory to rest.”

:: Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Lover, please do not fall to your knees

These are just the ghosts that broke my heart before I met you :: A Mix

Hallelujah :: Jeff Buckley
Video Tape (Mojib Remix) :: Radiohead
White Winter Hymnal :: Fleet Foxes
Heartbeats :: Jose Gonzalez
A Rush Of Blood To The Head :: Coldplay

No One's Gonna Love You :: Band Of Horses

Boys Don't Cry :: The Cure

Hoppipolla :: Sigur Ros

Manhattan :: Kings Of Leon

Such Great Heights :: Iron & Wine

Mushaboom :: Feist

Oxford Comma :: Vampire Weekend

Tangled Up In Blue :: Bob Dylan

Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want :: The Smiths

Sea Of Love :: Cat Power

Bohemian Like You :: The Dandy Warhols

A Case Of You :: Joni Mitchell

Both Hands :: Ani DiFranco

Harvest Moon :: Neil Young

A Sorta Fairytale :: Tori Amos

Ghosts :: Laura Marling

These are just the ghosts that broke my heart before I met you :: Mix zipped