yes, again

"She breaks my heart again and again, but I still love her."
- Troy, Reality Bites

it happens

Matt: I think you can't walk away so you're burning down the house.
Harriet: Yes
- Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

"You see? That is just like you, Harry. You say things like that, and you make it impossible for me to hate you. And I really hate you, Harry."
- Sally, When Harry Met Sally

And in other news

"If there's ever anything I can do..."

"Well, I certainly hope you'll die soon."

- Broadcast News

Quote #1 for today:

When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day, suddenly the work will finish itself.

- Isak Dinesen

Mirrored

Reality rarely mirrors
what our minds
create.

Sometimes it's so much more.

Like a face above yours
tracing words
in the air between.

How can we imagine the absence
of something not yet
known?

A name dreamt years
before, of one,
somewhere in the world
destroying
himself; cultivating
darkness. (or creating it.)

Destruction, like reality, continues.

flying so you won't land

So today I wrote a song for you
'Cause a day can get so long
And I know it's hard to make it through
When you say there's something wrong.

So I'm trying to put it right
'Cause I want to love you with my heart
All this trying has made me tight
And I don't know even where to start.

Maybe that's a start.

'Cause you know it's a simple game
That you play filling up your head with rain
And you know you are hiding from your pain
In the way, in the way you say your name.

And I see you
Hiding your face in your hands
Flying so you won't land
You think no one understands.
No one understands.

So you hunch your shoulders and you shake your head
And your throat is aching but you swear
No one hurts you, nothing could be sad
Anyway you're not here enough to care.

And you're so tired you don't sleep at night
As your heart is trying to mend
You keep it quiet but you think you might
Disappear before the end.

And it's strange that you cannot find
Any strength to even try
To find a voice to speak your mind
When you do, all you wanna do is cry.

Well maybe you should cry.

And I see you hiding your face in your hands
Talking about far-away lands
You think no one understands.
Listen to my hands.

And all of this life
Moves around you
For all that you claim
You're standing still
You are moving too
You are moving too
You are moving too
I will move you.
-Alexi Murdoch, "Song for You"

it's really all so very much
trouble
and the moon is neither waxing
nor waning
but walked away.

the song plays on.
the skin rises in welts,
the rain falls,
and there is no shelter


marks: imagined,
and real

Deborah: How are you that much nicer than me?
John: Well. You don't set the bar real high.
Spanglish

"She breaks my heart again and again, but I still love her."
- Troy, Reality Bites

"It is never too late to be who you might have been."
- George Eliot

beauty and terror

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

--Rilke

You get so alone at times it just makes sense.
- Bukowski

maybe this is all places, all people

"Los Angeles is a city dedicated to the telephone. In part, everyone is constantly on the phone because they are continually making, breaking and changing their deals. They're constantly on the phone because here, in the City of Angels, where the elect have ascended, they often find themselves perched on cliff tops, on canyon tops and hilltops, absolutely alone."
Kate Braverman, Lithium for Medea

substitute people

"I'm impossible to forget, but hard to remember."
- Claire, Elizabethtown

still out of order

"The reality of long-term relationships is that they can be beautiful, they can be brutal, and they can be everything in-between."
- Eric Stoltz

"Come to bed. I hate sleeping without you."
- Lorna, Out of Order

"The brain will do anything to avoid dealing with trauma. It represses things. … [W]hen the brain doesn’t want you to revisit the dark place, it distracts you with backaches, neck pain, insomnia. The brain has many weapons in its arsenal. Anything to avoid that place."
Mark, Out of Order

she must be tired

Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog
where no one notices the contrast of white on white.
And in between the moon and you, the angels get a better view
of the crumbling difference between wrong and right.
I walk in the air between the rain through myself and back again
Where? I don’t know.
Maria says she’s dying, through the door I hear her crying
Why? I don’t know.

Round here we always stand up straight
Round here something radiates

Maria came from Nashville with a suitcase in her hand
She said she’d like to meet a boy who looks like Elvis
She walks along the edge of where the ocean meets the land
Just like she’s walking on a wire in the circus
She parks her car outside of my house
Takes her clothes off
Says she’s close to understanding Jesus

She knows she’s more than just a little misunderstood
She has trouble acting normal when she’s nervous

Round here we’re carving out our names
Round here we all look the same
Round here we talk just like lions
But we sacrifice like lambs
Round here she’s slipping through my hands

Sleeping children better run like the wind
Out of the lightning dream
Mama’s little baby better get herself in
Out of the lightning

She says, it’s only in my head
She says, shhh, I know, it’s only in my head

But the girl on the car in the parking lot says,
"Man, you should try to take a shot.
Can’t you see my walls are crumbling?"
Then she looks up at the building and says she’s thinking of jumping
She says she’s tired of life, she must be tired of something
Round here, she’s always on my mind
Round here, hey, man, got lots of time
Round here we’re never sent to bed early
And nobody makes us wait
Round here we stay up very, very, very, very late
I can’t see nothing, nothing round here
Catch me if I’m falling

- Counting Crows, "Round Here"

ask the dust

small conversation in the afternoon with John Fante

he said, "I was working in Hollywood when Faulkner was
working in Hollywood and he was
the worst: he was too drunk to stand up at the
end of the afternoon and so I had to help him
into a taxi
day after day after day.

"but when he left Hollywood, I stayed on, and while I
didn't drink like that maybe I should have, I might have
had the guts then to follow him and get the hell out of
there."

I told him, "you write as well as
Faulkner."

"you mean that?" he asked from the hospital
bed, smiling.

- Charles Bukowski