what I thought about this weekend

I've been believing in the universe for a couple of years, but it's never occurred to me to speak to the earth.  Ask questions of the sky and draw strength from the ground.  Why didn't I think of that?  Right now I'm thinking only of clarity and focus and presence and pulling it from an icy morning ocean and moments by myself.

I'm spinning my wheels in sugar this week and feeling inconsequential and lost because of it.  It doesn't make me the kindest but eating only exactly what I'd like to keeps me on a path I'm happy with.  Strict rules are strict rules.

You know there's a question of being exactly where you are.  I realized today that I've been happy for a month straight.  I'm here, I'm here, I'm unbearably and astonishingly here.  Certain things concern me - a broadness in my back and the curliness of my hair - but I'm swallowing them and remembering (for once) that I'm hardly the only one that's ever been sad.

I'm with the right people, unquestionably.  I'm surrounded every day with wit and warmth and vibrancy and just the right amount of edge.  I know with a ferocious certainty that I will be here and there and everywhere for these people for years and years to come.

 

everything that's beautiful / what I thought about today part 5

Everything is circular.  You wake up at precisely the moment someone in your dream is going to tell you something important.  What anyone else thinks is happening has nothing to do with your own feelings.  "Their dreams are their religion."

It's autumn, it's fall.  In Australia they don't use the word fall, only autumn.  Autumn is a calculably more beautiful word, but fall and falling and fallen all have their own strange dreamy beauty too.  I just woke up from a nap and everything is coated in that charming and confusing fog that sleeping in the day brings on.

Have you tried being hungry?  It's astonishing how hard our bodies fight to keep from ever being hungry.  I'm far from starvation, and yet snacks are somehow at the very top of my list of priorities nearly every second.  Our apartment's official hangover meal is squash and butter, and I'm looking forward to dinner.

I'm trying to project outwards instead of in.  I want to be incessant, beaming, and golden.  Trying to slow my brain down is impossible so I've given up trying but I want to spin only warmth and happiness from now on.  No more impossible ones, I forget anyone and anything that doesn't need me.  I'm everything I ever needed to be.

hey sorry

Look, all my posts lately have been about FEELINGS.  Ew who needs 'em!  I'm sorry!  I've actually been in a pretty good mood, too.  Maybe just thinking too hard, but then what's new.

I just re-read my summer goals list and I guess summer is pretty well over, isn't it?  I think there's a few days left of summer but I'm in school now, summer's over!  Au revoir, bitches!

Anyways clearly you're all dying to know how well I did on my list.  Here are the results.

Mean Vagina Bites never went to karaoke and I don't think we had a single champagne breakfast.  Girls!  What the fuck!

I did tell all the boys I like that I liked them and that went okay.  Fifty-fifty.  Drunk Jill shouldn't be allowed to make that decision.  I also did manage to swim in the lake ten million times.  In the end we had a very sunny summer and my tan lines prove it.

I can finally do full camel.  Maybe not now? But I could.  There was a time in the summer in which the bottoms of my feet and face were good friends.

I didn't write my number on anyone's arm, mostly because I don't fool around with that shit.  I did, however, make my own kombucha.  Someone buy me a scoby, please.

 I was myself.  One hundred percent.

I read all the novels.  Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Good Squad, Brady Udall's The Lonely Polygamist, David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and I promise a few more that I'm forgetting.

That last point - about all the great summer things and my girls - I think I did every one of them.  Ciders in Rob's yard, Mad Mango my life (veggiecurrynoriceplease), so many cherries and peaches and raspberries and blackberries, endless bike rides every single day.  It was an exceptional and beautiful summer.

Look, I'm really, really happy right now.  Everything in my life is coming up aces.  I'm in law school, I know only amazing people, and my roommate makes me laugh every second of every day.  "if I could package this and sell it," right?

Hey, come visit.

I took this picture this morning to encapsulate my hangover, but it just came out as a paean to how satisfied I am.  Look at that mug!

 

what I thought about today part IV

Square your shoulders and look forwards, life right now is a possibility.  My heart and that ribcage you know so much about keep marching onwards even as I’m not sure where they’re going.  I’m still watching and kindling a semi-warmth after a long summer replete with flashes of ice.

Forget everyone around you, forget the imperative.  I know all I write about is my body, but right now I’m trying to forget about it and all of its questions and requests and live instead somewhere less earthly.

No one else cares how many people on facebook wished you happy birthday, no one else cares what colour you painted your nails.  The boy you like won’t notice you fishtailed your hair instead of braiding it, maybe no one will notice at all.  I hate to say it, but no one will be impressed you know all the words to the song and they don't care that you drink your coffee black.  If he doesn’t like you, your great handwriting isn’t going to change his mind.  If he doesn’t like you, there’s probably not much that’ll change his mind.  The tiny details of your life are only to delight the people that already love you, not to convince people to love you. Move on. 

feelings and wisen up: boys and girls party edition

1. Don’t be a shitty person.  Don’t drunk text the boy that’s still in love with you, don’t kiss the boy with the girlfriend.

2. Don’t catch feelings.

3. If you think he’s interested in you, he probably is.  If you don’t think he’s interested in you, he probably isn’t. 

4. Trust your instincts. 

5. Only drunk dial your best friend.

6. It’s okay to think all of your friends are dead sexy.  Male and female, straight and gay.  Tell them.

7. Be outraged when someone doesn’t have a crush on your friend.  There’s nothing better than a friend being outraged and genuinely astonished when someone doesn’t have a crush on you.

8. Don’t be a mess.

9. Are you a guy? Always be there for your girls on the dance floor to rescue them from creeps.

10. Believe in how beautiful you are.  

11. Be Kate Moss.

I don't miss anything/what I thought about today part III

I don't have anything to write today, but here I am.  Trying desperately to dredge poetry out of what I think might be happiness.

I'm feeling whole, I'm not worried about me.  I'm forgetting six ways, I'm forgetting anxious sadness.  Sealed up fractures, a ceramic semi-solidity to my shoulders.

If I keep straightening my hair, maybe I'll be stunning forever.  I hate me for thinking I look better with straight hair but the looks I get with straight hair are undeniable.

Endless openness, a cracking sternum, sneaking wheels in the bathroom during lecture.

I tell my public everything, my square triangular circular audience of four girls.  I keep my readership small and my thoughts impossible and I say what I want.

As a general rule, I do exactly what I want.  I'm watching most of every minute and sometimes saying stupid things but always doing me.  Forget sparkles, enact this girl in lean black every second.  I was made for a leather jacket and a certain forgettable goofiness.

nudity, am I right, two-feather?

let's talk angst / all the things I thought about today part 2

Ah shit I'm in Victoria again. I'm pleased to be here.  I'm still feeling kind of flush, buying organic tomatoes and coffees out. I'll take another scotch and soda and roll that 5.50 off my shoulders.

I'm not upset when the barista makes me a chai latte instead of a chai tea.

Fitting into friends like dropping into place, it's too easy and too hard all at once.  Outgoing Jill makes friends like snapping fingers and quiet Jill (who's arguably a lot more like real Jill) is still just watching. 

Sitting on a giant bed in a big room with no furniture, pretending I know where I am or how I got here.  Forget poetry, all I'm writing these days is huge shapes.  Drawing an infinity symbol is somehow easier than words.

"good and bad" is not how things should be in a new relationship.