Echo

inside me, there is a giant amphitheater of happy people listening to music, breathing in the cool air of an emerging dark moon fall.

an entire day saved in drafts.

their names are never spoken
the curse is never broken

fall fall fall

my favorite season

again, hello goodbye

this time

your goodbye is my hello

you asked about the real me

the one i said was amazing

would you recognize her if you met her on the street?

if you can, then you’ve met her.

some people are good at losing things

some people are good at finding things

some people are too busy with the paperwork to think about it

top 5 list

1. solitude
2. sleep
3. sex
4. symphony
5. sunsets

just my guess.

fireworks tonight.

sleep tight.

for you i’ve uncapped the night sky

A vial of hope and a vial of pain
In the light they both looked the same
Poured them out into the world
On every boy and every girl
It’s in the Neon Bible…

Weeds is one of the best-written shows on TV:

a 12th house venus in cancer. my greatest gift. my biggest burden.

fall shift is starting. today was the first plunge. as predicted, a storm is settling in to take me into fall. 22 day tomorrow. get ready.

thank you for a wonderful summer.

i know i can’t be mad. i’m probably more sad about it than anything. people want to look and see my insides even if they don’t want them, they don’t want to have to be responsible. they just don’t realize that it is painful for me to show my feelings and see how they don’t fit into this world. it’s for my own survival that i have to keep them hidden. no depth of hole can make me not aware of them. but burying them under words and words and words is the only way i can make sure my mind continues to function even while being denied the things i want most. it’s how i keep myself sane.

i’ll never tell you what i feel.
i’ll never tell you what i want.
unless you tell me how it is i can trust you.

I know when the time is coming
All the words will lose their meaning
Please show me something that isn’t mine
But mine is the only kind that I relate to
Le miroir casse
The mirror casts mon reflet partout
Black mirror.

one day, if you can find me, i’ll tell you everything inside me that i’ve been holding back.

The mirror casts mon reflet partout.

talked to a friend last night. her husband is acting like a little boy trying to get what he wants by way of tantrum. it’s disappointing.

i told her, it’s a male problem, unfortunately. inside every man is a little boy who didn’t want to grow up. the good ones just can’t justify it to themselves that it’s okay to act in a way that disrespects their partner. the good ones, at least you can work with…they’ll know at the end of the day, it’s in their best interest for both people to work things out and find a happy balance, so they’ll work with you. but a little boy behaving badly is hell on a good woman. because she’s conscious of exactly what’s happening, but knows the only way for it to stop is if the man decides to step up and put a stop to the boy.

Got a text from my basketball coach thanking me for the birthday present I sent him. We caught up…sounds like he’s still with the same girl because his ex-fiance has another guy right now, but he’s biding his time.

What happened to there only being one shot at the title, coach? Jeez. I guess some things are easier said than done.

I still remember though. I still don’t look back. Why stay with someone if you already know they’re not the one.

At Daisy’s bachelorette party in Vegas, some British guy had come up to talk to her (12 beautiful Asian girls at one table…what guy wouldnt?). I had been out on the dance floor looking for a hot black athlete for her to talk to (her request for the night). When I came back, she grabbed me and introduced me as, “This is my cousin, Julia. She’s my hero. This girl keeps guys in line like nobody else. If you get stupid and pull bullshit, she walks away and never looks back. So don’t even try unless you’ve got what it takes.” The guy kind of looked at her like she might be joking, but seriously, with an introduction like that in a dance club where most interactions are bullshit, most guys are going to run. I didn’t care though. He seemed cheesy. But it’s not that I’m cold. It’s that, I don’t have time to waste, letting my head and heart get twisted by people who don’t know what they want or what they’re doing. What I have to give is real and of value.

I wrote to my coach, “I remember what you said, ‘You only get 1 shot at the title.’ If a guy doesn’t drop everything for the chance to be with me and is willing to gamble that I might slip through his fingers, then he’s already lost.”

He wrote back, “You are a Jedi to be.”

I wrote back, “I already graduated, coach. I’m a Jedi Master, imparting great wisdom to the young men who will some day save our galaxy.”

Finished Tale of the Rose. It takes 2 to make a painful marriage. You can say 1 partner doesn’t appreciate you and treats you badly, but if you’re still in the relationship and taking it, well, it takes two to tango. So somewhere, both people are getting what they want. And that’s all I want to say right now about it.

Here are the passages I noted:

*”You’re going to live an intense life, he said to Tonio. “Don’t let jealous people get to you, always keep moving ahead.” And he confided to me, “He’s a great fellow: make him write, and people will talk about the two of you.”

*”I’m writing a book right now, just some personal experiences,” Tonio said. “I’m not a professional writer. I can’t write about anything I haven’t experienced. The whole of my being has to be involved in order for me to express myself–or, I’d even say, in order for me to grant myself the right to think.”

*I sensed that Tonio was suffering for all mankind, that in some way he wanted to make them better. He was a man who chose his own destiny, but he had to pay a high price for his freedom, and he knew it…Not one spare second was granted him, for something almost divine had made him a kind of seed, destined to sow a better race of men on the earth. He had to be helped in his struggles, in the painful process of giving birth to himself and to his books, amid all the everyday cares that harried him and among all those who had not yet perceived that something in his heart was speaking with God.

*I observed my husband the way one watches a great tree grow, without ever being conscious of its transformation. I touched him as if I were touching a tree in his garden, a tree whose shadow I would have liked, much later, to fall into my final sleep. I was used to my tree’s miracles. His detachment from material things had almost become natural to me. And we lived in expectation of discovering a better world that would not be unattainable.

*A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.

*”But don’t forget what I’m going to say to you: the most terrible dramas are those veiled in mystery.”

*I stroked the lovely evening gown I would wear for this, the first evening when I had given myself the right to live again as a woman awaiting a sign, which could come from anywhere, that everything would come alive once more.

*”You will forget me,” said the captain, “as all my passengers have forgotten me. That’s as it should be. I’ve loved them all, all the woman who stayed close to me for an entire voyage, lying on the same deck chair, full of the drama of their lives, full of their fear of dying. They were all as beautiful and as fragile as my boat’s journeys or the life of flowers and butterflies that live only a day, like the glass of champagne you’re holding in your hand that will soon be empty but will live on in the bright glow of your eyes.”

*I believe Vera finally understood then that just being pretty isn’t enough for a woman to become and remain part of a man’s life.

*My God, being the wife of a pilot is a whole career, but being the wife of a writer is a religious vocation!

*His way of seeing the world, of experiencing it, had undoubtedly come to him from his childhood. He never referred to himself, never talked about himself. He tried every day to grow, to use past experiences to increase the likelihood of success, not only for himself but for others. He didn’t talk just to make noise with words or spew out hot air; he always said something that had meaning. He never allowed his physical and emotional suffering to interfere with the rest of his life; he put them completely out of his mind. He always gave himself over entirely to whoever was listening to him. I remember a line of his: “You must love others but without telling them so.” It explains his character: he loved people but wasted no time explaining the attention and love he was capable of giving them.

For him, love was a natural thing. Those who lived with him found him hard to bear because when he left he took the whole of his being away with him, completely and utterly. But he was also capable of returning completely and utterly, without living a particle of himself anywhere else. His physical and psychological strengths were united, in harmony with each other, and almost inexhaustible. When I would scold him because he was working himself to exhaustion on mathematical equations that seemed alien and forbidding to me, he would answer with a huge laugh and then invariably say, “I won’t be wearing myself out any longer when I’m dead.”

I loved him for his clumsiness, his poetic appearance, the way he had of looking like a giant who is concealing a sensitive soul. He knew how to move very heavy weights effortlessly, with the same grace he employed in cutting little airplanes out of lightweight white paper, airplanes he would then launch into the sky from our balcony over the neighboring houses…

(this last one struck home for me. “you must love others without telling them so.” or by hiding them. my deepest feelings are the ones i don’t ever talk about)

“Do you ever sleep?”

I laughed. “A lot of people ask me that. Why?”

“I don’t know. You seem like you don’t, like your mind is always working.”

“I actually need a lot of sleep, and I enjoy sleeping because I have vivid dreams.”

is putting hope into an oversight.

Hmmm…I entered the contest and never looked at the prizes. I never do it for the prize.
But it turns out, the winners get scholarships to Writer’s Boot Camp. Apparently they are one of the sponsors.

I met one of the founders years ago. If I do well in this contest, it will symbolically be like getting delivered right back to him. I never did sign up for a class. I secretly can’t stand being around groups of writers unless in very specific situations with great chemistry. And I don’t remember what it was, but something about that organization felt a little cultish.

This makes for an interesting twist. I’m faced with the question of, if I have a conflict of interest.

I don’t think so. I’m just going to focus on doing the best I can in the writing. Figure out things that come when they come.

Another incredibly beautiful walk while the sun was setting, listening to Neon Bible by Arcade Fire and just living.

Watched the sun set over the water sitting next to a 9. Another secret spot filled with pure truth and beauty.

like lock and key. i will know the person because even when he is close to me, i will still be me.

The 2nd Season of Samantha Who is starting off with some really great writing.

Conversation between Samantha and her mother. Her mother tells her to not give up on relearning how to dance, and Samantha asks her to push her like she did when she was young.

Mom: No, oh no no. No no no no no.That was hard on both of us. So many tears. So many vodka tonics.
Samantha: But you just said a Newly never gives up.
Mom: On themselves…on each other, all the time!

hahaha. It took me an hour (though a lot of mental prep time) but I wrote the first screenwriting challenge. right around 3 am, too. Thanks, 29.

there will be a storm on monday.

1 Album

Simple Things – Zero 7

1 Movie

Grosse Point Blank

1 Hero

Chiron

1 Move

Power with Persistance

1 Name

Miles

1 Story

They found the boy in a giant peach.

1 Mirror

Train whistle at 3am waking up on the floor of a room you don’t recognize in the silver moonlight

1 Thank you

To the one who will save me from drowning

he was a great listener. i told him he wouldn’t believe the day i’ve had. the week i’ve had. the life i’ve had. about the kind of boss that god is, how he’s always dangling the exact carrots that get me to do whatever he wants, but sometimes i demand some proof of goods. but what most people don’t know is that we should expect as much back from him, as we are giving out to the world. the biggest fallacy in the world is that we somehow owe god and must fear him. he might be sitting at a greater, more omniscient position, but he needs us to believe in him just as much as we need him to believe in us.

i told him about how much i love people, about all these doors i see them passing up, but they don’t notice them. and when i point them out sometimes, they don’t believe me.

i told him that when i left my home today, i thought i was going to do something almost predatorial, win one for the team by not holding anything back. the intensity of the energy flowing through me was electrifying, sometimes it seems unfair to just unleash when it’s that concentrated. but tonight, i wanted it– all it would take is one ignorant, cocky guy to make eye contact and saunter over thinking he had me pegged, for me to blow his world apart. without him even understanding how i did it without touching anything. but i have so much restraint, i walked past the rowdier places where i was sure to cross paths with a douchebag served up like chum and headed straight to the triple door, which has had great music every time i’ve been there. tonight a dj was spinning good r&b (Very superstitious, writing’s on the wall …) the nostalgia and beat taming my beast. i listened to the music, and while observing the giant aquarium, that’s when i found him, this fish, to spill all my silent thoughts to. he sat there patiently the whole time. i couldn’t have imagined a more gracious audience.