today i am in love with vincent van gogh

"What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum." 

 ~

"Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, ‘You can't do a thing’. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can't' once and for all." 

~

"One cannot always tell what it is that keeps us shut in, confines us, seems to bury us, but still one feels certain barriers, certain gates, certain walls. Is all this imagination, fantasy? I don not think so. And then one asks: My God! Is it for long, is it for ever, is it for eternity? Do you know what frees one from this captivity? it is very deep serious affection. Being friends, being brothers, love, that is what opens the prison by supreme power, by some magic force." 

~

"Quick work doesn't mean less serious work, it depends on one's self-confidence and experience. In the same way Jules Guérard, the lion hunter, says in his book that in the beginning young lions have a lot of trouble killing a horse or an ox, but that the old lions kill with a single blow of the paw or a well-placed bite, and that they are amazingly sure at the job... I must warn you that everyone will think that I work too fast. Don't you believe a word of it. Is it not emotion, the sincerity of one's feeling for nature, that draws us, and if the emotions are sometimes so strong that one works without knowing one works, when sometimes the strokes come with a continuity and coherence like words in a speech or a letter, then one must remember that it has not always been so, and that in time to come there will again be hard days, empty of inspiration. So one must strike while the iron is hot, and put the forged bars on one side." 

~ Vincent van Gogh 

tick tick tick tick tick tick tick away

my friends don't really get me, think i'm the only one. well, i sold my soul to jesus and since then i've had no fun. behind every tree's a cutting machine and a kite fallen from grace. inside every man is a heart of sand, you can see it in his face.

i was in an indoor forest, and there were spiders everywhere on the ground. like... real spiders. spiders the size of your foot. those giant bird-eating spiders, and those nasty funnelweb spiders. and i was with some other... ladies... i think? we were walking through and they were all freaking out, but i was trying to not be the littlest little girl screamer of the group, so whilst my mind was overwhelmed with highpitch hysteria, i wasn't making any noise. and then a man in black slacks, and a white button-down with black suspenders and a low black fedora came in to take us out of the forest. and when i looked at his face, he had no eyes. just empty sockets. black as black as black. but they weren't off-putting enough to distract me from his chiseled features, or how attractive his hands were. i was only going to walk behind him, why did it matter what his eyes did or didn't look like?

the wind and i, we speak the same, but he don't hear so well. you're gonna have to curse him, well you're gonna have to yell. the sky and i we've had our fights and i'm coming round to rain. if the rain come round and i don't go out i don't ever have to speak again.


such a rainy, grizzly grey month april has been! the weather report says we might be getting valley snow this friday. that's ridiculous. i remember my birthday, in 9th grade, when i turned 15, it snowed and that felt super late to me and i couldn't believe that it would snow in april. now, don't get me wrong, i love rain. i adore rain. the snow and the cold? not so much. but spring rain, when the rain finally turns warm and you can go play in it and run around and get soaked to the bone, but not frozen - that is some of my absolute favorite weather. and one of the multiple reasons i feel so drawn northwest these days. the weather up north is mah fraverite. i want the pacific coast, i just don't want california. everyone else can have california, it's never been the place for me. and if portland weren't the mecca for every pretentious indie hipster poser, portland would be the place for me. i thought it was gorgeous when i went. like someone stuck a city in the middle of a rainforest. but no - portland's too inland. coast coast coast - i need the coast. i remember sitting in the trees by the heceta head lighthouse. on the side of this coastal mountain thing, and i could hear the wind in the trees, and the waves at the same time, and smell the ocean, and i remember telling myself i could live in that one spot for the rest of my life and be completely content. my... all of me... yearns for the coast and the ocean. some soulpull riptide keeps trying to drag me further west. and i feel the need to succumb.

the captain's got his boots on and he's heading out the door. leaving his lady alone, thinking "he don't love me no more." he's done with all his bullshit, he's going back to war. if heaven is as heaven does, then this is hell for sure.


oh, it was a month for remembering and forgetting you. jamming straw in all the chinks of the walls that you tore down. torn down or... exploded. it seemed like a major detonation, really. other days it only felt like it was a minor collapse. every so often i see it for what we really were. a long, slow deflation. after all the hot air ballooning up in the sky is over, it's back to earth, a bit of a bumpy landing. and you have to lay it out in a huge flat open space and watch it fall into itself until there's no air left and then you fold it carefully, and roll it up, and cram it into something so much smaller than it was. and you drive off and the thing that's occupying that small space in the boot of the car seems impossibly different, wholly alien from the massive colorful slow grace that carried you in the sky. funny the things you can do, the places you can go, with a load of hot air. i will polish that metaphor and hang it on the blank wall in my mind to stare at for a while, and realize that's exactly what it was. i can live with that image. i can let that one go. i can come back to it and it will remind me of never, ever again.

the captain and the hourglass - laura marling

Moongrate, these blinds;
Night light too bright
To sleep right.

lines from laura marling's secret song

there's a house across the river
but alas i cannot swim
and a garden of such beauty
that the flowers seem to grin
there's a house across the river
but alas i cannot swim
i'll live my life regretting that i never jumped in

there's a boy across the river
with short black curly hair
he wants to be my lover
and i want to be his peer
there's a boy across the river
but alas i cannot swim
i never will get to put my arms around him

there's a life across the river
that was meant for me
instead i live my life in constant misery
there's a life across the river
but i do not see why i should please those who will never be pleased

there was gold across the river
but i don't want none
there was gold across the river
but i don't want none
gold is fleeting gold is fickle gold is fun
gold is fleeting gold is fickle gold is fun
there is gold across the river but i don't want none
i would rather be a child and held up by a golden gun
sing work more, and we'll live more, have more fun
sing work more, and we'll live more, have more fun

dis parate

last nigh t the great bird was steady in his boat
i have got my s hit together
and i am read y to go
oh but t he way i've been acting

last n ight the grey moon c limbed right down in this hole
how on ear th did you get down here
it s till ain't clear
i had my shit toget her
i was rea dy to go
i must be doing so mething wrong

gonna say this once for the bot h of us
you can bor row my vibe
i'm waiting on the downtown t rain
my technology ain't n ever gonna be the same
i'm like a baby on s peed
i'm like a lea f falling out of a tree
look a t me
w hat do you see
i am kidnapping  your melo dy

tonight the to nigh t the hills are watching her
as she runs tow ards the sea yeah
she r uns so she'll be free
and of all the friends and enemies she's mad e along the way
they are now here in her thoughts as she dives beneath the waves

it i s for me
the event ual truth
of that look of the l ion ess
to her man across the nil e
it is that look of the li oness
to her man a cross the nile
wanna feel my hear t break (if it must break)
in y our jaws.
you can't get her e fast enough

and the first one t ore a picture of a dead an hanging man
who was kissing foreign fishes that flew right out from his h and
and w hen i put my arms around him
felt the b lushing blood run through my cheeks
and an airiness surround him when his tong ue began to speak
and he s aid oh boy you are so pretty
enough to wrap tight in rice paper, st ring

you're the color you're the movement and the s pin
could it stay with me the w hole day long?
fail with con sequence
lose with eloquence and a s mile
i'm not in t his movie
i'm not in this son g
n ever
leave me paralyze d love
l eave me hypnotized love

i live on a cha in
you, you had the same la st name
as a joke, i sent a bottle of whisk ey
as you choke d, you said it made you feel dirty
and i was waiting over he re
for love to beg in
i was lookin' for the new thin g
and you were the s unshine aiding my frontline
i was al one
and you were just a round the corner from me

one holy g host for the homemad e girl in the green tshirt
that read i quote what price damnation no w?
in the school of though t in the halls of state
with the leaves of f ate the loose translation must have lost her
it must have cost her to go b ack to the civilization
caught between her e and the real one
just to s ay what you'd begun to say once

i'll al ways wait to write you t his letter
we've been s tuck here for days and it just won't get any better
the man we both k now the one with the pass ionate voice
i hear d all his promises, yeah we'd love to do the same
so we'll sin g of open fields, sing of crow ded rooms
and t he way we love in the sea
and how it will all get b righter once we
sing of open fields, sin g of crowded rooms

stay out super l ate tonight
picking apples, ma king pies
put a little some thing in our lemonade
and take it wit h us
we're half a wake in a fake empire
turn the light off, say good nigh t
no thin king for a little while

i had a plan that was built on thin king too long
canadian win ters at home with your sister
the roman ce was hard to ignore
you were beau tiful
i was happy to f all
i remember you sear ching
i th ought you were searching
that's h ow i picked up the phone
happy to hear you remembe red the view
so glad to assu me it was fair
i though t at the time it was clear
i thought at the time it was cl ear
so i stood at the station with a plan and a pocket of poe ms
heroically tragic, bear ded and blind with ob session
i'm a car wi thou t hope
too c lose to the ditch to go far
my he art it just fell ap art
it was hurt by the sound of your vo ice
and i wished i could s how you the same view
you're by the wind ow and me feeling fine
yeah me just f eeling fine