in Peace

It's always bothered me when people disturb the memory of the dead. I don't want to see a hologram of "Pac". I don't want a third party turning Aaliyah's tragedy into a few dollars. Watching the world kick Amy Winehouse's baggage around this time makes me feel no different.

In response to the recent hubbub about Amy and her documentary, Yasiin Bey has a few touching, choice words about others putting a yardstick to her life. Since he was a voice in my ear at nine-years-old, Mos has always dropped knowledge. Here he does more of the same.

lastimas

Breathe through, ride through, damn girl, I don't know.
Pilled up, filled up, damn girl, i'll be getting back to you for sure.

What if I picked you up from your house? We should roll and see how it goes. I saw potential in you from the go, you know that I did. I don't know if you know, but I know who you are.

Circle

Some chick committed suicide off the tracks of the train my friend Natalie was on. Natalie was celebrating a new chapter and this girl was closing one. This life is tough. Living ain't easy. I wish someone could have held you and told you that we all suffer and that life is never okay. That is normal...nothing is ever okay.

Friend:

You do not determine my worth. I'm not going to fall apart if you don't want to be in my life. I'm not going to beg you to stay or to see me for who I am or to give me respect. I should not have to do that. I will not compare myself to anyone. I will not let you put me in place I worked so hard to get out of. I am truly comfortable with you stepping out of my life. Believe that. I know who I am and you not digging it is fine with me.

My mother was fearless but she could not save me from myself

Even giants die a lonely death, falling into darkness, moving further from the sun. We all return to the core. All entropy moves in the same direction. All earthly things move into themselves.
Death is a process of falling in. The earth devours us all.
Even  as rock will eventually succumb to the licking tides, so must the ocean remain.
Endlessly inward.
Swallowing the giant and small alike.


**I wrote this in response to Miranda July's "Ten True Things." I don't know how to deal with my own depression and even though I always long for things to evoke something raw out of me, I am always scared of what poignant experiences will illicit. I will never be free from fear.

Belonging

"I realized that everything in the world was an interplay of identical particles comprising different kinds of consonance: the trees, the water, you...All was unified, equivalent, divine." from "Sounds" by  Vladimir Nabokov

The passage is something I wrote down from a short story I read two years ago. I am using the spare pages of a notebook from 2012 to write anecdotes now. 2012 was a shitty year. There is a lot of pain between pages and I am still swimming in a pool of those feelings now but I have not yet drowned.

Things like this save me.