Today was like a shutter on a lens. Fast enough to miss, but slow enough to capture the moments. Tomorrow it will be like signing a yearbook. I won't be gone forever, just enough to make you miss me. You'll be there right before I fall asleep. Its the best part of the day because you think about things you love most without anyone around to ask questions. The daydreams are the ones we can be free to control and always remember because we are not yet asleep.
Old photos by a friend.
Its like the world outside of me can't get it together. We all loose what we can't control at one point. The cruel thing is it happens to the ones who smile. Won't eat or can't stop eating. Can't see, doesn't want to breathe. Must drink and hurt. Take a life, take your own. Lost a life and can't find your own. Throw away your life to something not alive. After all, you can still come to me for answers I can't even give. And it feels like scraping your knees across asphalt with nothing to ease the shallow wounds that burn hotter than your backwards choices. Douse them with lemon. Maybe it will wake you up. Or maybe you are just numb to it all. Drink your daily cup of pain in the morning - caffeinated, of course. You're so used to it that its the only thing to shock your heart into reminding you that you're human. Don't forget you aren't the only one. Life likes to deal it out in dozens like the lash of a Cat O' Nine. Don't worry, I'll take it because apparently I can handle it. I feel everyone's pain while you only feel your own.
Drop me from the sky with no ground where I can free fall for a thousand years and forget it all.
Life in LA continues to be ever so busy as I hit my two year mark this month. 730 days seems like hardly anything and in a way it is because I don't even remember that many days passing in front of my eyes. Nothing has changed and yet a whole lot has. Maybe traffic really does make time stand still.
One change I can control. Going short, and I don't mean the skirt.
A rabbit is the best accessory to an Alice in Wonderland costume.
When you are celebrating the birthday for a member of a secret club, the cake has to be unsurpassable. Such a masterpiece would include a two layered double fudge cake with buttercream and crushed up peanut butter cups filling, topped with peanut butter frosting and more crushed up peanut butter cups. Hello Maestro.
I'll have a coffin to go with that, please.
At midnight I find myself hanging at the edge of a hundred foot drop. I'm a little nervous because I've never done this before. Half of me says to stay on solid ground. But I am feeling reckless tonight. I loosen the rope behind me and defy gravity by walking backwards down a sheer cliff. Above me are the eyes of my friends watching me descend. Below me is an endless pitch black, which I am grateful for. If I could see the bottom I might psych myself out and get scared by realizing just how high I really am. The mist of a waterfall to my right sprays my face and I think of how much more amazing this is than staying home to work. Good thing I shirked my responsibilities. I let my feet follow the natural path of the rope and imagine what it would be like to continually exist parallel to the ground in this new vertical world. I'm not exactly sure how long the whole descent takes, but somehow its going really fast but lasting forever. I edge past some trees and before I know it my feet hit the bottom and I stumble a little while trying to regain regular balance. Not bad for my first rappel.
I wish I had asked one of my friends to take pictures of me going down, but I was too preoccupied with the idea of stepping off a cliff backwards into the darkness that I forgot to do that. Instead I snapped pictures of Lindsay going down. And she rocked it. Victory s'mores were had afterward.
Last weekend I went sailing with Captain Dave Broadbent and crew. It was fittingly on National Talk Like a Pirate Day. We set sail out of the marina. I couldn't help but wonder what life at sea would really be like when I saw the crowds of weather worn vessels all stacked around the docks. You could tell some people made their boats into their homes now, especially since recession hit. The small quarters below our boat made me grateful for what I usually thought was a much too small apartment for me to be living in back up in LA. But I'll admit, this boat would make for a fun expedition out to sea. We were going only for a few hours to sail up towards Santa Monica. The weather was beautiful. It was nice to get out of the speed of the city for a while. I thought maybe we would see some dolphins or even spot a shark, but on whole the trip was pretty uneventful. And that is just how I liked it actually.
Life in LA gets really crazy. I can hardly remember a day when I legitimately slept in without feeling guilty of wasting my time. There is just too much to get done and only so much time to do it all. I guess that's why people get so angry on the road down here. If you miss one green light because of a slow driver, that offsets your entire time line for the day. I miss how in Oregon I had no obligations and nowhere to be except the places I felt like being. As my roommate puts it, in LA you feel like you are 'drowning in responsibilities.' This boating trip defied that concept. I wish I was more reckless with my time.
