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essaysoneverything · 5 years ago

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the dream about the underwater house

I have been having a recurring dream where I built a house on an island that disappears into the ocean every night. In the dream, I know the entire time that the island disappears, but it is so beautiful and the man who is selling it is there and he is telling me its not impossible to build a house that withstands being submerged every night. People are there pleading with me not to do it, telling me its not safe. Telling me he is lying to me. Telling me I will be swept away with the house the very first night. It was as if their pleading made me decide even quicker (something that is very unlike my conscious self).

I had a vision of this perfect house made of thick glass and metal. Strong pillars that penetrated deep into the earth to secure it from being swept away. The entire dream has this sense of doom and tension but I continue to build. The island is so small and it does not have any trees. Its just a flat piece of land in the middle of the ocean. No dock. No boat. I have no idea how I get there. The entire time the sky is dark grey and stormy but there is never any rain. Just that sense of foreboding when a massive storm is coming.

Once I finish the house, its exactly how I imaged. Clean. Angular. Modern. It looks impenetrable. I am sitting inside the house alone just as the water starts to rise outside. I can see it start to climb up the glass walls. The house is still intact. Lights still on. No sound or shaking. Complete silence as I watch the glass ceiling become covered. The dark water continues to rise and rise in waves until the house is completely submerged.

Just as the house is completely underwater, I wake up. I have no idea if I get swept away in the middle of the night, if the glass suddenly breaks and I am lost in the water, or if I am safe in my ocean snow globe. I have been having this dream for a few months now, and it pops into my conscious mind often too.

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essaysoneverything · 5 years ago

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to the womyn in my life.

To O,

My oldest, realest, truest friend. We have been through countless transformations together but you are still the one my soul recognizes the clearest. You tell me the truth even when you know it’ll hurt. We’ve hurt each other in the past, never on purpose but I always know we will guard each others hearts with fire and fury if anyone else tries to hurt either of us. You are who I need when I am getting too floaty and turning to mist. You are my grounding. To S, My life giver. The most generous person I have ever met. Not only are you generous with your time, but with every ounce of your being. You were born to be a mother. Not just to the two of us who you carried inside you, but to all of the countless others you have been a constant source of comfort for. Your kindness and gentleness has healed and protected people in almost every corner of the earth. I sometimes worry that you will fill everyone else up with so much love that it would be impossible to have anymore for yourself. I know now that that is not the case. You are an endless source of love. A well of infinite depth. I can only aspire to be an ounce of who you are. I am beyond proud to be from you. To N, Fierce and made of fire and water. I am constantly inspired by your ability to have been born in an environment urging you to be quiet and correct, and to come out swinging as your own wild being. Born on land but destined for the ocean. Nothing could stop you from getting there. To M, Part of a pack. Such a tiny body that housed and nourished my father and his three brothers. I imagine you dancing as a young woman, long dark hair pulled back tight, balancing on your toes, delicate fingers reaching to the sky. The tiny ballerina who escaped the safety of her music box to travel the world and fall in love with a bleeding hearted philosopher from the wrong side of the tracks.You have lived a life filled with moments of spontaneity for someone who isn’t naturally a risk taker. You are brave and bold and audacious.I am often surprised and delighted by what comes out of your mouth. Just as I think I know you inside and out, you astonish me again and again. To B, Always looking for fun. You are a beautiful, iridescent bubble, shimmering and reflecting the light. Lighthearted and made of love. Ready to jump in a puddle or ride on the back of a motorcycle, or sing at the top of your lungs, or dance wildly in the kitchen laughing until tears run down our faces. You would do anything to make someone laugh. I remember once you snuck into the garage, put a paper garden bag over your body, made holes for your arms and eyes and came to the front door yelling “trick or treat!” And laughing hysterically. You are silly and kind and as sweet as sweet can be. You give your time to those who need it. You are fiercely loyal. You have earned infinity happy lives surviving what you have. To have been able to stay joyful through so much heartache is the core of your being. You know now what you deserve and you make it known. I am so proud of you for that. To S, I find the most strength in you. Meeting you felt like a deep breath out. Relief. Oh there you are. I immediately wanted to tell you everything I have ever felt, everything I have ever done. I wanted to hear about everything you have ever felt, everything you have ever done. You feel like safety. Zero judgment, zero urge to fix, just pure listening, real support. I feel so protective of you. I wish I could absorb all the cosmic pain you have felt in your lifetime so you would be free of it without losing what it has made you into. I used to wish I could cloak you in a forcefield made of golden light, impenetrable by pain, but now I know you don’t need it. You are your own force of pure golden light that you pass on to everyone you meet. Every person is better knowing you. You tell me how you feel like an imposter sometime. Someone who is faking it, playing a role that doesn’t belong to you. This could not be further from the truth. You are brilliant. Your ideas always surprise a

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essaysoneverything · 5 years ago

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song’s I'm glad I don’t have to live without

Caught by the Light - The Boxer Rebellion

Meet Me in the Morning- Bob Dylan

Graceland - Paul Simon

Sweet Thing -Van Morrison

Virginia- Scott Matthews

If I Need You - Townes Van Zandt

Obvious Child - Paul Simon

After Midnight - JJ Cale

Mi Negrita - Devendra Banhart

Hallelujah -(Leonard Cohen) Jeff Buckley

The Park - Feist

Windows- Angel Olsen

Let him Fly - Patty Griffin

Fade into you - Mazzy Star

Sweet Wanomi - Bill Withers

Strawberry letter 23 - Shuggie Otis

The Dress Looks Nice on you - Sufjan Stevens

Down by the River - Neil Young & Crazy Horse

Motional Sickness - Pheobe Bridgers

Amelia - Joni Mitchell

Amethyst - Low

Imagining my Man - Aldous Harding

Opus 23 - Dustin O’Halloran

Didn’t it Rain - Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Spooky - Dusty Springfield

Pusherman - Curtis Mayfield

Lovely Day - Bill Withers

I Need My Girl - The National

Come Josephine, In my Flying Machine - American Quartet

Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revival

The Number 4 - Khruangbin

Man In the Sky - Connie Converse

Unknown Legend - Neil Young

Sunday Noises - Califone

Bum Bum Bum - Cass McCombs

Bite the Hand - Boy Genius

Better Man - Paolo Nutini

Baby - Gal Costa & Caetano Veloso

Heartbeats - Jose González

Magic Man - Heart

I’m Yours - Joel Plasket Emergency

Valtari - Sigur Rós

Pink Moon - Nick Drake

All of Me Wants All of You - Sufjan Stevens

Here Comes your Man- Pixies

You are my sun - Sun Kil Moon

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essaysoneverything · 5 years ago

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the nest we watch all day

There is a little sparrow's nest outside my window at school. All day she prepares for the arrival of her babies. Picking the strongest blades of grass, the driest leaves warm from the sun, the most secure branches, the cushiest moss, the gluiest spider webs. She makes hundreds of trips back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes with pieces so small I think they won’t make a difference, but they always do. I hear her little feet tapping along as she constantly moves and works to make a perfect first home. She is always busy. Her head tilting, eyes looking around for any threat of danger to her hard-work. She weaves and braids and twists and tucks. I have seen her pull the softest feathers from her own body to cushion underneath her precious eggs. Giving fully of herself for a gentle beginning for her babies.

How beautiful that it is innate in her. Never taught, just known. I could watch her all day. The littlest ones adore her even more than I do. They have to check on her constantly to see if the babies have hatched or if they can get a glimpse of the eggs. They always insist excitedly that she looks chubbier than she did the day before and they wonder if she ate lots of moths and worms that night. They tell me that “she has to stay healthy so she can teach her babies to be healthy”. They have to lean their little bodies all the way on the window sill to see. Their tiny feet hovering a foot off the ground.

I imagine them going home to their beautiful little nests, full of toys and art on the walls, and soft blankets and stuffed animals of every variety. I wonder if at night they think about our bird. Not yet realizing that their own parents work just as hard as this little bird does to make a soft first home for their babies. Weaving, braiding, twisting and tucking a beautiful life. We really are all the same. Birds and humans and everything in-between. Just part of the cycle. Elements of the kingdom.

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essaysoneverything · 5 years ago

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to the ones I’ve loved, could have loved, and will one day love

The first boy I loved was disguised as a man. Big and tall and almost strong. He drove a car. He had a credit card. He had a name and face that people recognized. He was 18. I was 15. I was lucky. That’s what everyone told me anyways. First their eyes told me how surprised they were that I had managed to get him, and then they loudly told me not to do anything to make him leave.

My first taste of love was tangled in a bitterness so strong it changed my tastebuds forever. I didn’t look right. I didn’t speak right. I didn’t please him well enough. “Don’t do anything to make him leave” played on a loop in my mind. He had to hurt me because I wasn’t doing it right. He had to say those disgusting words to me because I needed to hear them so I’d be better next time. He had to find other girls because I wasn’t right. There were endless other girls for him, but no one else would have me. I believed him. When I finally left, I pretended to be a woman just as he pretended to be a man. Watch me look ugly. Watch me speak loudly. Watch me sit with my feet up. Watch me please another. I spent so long pretending I was grown that when I finally woke up, I really was.

The next ones were fine. Mostly. Some whose hearts I broke, some who broke mine, and some where our hearts were never involved at all. One passed me little slips of paper with drawings of creatures that we took turns adding features to until they were a mystical mix of his imagination and mine. One drove so slowly and safely I had to stop myself from grabbing the wheel and pushing his knee down to press the gas. Another drove so recklessly I had to close my eyes and pray to a god I don’t even know exists. One I danced with so wildly and made me laugh harder than anyone else ever has. One asked for a mixed CD he made me as a birthday gift back when we broke up. One insisted I was the only one in the world who could heal him so he flew to me, slept on my couch for a week, cried on my shoulder over his new girlfriend and left me $17.50 with a note saying “you’re the realest. See you when I see you” beside a wet towel and a pile of dirty sheets on my couch. One I thought for sure I could sip hibiscus tea on the edge of that creek putting flowers in his hair and listening to him read Irish poetry for the rest of my life.

One man I once imagined myself falling in love with feels more like a dream than a memory now. It’s hard to decipher what was real and what my brain has created trying to protect me. He had the soul of a 1940s French novelist in a fresh young body. His skin was always warm to the touch. He was a gentleman. Or at least he had the genuine intention of one day being one. The name of his cologne matched perfectly to who he was. I forget what it was called now, but it was something mysterious and sexy and sneaky. I think he saw me as exactly who I want to be. At first anyway. An artist. An empath. Someone passionate. Someone who works hard. I felt magical and beautiful around him. Comfortable. At first anyway. He was as close to the human embodiment of Icarus as anyone I have ever met. I had to stand on my tiptoes to reach him. Sometimes my arms weren’t long enough to pull him back down to me. My hands burnt from the hot wax dripping from his wings. Every word he spoke had just a hint of the lingering melody from the language spoken where he was born. It was like pure, warm honey in my ears. Romance that I had only read about. He really was one of the most beautiful things I have ever felt.

I pretended not to notice when I saw his phone light up with tiny red hearts as he half-drunkenly snuck away from me. The air left my lungs when I felt him silently decide that he wanted to go home to her that night. It was a deafening shift. My body stung in the way that only happens when your blood doesn't know where to go to heal you first, so it floods everywhere all at once and sets you on fire from the inside. In that moment, I was standing completely alone in that crowded room, a thousand miles from him or anyone else. I was so embarrassed. I barely knew him, I should’t have cared so much, but I did. He never promised me I’d be his only one. He never promised me anything in fact, I knew that but I ignored that truth and let my hunger for him take over. We played pretend with each other for one more day after that. We are both terrible liars. By the time I turned around to pick a fig to feed him, he was gone and the heaviness of the truth finally soaked all the way through my bones.

He wasn’t gentle with my heart in the way his soft voice suggested he would be or how I imagine he wants to be someday. Maybe he is with other women. The end was cold and quick and then completely silent. Just as he had entered my life, quickly and surprisingly, he left in the exact same way. Knowing that while I was thinking about him, he was thinking about her stung for a long time. We were living in completely different cosmic realms in the same moments. When my six year old student asked me why my smile looked different, I told him I was sick of the rain. I am a terrible liar.

I suspect I was only a soft place to land. An open ear and a body that was “different” as he called it. A temporary escape from reality. Something to tide him over. I am often the gentleness that people want a taste of. They drink me in until they are drunk on my tenderness and are freshly untangled, ready to leave again. I know this is innate in me and I like knowing that I exude the feeling of a safe shelter, but I am working on not letting that be my only identity anymore. I can’t be a home for tangled pain belonging to people who only intend on being strangers. For the ones I adore, I will untangle forever.

It took time to forgive myself (and silently ask for forgiveness from him) for building him up to be someone made of pure gold. Someone beyond impossible for anyone to ever live up to. To acknowledge that I saw his eyes as mirrors showing me exactly what I wished to see instead of what was real. To hear words and believe them to be true. To relearn how to trust myself to trust again. To understand that is it okay not to be chosen. To understand that the solidity of roots sometimes outweighs the enchantment of the fleeting petals.

I sometimes wonder if he ever thinks about me. If he does, I wonder what he remembers? I wonder what impression I left on him, or if I really did at all. Enough to float back down to me in the summertime and cover me in kisses and ‘I miss yous’ for a brief and blissful moment. Enough that feeling his warm, sun kissed skin and tasting his lips, salty from the ocean, instantly put a tiny crack in my freshly healed heart. He gave me an out but I didn’t take it. I wanted to see if it could be different this time. I could tell by the way he touched my eyelashes that he missed me. He asked me what I was thinking about before he kissed me. His lips were on mine before I could answer. A life jacket made of ice.

When I turned around to watch him wave to me as I walked down that forest path, barefoot, paint still wet, I knew that as much as I wished it wasn’t true, he was gone again. I could just feel it. I didn’t make the cut again. The drive was too long. The city was too much. He said everything felt dreamy. I meant him and he meant everything but me. The same flooding fire burned inside me when I had to force my frozen fingers to send him a note asking him not to drift back to me unless he felt sure of what he was able to bring to a connection with me. I finally know my worth and the level of respect and effort I deserve from the people in my life. I need connection rooted in friendship and trust where I am never afraid that every time will be the last. That every kiss will be the last. Every word will be the final one.

I will never convince or plead for anyone to come back to me (no matter the depth of my want to) because I can only fight for what fights for me now. Whether in friendship or lust or love or anything else, I can only yearn for what yearns for me. I have spent countless hours pining for apathetic souls in my lifetime. I wont do that to myself again.

I still think about him once in a while. I hope he will always keep his beautiful, dreamy, spontaneous, sparkling eyed passion. Maybe I’ll see him again one day and we’ll meet as the gentleman and gentlewoman we both aspired to be when we first met. Or maybe the universe only brought him to me as the embodiment of important lesson I needed to learn.

The next person I love will bring me apricots or plums or cherries from their trees and tell me truths and make me laugh and walk on uneven sand for me. They will be steadfast and present. I will be the same for them. We will untangle each other, equally. No need to convince. No need to plead. No need to tether. Just sun soaked sweetness. Rooted.

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essaysoneverything · 5 years ago

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a choir of honest killers by buddy wakefield

Every time I think about this poem, I feel my heart swell in an unfamiliar way. It is beyond honest, beyond authentic. It is simple and accessible. No unnecessary fluff, no bull-shitty filler. Just truth. It fills me in just the right way every single time. It is engrained in my mind. It feels individual but collective in the way that even though I know it was made for someone else, about someone else, I know that it was made for us too. For me and for you.

I like hearing the gentle southern lilt in the singsongy cadence. I like how it follows a timeline of a life full of experiences easy to recognize. I like the way it speaks of movement, something I also find soothing and meditative and often connected to memory. I like the way he uses "the waiter” as a symbol for delivering the truth. A figure we see often but who eventually blend together into one. "The waiter”. The person who brought us the food at that place. Or in this case, the person who brought us the truth.

If my whole body and if your whole body

If every single one of our bodies got amputated right now

We would still have to deal with what’s left of us

Everything we ever ordered

These four lines are what initially took my breath away when I first read this poem. I have spent so much of my life connecting my body to my experiences. I mean that I have always had this unjustified notion that things will be better when my body is better, or smaller, or more attractive to others. Reading these lines brought so much clarity to the obvious ridiculousness of that toxic way of thinking. Of course I would still have to deal with the reasons why I feel that way, even without a body at all. Of course the truth would still exists even without the shell holding it all together. Reading this took a lot of the pressure off. It is foolish to justify my dissatisfaction with elements of my life as being caused by the state of my shell. How convenient for me to believe this untruth.

Each one of us feels desire inside

that we can point to it on a map

stop acting like you don’t know which

direction your life is going

This is another line that hits me hard. We all know the trajectory of our lives if we continue on the paths we are heading down. If I stay where I am now, as who I am now, with who I am with now, doing what I am doing now, I know exactly where I will end up. I think it would be fine and lovely and I would be happy and loved, but that would be a conscious decision not to move forward and seek more. Which would be okay, but it would be intentional. I know exactly where I would point to on a map of my life if I could have it anyway I wanted, no strings attached. Why wouldn’t I reach for that?

Link to the poem:

https://goodmenproject.com/bits-and-pieces/a-choir-of-honest-killers-wcz/

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essaysoneverything · 5 years ago

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at your funeral

I was so high at your funeral on a prescription that wasn’t mine that I only remember flashes. I was too scared and too sad and I needed to be numb. I remember walking past the funeral directors in their black suits and furrowed brows and thinking it must be exhausting for them seeing sad people all day and having to pretend they are sad too. I wondered if they look in the mirror and practice their grief faces to make sure they look convincing. Empathy is hard to fake.

I remember seeing your framed photo, standing straight and proud. Belly sucked in. Very much alive. Exactly how I remembered you looking the last time I saw you. I remember sitting in the coat closet under long wet trench coats and twirling my finger inside a little pot of sticky lipgloss. Hiding. I remember my mom's high school boyfriend showing up and looking at her in a way that only people who have never fully healed from pain can look. I remember seeing his hand shaking inside his suit sleeve. I remember being angry at my brother for not being with me. I remember flipping through photos of you in the small side room and resting my head on my dad’s shoulder. I remember hearing my aunts high school friends trying to deflect from the uncomfortable grief by gossiping about her ex husband and how he shouldn’t have sat with our family at the front. Who did he think he was? I thought it was nice of him to support his kids and the woman he made them with. I remember standing in front of hundreds of people as I stared at the floor while C read the poem we wrote about you together.

The six of us, minus one, all slept on the floor together the night before. We talked all about you. We cried. We laughed a lot. All six of us are too tender hearted. We are just now realizing how many of the same struggles we have gone through in our lives separately but together. The same tortured blood. Your blood. The type to pick up an injured bird and carry it around praying it would live but knowing it wouldn’t. That is when I feel you in me the most. When I cant help myself from doing something I know you would have done too.

We were all transported back to the farm, playing in the fields, riding that massive, untrained horse that when we sat on her back, we were almost doing a complete split. It felt like a completely different universe all along those acres. A billion miles away from the city I thought was the only place that existed. You made it so special for us. I remember the pride I felt holding your massive hand as we walked through that tiny, strange town where people talked funny and looked at us too long. I felt like royalty as everyone knew and worshiped you there. You knew most people there from the moment they were born and you dug their grave at the church when they died. Reliable to your core.

We talked about how we were the epitome of a second chance for you and how you delivered. We talked about how you hurt our parents so deeply. How my mother survives by forgetting, but her sister doesn’t. It’s how they cope. It’s how we were taught to cope too. Silently absorbing their pain. Moving forward but knowing the pain that exists and will surely one day erupt. It does. Often.

I know that the last thing your mother said to you as she was dying was that you were mean. I know that broke your heart completely as you devoted your life to upholding a saint-like image to those outside your home, especially your beloved mother. you must have made an unspoken vow not to make the same mistakes twice. You did not.

I was born five days after your mother died. The first of six. You loved each of us differently but equally. You had a special connection with W though. I never felt an ounce of jealousy because you were made for each other. You loved the boys too. You asked them if they would take your last name. You hated knowing that your name would die with you because John had only daughters. You were carefully aware that it might offend our fathers by asking, but it didn’t stop you. You were so proud of that name. It really does suit all of us. Woods. It’s strong and natural and makes me think of the little imprint of the sleeping doe we found once in the snow between the little pine trees you planted in perfectly straight rows just for us.

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essaysoneverything · 5 years ago

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"pleasure past and anguish past, is it death or is it life?"

Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti is the first poem that made me fall in love with Victorian poetry. It’s otherworldly and erotic and dripping with nuance. It toys with themes of sexuality, addiction, violence, marriage and society from the perspective of a woman in the Victorian era, all within the juxtaposing lens of a jaunty, breezy, folklorish tale. Can giving into forbidden sensuality and desire lead to the death of paradise altogether? Is anguish and addiction part of the game of courtship in the Victorian era or even today? Is temptation by things seen to be unbecoming or taboo the most unifying sensation that spans generations? Maybe its the comparison between sweetness and bitterness, or the fine line between pleasure and pain that I am so enthralled by in this poem. It has stuck with me ever since I was first introduced to it years ago.

Link to the poem:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market

Art by Arthur Rackham, Goblin Market

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essaysoneverything · 5 years ago

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the night i felt you turn to light

I felt you leave the space between earth and the beyond last night. You have been dead for more than a year now but it was the first time I felt you in a good way. I have been furious with you. You hurt so many people that I love beyond repair. Well, maybe beyond repair. I guess that part remains to be discovered. Last night I couldn’t sleep. I took a hot shower in the middle of the night. I turned on the fan. I listened to music. I stared at your shirt that was in a pile on the ground beside my bed and I felt bad that maybe you could see it and you would think I didn’t care about you or love you because I wasn’t taking care of it and folding it or hanging it up like I do with all my other clothes. I could feel your energy so strongly but I still didn’t pick up your shirt. Maybe I was testing you. Maybe I was testing myself.

When I finally fell asleep, you were there. I didn’t see your face but I felt you. I could smell you. I couldn’t describe your smell other than you always smelled clean and warm and safe. You were not always safe, but you were always safe to me. I have always felt an overwhelming pulling sensation over how I could feel so secure with someone who made others feel so terrified. My head was on your chest and you were warm. Your giant worn hand resting on my shoulder. Your soft shirt with the top few buttons undone. My ear pressed against your bare chest and my cheek on the breast pocket of your shirt. My ear suctioned to your skin in the way that makes it feel like you are underwater. I could feel your slow breath and the slight catch of the hairs on your chin against my forehead as your head moved slightly as you breathed in and out. I was completely wrapped up in you. I haven’t hugged you like that since I was really little. I know you loved it more than anything. I have many photos of me laying on your chest as a kid. It felt so real that I know it was. In that brief moment, I knew you were all light now. No resentment. No resisting.

I have felt that you were not ready to leave earth yet since you died. Your body was ready, but your soul was not. Not ready to turn into light because you were not able to bring goodness when absorbed by people or plants or the ocean or stars. Not yet. Still resentful or angry or judgmental or jealous or hurt or broken. I’m not sure, but the resistance in you was always so strong and stubborn in life and now in death. I think that is why you haven’t really felt gone to me until last night. I think you decided that it is time to move into goodness. Into light. Into energy. Into sunlight. To feed the plants. To warm the skin. To be who you were for me, to everything now. To let go of this life and give yourself fully and unabashedly back to the earth as something new. I felt you. The way you held me was only light.

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