stray lower.

by daily dying i have come to be.

I’m not afraid of dying. Pieces of me die all the time. – Sage Francis

I remember everything and I write everything down. Sometimes it rhymes. I am insatiable in mind, and in body. I learn from equanimity and grow by loving ravishingly. Don’t give me anything at all, if you can’t give it all to me.

To really know someone, you must have known them as a child. I was a Yankee who grew up in the southern boondocks. I rode my bike in the sand, stained my clothes with Georgia clay, and learned to be suspicious of the seldom vehicles that traveled down the country road in front of my home. “They must be lost,” we’d always say. I daydreamed of places I’d never been, of distinguishing myself from the rest of the world by becoming someone extraordinary, and made wishes to the southeastern night sky – and I was content to do it all alone. I never had an imaginary friend, but I talked to myself and was a pathological liar. I was needy for attention; I was greedy for a willing set of eyes or ears. I wore the phrases “look at me” and “listen to me” like I wore my Sunday dresses and Mary Jane shoes – proudly and unapologetically.  I stood out like a lone cranberry in a pit of peaches or sweet Vidalia onions. I didn’t belong like a sprig of mayflowers doesn’t belong in a bushel of magnolias or Cherokee roses. I excelled in school but was regularly reprimanded for talking too much. I received highest scores and awards in most subjects in all grades but was frequently disciplined and given detention for not following rules. I played instruments, danced, joined the drama club and was given leading roles in the school’s plays all the while being told to play fair, calm down, and why I couldn’t have it my way. With all this distinction, I got much of the attention for which I asked.

I still don’t know why I was asking for it. Back in those days, I had a recurring dream where I’d stepped up on stage and stood behind a podium. With the theatre lights warming me and both unfamiliar and familiar faces intent on mine, I didn’t know what to say. All the recognition that I ever strived for, I didn’t know what to do with it once I had it. It wasn’t like a nightmare where the dreamer forgot their lines or was overcome by stage fright – it was different. I wasn’t scared but was overwhelmed with everything I needed to say but didn’t know where to begin. I was slightly panicked that the audience would leave before they had the chance to hear it all, but I couldn’t form the words of what was so integral or of what was so important that needed to be said. Eventually the drive for attention faded as I grew older and figured out that well-timed silence can speak more than a novel’s worth of words and that, apart from poetry, it is not necessary to say something with five words when it can be said with three. I also subsequently started to realize that the craving I’d had for attention, to have eyes and ears locked and loaded on my words was not for the want of praise, applause or flattery in its own right. It was a pressure I felt, an ambition to give anyone who stood before me anything I had to give, to teach them anything I had learned, to have the right words in the right moment that they needed to hear. I still don’t know what it is that I feel I must say but I’ve discovered many more words in search of whatever that may be.

Poetry: Words that rhyme, and sometimes not. Uh, something, something, something, ought.
Melancholy: Blog, personal diary, narrative rants and resting place for random thought.
Sophistry: Short stories, flash fiction, fantasies, vignettes and such the other two forgot.
Vanity: Paintings, sculptures and pretty objects that I create or like a lot.
Serendipity: Places to spread the lifestyle sought.

My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers. – Tom Stoppard

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. – E.B. White