Slips of the Tongue

Shipster noun. 1 Shakespeare hipster; one who claims to have loved Shakespeare before all others of their generation. (Even though she was born in the 90's, Lucy was a shipster, and therefore her English teacher wanted to punch her in the face).

Yellow Light

Slow down. Don't stop. Don't try running from the cops.

Be safe. Don't picket. It's not worth getting a ticket.

Back up. Stay where you are. Keep your hands inside the car.

Slow down. Keep your pace. But then you'll never win the race.

Dirty Words

Blithe.

Banal.

Safe.

Within the lines.

Pretty.

Respectable.

Careful.

Easy.

Similar.

Pastel.

Transparent.

Empty.

Lifeless.

Cute.

Blind.

Fake.

Normal.

Neat.

Flashing Red Lights

   And the quest for emotion continues.

   Feeling has become a source of alarm for me. Or, more accurately, lack of feeling has become a source of alarm. The ability to create is at the highest point on the tippity-top of my list of "Things Worth Living For". Imagining a world in which it was not possible to produce beautiful music or books or poems or pictures just seems vaguely pointless to me. They express the previously unexpressable. But the problem is, the most evocative, powerful, and poetic works of art are created by special people; people who feel; people who notice life.

    I rarely feel any emotion, let alone strong emotion. Self-pity doesn't count.

    I can fake emotion pretty well. It's becoming a skill that I am trying to hone. It's part of the reason why I love singing so much: you don't necessarily have to feel what you are expressing, you just have to make the audience believe that you feel it.

   Maybe it just...ahem...feels that way; maybe I just think that others feel emotions more powerfully than I do, because people have a tendancy to overuse this thing called "hyperbole"; or maybe I really am a couple self-inflicted barriers away from being a full blown psychopath. But, whatever the reason, when I step back for a moment, pull out my metacognition, and examine myself, I will usually come to the conclusion that I really don't care too much about the situation that I'm in, or where I'm headed, or whatever else. And then I have to start wondering about why I'm going that way in the first place. And then that brings to question where I could go where I would care about what I'm doing. And then I realize that I don't know, because the only thing that really seems to matter to me is creating, but I haven't the experience nor the emotion nor the "born with it" quality to create something worth anything.

And then feeling becomes a source of alarm for me.

And then I realize that I'm back at the beginning.

English, not Math.

I am weird, I am creative, I am talented, I am normal, I am annoying, I am lazy, I am a hipster, I am cheesy, I am mainstream, I am cynical, I am awkward, I am sarcastic, I am idealistic, I am afraid, I am a singer, I am asymmetrical, I am selpeld all wnrog, I am learning, I am confident, I am mechanical, I am thoughtless, I am shallow, I am a swimmer, I am a dreamer, I am a rhymer, I am an internet addict, I am a sleeper, I am

                                                                     WIDE AWAKE,

I am NOT a mathematician, I am profane, I am obnoxious, I am all talk, I am accepting, I am a writer, I am a rememberer, I am smart, I am childish, I am insensitive, I am dense, I am narcissistic, I am forgetful, I am narcissistic, I am growing, I am sweet, I am unique, I am a climber, I follow the crowd, I am a reader, I am a talker, I am judgmental, I am a walker, I am an avid eater, I am a picture-taker, I am absent, I am an over-analyzer, I am jealous, I am carefree, I am a contradiction, and

I make perfect sense.

Boyfriend

I dislike the term "boyfriend". Not because I'm against the idea of male companionship, or because I'm super PC and think that everybody should exclusively use the term "partner" when referring to their significant other. It's because it feels confining. Using the term "boyfriend" has always felt akin to putting myself into a box; into somebody else's idea of what a relationship is supposed to be. On the rare occasions when I have been in a position to call somebody my "boyfriend", the word has felt foreign coming off my tongue, awkward in my mouth, as though it doesn't really describe who that person is to me. Mind you, I've never been in a healthy relationship, but even if I ever am, I still don't believe that I will want to call the person I like/am infatuated with/love/desire/adore/whatever my "boyfriend". Lots of people use the term, and let me tell you, I certainly don't wish to emulate many of the relationships that I see before me. If I ever find someone with whom I wish to spend an inordinate amount of time, and whom I choose to kiss exclusively, it is likely that I will still wish to refer to that person as a friend.

Because that's what they will be.

Whoever decided that friendship and "relationship" are different entities is pretty wrong. Think about it: whom do you desire to spend the most time with? Your friends. You did choose them after all. If you desire to spend a lot of time with your family, it's because they are also your friends. Friend is another word that I think some people (including myself) often use too loosely. But that's another blog. You've got to be friends with someone if you ever wish to have a "relationship" with them, because hopefully you're going to be with them for a fairly long while, and you don't want to end up sick of each other or frequently wishing that they would just leave you alone or trying to force yourselves to understand each other just because you're "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" or "partners" or whatever the hell you are.

I don't want a "boyfriend".

I want a friend, who just happens to be a boy, and who I just happen to enjoy kissing for extended periods of time.

However, this poses a slight problem, because a lot of people will take my wish to not call somebody my "boyfriend" as me saying that I want to play fast and loose with their feelings and not commit. Yeah, because there aren't people who have a different "boyfriend" every week. The label doesn't make your relationship more legitimate. Your relationship makes your relationship more legitimate. Your character and your understanding of the other person and your interest in the other person decide whether you two should be together, not some arbitrary word that doesn't even really make sense. And so, if I ever get myself relationship, and the other person asks us what we are, I will tell that person:

We are us.

Places

I like to say that my true love is a campground. I've never been very good a falling in love with people. The idea of "human love" has always evaded me. Humans change and don't always know how to articulate their thoughts and quite often just suck at communicating. Places, however, do not, which probably has a lot to do with that fact that they don't have brains or emotions or anything like that. But I do have brains and emotions and all of those things. And I fall in love with places. I grew up going to the same campground every year. I know that place, the dirt roads and the path to the beach, the beach and the buildings, the little field just to the right of everything. If I had spent that much time with a human it would be expected that I would become attached to them, whether I liked it or not.

The same thing applies with places.

In my place I am often completely isolated, yet never alone; it forces me into my own head, so that I have to self-reflect and be comfortable being my only friend. I don't have to try to explain my thoughts to it, because it already knows. It makes life feel more real, because I'm not forcing myself to be something for somebody else, or worrying about accomplishments, or doing what I "should" be doing. In my place I don't have to be anything. I can simply drift. A body doesn't even really seem necessary; I could just let my thoughts out loose and see where they chose to go. My place might not have brains or emotions, but I've never felt more possibility than when I've been staring up at the sky while swimming to the middle of the lake. My place is plain and blank and therefore I can turn it into whatever I please. I can put faeries into the bushes, or into plain sight. I could make all of the plants sprout ears. There could be a whole merworld beneath my toes as I paddle through the water. There could also be the creepy monsters from "A Promise Is A Promise" lurking beneath me, but I try not to think about that.

I have to share my place with a bunch of people who just. Don't. Get it. Or maybe I just don't want them to get it, because I want my place to stay mine. But I guess sharing wouldn't be so bad, if they promised to really appreciate it, and not just sit on the beach with a book or a bunch of screaming children, not seeing what's right in front of them.