I totally surrender to them

This blog was my idea. My creation. Some of my html handiwork. But Kathleen has made it her own. She is faithful to it in a way that I am not. Her honesty and humor, ugh. How is she so good? And Aileen--of course. She of the brilliant sentence fragments. She who writes so casually but so URGENTLY. I bow to both these women. So maybe it's not even my place to write about not movies/not books/not art. But I long to talk about other things. So that's what I'm gonna do. Readers (all two of you), I'm sorry. Movie reviews aren't moving me right now. But words and how these words cohere to make sentences...how these sentences move to tug at my soul...that is everything.

Found poetry is the best for beginners. Brilliance is so easy. So accidental. I remember one of my first encounters with found poetry--making a poem out of the Lord of the Flies text in English class. My poem had the refrain "Because the rules are all we've got!" To me, at tender 15, it was so true. So frustrating. So repressive.

But the best found poetry is in my email account. Because my friends are brilliant and exist on wavelengths...They are not even of this world.

"DON'T try to be [a] pretty girl. that is soooo regressive!! you just can't win. I mean, there are a lot of pretty girls. i totally surrender to them. but i feel like i have more, you know?"

And if I made this into a poem--well, obviously the refrain would be: "there are a lot of pretty girls/i totally surrender to them"

And this

"You're really really attached to your family. it's a fact. Just try and break away from them. Just try."

And, my favorite--when my personhood is compacted into a small explosive ball. When i feel like I will unwind, unravel, implode. I re-read this line. Re-commit it to memory.

"sometimes im just mad at the whole world...but always always its maddening because you're mad with yourself too. for being impatient, helpless, hypocritical, sensitive"

And sometimes the day is really warm and the water is really cool -- so this:

"the world was immediate
and ours"

And

"I think insanity is the correct nomenclature. I think, in many ways, work (all day every day all year every year just to pay RENT? Can anyone say SHAM) is a type of hell, it's like rolling a boulder up a hill, watching it roll down, rolling it back up, day in and out."

Oh god...I feel like some caged animal/human who finally has an ear to listen andIcan'tstop this typing. These words, these women, they move me. They make me.