Fascination on Fire

I'm not much beyond my eyes, but I'm infinite beneath my surface. Talk to me. Show me. Feed my flames.

[savethesoulfish-blog]

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Ugh so this has to be the 6th or 7th time I've listened to "You Were Always on My Mind" in the last hour. I wonder if you wish you had treated me differently and more than that I wonder if I gave you another chance if you actually would. I really want to believe you would, but I don't really have any reason to think that. The last few days have been a whirlwind. I just keep reevaluating every relationship I've had like they're a puzzle and I'll get a prize for putting them together in the right way.  I just wish we had more poetry together. I wish my soul felt heavy with meaning when we were together, and I wish those words meant something to you. I remember a few months into our relationship when you teased me for how much I worship poetry, and in that moment I was suddenly afraid we had no chance of making it work. Over time I forgot that conversation (sort of) and I also gave up on having a relationship that was full of poetry. A few times I asked you to try and a few times you did it on your own, but I always felt like I was straining it out of you. Worst of all, I stopped writing poetry. Maybe it was all those nights when we both had so much work to do. Maybe it was my need to constantly show you I was practical and could make decisions myself, so you would start treating me like I was as capable as you were. Maybe in some ways I resented you, for the poetry and the adventures we weren't having. I know that wasn't all your fault though. You never understood why the little things bothered me and it always made me feel like I didn't have a right to be bothered by them. When you picked me up at the airport without flowers and stood in the corner waiting for me to come to you. When you complained about how often I asked you to spend the night when you knew it was because I was having anxiety attacks once you left. When you forgot a secret I had only told you. 

But still today I heard the song we danced to the first time we danced together, and I wondered if you would even know which song and which moment I'm talking about. I wonder if you've pursued anyone else or if you've considered it, but I know I don't actually want to know the answer. Do you miss me as a person or having a girlfriend more? It scares me that I don't know the answer.

I'm strong. I'm so much stronger than you ever gave me credit for. I don't want to be a victim or along for the ride. I don't want anyone to try to sweep me off my feet. I want to figure out how to be as engaged here as I can be and how to get the girl back who was happy and enriched being alone with herself, the girl who didn't need you. 

[savethesoulfish-blog]

I haven't touched this blog in a while but I really need an outlet tonight. 

I feel so traumatized by what happened to you. I remember lying on your trampoline pressed up against you in the rain, while all our friends stood in the door to your backyard yelling things we couldn't hear. I remember finding all the bottles in your closet, messily hidden reminders of the mistakes you didn't want to show me. After I finished my novel, you tried to publish it for me and I remember how sad you were when you told me you failed but the fact you had tried meant everything. You never showed me the letter you were writing for me. Now that you're gone only its ghost can live on in my memory. I remember that night at the beach after someone's party, when I was so distracted by the older boy who played me songs on his guitar that I forgot you. Now you'll never know how sorry I was for that mistake. I'll never understand what happened to you, what led you to make the choices you did that wrenched our friendship apart and stole your life from you at 19. But I'll never forget that the first time I went skinny dipping was with you. It was late and your pool wasn't far from the road, but we pulled our clothes off at the slightest suggestion and swam as if our bodies were new to us. You were so gentle to me no matter how rough I was on myself. The way you ran your fingers over my hair, no one had touched me that softly since I was a child. I wish I had the nerve to tell you at the time that there were moments when I wanted to love you back and there were seconds when I tried to convince myself that I could. But I know now that you weren't meant for this world and you certainly weren't meant for me. You always worshiped my writing, and if I hadn't been so cocky and insecure at the time I would have told you that yours was better and it was. I always believed there would be a time when you would snap out of your downward spiral and see everything clearly, and someday I would run into you and everything would start fresh. Did you know that would never happen when you plunged that needle into your arm? I remember seeing you across the room at homecoming our senior year. Our tables were right next to each other and I focused so much energy trying not to look at you. I wish I hadn't been so confident we'd have forever to work it out or so committed to making you a relic of my past. Today I went back and read some of the poems you wrote for me. I want you to know that through everything we went through together, I always knew there was something deeply beautiful in you. Now I know it was the same part of you that made you a storm.  

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[9090432-deactivated20140709]

[visual-poetry]

[savethesoulfish-blog]

“half of heaven” by antje blumenstein

[imaan-sabr]

[stellar-blue-deactivated-deacti]

So build yourself as beautiful as you want your world to be. Wrap yourself in light then give yourself away with your heart, your brush, your march, your art, your poetry, your play. And for every day you paint the war, take a week and paint the beauty, the colour, the shape of the landscape you’re marching towards. Everyone knows what you’re against; show them what you’re for.

Andrea Gibson, “Evolution” 

[telescoptics]

[themushroomblues]

Somebody told a real life woman that her skin was too brown to play an imaginary creature. That basically in the whole fictional world of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, where you have dragons and trolls and talking trees, where you draw the line, where imagination is capped out, no more room, is for a brown hobbit. Like firery eyeball thing, no problem but don’t even try to imagine a Samoan elf. That shit will blow your mind.

Wyatt Cenac 

[lawyerupasshole]

[bluedollarbillzmusic]

[red-lipstick]

[savethesoulfish-blog]

Nanami Cowdroy (b. Australia, Japanese-European) - Tori Trigger

Drawings: Pen + Ink

http://www.nanamicowdroy.com/

[doloresjumbridge-deactivated201]

“I will always be the virgin-prostitute, the perverse angel, the two-faced sinister and saintly woman.”

Anaïs Nin

[aduncous-blog]

[hyperallergic]

[andrewharlow]

Motoi Yamamoto makes elaborate installations using a very nontraditional contemporary art material, table salt.

For the latest installment of The Avant/Garde Diaries, the Japanese artist traveled to the salt flats of western Utah to discuss life, death, rebirth, and his elaborate patterns that can resemble the powerful metrological patterns of typhoons or hurricanes.

[sosuperawesome]

[savethesoulfish-blog]

Hajin Bae, aka soulist-aurora, on Tumblr

[galentines]

[savethesoulfish-blog]

I like that age, where you’re not quite into boys yet and really think you can be an astronaut, a teacher, a doctor and a roller skater. That girl and I live in the same world.

Amy Poehler