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Posted on November 15, 2009 @ 9:19 pm
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Funny how fast I switched from interest in film to interest in plants. I've become such a nerd. I was on a shoot this afternoon out north of Chapparal on Native lands, between fields of broccoli and cotton, and all I could think of while I ought to have been producing was their ingenious irrigation system or the smectites that must have been responsible for the cracking of the dried soil in the ditches off the road.
Everyone thinks it's hilarious that I'm bent over the seeds of a rogue squash plant instead of discussing "Brick," but the more I learn, the more I realize that plants are, in a lot of ways, far more advanced than humans.
1. Plants make their own food. Plants are autotrophs, which mean they use energy directly from the sun to feed themselves. When given the right ingredients, they are entirely self-sufficient. In addition, some plants are carnivorous, which means they are not only capable of making their own food, but have also adapted to secure additional sources of available nutrients.
2. Asexual reproduction. Humans have been attempting to perfect the art of cloning for decades, while plants have been doing it since the beginning of time. Many plants possess the ability to clone themselves through a number of means, continuously throughout their lifespans. In addition, most plants are also able to sexually reproduce not only with themselves, through self-pollination, but also with others through cross-pollination.
3. Stem cells. All plants possess meristematic cells even in maturity. These cells are undifferentiated and are able to become whichever cell the plant most needs - be that a branch, a leaf, a bud, flower or root. Humans are stuck with their same 'ole undifferentiated cells from birth until death.
4. Chimeras are possible. Only in the fictitious world of Dr. Moreau is it possible to graft an ape's head onto a human's. In plants, however, it is entirely possible, and sometimes even beneficial, to graft the top half of one species to the bottom of another. Most commercial citrus and pine are grown in this manner. Just think - this year's Christmas tree might as well be the minotaur!
5. Plants heal themselves. You can pull an entire weed up, only to see it sprout again a week later. From just a single root, leaf or portion of stem, many plants are able to rebuild themselves entirely. Imagine if a man could regrow himself from just a single toe.
In addition to all these, there are an infinite number of reasons that plants were here on Earth before us, and will probably be here long after. Many live longer (redwoods are some of the oldest organisms on the planet). Many are capable of movement, of sensing touch, of creating noise and of competing with one another. The sheer volume and number of adaptations of plants is overwhelming. And yet plants do not participate in wars, discriminate and are not violent. They are beautiful, tenacious things that perplex me endlessly.
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Posted on November 15, 2009 @ 12:02 am
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Watching Eyes Wide Shut and thinking about Closer and I remember what I thought after you left - that sex is a weapon. That we attribute to it this sort of specialness, this value that is all conjecture. Sex is no more a weapon than words are, or knowledge. And sometimes I feel that the things that I've done will mean you can never love me again. But then I think. And what I think is that sex is no more or less than something that people do, like hold hands or hold conversations. Like ride bicycles or pick blueberries. And I don't know what it is that makes it so much more important than these other things. What is, in fact, important, is the intention of the act. Because I can fake an orgasm as well as I can feign interest in a conversation. I can fuck someone like I can order coffee from them, share a bed with them like I can share a cab. It's just a human interaction.
What I can't fake is how I feel, really. That I have ordered lattes from hundreds of men and I will never remember or care for them. And that I have slept with other men, too, but I don't know their faces. And the truth is, I'm sorry I did. I'm sorry I've fucked other men. But I am sorry that I've let other men hold the door open for me. I'm sorry that I've shared meals with other men, or movies with other women. I'm sorry that I breathed one more breath, took one more step, made one more attempt after you left. Because nothing has mattered since. Not his kiss, not her laugh. Not the sun through the blinds or the feel of the sheets. Not a moment since you've left has meant a thing.
And when I see you again, we will make love like you are the only man in the world for me.
And we will eat toast like it is the only toast I've ever eaten.
And we will walk the streets like someone has finally pushed the "play" button on our lives.
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Posted on November 12, 2009 @ 11:23 pm
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My name is Delen.
That's what I'm called but it is not who I am.
What I want is respect, appreciation and love. I deserve these things because I am beautiful, intelligent, honest, outrageous, spontaneous and good. I will conduct myself in ways that enable the people around me to realize these things. I will demand respect and will not tolerate degradation. I will love myself and force others to love me in the same way or to move on. When I sleep with someone it will be because it is my choice. I recognize that my body is beautiful, amazing and a gift. I will allow it only to those who have recognized this as well and who have earned it. What I put into my body is my choice and mine alone, and I will do so with purpose and without fear of consequences. I will seek to feel good, but not at the expense of myself. I will not compromise who I am.
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Posted on November 03, 2009 @ 1:39 am
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I leave the dark of the kitchen dance floor and duck into the light of the bathroom. When I hear the door click behind me I turn to see him, the big blue-faced Braveheart from the night before. He takes a fistful of pink cardigan and twists it off of me even as I lean away from him. I am too at a loss to make a sound, too full of Oxi-Clean vodka, when the door bursts open and I see the flash of her white skin and black wig, small but determined, shoving him out, scolding and pushing and shutting the door. She speaks kind words and redresses me. I want to get out of these enclosed spaces. I walked outside and up to Sarah, who grabbed me just as he did, stronger than her and spinning me around. "What's your problem?" he snarls, half-blue face inches from mine.
"I'm flattered," I say, pushing against him. "But no thanks."
"You've got five minutes before I walk away from you," he threatens. I am at that hazy border of drunk and sober that makes me do things like this.
"ONE." I count. "TWO."
I can see his eyebrows knit, enraged.
"THREE."
"You're making a mistake," he tells me.
"FOUR."
"Stop it."
"FIVE!"
He grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me free of Sarah, snarling. Alan steps in within a second and shoves him away. "Hey, man! Get off her!" I hear him say as I stumble, clutching Sarah, across the gravel and into the dark where we stop and I feel hot tears behind my glasses again. I blink them away, but the night won't be salvaged.
Why do I feel worse when I wake up after a night of defending myself than after I just give in? Why don't I think the insides of me are worth protecting? That I'm better than that? That I deserve being stood up for? And why am I not surprised to find out that Mark and Jimmy and Guillaume and Chris have told him that I am good for it, that they have goaded us both on, into drinking and dancing, in hopes of instigating something. That I am just someone's cheap entertainment.
I just fuckin' love you. Two years, three years, whatever it's been. Why do I feel like it's nothing? Why do I feel like I won't have ever waited long enough to get you back?
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Posted on October 26, 2009 @ 11:22 pm
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Philip died.
A man who I had held hands with, shared a bed with, kissed in the dark on the street corner with cop cars circling the block. Who had told me I was unbearably beautiful so many more times than I deserved to hear, who said that he loved me, who wrapped his arms around me and made tiny moans, who showed me off to strangers on the pier, whose smile was enormous and genuine, who I knew cared about me without restraint, despite my shortcomings. A man I met on a day I had forgotten my phone, who came into my life because we both had to use the bathroom at the same time, who by the end of 24 hours together knew he would be happy to spend the rest of his life with me.
Someone who I knew for less than five months, who I was cruel to and abusive. Who I used and manipulated. Who I wished I loved but couldn't. Whose sunglasses still sit on my dresser, whose jacket's smell is slowly fading in the back of my closet. On the night he passed on I was being careless, wreckless, faithless. I was inconsiderate and hurting. Miles from someone who still wanted me, I was giving myself to someone who couldn't care less.
But he died thinking - maybe knowing - that I did care about him, and that he quite possibly treated me better than any man ever will. And also that I was mad at him.
They tell me to write you, to tell you I love you and that I don't want this to all be over tomorrow.
I tell them I write you all the time. That, if there were a way to make you speak to me, just form a six-letter strand of binary characters, I would do it. It's like you're already gone to me. It's never been the case that only after the fact I want to tell you I love you - I want you to know it now, above anything else. I love you, I love you, I love you. I will always love you. True and honest and how Philip loved me. And like Philip, when I die, I will do so still loving you.
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Posted on October 22, 2009 @ 11:27 pm
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It makes me sick, these wet boys in hot, dry places. This desert of me.
I think how it is that some people are never in their lives sure of what they want. Where or when or what will allow them to be content.
And I think how it is that I'm the one searching most of all, but I know.
I know just what I want.
There was a time when I said I could never forget you. That was a lie. I wish it hadn't been, but it was. I don't remember the smell of your hair or the topography of your smile. I can't conjure the feel of your thumbprints on my neck or the intonation when you said my name.
I want to think that I can still remember the way you removed your glasses and folded them for the bedside table before you would lie down beside me.
But in truth, it hasn't taken much time at all to forget everything, despite fighting it.
All I have now that I had then are the feelings, and even those are more empty than full.
I don't think I understand it sometimes.
It hurts more than it should.
I hate that I have to think that you're never coming back.
I hate thinking that I'm a fucked up, messed up, wasted wreck of a girl who lives in a house beyond her means, who has no couch and sleeps in the sun on the floor. How weak I've become, and how calloused and cruel, and in how many ways I break mens' hearts, just to have the power. Just not to feel what it feels like now.
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Posted on October 18, 2009 @ 8:26 pm
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I have the taste of everything prior in my mouth. The taste of Bailey’s seafoam on a crashing tide of Guinness that burns the back of my throat and squeezes water from the corner of my eyes. There is a girl asleep in the closet on top of the washer. People in the bedroom and on the patio flicking burning embers out into the darkness. These are people that I know. But I’m always leaving my flock.
I follow him like a shepherd. Without a word we move into the bathroom and I am on my knees in front of him, tall, dark and handsome. So much like a priest in his dark slacks, white button down, tie. But he is not here to bless me; instead, I think, I am the altar and the sacrifice. There is no priest in the world who will offer me forgiveness for the sins I’ve committed. If only I could look down into the patent black of his shoes and see my own eyes, I think, but instead I am watching my own fingers undo the machinery of his belt buckle.
I pull his tie and it comes off in my fingers like a black snake – he pulls my necklace, feeling the beads, lips moving against my neck in a hot and vulgar rosary, and it breaks in two places. I remember the feeling of mirror against my back and of cold counter tile against my bare cheeks. Running my fingers through his dark hair and looking into his dark, dark eyes I wonder about how easy things are to fake – to fake love someone long enough for things to be good.
When we stumble out into the din of noise and heat I wander, dazed. I dance, confused, with arms around necks and legs around waists, thinking that maybe there is no meaning in movements. Maybe we have no connection with the people we touch but the physical bombardment of our atoms. At the smallest level, every person we touch is hurting us. Maybe no one will ever really know what’s inside of us. But we let them search, hoping that they will.
And it is not ten minutes later that I am searching for salvation in someone else’s lap, on my knees again. But I don’t think you can pray with your mouth full.
Wandering from the bathroom, wrapped in the softness of someone else’s robe left on the hook, it was like time had stopped in the faces of the friends who saw me.
And I cried harder, and went to them, and I was folded into their arms, pressed against chests, sobbed wet, half-drawn breaths into their necks. And stood there, forever, until everyone else left, until it was only the mess of us, still standing there in the kitchen amidst the rubble, me wrecked most of all.
They feed me water and sweet bread that I take, like a sacrament, and return a confession. I want to tell them: don’t let me do this. Don’t watch me hurt myself, be destructive, throw things away. I want to scream at them: you wouldn’t let someone hit me, but you will let them hurt me in ways much more violent. But I can’t, because these are my crosses to bear. I think, sometimes, what kind of friends are these at all?
But then, when the sun still hasn’t risen and you haven’t shut your eyes in 24 hours, and you walk, still bleary and stumbling, still hurt but moving, up to the top of a mountain. And you sit. In the dark, on the dirt. And wait until the sun first wakes up and yawns over everything, and for a moment all of us are just silhouettes burning on the edge of the world. Then you walk down the traintracks towards it, and one of you says, “Look up.”
And I look at the telephone wires over our heads, where hundreds of black birds are perched. And I think just a moment, share just one instant with the rest of everything, before throwing my hands up and screaming at the top of my lungs, and they scatter, black wings beating the sky.
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Posted on October 13, 2009 @ 9:34 pm
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I shouldn't have let this fall into disarray. I know. But what else am I going to say?
That my name is Delen, and I ride an old Murray fixed-gear that I traded for a pack of cigarettes? That I love the feel of the wind on my skin as I ride at night over the bridge? That I love the smell of the earth on my hands, crushing basil beneath my fingers? That I burn incense with the windows open while I cook quesadillas de flor de la calabazas? That I've known the soft, slick feel of limestone on my bare skin, pale in the white Arizona moon, the lazy pull of cool water off the mountains? The heat against the inside of my eyelids, the sweet-sour taste of prickly pear that stains my lips and hands? That I recite poetry and lie in dark fields of desert and watch lightning shatter the sky, feel the rain soak my hair and slap the soft, hot back of my neck as I run, laugh, breathless through the streets?
Or that I still think about you? That I still curl up, alone, tired, at night and, instead of flying, that my dreams are attempts at memories of what it was like to lie next to someone you love? I think about these things and all the words I could write, all the sentences I could string together to describe a day, a moment, what it's like to be me. And it seems so futile because the only thing I've ever wanted to say - that I love you, Tom - feels cheaper every time I do. Someone said to me once that it's not who loves us that defines us, but who we love.
I don't want this to be stupid or crazy. I don't want to be forgotten. Because it's not that I don't do amazing, wonderful, great things with my life. It's not that I'm not the happiest I've ever been since you left. It's that I'm the happiest I've ever been since I've been the happiest I've ever been. It's that I need you in my life. Plain and simple. To make any of this worth anything.
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Posted on September 27, 2009 @ 2:49 pm
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My sharp white teeth cut the parched, dusty flesh, and it sticks, gooey, honey-like to my gums. Rolling it over my tongue like Spanish words, thick, heavy, soft, I squint against the blue sky. Only 6AM and already, driving east on the 202 is like crossing the River Styx into hell. I have a halo sunburn, worn cut-offs and Converse, a dusty desert angel, a cactus wren.
We cut all day with our scythes at the mesquite trees whose roots are like those of Ygdrasil, tapped into the water table, the heartblood of the earth. We pull and lean and pull with all our weight, stopping now and then to run a forearm across our sweating brows, to pass a waterbottle between us and take slow swigs.
When we are done, we climb up into the trees to taste the fruits of our labor, the golden Madjool, soft, sweet Deglet Noor, dark Dayri. Our hands are sore and our tongues too from the thick sucrose, tasting dates all afternoon, filling our bags to bursting and lugging them home, telling the other workers goodbye, already dreaming up recipes.
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Posted on September 21, 2009 @ 9:17 pm
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JESUS CHRIST I LOVE YOU. fucking talk to me. i don't want to be your girlfriend. it would be orgasmic just to hear you talk about another woman.
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Posted on September 06, 2009 @ 12:30 pm
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michelle plays her laments for me on the bedspread, a pillow hugged to my chest, and when david comes in and sits beside me, our breaths and our brains both fuzzy sweet with too many espresso martinis, he lets his arm fall over my knee.
and when, later that evening, everyone having waited all night for it, our lips touch and he bends me over backwards in a soft and gentle arch, and my fingers go up into his pepper-short hair, i am not there. we kiss and we kiss and i think back to how nervous i was about my first time with you. i think of all the tongues that have passed over mine and how you were the only one i ever kissed back. and when i push him away he growls, upset, and everyone in this spinning room laughs, but there is something missing behind my eyes and my fingertips search for your thick black hair but find instead formica countertop sticky with the residues of bad mistakes.
at dinner, after dancing drunk through the fountains, fragmenting neon lights with our bare feet, liz leans in, her eyes bright and wide and a little crazy, and she asks us, "if you could go back in time and tell yourself one thing before your first kiss, what would it be?"
"open your mouth," says lauren.
"better location," says jennifer.
"on the lips," says molly.
and, everyone turned to me, i think of you in the dark in that doorframe, beautiful, tall, so completely in love with you, and i say,
"this is going to be perfect."
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Posted on September 03, 2009 @ 11:42 pm
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her toes pressed hot circles onto my windshield,
the rain on the window hard and hopeless
and ghosts of tears on her soft cheeks.
and lightning lit the sky above our heads as
her voice broke
into the receiver.
my forehead pressed against the window glass,
wet eyes like stars in the streetlight,
reflected in the endless black sky,
cinnamon cider in a shotgun cup curling steam up from the backseat.
"i will remember you until the day i die,"
she cries.
"i will love you although you will not love me,
i will know you better than anyone will ever know you."
and when she falls knees down onto the muddy asphalt,
nose bloodied, beaten,
my heart is breaking all over again.
and when we get home and we curl our soft, round, pale and naked bodies around one another
like two commas, two pregnant pauses in the pallid glow of the night,
we hold each others' thin wrists
"i don't want to hurt like this,"
she whispers into wet pillows.
i echo her.
i don't have the voice to tell her that this is the pain that never leaves you,
that you change but you never forget.
we are two moths with the dust off our wings,
weak and alone but together.
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Posted on September 01, 2009 @ 12:19 am
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YOU ARE MAKING TERRIBLE LIFE DECISIONS.
IDIOT.
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Posted on August 12, 2009 @ 11:13 pm
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apologies to everyone who expects me to be eloquent, but, question:
have you fucked alyssa in the two weeks since i left your heart and a bottle of wine smashed on the sidewalk of that small town?
because you tell me you love me and can't be without me, you call me from dates you're taking her out on.
but somehow i suspect she's not giving it up, either. and i feel bad.
but know that what i did was for the best, because
less than 24 hours after i last turned away from you,
i was in bed with three of the slipperiest, silkiest, softest human beings, touching them in places i'd never touched you, being touched in ways that you can only dream of touching me.
don't tell me you still fucking miss me. there is no such thing as love. i would fuck you if you wouldn't make me say i love you. we could have so much fun, if you didn't care if i had just as much fun with everyone else.
stupid boy.
i was in love, once, and not with you.
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Posted on August 03, 2009 @ 11:32 pm
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all this is is free-association, stream of consciousness, the clear and lonely ghosts of conversations we've never had. maybe your hair is thinner and your face full of scratchy red beard. maybe there are more holes in your flesh. maybe there are more in mine, too.
maybe i black out too much and wake up on too many different floors. maybe you've been inside her and maybe it felt better than it did inside of me, and maybe you knew a long time ago that you wouldn't love me forever.
maybe my skin is soft and white like milk and my hair is more tame than you remember. maybe i have more curves and my soft feet kiss and stick to the cool hardwood floor in the morning when i cross topless to the sink and stare out the window wondering where you are.
maybe i am just a girl who drinks too much and is too smart for her own good, who misses you terribly, who has never been close to a man after you, who still cries at the right chords, who still lingers a little longer in certain spots around town, whose breath still fogs the plexiglass of airplane windows that refuse to take me to you.
maybe you're not even recognizable, not even remotely the man who i fell in love with. maybe i'm just in love with what we had. but maybe i don't want to live the rest of my life now knowing.
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Posted on August 03, 2009 @ 12:25 am
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i'm real fuckin' good at amassing people to miss.
i've totally fucked everything up. i'm just fucking lonely.
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Posted on July 30, 2009 @ 1:44 am
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tonight is the night i realize you're really never coming back.
the world could drown in these eyes.
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Posted on July 28, 2009 @ 12:49 am
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Dearest Philip,
I apologize for talking in circles on the phone this afternoon. You had me all in a fog and I'm no good at these sorts of things. What I wanted to say was this.
We are two fucking gorgeous people on this big damn planet. Sure, you might not need another friend. I don't need another, either, and I sure as Hell don't need another idiotic semi-relationship built on lies. Sure, I might be a dirty, trampy, home-wrecking whore Hell bent on making the lives of men miserable. But what I don't understand is why two charming, intelligent, rapier-witted, fashion-forward, movie junkies such as ourselves should let that stop us from seeing the world together.
I want to live out of the back of your Jeep, wash our mouths out with whiskey, skinny dipping, elope on a stolen speedboat, watch the sunrise, dance our asses off, toes off the dock, love each other's bodies, share a little bit of soul.
I don't need another friend, but I sure as fuck need a smart, sexy, spontaneous Australian boy to tool around town with this loud laughing, heel wearing, piss drinking, hard partying redhead.
Who the Hell knows where this road will take us. If we're lucky we'll die in a burning ball of flames at 120 miles per hour down the interstate. But if we don't, I can't promise I won't kiss some other lips, sing another song. I meant that I love you. I know that I'll miss you. Your smoke and Aqua di Gio smell, your slick plastic sunglasses, cheap BIC lighters, the bracelets that litter my bathroom counter.
Don't tell me you want to marry me, and don't tell me you can't just be friends.
Just tell me again that I am the most amazing, sweetest, most beautiful girl you ever met and I will tell you that you are the most romantic, honest, insane boy I ever have. We can kiss in the back of cop cars and eat McGriddles with the windows down and music up at sunrise. I have flawless skin and you have soft hands. Don't let the fact that I can't commit to you ruin what we would have.
I just want to know you forever.
Sincerely,
Delen.
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Posted on July 26, 2009 @ 11:29 pm
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tom i love you so fucking much
you could be across the room and you would not be further from me than you are now.
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Posted on July 07, 2009 @ 11:15 pm
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Thomas -
There was a point when I thought I could never love you more.
Now I know I love you more every fuckin' day.
Every movie I see. Every song I hear. Every shaft of light coming a million trillion miles at just the right angle between two kissing maple leaves, every swordblade of grass, every pebble of warm pavement denting the soft-sweet skin of my cheek. Every single thing in this entire universe is telling me to be with you.
Life goes on but it feels like I haven't exhaled the breath I began before you left. I can wait two years. I can wait ten. I can wait until I am cold ashes in a cold urn, just burned memories of what we were.
I want to press these words into your heart, your head, your hands: anything more than this. I just need you to know. I just need you.
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