Christmas (Eve) Conversing

Cosmas: Happy Xmas.
Liesl: HAPPY XMAS!
Cosmas: Miss you and hope all is fine with you!!
Liesl: miss you both more than I can say!
Cosmas: we wish u were here
Liesl: duuuuuude. me too.
what are your big plans?
Cosmas: .just looking at big bobiies
Liesl: perfect choice.
now I'm really jealous.
boobies would have been awesome
but bobiies are WAY better.

Points of interest in this conversation:
a. despite what it might look like, I was not in some random chat room. does anyone even do that anymore?
b. I never saw this conversation going this way.
c. I believe it's all too clear why I miss this person.

Have a good Christmas and all that business.
-L

Get Your Headphones

Ladies,

I give you Justin Bieber's single "U Smile" slowed down by 800%:

J. BIEBZ - U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis

I'm absolutely in love with this most recent finding. Who would have known that some pre-pubescent's croonings could turn out to be so lovely. It's like what Bieber would sound like with the spiritual maturity of St. Thomas Aquinas. It's like nirvanic achievement from the usage of Adderall.

For the original so there's a comparison:

Even If The Sky Is Falling Down

My family called 911 the other night and I was nearly carted off to some mental health institution.
Because I had taken three times the prescribed amount of anti-depressants-
in lieu of dinner that evening.

I was only trying to go to sleep.
So much hurts and aches and this swirling blackness is so overwhelming:
I wanted to make sure it was a good, long, deep sleep.
I don't think I wanted it all to go away. They asked me, of course, and I told them that, no, I was not trying to hurt myself.
Ironically it was the only way I knew of to help myself.
I promise. That's what I thought I was doing:
Being helpful.

Pressure

Piercing and purging
encompassing a soul's hope and escape

Fragile lives flee and fear
in promise of irreparability

conscious sufferings
waging war on the poor man's slumber

a forward-thinking motion
willing the ache to desist its cleaving

run run run run run, a moan
hand steady to ease the dizziness

and in that dream
you're there next to me

and it's good, good that you're there
because I never love anyone else

Madness

You started forgetting what it was like to have loved life in the span of roughly two months.

Looking down at the specimen that your body has left you, struggling through the four hours it takes to be pried from a bed and put into clothes, and seeing the utter horror on everyone's faces that you know is only mirroring your own - this is madness.

Disease is madness, Madness in a form that you can touch, in a form that can grab you and hold you down.

The only thought is for it to stop, to be able to say, "See? I'm not crazy. There is no sickness. This is a normal Tuesday for me just as it is for you."

But persists the cold grip of reality that drags you painstakingly throughout your devastation, your existence, taking care that you experience every nuance, that you have to shoulder every pang.
And mostly, you are sure that there is never. Ever. An End.
This is its victory.

They ask and prod and wave their fingers in your face, make noises in the backs of their throats, and send odd gifts and niceties. You hate them for this.
All of this smacks of pity and your body mocks you by retching as if it smelled something vile.

You vomit from trying to live and they will pity you even more for it.

But the loneliness.
Akin to a cold that is so deep into the bone that no amount of heat or covering will ward it off. It stays. There are those that remain next to you, that fight with you, that weep with you, that fear with you, that pull you into a small sense of yourself.
But even in the face of their presence, you feel a bold and steady darkness fold itself around you as if it were only just in the wings; it seems so familiar and you realise this is because it only had left for mere moments as they tried their damndest to pull you back from that brink. You watch faces disappear and grow smaller and distorted with their own pain, their own thoughts, their pity, their lives. You sense their disgust and you hate yourself for ever being the reason for that look on their face.
But it is you.

You tell them that you can't go further, that you don't wish to go further. You know this in the deepest places that your soul contains. It resonates in your head and extend through your former years. Nothing is nor will be more true than the one thought: Please, no more.

They tell you to push forward and you do it but they seem far away and insignificant. You tell yourself that a few moments - oh for just a precious few! - without this relentless horror and away from the Madness might clear your head. Then you might know again about life and why you once loved it.

You receive no respite, no few moments to catch your sanity. For all the anguish and the fog and the tears and the hysteria, you eventually are struggling to hear those you always held dear telling you to hang on and that you will see the end.
That it is near.
That you are fierce.
That you have life outside of this.
That there is no pit that is too deep.

And you are hanging on.
You are hanging on with all that your body and spirit will spare you.
And you are saying to yourself that you are not ever going to go plunging to those depths comprised of your deepest sorrows and unfulfilled longings.

Brother Got The Moves

To My Body

You are my affliction
We are old live-ins

I hate you with new fury
You are the drug, you are fear, you are dark before light

Kicking and screaming
You leave me, sharp and tingling

To bleed, the pain a respite
Preferred to your uninvited quiet

When this spirit cowers
Claws drawn, teeth bared, eyes rolling back

A whispering over gaping well-wishers
you are staying, you are prevailing, you prove yourself

the way madness implores with terror in its eyes
to know that tomorrow holds your presence

Letter To My Doctor

Dr. --,

I always say "you are your biggest battlefield" and that is ringing so true for me at the moment.
The past couple days have been rough. I am seeing a great deal of improvement.
However... The more improvement I see, it seems the more the anxiety sets in and I just think, "but it will stop" or "but it will be back. It always comes back."

I read the foreword of the book that you sent me as soon as I got the package you sent.
That doctor tells the story of having gone to an internist and being sent away after hearing, "I can't help you."
I burst into tears after reading that bit.
See, I've always felt helpless when things would flare up, I would be bed-ridden for a few days, I wouldn't get any sleep, I'd go to the doctor and he would prescribe steroids or antibiotics (or psycho-therapy. yes. it happened.), or, like the last one, he would say, "and now you're cured!" and I was very much not cured and when I tried to contact him again, he just never got back to me.
So I've just always thought, as long as I can remember, that this is how it is. "It is what it is" my mother says for a lot of things and so I had decided that 'what it was' was a body that hated me.

Well now I am seeing these improvements and understanding a lot more of what is going on and really starting to wonder if things could just be normal for me. And stay normal.
I'm honestly very afraid to think or believe these things.
Disappointment is a vicious and unforgiving lady.

I know this is not much of a progress report. The subject line was very misleading.
I haven't mentioned any bathroom breaks but I assure you I'm still doing everything you told me - religiously. I'm sorry because it's probably wasting some of your time to read this malarkey.

I'm just losing the fight in me because I'm so desperately afraid of always being in the dark and one step behind the reason of why my body seems to hate me and I think I needed to tell someone who seems like they might know what I mean.
Know what I mean?

Anyway, thanks for reading. I hope you're well.
Expect a real progress report soon. Scout's honour.

Affectionately,

Liesl

And Back Again

Louise. Darling.

I've always heard it said, there is "no rest for the wicked" and then, to follow-up on that, "the righteous don't need any."
Downright criminal, if you ask me.
I steal as much sleep as I can get because - like you dearest - I don't get much of it either and what I do get, is fitful and heavy. Makes me feel more like I have been chasing my tail than any amount of "replenishing."


Louise, I find normal very very droll.
Your "normal" needs to come from whatever you make of the happenings. You could be standing in a field in Bora Bora or beating your head against the pavement in some second-world country, but "normal" is going to be pretty relative to the various colours on the spectrum, don't you think?
Just make sure your "normal" is the "normal" that you mandated, that you wanted. If the cupboards don't hold it, stop going there.

I am in a lot of discomfort. I cry a lot. I'm not eating a whole lot because of this god-awful diet that the doctor has put me on. I'm desperately pleading with my body every day to rally itself, to come to its own aide, to be its advocate, to heal.
I know that the time will come. Until then, it's that waiting game that I am so furiously bad at.

In the meantime, I hope I see your lovely face soon. It is much needed in these parts.

Oh and? My hair smells of peppermint and rosemary.
God's in His heaven...

Your Thelma

From Louise To Me

Thelma

They say there is no rest for the wicked. Or is it the weary? Help me out on this one, as it's imperative.

I can't even keep my euphemisms straight anymore.
Regardless, I haven't had a restful night's sleep in ages.
It doesn't help me that you're on the lamb, or that I'm on the lamb, or that we can't keep our lambs in their pens.

This road is getting weary. I scrape off new calluses and old blisters every day; I dig through bathrooms looking for lotion, razors, tweezers, anything to give me that sense of normalcy. I eat what's put in front of me, and I'm hungover way too often for your mother's taste. Today I rode a horse. I'm sitting on a lakeside on the border and I really have no idea what I'm doing here.

But my fingernails are cut and clean and my hair smells like orange ginger and is drying in the dying light of the day, so there must be something right with the world.

Your silence is understandable, though I wonder if your battle is anything like mine. We have been separated too long. When you find the strength, write me back.

Love,
Louise

You're Violet, Violet

I have surrounded myself with the journals of Slyvia Plath, any movie I can find, and as much sleep as I can tie down.

It's coming sporadically and horribly.
"Sleep is the poor man's respite" never was a filthier lie.
The dreams are unfiltered and raw, much like my aching body.

Whatever your prayers look like and whoever might be listening, think of me when it all goes down, yeah?
The doctor has taken complete control. I hope to be further from Bed-Ridden on a sooner than later time scale.
You are in my thoughts.
And such.

To Those

"Hence ... the exquisite arbitrariness and irresponsibility of this love. I have no duty to be anyone's friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."

The Four Loves
Clive Staples Lewis


Party conversation is a teasing: discourse over a steady drink and a good smoke. You've both discussed God being dead and whether or not Euripides really authored Rhesus. He had good points, you countered with valiance. You parlay-ed for what seemed a mindless eternity and basked in the diet of that which sets us apart from the beasts, finding the unbridled substance and sanctified repertoire of thought at each other's core.

A good sleep can cure what ails you.




A friendship of convenience is captivating in its moment and its time but then there are those who long and thirst for more.
He wants to be known, she wants to be understood, we all want someone to reach inside to our very core and say, "Oh, there it is. See, this. I love this."

And what of the supposition that we don't all find it?
That there are those that walk through this life without a true Jonathan to their David?
We don't need it, we can live without it, its absence does not subtract from the forward motion of thought and progress.
I am not speaking of the friendship of convenience, the friendship over conversation and shared ideas.
I am speaking of the friendship that fights, struggles, prevails, conquers, and aches from joy and pain with its beloved.

How humbling it is to have someone set their sights on you as the object of their affection in light of their deepest truth. It is, however, all the more humbling to find that there are creatures that roam this earth whose deepest truths resonate with your own, who endeavour to live fiercely and without apology whilst calling you "friend."





"You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him."

Place A Bet On The Bet

I like playing with my cards close to my chest.

The idea of me being the only one in this world knowing what I am going to do next and where I will be and what I'm actually thinking about it is nothing short of exhilarating.

It's plain addictive.

I left my college town once after repeatedly refusing to throw myself a going-away party, nor would I hear of talk of letting one be thrown for me.

At the very last minute, right before leaving town in the middle of the night, I scrawled a few well-wishing words on some post-its, located the appropriate cars on which to leave the notes, and got the hell out of dodge, so to speak.

I loved every minute of it. I still love thinking of it because I know that I am capable of post-its with kind words and then turning heel-toe for the hills.

I like laying all of my cards out on the table.

Living passionately and unapologetically is so abrasive for my stomache's disposition that I find it downright spiritual.

I, myself, do not even know what to do with the kind of honesty that meets me in the morning before my coffee or loiters around at the end of my 26 miles of bike path.

It's offensive. It's rude. It's invasive. It's overwhelming. It's suffocating.

But oh god is it intoxicating.

I see it in motion and I simultaneously want to destroy it but then devour it to make its soul's substance my own fodder for the person I long to become.

"That is salvation."

Author Unknown

Anger darkened this doorway in a form that my local postal code had not seen in ages.

I set all of my belongings down in a tiny one-room apartment at five o'clock in the morning after frantically throwing everything I owned into arms to be carried and bags to be dragged to flee the wrath of the man I was living with.
And then found myself in the next moment embracing a toilet, sobbing and dry heaving whilst the poor unfortunates who stood by looked on with dismay because there was truly nothing to be done.

She has to feel it.

I raged and ranted and hurt and cursed and collapsed but clammered to standing again because I am, in fact, so desperately afraid of those depths that I felt washing over me like a surge of cold incapacitation.
I decried the injustice in having men who hate me, who leave me, who belittle me, who make me feel like a victim.
I loathed everyone that loves me and decided that they could see these depths for all it was worth and then run from it all with terror because I had become what I despised the most.
A failure.
I wanted to sear it in minds and open eyes to this pain, to make them all feel it to the nth degree and I wanted this black hole to open up and swallow me for infinity because I felt like I was getting used to the idea of falling.

For the first time in what I thought was only the past I strived without pause to do the only thing I knew to do.
I wanted to loathe myself with the fervor that I had met and I wanted to call it "friend."

A Lesson In Frailty.

The Feeling After

Dressed like a uni-bomber standing in front of the state library smoking a bummed cigarette.
scene change.
Furthest corner of my little world that I could have let myself imagine. With a red backpack.
scene change.
Bike ride for the last official last figurative last meaningful time.
scene change.
Prostrate in my roommate's arms sobbing for the fear and the anguish and the dreams and the pain and the newness and the oldness and the ending and the beginning and and and.

Scene change.

I wanted to say that I did not want to suffer anymore and it ripped my chest into thousands of pieces to have to say it but somehow I managed to simply pour myself another glass of water and lay my cards out on the table.
No one told me that the feeling that follows the incredible lightness is akin to that of being hung high on a wall and made to watch your life's dreams parade down below you. I collapsed down into myself and tried to find a volume for the music that was loud enough to drown out all of the thoughts that came flying at me in the wind on the ride home.
I already knew that numbness lay at the bottom of that bottle of wine so I swam down and pinned it down till it let me sit still.

I knew it was coming to this and I knew this for a while.
This is called suffering and anguish, not sorrow.
It would only be sorrow if I were sorry and I'm not sorry.

But, it is suffering because taking leave of a sizable portion of oneself and leaving it in a little neighbourhood in Berlin is not anyone's idea of a walk to the corner store.

Decade

Yesterday was the day that my dad was surprised and reminded that he is officially sixty years of age and the day that my brother was surprised and rejoiced that he is finally twenty years of age; nevertheless still forty years the junior to the senior with only a two-day addendum in his honour.

Pops came in on the 9th of March and Kid Brother rocked up exactly 40 years later and nearly stole all kinds of thunder but missed his mark by two days.

There was however, not any thunder stolen. Nothing could be more the opposite. Kid Brother is the Ying to the Yang that Pops brings to the table. The Betty to his Veronica. The Black to his White. The Keith to his Mick.
And often, as it so is with humans and more specifically fathers and their children, the Yes to his No.

Our dad is our hero. He is, by default, a hero, because he is Dad.
We go that extra mile, we take that extra step, we fight that extra fight, and we blast through any ever-loving obstacle that lies in our paths in order to get his approval, his recognition, his understanding, his pride.
But he is also, not by default, our idol and very essence.
Trusting that this is something that many a child fights tooth and nail until full realisation hits, I am confident in saying that I was one of the privileged to have experienced having a father as my biggest foe.
There is something about fighting against the very man that helped give you life that is so bold and dangerous and beautiful and destructive and blissfully powerful because it is simply the act of defiance and independence achieved through sheer, brute willpower that makes you realise that you did it all to see the fire in his eyes, the pain in his face, to hear the disappointment in his
words, and to dare him to disown you, to declaim you, to turn from you, to stop loving you.
It is in this, in this period of self-analysis and assertion, of utter stupidity and blatant disregard that we are doing our best to drive him from us, to test him, to prove how ugly we can be, to blame him for what he made us, to make him hate us for what we might become, to make him wonder where he went wrong... and to demonstrate how much we desperately need him.
It is the most beautiful moment in this life to outlive the most vivid baptism of fire that a young person can endure - warring with a father.
The lines of love and hate that were once so blurred give way to life's battlefield for both you and he to pick up arms and face the real adversaries, the ones that never claimed you, never loved you, will never know you, and only live to see you fall.
The only thing you have to know is that he loves you, he fought you, he let you strive and succeed and fall and get up again, only to knock you back into it again but you will stop fighting him for his love.
You have it.
He proved you.
He showed you how to love yourself.

Admittedly, I have never before felt that what I am doing here in this country was meaningless.
Until yesterday.
I wish I could have been there to extend the hand of friendship to my father.
Friendship for fighting the good fight and proving to be one of my best friends and one of the few souls in this world that knows me for who I am, loves me fiercely for it, and fought me to finally fully and unashamedly embrace it.
I longed to be there and congratulate my brother and welcome him into a decade that will turn him upside down and string him sideways and under.
He will go through fire and turmoil to know himself - at least, I desperately and breathlessly hope that for him.
I impatiently and hungrily anticipate the day that he will offer his own hand of friendship - the most beautiful and purest of all the loves - to a father because he knows what it is to stand as a friend next to a great man he was chosen to know.

Happy birthday and may the heavens curse the distance in between us.

Best Friend

L:

dude. did you know that some women eat their placenta after childbirth?

K:

DUDE.
why.
why would you tell me something like that?
are they native american?

Non-Swimmer

Music To Abide By

Midlake was in town this past week and I was able to drag my feverish carcass out of bed and go hear the beauty that is.
It was so lovely to see so many Texans in one location and my friends here in Berlin marveled at how beautifully men in Texas can grow a beard.
and wear plaid.
and make rock music.

Oh it was magical and I was excited to see the familiar faces and bask in the glory-hallelujah Texas rock for a short while. Blame it on the fever or the sheer delirium that I have been experiencing as a result of not seeing any sun for the past two months but the nostalgia was damn, near overwhelming and I almost begged the boys to pack me in their suitcases and take me home with them.
Because let's face it, Texas will always be home.

Before the cheese in this past starts to give you a song and dance, I am going to bring her to a close, take the lady home, and call it a night.
But but but. I wanted first to say how much I am in love with this song at the moment. It's seen a good deal of the repeat function on my iPod and has gotten me through many a trek through the ice and snow in Berlin.

All my love to all of you every one of you especially you.

The Day That I Worried That My Kid Brother Had Become Suddenly Uncool or How The Writer Nearly Flipped Her Sh***. A Story In Pictures.

I made a phone call to my brother today.
The connection is made and this soothing, female voice on the other end asks me to "wait while my party is reached."
And then some crappy what-might-be-known-as-R&B-in-some-loose-terms comes on and some woman/man? is whining in my ear.
And I'm all:

I'm hearing what-might-be-known-as-lyrics-in-some-loose-terms along the lines of, "oh baaaaaby (blah blah blah) and your boooooody" and "oh gurrrrrrl you've got me gooooooin'" and then back to "your boooooody" and probably something else further about her boooooty but I had already tuned out cause at that point it was,
Because really, can this be FOR REAL?
I mean, I know my brother. He's kickass. He owns. He's hip. He jives. He's down.
He does not use his cellphone to broadcast statements like, "I'M A TOTAL DOUCHE BAG AND REALLY PROUD OF THIS FACT SO WHO WANTS TO KNOW. GURL."

He just doesn't.

And then it happened. I'm working on keeping my blood pressure down and thinking of the Come To Jesus talk that I am about to have with the kid brother in question...
"Hi. You've reached Chelsea..."

Wrong number.
There is a God.
Woo.



Chelsea was, I would say, roughly 14, 15 years old.
You know, of the generation that could run the world if the quadratic equation could be converted into text speech and sports shirts saying, "Don't You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me?"
And sadly, apparently one of those that feels like boys singing songs about her "gurl booty" and her "boooooody" is so cool that she should use her cellphone as a small radio transmitter to let everyone know:
"I dig douche bags."

Needless to say, I was relieved.

Yes. Chelsea.
You are in my thoughts. I'm there for you, gurrl. Don't let your boo get you down. Be strong baby girl.


And change your ringtone. For crying out loud.



RE: the restored status of aforementioned kid brother:

Props for being you and not being lame and, you know, stuff.
Close call buddy.


but so HELP me!



if you EVER scare me like that or DREAM of being Chelsea's "boo" or or or!




Love,
Big Sis

If You Have Not Seen Band Of Brothers, The First Paragraph Will Mean Nothing To You. Muh Bad.

I nearly thought I was going to lose my feet today when we headed outside to go sledding with the class.
I just kept thinking to myself, "At least I'm not in Bastogne." I was never in Bastogne and the closest I got was a crazy night in Brussels but that is not what matters right now - what matters is that I was Not In Bastogne so I feel that Never Having Been In Bastogne gets the job done.
I was not in Bastogne.
But I was still not in Spain. And that seems to be the focus of my thoughts lately - "the HELL did I not study Spanish for?"
Because really, this cold is for the birds.

Well, I have promised someone near and dear to my bleeding heart that I would post some more pictures of my side of the world so I am doling out some of the love from some of our better moments since classes started up again.

My music class with the movie stars themselves: Glasses with different amounts of water to produce a tone when struck with a spoon. Bam. A full octave. We DO-RE-MIed the nonsense out of this project.


The Sledding Sessions: We had to traipse over snow dune after snow dune in order to get to the park where we wanted to sled. Here is the group and my colleague (the one that is not a child) who repeats everything I ever say in the English language because he 1.) does not understand it so it must actually. sound. interesting. and 2.) lives to make my life a bit more complicated.
The girl in the pink is our little tomboy. She is clearly wearing the pants in this little relationship and he is clearly okay with it. She boasts loudly about how much she has eaten, punches harder than any of the boys within a 3o km radius, uses the word "dude" more than I do, and is absolutely adored by every single unsuspecting male that comes within 2 feet of her. She's a legend in her own right.

See what I mean?!?! Don't mess with momma.
Brilliance.
If this is not the most perfect, ruddy-faced German under a fur cap that you have seen all day, then I'll buy you two of what you're drinking.




This picture really strikes me as some kind of ad for Gap Kids.
Or Mercedes Benz.No one can ever fully understand what this structure in this specific park means to me.

you asked for it.
-L

My Heart My Weakness

I'm at that moment when my heart could just overflow.
I walk through this city and I can't feel my hands because of the bitter cold and yet I take no notice and hear nothing but the sound of the snow underneath my boots and the pounding inside my chest. When I finally come to a stop, I am sweating violently beneath my clothes and I am not sure if it is because I was running without knowing it or if my body was only overwhelmed with its own energy.

Everything stands in a grand juxtaposition of itself and tomorrow is always unforgiving.
I need that tall glass of cold water.

Save my money
For that plane ride
Horn of plenty
Heavy sunlight
Autumn's bounty
Bread and red wine
In a hurry
But there's so much time

I will wait for you
Growing love but like water
Time will always slip through
I will wait for you
But please come soon

The wind sounds angry
But my coat's kind
Wrapped in blankets
In the daylight
Winter's longing
Somewhere to close behind
In a hurry
But there's so much time

I will wait for you
Growing love but like water
Time will always slip through
I will wait for you

-Leap Year (Maria Taylor)