What I'm thankful for.

This is the first year that I'm not actually not spending the holidays with my family. I called my mother today, talked to my father. Can't speak to either one of them without crying. It's been hard these past years. Trying to maintain my own life and not feel responsible for others.

I understand that leaving LA and the people I love was a choice I decided to make, but I can't help but feel guilty. That I should be with them, and because I am not it somehow means I care less.

I know this isn't true.... And somewhere deep down i know that they understand, or at least I hope that they do.

At the same time, this is the first year I am spending it with people who not do not have access to their family....

I, on the other hand, do. No matter how dysfunctional, have a wonderful family who in spite of their faults love me. I have a best friend who also has a amazing family who supports me like their own. Friends who understand and care for me in ways people could only dream of.

I have those things... and though I don't have much to show in any tangible sense, i have a rich life, which is measured by my understanding of the world and the people that fill that space.

and for this I am thankful.... very very thankful.

My Long Winded Response to Gender, Relationships and Love..

So I had a conversation today about gender roles, and relationships.

Here's my response:

In regards to gender roles:
The construction of what it means to be a man or a woman is interwoven with a multitude of factors (both physiological and social)… but should not be mistaken as a fixed state of being…. If only because of the different expressions of everything else in-between… and believe me… there is an in-between.

Maybe that in-between is a personification of the dualities expressed within current forms of what gender means… sometimes it's a cluster fuck of god knows what. Nevertheless, gender is expressed in a multitude of ways.

Women convey themselves in ways that are considered masculine... Men behave in ways that are very feminine… And yes, there is such a thing as androgyny... Regardless of orientation…. these things exist.

How can I make such an overt statement as if it were fact? Because, whether or not you are aware, it is ubiquitous. All you have to do is look. With the expansion and acceptance of expression there is no real need to live up to or dismantle gender. We are acculturated to become whatever society wants us to be, while simultaneously finding ways to break those paradigms down.

As far as my opinion on relationships:
Being on all different ends, both good and bad. All I can say is this…. from any starting point it's easy to judge others, until we are placed within a predicament that engenders dissonance within us.

We can sit outside of ourselves and see the dualities of a situation, but there are so many variables that make people behave in ways contrary to what we expect. And we must remember, regardless of our expectations… not everyone can live up to our ideals…. Shit, we can barely do it ourselves… how can we expect or devalue those who can't either.

We are human. We make mistakes. We behave in ways contrary to values or beliefs that feel inherent within us…

Why..? I don't know. Maybe because we're selfish. But maybe we're not. Maybe when we have to take other people's feelings into consideration we put our needs last. Sometimes social, cultural, and internal factors don't add up to the same solution… and at the end of the day we still have to pick one….

Does this make us wrong, or selfless, or inherently hypocritical?

Maybe, but our actions do not define us or encapsulate who we are. We are much more than an event, or moment in time. So it isn't fair to assume the intentions of others, when we can barely understand those of ourselves.

I guess no one ever really knows what they will do until they are there. Until then, we as people should consider reevaluating the way we judge others.

And finally my stance on Love:
Love… and what each individual wants within the context of a relationship varies…. And is essentially innumerable. One can make generalizations, but when it comes to love, it's too abstract to place such categories into concrete terms. All you can hope for is that you find someone to accept you, understand you, and maybe even one day love you unconditionally. Love is work, no matter how strong the foundation is.

Because at the end of the day, if you never give all of yourself what's it really worth?

Winter Summer Solstice

Will I ever taste the early solstice?
the afternoon slumber
after our red laden kiss
that binded the barricades of your dark laden door.
lying. looking into slits of deadened trees
of orange leaves that
hid my touch
your whispers
our secrets.
Will I ever feel the solstice?
the late night heat.
dripping off of your heaving chest
unto my swollen breasts
as you hide your lies within me?
floundering. arms outstretched
as you clutch my tears
to save as salves
to ease your selfish pain.
numbing. the sound of thunderstorms
that promise
to come but never seem to keep.
Will I ever mend the days now lost?
realign the skyless streams of sunlight
that make my visions true
as we bask upon each revelation
your future, my home,
our equinox
without us?

What I Converse About: In 3 Minutes Flat

Friend: What goes on in that head of yours Elizabeth?……

Me: …….. I don't know. Do you want the dumbed down version, or something mildly poetic?

Friend: How about both…?

Me: Ummmmm…. What's in my head…… ummmm. Ok…..

My Head is a continual stream of consciousness looking for it's ocean. Filled in lines with no ellipses, commas, or periods……

My head is a rambling abode of chaos with only rhyme and no reason. It tends to fuck with treasonous thoughts, if only because it brings me closer to an edge… my edge of understanding.

I am my own conundrum.

My head is a container of neurosis that spills out from time to time. The destructive child. The mother who cleans up the messes.

My head is warring alongside the world with a silent hope for peace. My head is waiting. Waiting for my heart to catch up, because it's tired of running so fast, and feeling so slow.

My head is yearning for my next walk, because it misses the sound of his footsteps.

My head is loud, quiet, still… erratic. Moving toward cessation.

My head is humpty dumpty after the second fall.

My head is a drummer… the dimmer switch, my catalyst for light. A lens projecting the disfigured state of the world, gracefully. An idolizing fool mimicking what my heart once was.

My head is aching from dissonance, digging through clutter to find clarity, trying to find the words, a connection that makes me feel less lonely than being alone.

So where is my head these days….? Everywhere but where it should, in the exact place it needs to be….

Friend: Oh….. So what's the mildly poetic version?

Me: That's it's blank most of the day and when synapses occasionally fire it comes up with a odd thought that gets instantaneously sidetracked by shiny things.

Friend: Sounds about right.

Me: Yeah…. Yeah it does.

your cloud

I feel as if I am disconnected.

Wandering, wondering… for as much as words seem to keep the heart warm, it never entirely stave's off the cold.

I want to believe, beyond what is considered devout. Beyond the faithful.

But I need a sign. Beyond what is said. Beyond words.

Not a conciliatory flag waving white in my direction.

You seem to assume that I am unaware or unknowing ..of what and who you are.

and yet I wonder, how much do you really know?

About you.
About me.
About us.

Just because my voice remains silent, does not mean that they are unseen or unheard, unless my feelings do not resonate upon your ears.

What streams I thought we're once connected, are now lakes becoming oceans that I am afraid to float across.

The words that jump off my lines into your pages were once fluid, poetic.. But now increasingly despondent and disjointed.

I do not like what this story has become… i do not like the perpetual, potential, proverbial ending that appears so evident in my heart.

Trying to find a way to combine, to coalesce, the things that divide 'you' into 'me' now that we've become 'us'…

I want to see what's real. Define and erase the lines again and again until it we make our own map, our own world.

But I feel as if we are drawing on two planes of a distant existence. Painting on polarized points of the same world.

And I don't want draw territories between countries, or oceans. I want to recapture the space between. Where we fit in all the right ways. I want to mend us into distinct forms made from the same mold.

And never again have to ask, but know, where you are, and where I am. Not where you end or I begin.