I have moved to vox.

Wash

Failed attempts to slowly massage out that which is killing you
leads to this now -
the ripping of band aids.
I'm a clever jester,
the clown of profound,
but the makeup never seems to come off.
My focus is daring, a startling injection
at the root of.
Its the push and pull that zeroes in,
aim precise,
scanning for the weak spots.
Leads to this now -
the ripping of band aids,
the force of will,
wounds that will heal when you tell them to.
Its power that cannot be negated,
the worst of them all.
But over and over in my head it plays,
the face of stone
the face of stone
the face of stone.
Detachment attaches itself ;
wounds will heal when you tell them to.
Round robin it goes,
"he could get anyone to do anything he wanted ..."
lulled into sleep.
Hiding face down between the tracks of the oncoming trains.

Because he can't turn it off.

Walking slowly down a busy street,
sun coming in through the fall trees;
and I'm thinking,
"one night we're gonna burn 'em down ..."

Torture me so that I can learn to bear happiness. The journey is the same as the reward - and I will have both.

And then she bought a house.
Southern Gothic style.
Paint peeling off the shingles.
Two miles from the main road.
Shaded by the orange trees.
She felt no need to fix it up; not the outside.

You were there.

"Well, sit down. Listen. I understand. And it's very nice of you. But you don't know. I thought a few days here would be enough to take the hero worship out of you. I see it wasn't. Here you are, saying to yourself how grand old Cameron is, a noble fighter, a martyr to a lost cause, and you'd just love to die on the barricades with me and to eat in dime lunch-wagons with me for the rest of your life. I know, it looks pure and beautiful to you now, at your great old age of twenty-two. But do you know what it means? Thirty years of a lost cause, that sounds beautiful, doesn't it? But do you know how many days there are in thirty years? Do you know what happens in those days? Roark! Do you know what happens?"

"You don't want to speak of that."

"No! I don't want to speak of that! But I'm going to. I want you to hear. I want you to know what's in store for you. There will be days when you'll look at your hands and you'll want to take something and smash every bone in them, because they'll be taunting you with what they could do, if you found a chance for them to do it, and you can't find that chance, and you can't bear your living body because it has failed those hands somewhere. There will be days when a bus driver will snap at you as you enter a bus, and he'll be only asking for a dime, but that won't be what you'll hear; you'll hear that you're nothing, that he's laughing at you, that it's written on your forehead, that thing they hate you for. There will be days when you'll stand in the corner of a hall and listen to a creature on a platform talking about buildings, about that work which you love, and the things he'll say will make you wait for somebody to rise and crack him open between two thumbnails; and then you'll hear the people applauding him, and you'll want to scream, because you won't know whether they're real or you are, whether you're in a room full of gored skulls, or whether someone has just emptied your own head, and you'll say nothing, because the sounds you could make--they're not a language in that room any longer; but if you'd want to speak, you won't anyway, because you'll be brushed aside, you who have nothing to tell them about buildings! Is that what you want?"

Roark sat still, the shadows sharp on his face, a black wedge on a sunken cheek, a long triangle of black cutting across his chin, his eyes on Cameron.

"Not enough?" asked Cameron. "All right. Then, one day, you'll see on a piece of paper before you a building that will make you want to kneel; you won't believe that you've done it, but you will have done it; then you'll think that the earth is beautiful and the air smells of spring and you love your fellow men, because there is no evil in the world. And you'll set out from your house with this drawing, to have it erected, because you won't have any doubt that it will be erected by the first man to see it. But you won't get very far from your house. Because you'll be stopped at the door by the man who's come to turn off the gas. You hadn't had much food, because you saved money to finish your drawing, but still you had to cook something and you hadn't paid for it....All right, that's nothing, you can laugh at that. But finally you'll get into a man's office with your drawing, and you'll curse yourself for taking so much space of his air with your body, and you'll try to squeeze yourself out of his sight, so that he won't see you, but only hear your voice begging him, pleading, your voice licking his knees; you'll loathe yourself for it, but you won't care, if only he'd let you put up that building, you won't care, you'll want to rip your insides open to show him, because if he saw what's there he'd have to let you put it up. But he'll say that he's very sorry, only the commission has just been given to Guy Francon. And you'll go home, and do you know what you'll do there? You'll cry. You'll cry like a woman, like a drunkard, like an animal. That's your future, Howard Roark. Now, do you want it?"

"Yes," said Roark.

Chinese for dinner; my fortune said this:


What is to give light must endure the burning.

"He knew that the days ahead would be difficult. There were questions to be faced and a plan of action to be prepared. He knew that he should think about it. He knew also that he would not think, because everything was clear to him already, because the plan had been set long ago, and because he wanted to laugh."

Oh god, this.

Feeling quiet and empty, he told himself that he would be all right tomorrow. He would forgive himself the weakness of this night, it was like the tears one is permitted at funeral, and then one learns how to live with an open wound ....

Surrender the idea of higher knowledge, surrender pseudo-insight.

For now: there is no such thing as denial.

Said honestly, directly, forthright.

No fear, no desire ... nothing but (perhaps concerned?) neutrality.

Scattered and confused, pressured to ...

Its no longer reactive vs. nonreactive. Perhaps closer to middle ground, perhaps just a swift jog away from the superset of possibilities.

What was or may be wasted - I let it go.

You think you can make it stop?
Well, you can't.
We build a shield, and somebody will build a better missile.

... and what am I looking for?

You, in the face of anyone but.

Being dragged through it, heavied with errors and missteps, is weighing me down. Actually, its been weighing me down since I was 17 and I think I'm finally cracking after 4 years. Sucked of magic - maybe this is life? I can wish there was a handbook, but even then, I'd be without answers.

I tried to envision something grand and beautiful. I held off on excitement, held off on pedestal placing. Years of this must have trained me to know better. The inevitable is just that, and here we are again.

Worn.

They should take me in because I'm family. They should take me in because I have nowhere else to go. They should take me in because, at the very least, they owe me.

My family functions like a business transaction placed without the incentive.

Red tape, red tape, red tape ...

This is how I ended up this way, bitter and tired, acerbic and withdrawn, chock full of defense mechanisms and deflective tricks. Private but lonely. I used to be very idealistic, easily inspired, "Man is basically good."

But, to be clear, this is not the painful part. That was when I was hoping that their response would be different. Hope is painful, not the disappointment. Caring is torture.

Knife in the gut, k ni fein t h eg u t

Left with no buffer (another childhood mistake you made, can't replace, just like unconditional love), with nothing to offer, nothing of value. Just me and this dog, dreams that should have died long ago, fragments of sentiment I'm trying to shrug off.

See the end -
see the end of time
From the widow's walk I feel the undertow
It grows
and my fishin' pole
Like a willow bends toward the blackest hole
To the hole
See the film
see the black and whites
Circle stationed stupid to the tape that rolls
My soul receives another blow
From the flashlight of the city hate line
See the bad dreams that you speak about
And all the things you bring to light are comin' down
Now everybody hit the ground
Fear is on the march and in the lost and found
These are the times to read between the lines
Yeah my truck runneth over false prophet signs
And road blocks
In the road

My name is Meagan Jean.
When I was young I was a beauty queen.
As I grew older I became bitter and mean.
And now I'm somewhere in between.

When I'm down, well, see ... you've gotta get out of here. That's how this goes. And if there are three sides to everything, then I'm not just Jekyll and Hyde. There's at least one more unaccounted for.

Imprisoned by my own decisions - stick with you! A new season, a dark one, a rebirth of sorts. Now we're going off the map. All three of us.

This is the beauty of suspicion, this is the beauty of deceit:

I got everything of you, and you got nothing of me.

Shocked that I won't argue, given my wealth of arguments. Let me tell you why - to argue, to deal, to show emotion or passion of any kind is merely bending to your will.

Poverty is no longer noble.

Frank Sinatra's I'll be Home for Christmas.