S.P.A.M.

I live exactly where I want to live, by choice and not by circumstance.

S.P.A.M.

Instead of being lazy and taking a mini vacation from fitness I rallied a couple of friends together for a morning make-up workout session, and actually challenged myself with  free weights (sans lovely personal trainer impetus).

Seven Minutes in Heaven

A girl across the street, though obviously a woman and not a girl, is wearing one of those cotton dresses that make me think of scraped knees and jelly sandals. Her spine has the dejected curve of adolescence. She stares vacantly into the car seat sitting in the sun on the back of her Ford Tempo. The carrier is navy blue, the car a dull burgundy – both look dusty in the daylight. Her hands dart out to touch the carriage every few seconds then tuck back into a tight fold across her chest. She doesn’t shift her downward gaze. A boy, though clearly a man and not a boy, stands on the other side of the car seat and yells at her. He leans heavily on the car with his hip, drops his hand onto the baby carriage then springs up again to shake his fist at her. Everything he touches sways like an abandoned swing. She stands very still except for the occasional flutter of her hands. His eyes never leave her face. This goes on for seven minutes. Then, he swings the car seat wide between them and they part with no goodbye.

S.P.A.M.

Sometimes, when I draw something, then come back to it after not looking at it for a long time, I can hardly believe I made it. In a good way.

I Heart no.8

Etsy Find: Dilkabear. I haven’t quite gotten enough of the large-heads-with-wide-spaced-eyes little doll people portraits, and I’m a sucker for an artist with a style.

I’d like her to illustrate an assortment of children’s books with all those dark fairy tale nuances for me. Until then, I’ll browse here.

S.P.A.M.

I have good posture. Most of the time.

Something Positive About Myself

I’ve been charged with a task, and I’ll take it on. Once a day, kids. Something positive about myself.

I have nice wrists. They’re small, but not bony. Delicate. Elegant, even.

What? It’s something.

I’m okay and I’m alright

Sure sure, kid.

the Last Time God Spoke, pt. 2

In so much as the Voice of God could be said to whine, Gabriel did so audibly as he stretched his wings wide, searching the expanse of feathers for more detritus.

“No one else up here smells like anything at all.” Ropes of muscle, naturally grey and currently silvered in the diffuse heavenly light, coruscated across his ribcage and abdomen as he jerked and twisted in a spastic circle, inspecting every bit of himself, muttering all the while.

A choir of waif-like angels he hadn’t noticed sulking nearby eyed him suspiciously. He stared at them from beneath one huge outstretched wing, and then straightened to his full (rather imposing) height. They burst into giggles and fluttered breezily past him.

“That’s just great,” he yelled after them, catching their scent. Gabriel realized that the angels, like everyone in heaven, smelled vaguely of dust. Dust, and something sweet. “Marshmallows,” he grumbled. His stomach turned.

Shuffling his wings back in order, he stomped off to his living quarters. Well. Technically, no one was “living” up here, and no one had any property to themselves. Still, the place where Gabriel spends most of his time in heaven might as well be called his, as no one save a stray newcomer ever passes through it.  And they never stay long.

People used to approach him all the time, ages ago. Bring him gifts and things. Mostly clouds shaped like earth-things, poems or bits of stars. Junk, really, but still, they were offerings. The newly dead (and for a brief period before the whole earth debacle all of the cherubim in the spheres) thought that he could curry favour with God Himself.

They didn’t understand, of course, that God had stopped listening to Gabriel shortly after some of the other angels, erm, left. Also, none of them really seemed to get that the Lord didn’t favour anything, or any one. Never had. Ever. He loves e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.

Gabriel did his best to never spend more than a few moments in His presence. He found it depressing.

The thing is, is…

Fits of rage only last so long.

Relationships only last so long.

Life only lasts so long.

What my disease boils down to is an  acute inability to keep shit in perspective. I want a security blanket. I want some sort of rosary to count my troubles and successes and prayers and furies on. I want a crutch, a twitch, tourettes, ocd, a habit, an addiction, a constant.

I don’t want to feel week, lonely, broken, wrong. I don’t want to be ignored, snapped at, bracketed off, forgotten.

I want to talk about the weather, and the world, and art and beauty. I’ve spent so long learning to ’speak from the I’ that I’ve fallen out of context.

It’s boring, really. That’s the sad part.

Just keep swimming.