Open the Gate

From 3/14/2008

I want to see myself in the writing. Feel the writing from the inside out. To see myself reflected – good, bad, beautiful and ugly. I want my writing to be a mirror of my humanity. The image that comes to mind is a garden with big iron gates and an ocean flowing out – a surreal image without logic or reason.

I want others to feel the writing too.

As a writer I want to reach into the chest of my reader, pull out their heart and show it to them. Saying, “look! Look what’s in your heart!”

I have no idea why I want to do this. It’s not meant to hurt, it’s meant to help -- to open their eyes. To open the gate.

Open the gate
Meet me in the lush green garden
Walk circles with me around the daffodils
Swim the cool waters
Surrounded by rainbow fish
Diving deep with me
Into screaming caves
And evening shadows
Laugh with me
Cry with me
Transcend time with me
Feel me from the inside out
And know my knowing as your own
Open the gate
And meet me in the lush green garden

Writing is

Writing is trust

Trusting that you have something to say, trust that you can say it, trust that others will listen, trust that you will not be judged, and trust that you can survive the judgments if they occur. Trust and faith go hand in hand. If you have faith in yourself, you can write.

Writing is never perfect

You are always aiming at capturing the exact experience but you will always fall short. Words and image will always point towards the abstract but will never capture it exactly. It is the nature of life and of writing that we can experience bliss with our being, but describing it is almost impossible. Word and image will never be perfect but they just might open a door in someone’s soul that allows them to experience bliss for themselves.

Writing is addictive

Once you feel the rush of adrenaline, the satisfaction of words on the page, the response from your reader, it is easy to get hooked. It is also easy to become obsessed with creating the ‘perfect’ writing which will never happen but may motivate you endlessly to try. Writing is cathartic and therapeutic which can also be addictive. Needing to get the words and images out may become a compelling obsession.

Writing is Organic

Even with the structure of sentences, words, grammar, etc, writing is an organic experience. The way you maneuver and organize the language and image that you use is an ambiguous and creative process. It is slippery and chaotic at times. It lacks discipline and compromise other times. It grows on its own and thrives on its own. Writing seems to have a life of its own.

Writing comes Through you

Writing comes through you not from you. As much as our ego would like to take full credit for our brilliant writing, writing would not exist without our connection to the world. Each of us has been given a certain voice, specific gifts, and a unique perspective. When we connect to the energy of the world – through people, culture, events, art, spirit, emotion, etc. – we are allowing the creative force to move into us and through us. Writing is our personal expression of the universal consciousness that we all share.

Writing is Adventure

Writing is a process of discovery and exploration. Writing is always following the road less traveled. If you are writing, you are expressing something that is authentically you and carving out a path of your own. You must have a thrill seeker in you if you are a writer. Writing will always be unpredictable and have unexpected results. You need courage and conviction to continue to follow the adventure of writing.

Writing is contribution

Writing is giving something back. Writing is your active participation in the voice of the world. Writing is your contribution to the universal dialogue. Writing is taking everything that you’ve learned and experienced and formulating something significant to say to humanity. Writing is the mark you make, the song you sing, the idea you share, the thing you will be remembered for when you’re gone.

Writing is paradox

Writing sets you free and traps you in an endless desire to write. Writing conforms to structure and logic but expresses creativity and emotion. Writing is a solitary endeavor yet reaches countless people in its expression. Writing is a personal act but captures a universal phenomenon. Writing is familiar yet totally unpredictable is its nature. Writing is a paradox just like life is a paradox. From the tension of duality, comes the creativity of writing.

Struggles of Writing Life Story

From 12/21/2007

I couldn’t possibly tell you the truth, could I? Couldn’t really allow myself to remember the smell, the flavor, the texture of it all? The further away in time, the less real they seem – the memories, that is. I know that I remember. I know that somewhere inside of me every ugly detail is recorded. It’s only in desperation that I allow myself to think about it at all. I’ve hit a wall in living. I’ll die if I don’t do this. I’ve already tried it once. Suicide. It didn’t work, obviously. If it had worked, I wouldn’t be staring myself in the face at this very moment daring myself to do it. To open up. To purge the sludge-filled depths with my voice. My voice. I’ve just got to let it go. The tears and slimy snot dripping down my face. The pity. The anger. My oh-so-cold silence. I gotta let it go.

I am

From 2/20/2008

I am so open and so willing to make it work. To be deep. To be heart centered. To be aware. To be transformed. I listen when asked to do more, say more, be more. I listen and do things differently. I like to stay in relationships for a long time and see if I can make it work. I want people to be happy. I want to make them happy. I like the truth. I like to know how I can grow and learn and do more and be better than I was yesterday. I like to know if I make you feel sad or happy or comfortable or uncomfortable. I am very good at making change and learning from my mistakes.

I am so totally in this journey. I’ve made it my own. I take responsibility for it. My choices, good and bad, have led me to this moment. I don’t have any regrets. I like people. Even the incompetent ones. I just want to be good at what I do. I just want to help people to feel relaxed, healthy and happy. I only care about being me, enjoying my work, and living a simple life. I think the work I do is important. I think it is more important then being tall or good looking or making lots of money.

I like the fact that I take risks. I like my affinity for adventure. I like my drive even if it bulldozes people some of the time. I like my writing. I think it’s fun and revealing. I like my passion for life. My big heart. My fearlessness about death.

i could die tonight

From 7/19/2004

I’ve lost control
Given it up
Moved willingly into the tempest
I am rising and falling on the stormy ocean waves
Far from shore
Chaos surrounds me
Drowns me with its energy
I drink it in
And relax into the loss of my organized self
‘I could die’ I say with a smile
Feeling a dangerous satisfaction
Daring death to come and get me
‘I could die a happy girl tonight’
Drop down into the deep water
Sink slowly to the bottom and
Lie peacefully among the coral and seaweed
Why struggle with the waves when
There is rest in surrender?
I let go
Close my eyes
Move willingly into the darkness
Let the night decide to take or leave me
Tomorrow I will wash onto dry land or
Remain a milky white ghost
Sleeping on the ocean floor

i love you

From 5/12/2008

I know you are a person who loves deeply. I know you are afraid of loving me. I know you question whether or not I am good enough for you, whether I am refined enough, safe enough, enlightened enough, sensitive enough or whatever, whether or not I fit into your life plan. I don’t care about any of that. I love you because I want to love you, not because I want you to love me back. I give you my heart because I want to give it to you, I like the way it feels to be enamored and intrigued by you. If you chose not to give me your heart, I will be sad but I will still love you. I reap the benefits of loving you because it keeps my heart open, it allows me to feel things I don’t feel when my heart is closed, it allows me to write this letter and other letters letting you know how much I appreciate you. It allows me to relax because I don’t have to pretend that I don’t love you and I don’t have use all my mental energy to come up with all the reasons why I shouldn’t love you.

Ireland

From 3/3/2004

I want to feel her inside me
The Earth
The moss
The wetness of the wind
I want to absorb her
Melt into the mystical
Forget who ‘I’ am
And become one with her
The rush and the hurry pull me away
Filling me with regret
And a tearing of myself at the seams
Streams through me
My heart lingering behind
In the forest
In the mountains
In the crisp Irish air
All the time in the world would be enough time
To lose myself here
To let go of ‘me’
And become her
To become Ireland.

Arrival

From 3/3/2004

Ache away
Bodily memory
Fleshy pain
Holding molecules of emotion
Like dirty water in Life’s bucket
From jaw to neck to back to flat feet
Move through me
Unblock and unlock me
Open chamber doors
Guarding heart
Guarding life
Know Needing in comfort
Taste the bleeding roots of this flesh with
Bitter sweetness
With conviction to replant
To grow bigger, taller, more lush and plentiful
Overflowing like the greenness of Ireland
Connected here
Part of me and part of it
Forever changed by the meeting
By the weaving of Songlines
Between me and the people
Me and the land
Me and myself
Contain me not from my own Knowing
My own passion
The pull to be pulled
Arrive safely inside
Stepping again and again into the flow of myself
Yet never stepping into the same person twice

I am from...

From: 6/16/2007

I am from Anne and Leroy, Oak Street and Wayne Avenue
from Scranton and Hershey and the Lackawanna Valley
I am from abandoned coal mines and steel trains
From tree houses and swimming pools, snowmen and block parties.
I am from Holy Rosary, scranton Prep and a lifetime of school uniforms
I am from craziness and darkness, violence and fear
From Italians and Irish and tempers and drinking
I am from ballet, tap, and all that jazz
from painting and singing and roller skating in the basement
I am from rolling green hills, cold grey winters, and orange autumn trees
I am from pizza and pasta, cotton candy and canolis
I am from fireworks, the Philharmonic and Carvel ice cream
I am from dad hitting her, dad hitting him, dad hitting me
From waiting on the porch swing to flirt with the paperboy
from writing in my journal, collecting stickers, making up imaginary stories and playing with kittens.
I am from beauty pageants, dance recitals, plays and peforming
From Cadillacs, Jaguars, dirt bikes and go-carts
I am from yard sales, amusement parks, tire swings and sitting on dad's shoulders
from drugs and guns and flopping fish on the floor
I am from harshness and sickness, reeking wretched ilness
from bunny rabbits and pigtails, magic and puppet shows.
I am from broken glass, barbed wire fence and grranite tombstomes
From blue skies, fluffy whote clouds and sculptures of angels
I am from wilted weeds, untended grass and lots of dry earth
I am big lakes, hidden rivers and running streams
from lots of love and tears, heartbreak and struggle, happiness and sorrow

Have I been wrong?

From: 6/14/2007

Have I been wrong? Have I been blind? She says that I am unaware. She says I don’t connect. She says I am not intimate. She says I am a mystery. I am so open and so willing to make it work. To be deep. To be heart centered. To be aware. To be transformed. I listen when asked to do more, say more, be more. I listen and do things differently. She says that’s not enough. She says I have to do it without being asked. She says I have to do it because I want to do it. I say it feels like pressure. Like expectation. She says maybe it won’t happen in this lifetime. Fuck her. She says I accommodate people. She says it in a negative way. She says she doesn’t want me to accommodate her she just wants me to be different than I am. She says I irritate her. She says I’m manic, hyper-focused, driven, jarring, fearful, heavy. She says it in a negative way. Then she says I’m negative. She says she doesn’t like my behavior. She said that she used to be infatuated with me. She used to want to be me. Not anymore. Now she wants her freedom. She wants to spend time with her dog and her husband. She wants to travel and work with other people.

She says she didn’t trust me but today she’s starting to trust me because she finally believes me when I say I am not here in the moments when she feels like I am being rude, unavailable, cold. I’ve checked out. She says I am disassociating, splitting. She loves to give clinical names to things. I’m a person. I go away when I feel uncomfortable, overwhelmed, unsafe. I always come back. And I come back even faster if you just call my name and say, “Hey, where are you? Where did you go? What’s the matter?” And I’m honest. I’ll tell you where I went and why I went there. She doesn’t like it when I tell her. She says it feels like blame. She says she takes it personal. She wants me to be comfortable when I’m uncomfortable. Confident when I am scared. Here when I am there. I don’t know how to please her. She is not the first person to say these things. Other people have said these things. I used to get really upset. Now I just sit with it. I am who I am. I do the best I can. I asked her why she doesn’t approach me in those moments and try to talk to me. She says I’m unapproachable. She corrects herself. She’s says “I don’t want to make the effort. It’s too much effort.” A tear falls from my eye. I say, “I think I am worth the effort.”

I waver on the fence of sanity and stability. I know who I am, right? I am aware, right? I know I have things to work on. We all have limitations. I am working everyday to become more whole. To become more graceful. There are so many things about me that I don’t know what to do with. Like a brown bag of groceries, paper tearing, oranges spilling onto the floor. What do I do with all the parts of me that don’t fit into this relationship? What do I do with the over-analyzing, over-achieving, unaffectionate parts of me? The immature, dramatic, isolating, withdrawing parts of me? How do I accommodate without being accommodating? How do I be myself when someone is saying “I don’t like who you are”? I love to walk away from these relationships. I love to walk away when someone is being apathetic, insecure, passive aggressive, unreasonable but I also like to stay for a long time and see if I can make it work. Maybe there is a magic formula. A magic key. Some door in some hallway in some house that will let me inside the person. Let me understand and relate to the person. Let me figure out what it is they want me to be.

She said she wanted me to be more of myself. She said she wanted to see me drunk, vulnerable, inappropriate, unprofessional. I let down my guard a little. Showed her a few things. She said she didn’t like it. She said it was unbecoming. It wasn’t spiritual. More oranges on the floor. What do I do with my immaturity, my loudness, my affinity for drama? What do I do with the girl who grew up unattended, undisciplined, and unstable? She still wants attention. She still acts out. She doesn’t fit into this relationship either.

This is my depth. This is who I am. This is me without exaggeration, grandiose emotion, self-pity, victimization, performance, or ulterior motives. I am a pretty simple creature. I want people to be happy. I want to make them happy. I want them to be nice to me. Really, that’s all I want -- just be nice to me. Reach out to me. Tell me the truth. I like the truth. I like to know how I can grow and learn and do more and be better than I was yesterday. I like to know if I make you feel sad or happy or comfortable or uncomfortable. She says I’m shallow. She says it’s too clean, too organized, too black and white. She says it’s always on my terms. She says that that only leads to people calling when they need something from me. She says it’s co-dependent. (There is the clinical again.) I ask her what depth is to her. She says it’s really caring about people deeply and wanting to connect. She says that I don’t really want to connect or else I would.

When I swallowed all of those pills on the beach 2 years ago, I swallowed them because I was mad at myself. I was ashamed. I was mad and ashamed because I wasn’t being true to myself and it led to disaster. It led to rejection from a guy that wasn’t worth 10minutes of my time let alone 10 months of my time. People were telling me that I needed to go deeper, I need to be in love, I needed connect and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to but I did it anyway. I forced myself into it. I thought there was something wrong with me for not wanting to be in love. I thought I was weak. I thought that I needed to do it to prove something to everyone. And the only person that I hurt was myself. I betrayed myself. I won’t do it again. I won’t connect because she tells me too, because she tells me I should, because she says that I’m shallow.

I am not shallow. I am not weak. I am not even unhappy. I am going to sit in my heart center, in my confidence, in my integrity and be who I am. Like it or not. Loss or not. Failure or not. I am who I am. I won’t change for somebody else. I will only be as honest, as kind, as open, as diligent as I can and the cards (and oranges) will fall where they will.

i want to raise eyebrows

From: 5/29/2007

I want to go into the deepest ugliest part of me with my writing. I want to divulge all the secrets, expose all the indiscretions. I want to raise eyebrows and get reactions from my readers. I want to slap people with their own stupidity and wake them up in some primal poignant way. I want to rock the boat with my writing. I want to be controversial and upsetting. I want people to feel something when they read what I write. I don’t want to be nice. I don’t want to be well-behaved. I want to break the rules – my rules about what is good, right, proper and appropriate. I want to be a slut with my words, a promiscuous prostitute with my language. I want people to cover their gaping mouth when they read what I’ve written – then I want them to throw off their clothes and join me in the orgy of my story. Can I fire people up? Can I turn them on? Can I lose control long enough to free the words that will give others their freedom? Do I have the courage to be honest? To say how I really feel? To offer up my deepest self even if it isn’t pretty, popular or proper? Can I handle the confrontation – real or imagined – of what others will say and think of me? What would I write if I didn’t give a fuck about what other people thought? What if I wrote my unedited anger? What if I fired the press secretary, took the microphone in hand and started rambling? Would I be impeached in my own head? I want to be bold. I want to be wrong. I want to be embarrassed. I want to be misunderstood. I want to be censored. I want to be repressed by people who can’t handle what I am saying. I have a lot to say. I think there are so many fucked up things happening in the world. I need to go back into the fire of my life and write unawares. I have to stop being such a pussy.

I love to fly

From: 5/29/2007

The air in the plane is stagnant and dry. Dave leans over, his head in his hands listening to his ipod. The woman in the white tank top hovers around the first class bathrooms in her shiny lip gloss doing suggestive stretches. Looking out the window makes me feel weightless. The confinement of the airplane gives me freedom to write. I wish I could fly everyday so I would be forced into my little corner with only a book, a pen and a bottle of water. This works for me. This makes me happy. It’s so simple, so rich and nurturing. It reminds me of the endless childhood days when my mom would confine to my room for some bad behavior – before there were cell phones or computers – and all I had at my disposal was my imagination. I would write children’s stories, draw pictures. I even hung signs in the bedroom window advertising some imaginary business of which I was the owner. Sometimes it was a pet shop. Other times a dance studio. I could have a whole imaginary life in my small little corner of the world. Life is bigger now, more spacious and open and yet somehow claustrophobic. Sometimes I choke on all that space. All those people. Too many choices. Too little structure. I try to find my way as best I can without getting too lost – although I have wandered down one too many dark alleys. Recently, Tej, my yoga teacher, told me that my energy, my core is “dispersed and fragmented.” I couldn’t agree more. There are parts of me all over the place. Scattered from here to South Africa and back. Little pieces of me left in big places, on expensive boats, in shady hotel rooms, in the intangible air between here and 13,000 feet where I jumped from a plane. How could I not be “dispersed and fragmented”? I wonder what it’s like to be in prison. Could it be a healing sentence? A blessing in disguise? An opportunity to be stuck with yourself without the oppressive freedoms of the outside world? It’s kind of monk-like. I’ve always wanted to be a monk, since the first time I encountered them in my early 20’s. I can’t imagine anything more amazing then a life of spiritual contemplation. I’d want to one of those monks in charge of the monk library. One of the monks that copied the lineage of text books by hand on rice paper. I’d want to be the monk that all of the other monks came to when they had a question and I would look up the answer in some dusty rustic volume of crinkled yellow paper. God, how I love paper. The blank page is like a vortex into my own soul, a time machine into another space and time. I love to write wherever there is an inch of space. In the margins of a book. On the back of a used envelope. On a paper napkin. I’d love to fill up every blank space in the world with beautiful writing. Poetic graffiti. Linear lines of characters composing stories about why we are here and who we are and what all this means – why I am flying on a plane with air that is stagnant and dry and why I am loving every minute of it.

images from dreams

From: 9/2/2005

I am kidnapped
I am a murderous kidnapping drug dealer
I am trying to escape
I am trying to get some kind of help.
I am returning to my childhood
I am filling up with my belongings
I am losing my belongings
I am driving to the shore
I am crying and blaming
I am being blamed
I am calling but I can’t get through
I am unreachable
I am calling but they are not ready
I am not ready
I am explaining how and why others should fix their overflow.
I am relocating
I am lying with the sacred and seducing it
I am giving up the sacred for the profane.
I am fighting
I am beating boys up
I am being beaten
I am separating
I am being separated
I am trying to get attention
I am hungry
I am being ignored
I am ignoring
I am nurturing myself
I am falling
I am making calls that won't go through
I am fleeing the scene of the crime
I am on fire
I have a baby
I am a baby
I am saving the baby
I am being saved
I am being lifted up
I am lifting
I am indifferent
I am annoyed
I am arrogant
I am making a donation
I am driving to a family party
I am having difficulty finding the location.
I have a smashed car
I am smashing a car
I am hanging out with my family
I am talking
I am in the shower.
I worry that others don't like me
I killed my family
I have super-human strength
I am in my childhood
I am calling my dad for support.
I am being called on for support
I don't answer
I am unplugging and leaving
I am crawling through the dark.
I am found
I am confronted
I am finding and confronting
I have a crazy look
I am insisting
I am latching onto someone
Someone is latching onto me
I am having sex
I am calling
I am being called
I am murdering
I am watching death
I am wandering
I am delirious, dumbfounded, lost, confused, and numb
I am bleeding
I am defeated, finished, and emotionless
I am driving
I am stopping
I am driving recklessly
I am angry
I can't find one I like.
I am finding exactly what I'm looking for.
I am pleased
I am untrustworthy.
I am leaving.
I am following.
I am trying to resist temptation
I am giving in
I am so comforted
I am giving comfort
I am not sleeping
I am unhappy.
I am having a great time
I am watching and listening
I am on a cruise ship
I am having a good time
I am trying to do some shady business
I am cold and indifferent.
I am angry, scared, hurt and confused.
I am acting
I am screaming
I am transformed into the most beautiful woman
It doesn't bother me to be in horror movies
I am in my childhood
I am losing
I am dead
I am craving attention and affection
I won’t give attention and affection
I am preoccupied with friends.
I am cheating
I make excuses
I am freaking out
I lie
I am throwing a temper tantrum.
I am having a great time.
I am even angrier now
I am going back to my childhood
I am trying to make contact
I am between worlds, between the living and the dead.
I am frantic.
I am hiding.
I am discovered.
I chase
I demand control
I am in some underground place
I am crying and crying.
I am telling people that I ‘knew’ the world was going to end
I am hiding out
I wish that I would die rather than be one of the survivors.
I am on an elevator
I don't know which stop is mine
I am getting off at different places
I am at a jewelry store
I am holding and caressing the jewelry.
I am in a weird place
I am disgusted
It makes me sick
I am pregnant with twins.
I am intoxicated.
I want to leave
I am a security guard
I am demanding.
I am knocked out.
I am leaving
I am waking up.
I am wandering around
I am looking for my friends.
I am fussing over money
I am finding my friends.
I am being found
I am looking for my car
I am holding myself back
I am trying to get away
I am locking the doors.
I am trying to leave.
I am the 'other woman'
I am creating a scandal
I am at a party
I am stepping back in time
I am getting lots of attention.
I am sad.
I am going up a long winding staircase.
I can’t open the door
I am in the wrong room.
I am going to the next door.
I am flirting and flaunting
I am worried that my secret might be discovered
I am naked,
I am fighting.
I am kissing and touching
I am angry.
I am screaming
I am bi-sexual.
I am staying out all night
I am screaming
I am hanging up.
I am trying to get home but I don't have a car.
I am trying to get a ride home from strangers.
I am receiving a gift
I am giving a gift
I am chasing something in the dark
I am joining others
I am freaking out.
I am having panic attacks, crying and feeling really self-destructive.
I can't explain to anyone how I feel.
I am not helping
I am riding to a mountain.
I am living in a bizarre indoor-outdoor house.
I am climbing an indoor tree
I am running from room to room
I am trying to turn out the lights
I can't find all the switches
I am trying to go to sleep.
I am in school
I am dropping the unhealthy and picking up the serious
I am planning a trip
I am indecisive
I can't find my car
I find another car.
I am scooping out sand and water.
I am trying to drive with no steering and no brakes
I am staying home

putting it all out there

From: 5/14/2007

I need to start writing again. I'm suffocating in my own thoughts. There is so much happening around me and the only way to make sense of it all is to write. My words are like my blood, my life force. When the words are not flowing, my body feels dead and dry. I am raw today. I am open. I feel my wounds on the surface of my body. I feel the pull to drop down into the depths again and see what lurks beneath the surface.

I am uninspired by the outside world lately. I care more about what is inside of me than what is out there. I know there is goodness, richness, meaning, and treasures inside of me. I know I am supposed to carve and cultivate them. I need to bear the fruit of my experience. I want to be reminded of what it feels like to be deeply loved, desired, held, connected, inspired, aroused, engaged, infatuated. I want it to come from within. I want to tap into something eternal and immortal. I want to lift the veil. I want to make love to my own soul -- is that possible?

The mundane is so mundane. I am surrounded by drama. Everyone falls in love with me so easily. What the fuck? Why do I elicit that in people? Is it because I am unavailable? Is it because I am mysterious? Is it because I am aloof and uninterested?

Someone once told me -- another gentleman who was in love with me without reciprocation -- that I am easily lovable. That there is something about me that makes everyone want to be with me. I find that ironic. I find it ironic because I prefer to be alone than to be with others. I prefer the sun and the moon and the water. I prefer my cat and a good book and a cup of tea. I prefer a hot bath or my computer or a deep meditation. I prefer to write about the way it feels to look into your eyes, feel your breath on my neck, feel your hand caress my inner thigh than to actually experience it with you. Is that wrong?

There is a place of suspension, like a rope bridge, where I linger with my desire, waiting for something to come, having left behind an experience of satisfaction, feeling ready for the next episode. And I linger......I pause..... I don't even want to cross the bridge. I don't even want to get 'there.' I only want the possibility of getting there. The possibility of it being better than it was before. The possibility of it being more satisfying than the last. I can smell the earth behind me, the water below me, and see the new adventure in front of me. But still I wait, on the bridge, without any forward movement other than my fantasies....and no one can reach me. I am out of reach. You see me on the bridge, wait for me to cross, but I never do. I just linger. And you want me to move, and I don't. And you wait and I can wait longer because I enjoy being right where I am am. Out of your reach.

I start writing so many things and then I stop. I stop when it becomes arduous and painful. I stop when it starts to pull me under, expose my wounds, make me feel too much of one thing or another. Writing makes me so hungry. Fiercely hungry. Hungry like a wolf or hyena or tiger. It makes me want to go out and devour some one or some thing to fill a deep void. A void better left unexplored or transcended in some way because nothing good ever comes of looking into the vast emptiness of the self and wanting it to be filled with life and love and light that is unattainable. Don't get me wrong, we can all be blissful for a moment or two but the vast emptiness, the enormous unknown, the impenetrable darkness is the reality of the soul. And I mean that in the most uplifting way. Dropping the identity, the personality, the insanity of my humanness leaves me face to face with nothing. No thing. Nada. And what's a girl to do with nothing? Fill it, of course. Fill it with indulgence and romance and sensation and attention and reassurance that there really isn't nothing and that there really is something substantial to this life.