Pablo Neruda

'I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.'



I still haven't finished setting questions on this guy's poetry. Every time I try I just get overwhelmed. How can he have pinned an emotion like that? Does everyone feel that? Are these emotions recognisable simply for their fundamental role in life or is there something more specific to that ring of truth? How dare he take something so pure and pore emotions into it? Or, take the fire of emotions and structure it like that? There are a thousand questions I could think of, but the problem is I have to also know the answer.

It's incredible how anchored to the land he is. He writes about her body, and she is the earth. He writes about her waist: it is fog. Their love: the sighing of pines, the wind, the universe. How does this not become ridiculous?

'So that you will hear me
my words
sometimes grow thin
as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.'

I can no longer sleep. I'm writing this instead of annoying myself by trying. It was this or go smell the night-blooming flowers and I knew I had to look up some of the poems I was missing out of my collection of Neruda. And then I read them and my being alone is compounded by his physicality. It keeps just bouncing away from being hilarious. Arms of flowers and laps of roses indeed. Closest I've got to porn in a while, except when I walked in on the same guy who put this chain on my poor rusted wrist.

'Hardened by passions, I go mounted on my one wave,
lunar, solar, burning and cold, all at once,
becalmed in the throat of fortunate isles
that are white and sweet as cool hips.

In the moist night my garment of kisses trembles
charged to insanity with electric currents,
heroically dividing into dreams
and intoxicating roses practicing on me.

Upstream, in the midst of the outer waves,
your parallel body yields to my arms
like a fish infinitely fastened to my soul,
quick and slow, in the energy under the sky.'

My goodness. Hardened by passions, eh? And that's only the 9th! There's eleven more to go! And then he'll reference his cape or something. As if that's important to him when some woman's eyes are light houses. Or whatever.

It'd be so easy to take all of his similes and write a series of ironic poems. Someone probably already has. But I couldn't, because right after he's waxed lyrical on the subject of how much he's getting, he'll say something like:

'Turning, wandering night, the digger of eyes.
Let's see how many stars are smashed in the pool.'

Can't you see the cosmic wanderer, destructive, digging, smashing, all within her eyes? If I don't stop quoting him now I'll just have to bung the whole collection in.

Individuality comes through love. Can that be right?

The problem with airports is their blandness. They should be rich, a meeting point of cultures and times and joys. Instead I ended up staring longingly at a pack of Camels and chewing tough grey noodles (which seemed determined to flick goop everywhere whilst I struggled with chopsticks) in a grey soup with grey seaweed and grey Japanese flavourings, whilst a particularly oversized couple and their son of the gargantuan mouth, resembling snails which had been slid out of their shells and sprinkled with pink sugar, managed to fit a distressing amount of startlingly colourful hamburger between their rubbery lips. They weren't even Americans. They should have been enough to awaken me from my paralysis of grey doom but it was too cold to move, so I just had to sit there and stare at them as they threw away half of their 'extra' plate (yes, they had ordered a spare meal just in case, and it was a wonder any of it escaped).

Then I realised I couldn't see the arrivals boards as my eyes had apparently decided that anything happening around such awful soup and people could not possibly be worth seeing and had packed up and left me with blurred ideas of colour. Luckily I'd thawed out by then, so I shuffled to stand staring at the arrivals door for the next hour. Maya is a glorious person.

Just realised that the nice arts poster I brought for my university bedroom wall has at least three or four naked people on it. I would say four naked guys except pretty sure the top half (or at least the face, I can't remember that well despite Maya's inspection) of one of them is definitely a woman. I think she's an actress. How did I not notice them before? I've looked at it quite a few times and they just escaped me. My bad.

I wonder at which small hour my eyes will stop functioning altogether. It feels like it might happen soon.

Musical times.

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros sing a song called Home. My friend listened to it when she moved into her new apartment for her second year of university and cried. We know it from the Lair, when they sang the lyrics slightly altered in favour of blue-ness - 'home is whenever I'm at blue'. It's funny how they pronounce the words and that's fascinating because it helps the song get hooked into your mind like it'll never let go.

I've never been surprised to find myself at a gig before in quite the same way. One minute I'm at Eli's goodbye party laughing at how much ketchup i can manage to get on my face and the next CAKE is before me in all their glory. Took me a good while to realise they'd been recommended to me ages ago by someone or other. Still not sure who it was except I'm sure it was a guy, and he was tall. On reflection, I realise that the reason I don't love them is because they're way better live than recorded. Much more my kind of thing live. More acoustic, to be honest, more music and less simple rhythms.

Strangest way to whip up a crowd though. The organisers had not left enough space for the crowd which turned up so we had to slip around the side. The main guy looked down at us all, divided us unequally with his arm and told us to hate each other. He said
- the world is unequal.
- there are two kinds of people, those who are with us and are full of hatred, and those who are against us and do not care.
- yell it like you have the purity of anger in you. (or something along those lines)
- (points at the people singing lyrics about flying) you are the existentialists. (points at those singing about not being there) you guys are the angry ones.

I could see his point. It was in Oakland, which is supposed to be a sketchy kind of area, and yet a load of pretty middle class people had rolled up, and they weren't all that young, generally. There were some kids, sure, but I was definitely among the young minority. Generally they looked to be thirty somethings, with a good scattering of twenty year olds and about a quarter of the audience were middle aged. CAKE was standing there wondering where their time was gone. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Some of their song lyrics caused thoughts in my head as any words/ideas/whatever will, but of themselves they're nothing to pause over. 'I want a girl with a short skirt and a long jacket'. Do you now. I'm so pleased, good luck with that, goodbye. 'Fingernails that shine like justice'. Huh. Since when did justice shine, and if it does, I prefer matte nail varnish, so we're going to have to part ways right there.

The trumpet guy was awesome though. And the main singer waved at me when I left. Left early, that is. Also, he gave some guy a tree, and the tree guy followed me on the BART (bay area rapid transport) which was kind of funny. He was struggeling a bit, carrying it home. Poor thing promised in front of a good 600 witnesses to plant it and look after it and post photos of it to CAKE on pain of them all storming his house.

I miss the mountains. See them next weekend. What will I do without them for at least a whole year? I shall have to investigate Scottish ones further, I guess. This holiday is ridiculously long. It's no longer a holiday, actually. It's a pretty pleasant and varied state of being. Can't wait to go on holiday to 'home', wherever that is. The strangely big house which I might paint strange patterns onto, maybe. Or maybe it's just where my family are. Or where my friends are. Or where my boyfriend is. (Aha.) How cliched can I go? 'Home is where the heart is' well what about where the soul is? If we're disregarding the body, that is. And anyway is that really accurate? Could it be where your stuff is? Where you are currently living (existing. sleeping. stuff.) as that's really your territory, so biologically... although that can change so quickly. Fuck the concept of home. It doesn't even make sense. Once you find it, you just want to see the rest of the world. Go tend to your back garden, fool.

(That's not directed at anyone! Traveling expands the mind! Everyone should do it! For an entire year!)

People who meet me once add me on facebook. This is fine, it is good. It is a little strange, perhaps. Not on a personal scale, but as a phenomenon. Some of them I feel like I'd like to know more about them. Most of them it was weird when they asked me my last name so that they could find me. If we have friends in common, fair enough. If there's even the most remote chance I'll see them again, alright. If we live on the opposite sides of the world, have very different futures as discussed, little in common except youth, and they've been creeping me out for the whole trip, then it's less than ideal that they've stalked me to my facebook.

Now listening to 'Harmony'. Lair version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suB8ktM4-mU. Suddenly can see what Dylan meant about it not quite working with these singers. I can't find who it's by (I could look in my special Lair songbook because I'm that cool, but it's gone back to England with the sister.) so I'll just listen to Peter, Paul and Mary's 'Don't think twice it's alright' rendition. Aw. Wow have I listened to different types of music today. M C Hammer was... invisible. Surrounded by dancing people. Can't touch him...? Can't even bloody see the guy.

Blue has all washed out of my hair.

figs.

My cousins cooking dinner. All I know is that it involves figs, cheese, kiche, chocolate pudding liquidy stuff, and there's some chopped avocado on the side. AVOCADOS ARE AMAZING. They grow them around here. There's another thing I should have eaten more of.

Overnight train/bus to Oakland tomorrow. We arrive just before 6am. No idea how to get to Grandma and Grandpas from there. And, once we're there, we have to be quiet and grateful for month old re-heated mush. At least their house is beautiful. And there's a piano.

I did cartwheels on the beach today. Because I keep being scared that some things are in my imagination and when they're said in real life they make me want to spin around except spinning around in the sand is painful and so then I did cartwheels. Only, I can't really do cartwheels so I ended up falling over and then the water rushed over me.

Whale in the room.

First day without smoking since 3 weeks ago. Yay.

Disappointed in myself over my exams but they seem so long ago that it no longer matters. I got the overall grades I need, and if I didn't get a pretty star next to my A in english it just proves I should be proud not to be my brother. B in Religious Studies is hilarious, I still don't fully understand why I took it. Having a minor identity crisis over the fact that I keep doing better in biology than in english. And I haven't written as much as I thought I would, this summer. And every time I think of university I make an odd moaning noise. This is because it was SUPPOSED to happen IN THE FUTURE. How did that get so near?

Beserkeley Art place

http://www.site.nervousfilms.com/

BRENT GREEN.

San Diego on Sunday night. Had to change the booking because we are no longer allowed to ruin my cousin's last weekend at home. Disappointing.

Tried to write a text all day but kept getting distracted by strangers talking to me. Do I have a stranger friendly face or was that just Izzie's skirt's length? I feel just like a child. Devendra Banhart recommendation right there. How is it that everything can remind me of someone and when it comes to writing a few words to them I can't manage it? I guess it's because there's too many words. When I try to think of what I'd like to say to anyone, there's a huge rush of thoughts like just before I faint, or when I'm really sobbing, and then it goes silent and I stare at the blankness and hope that I'll find a way to my emotions which I can show someone else.

Santa Cruz, and why I can't be a hippy.

'Definition: pronoia is the antidote for paranoia. It's the understanding that the universe is fundamentally friendly. It's a mode of training your senses and intellect so you're able to perceive the fact that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.

Hypotheses: evil is boring. Cynicism is idiotic. Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy. Joy is fascinating. Love is an act of heroic genius. Pleasure is our birthright. Receptivity is a superpower.

Procedure: act as if the universe is a prodigious miracle created for your amusement and illumination. Assume that secret helpers are working behind the scenes to assist you in turning into the gorgeous masterpiece you were born to be. Join the conspiracy to shower all creation with blessings.'

- Rob Brenzy


I went into a store which had the sign 'hippies use the back door' in its front window. The lovely young couple who ran it had based the store's 'concept' on Pronoia. There were some beautiful quotes.

I brought a necklace and smiled and spaced out and waved goodbye to them and wandered to the beach, where I wrote:

'It is wrong to say 'I think', one ought to say, 'I am thought'.'

'I am thought'; and whomever thinks me is the creator who has love - for to create you must love. to do anything you must also know its opposite and choose one way. I watch a wave crash to the sand and as it curls it is eternal and all-important, otherwise it could not happen. If every place, movement, moment, thing, was not eternally important it could not happen as things cannot be only past or future they must also be the present or else they do not exist. You must choose to accept all as eternal and important or as non-existent.

If everything will cease to exist there must be an appointed time and place, there must be a moment of cessation. And as its end must be eternal, so it must be eternal for its end to be so. To say 'I loved you' is to say 'I love you', for, if something has a past it must have a present. And so all things are eternal, in truth, and all things are holistic and unforgettable. Each has its opposite, and it is a matter of percieving your choice. Will you be the moment of balance, or the moment of fall.'


---------


I think I may be lost.

None of that makes sense. It was meant to be an exercise in capturing a voice, that strange vibe which comes off peace love happiness writing. Perhaps a sprinkling of weed.

I've had tobacco in almost all the ways I can think of now. I've drunk it, I've smoked it in a cigarette, both rolled by me or izzie and factory made, and in a 'hookah'. I've steered clear of weed despite the number of times it's been offered to me. I've had one vodka and orange juice, and a couple of glasses of wine, and a cocktail of something or other. I've been called a 'escort', and I've had a few strange encounters and escapes. I've had long and vaguely meaningful conversations with multitudes of strangers, almost all men. One even gave me a book for no reason at all, which is making me laugh a lot. I wonder if this counts as being a crazy teen being irresponsible.

We haven't gone to a single museum. Or any churches. Except, Yosemite IS a huge museum, church, everything. Maybe.


Words spinning inner thoughts through my blue hair no brainer. The dry gold of the hills shows me genesis as strangers steal only your most drunken of words. Songs of saints - cruz-ing charismas. Tired and dehydrated under the painted blue waterfall, dark and smelling sweetly of stones. Everything is blue blue blue seats, camp, sky, hair, half-remembered eyes, sweets, ink, windows, lights, drugs, frames. Is it my perception or its projection which dyes my fingers blue with residue?

Lucky, sad, sorry, clear. Ruinous. Bursting, bleeding, bubbling blue. Makes me obsolete and omnipotent. Mountains in the distance, too far away to manage anything but blue. Blue boy, blue room, blue curtains, blue carpet, blue bottles, blue packets, blue promises. It has to come from somewhere. I have something to say but my mouth cannot escape around the sides of the bulbous blue word. It takes my tongue captive until it throws itself forward to steal your kisses from my lips. Blue. Blowing blue bubbles to you. I don't know how I came to blue out a wash of universal colour. Every shade under the sun and we stare at blue, midnight, navy, bright, light, sky, powder, brilliant, dark, damnable blue. Blue smoke. E x p l o s i o n s as you disappear.



I feel found and lost and found and lost and dropped and picked up with an armful of smiles.

I don't miss tea. I don't miss my own home. I don't miss the countryside, or the 'quaint' smallness of everything. I don't miss the food.


'Your face is true and your hair is perfect and I love you. You make boats in my dreams and you speak without words and I love you. Your fears unnerve me and your questions amuse me and I love you. I love you not only for who you are, but for the interesting person I become when I'm with you. I say I love you and love you and love you until the words become the constant song of your voice in my head and the original ache of memory in my soul. I love you more than life and death, more than everything that's in between the light and the dark. Do you believe me? Try harder. Do you believe me now? I'm always with you, which is why I know you will never abandon yourself.'