You have entered the realm of a writer.

Welcome to A Writer's Landscape!

You have entered the realm of my mind where words play with the fabric of our existence. This is the map of my imagination: the very foundations of inspiration, musing, and thought splayed for your wandering eyes. Dive deep into the tides of these forces and experience my reality, my fantasy, my world; and if you should be so inclined, share your words with this land.

Peace and Love!

J Hart F

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Words

Words, or whatever you wish,
fall slack upon this page.
They've overturned themselves
pouring the unmistakable, the black,
upon springtime snows
like churlish smatterings seeking
the unknown expressions lost within.

Pointless ballpoint pens,
void keys clacking onward,
hazy disillusionment of
     measurable ambiguities,
compression leaving marks on my chest...
I stand at the bottom of an emptied pool.

Blue never looked so isolated,
delineating regulatory spacings.
Please pardon my white legs--
They tast not he freedom of language
     turning leaves like
     unprecedented heat waves.

I fear a recessive winter's eye
peering between two lungs.
Perhaps summer's burn will brown
unlike the scrawling phallus
whose pleasure is permanence
     in symbols
between the mournings.
Do we know best that which
     darkens?
     Keep us white?

Where vibrations soar in unvisualized
     mediums
signification clings to no answers,
like the burdened charring
upon unfettered clouds.
We'll fall in pursuit, hoping
our tools will free us from
     the emptiness.
Thus here we are...
     But from where,
     and with what?

I've stared into the page,
beneath the walls perpendicular to my eyes,
soaking in the emptiness...
until I decided to start with


               Words.

Weapons Range Qualifications

Basic instructions:
     1) range of intent
     2) special field qualification detection
     3) marking multiple timed targets
     4) conduct field-fire standards testing
     5) alternate targets
     6) mark
     7) phase single target
     8) observables
     9) conduct timed training
     10) record rifle marksmanship
     11) alternate courses
     12) section intent

Drug Abuse

Methods withdraw body and mind.
Scientific drugs rehabilitate strictly necessary
futures.
Entrepreneur Wellbeing, his dependence overcome,
can't be bad for you.
Calculated facilities -- abusers tried misuse;
Reduce life, fix chemicals!
Getting together, that slippery slope,
freely admits symptoms tested
in effect, brainwashing addiction.

Skiing

Time the of most bills your pay.
Still... and day powder every ski.
Possible as little as work:
To how here's happen, lifestyle.
Bum!
Ski the make, actually you do how.
Answered be to question
Important, an there's us
upon is.
Winter that now.

Moving in with your parents

more than
ages
living at home in
at least
.com found
in
their early
saving up.

Shoplifting

Prevention provides programs:
     Petty professional property...
Problem: poster people.
Promoting pay, Peter
paces personal potential's
perceived plans. Physiological
paybacks perhaps profit
PAIN PARADOX PERCENT:
Personal Pulled Pressure.
     peer primary presents.
     prior publish prevent.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

If you hate your life, then 2 equals naught.

Conditioning of the impervious existence,
where the undeniable contracts within constant forward motion...
We see, we feel, we are, we choose:
and the choice to pleasure
             experienced and given
is the choice which defines the ruts we tread.

 What when the choice is negative?
Negated negotiation of expectation:
What is foundation is lost in nothing.
It is between the two, a space of reason
from choice and chosen --
           sunshine and void
           teeth and absence
           One and one

 Love and hate shifted paradigms of choice.

           What choice, when one makes all for naught?

Sunday, March 18, 2012

How does the world reconcile love and belonging? It feels disconnected sometimes: love inhabits the undeniable a d belonging inhabits a space somewhere outside the realm of possibility. Perhaps belonging is in the mind, I admit... I will always learn from the obvious truth that perception rules the cosmos more than truth. A truth: my boyfriend and I don't belong together. He belongs with his own, I belong with mine... And I don't know what mine is... I thought I knew who I was, where I belonged, and to where I would go... It seems I was wrong.

Well, one thing is true: I know what I will do, where I'll go, who I will be... The trouble is always in the moment. Moments change the mind more drastically than truth.

I can't let this moment change my mind. I'm happy. But I'm not fulfilled. I know why, I'm just scared to face the truth. My uninhibitedness has waned drastically.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Would Messier See Me Falling?


The arrows move
     drawing me down
                         onward toward the inner dark --
                         whiteness berating noise --
                         neither in nor out --

Falling into the inner horizon,
     diving where known cannot be,
to be torn apart as
                         thoughtless instability drifting in space
                         creating new space
                         in spacelessness

I look to the sky:
underneath calls beauty black --
     spreading wings into a nether
     we fly down
                         like arrows in gravity
                         turning language into dust
                         air becoming the throne

Emit
caught in the lines of imaginary rainbows
     absorbed lines cutting in the void.
     My mind falls
the words are gone.
                         Sitting alone with peers
                         grasp endlessness with a desk
                         intent slips into an anti-verse.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Distraction

1) Surfacing discomfort
     coupled warmth and
          [incomprehensible] (agendas)
--a meaning hazed-- drowned in language
skimming consciousness
--
     They mumble
          something[s]
about importance
                         [learning][teaching]
stuck by a chair, in [without]
     (what thought [-----])?
. . .
               Droning on,
                                    I slip away into . . .

2) jealousy another
--what love has wrought--
     waves crash, bring
     (what was already brought)
     [love] [him] [him]
like a choosing
     no choice -----
     Abundance, overly!
          I say I love [          ]*
          I say I want _____
          I say I am.
. . .
               In love, broken amongst many,
                                   searching what's found . . .

3) words flow like red rocks from the mountain top, molten rivers creeping upon the lush splendor of fertile habitats. This, the language in black, moves through the [vestibules] [wings] like tormented zephyrs (waiting to speak [a godly] truth about what dares [not] be known)_. [I] listen ([un]consciously) and feel the pen scrawl across the symbols like a soothsayer pointing at my hea[d][rt].

     She whispers
                    "you [don't] know what [they] [you] want.
                    "you [can't] know what [they] [you] need.
                    "you get what you hold."

4) I [hold] love
          Three, four... five
               too much.
I [hold] want
          Freedom, one... all
               too much.
I [hold] need
          Together, apart... commitment
               too much.

5) "Turn in your essay questions."
I'm lost in the trails of my thoughts,
wrapped in
          love for
                    too much.

Essay Exam for Critical Thinking

[This is an essay exam for my critical thinking course. Enjoy reading, and go pick up A Gathering of Matter, A Matter of Gathering by Dawn Lundy Martin and read her poetry. It's really quite good, once you get past the odd forms of the poems.]

The Form in Between
Dawn Lundy Martin’s A Gathering of Matter, A Matter of Gathering is an intense book of poetry that sits between two distinct forms of poetry while still exemplifying characteristics of both. One form of poetry is language poetry, while the other is lyric poetry. These types of poetry utilize language in drastically different ways, one focusing on the actual use of language and the meaning forming from the language while the other focuses on the addressed emotion. Martin is able to bridge the difference and bring a unique harmony to the two forms.

Language poetry, according to the Academy of American Poets, acknowledges “that language dictates meaning […]. Language poetry also seeks to involve the reader in the text, placing importance on reader participation in the construction of meaning.” Martin plays with the language in her poetry very poignantly. One example of her expertise with language poetry is her poem “Butterflies Become.” The portion of this poem in brackets seems very heavy, yet innocuous at the same time. Each bracketed phrase, “[Fatwa] [Faucet of defiance] [From mesa] / [Desert stinge] [Vulva stiffening] [Sulfuric blunder] ….”, holds a very relevant emotion but does not explicitly derive that emotion for the audience (Martin 20). The language creates the emotion as we read through the poem. Not only are these emotions build through the language, the diction needs investigation for many people as well. As the audience learns what “[Fatwa]” means (a ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognized authority) the following brackets change their meanings (Martin 20). Without the definition of such a word, the poem’s meaning would be less solid. The language of “Butterflies Become” creates the meaning, whereas the meaning is buried deeper and harder to find without examining the language directly.

The other aspect of Martin’s poetry is its lyricism. Lyric poetry, according to Types-Of-Poetry, is “a poem […] that expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet. […] Lyric poetry addresses the reader directly, portraying his or her own feeling, state of mind, and perceptions.” All of Martin’s poetry attempts to portray an emotion through its message/meaning. However, Martin does not allow the narrative of the poems to obviously address the audience with pronouns of “you” and “I”. “The Symbolic Nature of Chaos” is a superb example of this. The poem itself is addressing a direct emotion or feeling but Martin doesn’t address herself or the narrator, much less the audience. She puts out the emotion “ … like a yelling and a tree” and allows the audience to sit in “… the darkness of this bereft body” without any explicit declaration of what is being read (Martin 3).

The best example of Martin’s duality of language and lyric poetry coalescing in one poem is her poem “After Drowning.” The diction used is baffling at times, skirting obvious meaning and burying it beneath the language used, but still suffuses a meaning, an emotion, a state of mind within the poem as it stretches across the pages. She also utilizes “I” within “After Drowning,” giving the distinction that there is a narrator expressing something, but it still takes a deeper reading and comprehension to bring that meaning to the surface.

Spontaneous Feelings Resisting Intelligence!
Martin creates poetry that both expresses a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and “resist[s] the intelligence” of the audience. She writes poetry that feels infused with so much emotion, heavy meaning wrought from some very heartfelt place. I felt as though the poems were dark: dealing with the feelings of being an African American woman writing form a standpoint of having power and not being able to express it because of her sexuality. There are times of very heavy emotions shining through (“After the Death of a Young Poet”), and times when after reading the poem I sat dumfounded as to its intent (“Blackface Caricature in Thirteen”).  Most of Martin’s poems resist categorizing themselves into either just powerful emotions or simply resisting obvious understanding. “The Symbolic Nature of Chaos” is just such a poem. It holds such a vital feeling as it flows out nearly chaotically; it resists easy interpretation, and still holds the audience’s engagement because the feeling/emotion/meaning carry through the pages. In fact, her form on this poem really dives into both interpretations of poetic style expressed by Wordsworth and Stevens. Starting on page 4, Martin creates a very different form that both represents chaos (in the first portion on the page) and slips back into prose poetry to gather the audience back into comprehension. She does this several times with several poems, using form to instigate a feeling and break easily intelligible understandings.

Form Forming Formulations of Form
Martin plays with form all throughout A Gathering of Matter, a Matter of Gathering. Her first poem in the book, “Last Days”, automatically engages form. It presents a question and answer session where the answers do not necessarily answer the questions posed. However, the reader will intrinsically assume the answers relate back to the question just asked. This builds connections and meanings, even when these aspects are not explained in the poem language of the poem.  “Last Days” uses the form very well.

Another poem where form is very important is “The Symbolic Nature of Chaos.” With the title of this poem, we should expect the poem to resist the natural forms of poetry: structure, meter, rhyme, etc. None of the pages that this poem crosses look the same or are structured the same. This continual shifting of the form really do lend to the feel and meaning of “The Symbolic Nature of Chaos.” Adding to the chaotic form of this poem are the brackets, which make their first appearance in the book.

The third poem that utilizes form in a very distinct way is “Blackface Caricature in Thirteen.” It’s a list poem with thirteen points. As the poem is read, the audience believes that each point has a connection to what it means to be a blackface caricature. With this form, the reader tries to create a picture of what is being described. This poem, however, is more of a language poem and the meaning of the poem is created by the language used coupled with the structure. It is hard to draw a picture from this poem, but looking into the words creates a meaning much deeper than an easy, explicit poem.

And Within
One of the poems that struck me was “Violent Rooms” which seems to dance between the idea of having sex for the first time and rape. This poem relates to the book as a whole by addressing an important step in life that primarily women experience. Women in many areas in contemporary society are seen as an ‘other,’ or marginalized in society, much as being African American. Several of Martin’s other poems deal with being black, like “Blackface Caricature in Thirteen” and “Negrotizing in Five: or, How to Write a Black Poem.” Both of these poems work with ideas of a marginalized person as well. Not only do all of these poems share the subject of a marginalized person, either all the same gender (female) or simply all African American, but they also deal with juxtaposed emotions.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Bravery: Letting Go


[My professor told us to write a piece that we would never show our family. I wrote it. He then told us we had to invest obstructions on our writing and a classmate gave me many obstructions to the prose... I changed what I wrote. I've decided to let the world know my deepest secret... and if my family should read this, read at your own risk. Know I'm not ready to talk about this... I hope my prose are touching, provocative, and worthy of the read. Thank you.]

I look in the bag, staring my past right in the face. There is something about these shirts that makes me remember more than photos or stories ever could. These shirts went through life with me, and nearly from my own vantage point. This shirt experienced my first kiss with a boy. This one I’m going to keep, I don’t even know why I thought I could get rid of it. This one I got in New York after seeing RENT with my high school orchestra. Gonna have to keep that one as well…

I rarely, if ever, wear these shirts, but I can’t give them away. Emptying out my closet was supposed to open up more space for new shirts and such, but I can’t give up memories… right? Especially that shirt. That memory… That one lived through my first experience. It would be easier if that shirt didn’t exist at all… but it remains like a scar: its presence diminished, its power waned, but it would forever be known that it existed to begin with.

Grabbing the shirt out of the bag, I hold it up in front of me and look at it, feel it, remember it.

It’s only a shirt.

It’s a light brown fabric sown together without any logos or designs. It’s a simple shirt.

It knows.

I throw the shirt back into the bag, determined to forget and let go. As the hiss of the fabric sliding down the plastic echoed in my ears, I felt again.  I relived the memory, the reason I didn’t come out sooner. It all began with trust, trusting friendship, a hug, back massage. I trusted touch, until touch turned into disorder. Uncomfortable violation one can’t fight…

I was walking into my best friend’s house. His mother’s boyfriend was there and lounging on the couch like he did. He greeted me as I walked in and eventually asked me to sit next to him. Instantly, I wanted him to be my role model, whether I understood that or not. I trusted him as he put his left hand on my shoulders and squeezed, massaging the twelve-year-old muscles…

The shirt represents the trust I lack in myself… to know when not to trust…

That thing reinforces my distrust in any man I might trust, and if I can’t trust in any man then I will never truly love. It knows why, and it whispers that vision every time it brushes against my skin.

I close the bag. Lift it up. Throw it in the slot. Push it past the too small space. Hear the soft thud within the donation bin.

A whisper rises from the trees behind me and a bird chirps gaily. I get back in my car, role down the windows, and turn on my music and start singing, trying to escape emotions that were buried for so long. 

U

Unless uniform un-involvement uniquely understands universal ubiquitous uselessness usurping upheld unanswerable undeniables, uttered under ushered ullages, unabated unalienable use upon ulterior ulcerations.

D

Desolate desperation drowning direct derelictions darkly deepens didactic depressions.

P

Perfection plays poignantly past people's perceptual paradigms, potentially piling parenthetically pungent poison (polarized perhaps) pills. Picture perfect...

A

Alack! Allusion aways all ambiguous assumptions ailing armored amour (availing arduous attacks against). Attempt aspiring alignments astoundingly! Aim above, ask alluringly, accept affirmations assisting assertive ambitions! Always.

F

Fearlessly fading: fast falling fallacy functions forever forlorn. Falsity, flack flung face first forward, feeling French fecundity; forefingers flexed for Facebook fame. Focus freedom furiously for factual fervor. Flames fume.

 ... Fuck...

E

Every enigma energizes: effervescence enlightened each entertainment, endeared evermore. Eyes escape endeavored elisions, enforced eccentricities. Enlivened entities engage evil: estimate everything.

Trying to Comprehend Changes

There's a sense of things when the world around you falls away. All the creation, intentional and purpose driven with aspirations fueling the crafty hands as they whittle away at the fabric of friendship, seems to abandon the original form and molds into something which doesn't need your attention anymore. Here is where I've found myself: the now of a world where my disappearance would certainly not be noticed amongst the very community I have drawn together.

I'm being selfish.

A breeze dances in the trees and rustles the leaves creating a world of music: whispers echoing the coo of a bird's song as the sun banishes the cold of the other worldly enticement. Displaced pressure moving the air concocted this symphony of nature; we see only the vibrations in the air from the moving trees. I am the air pressure dancing around a forest, and the forest goes on being beautiful and thriving without my encouragement.

What do I say to this? What do I do when it's apparent the vitality of my happiness, born of a newfound freedom to experience a group of the closest friends I have ever found, evaporates and the community I desire to be in at all times continues to coalesce around another point? I could take up smoking and forevermore be included in every aspect of the party. I could partake in every extra-"curricular" engagement and forget the foundation I built in some miraculous morality [which has withstood the onslaught of high school pressures]. Or do I simply let it go and move on?

Change is the only constant... The only constant remains change. The only change is the perception of reality from moment to moment and the acceptance of what is seen and understood, comprehended with the constructs of language filtering images into synapses in complex brain structures incomprehensible to the wisest of scientists. So what is my perception saying about this situation? That I don't belong... not even in the perfection of my relationship with all my friends. I will never know what it's like to be in their world because I've never wanted to experience that world.

I am being selfish.

The steps I take from day to day will always shape the wonders I experience. This solitude, this pit of whateverness, is yet another experience I wandered into. Dare I change it? Leave it? My language explores the possibility in so many fashions... and here I am suckling depression for its nourishment...

What nourishment is that?

Sunday, February 19, 2012

An Ex Ex'ed Out

I cry
     A death perhaps succumbs to joy
but never has it been
     without teaming
unlight stolen from here,
     a now unto
what seems so distant -- near
     a heart whose beat
challenges
     rythm
          of a broken excerpt
worded justly to bring the unwelcome.

He walks there, seen not heard nor known
     of course
what care gave him
     he took in soothe, seething
in some semblance of arrogant smirkings.
I cry for a loss untinteded
     there:
a construct of balance
     between the here
                    [and now]
and what was back then: veiled untruth.

I walk a line he won't touch. I spoke... write.
When deafening drums kill his doldrum -- love.

It Is, In Its Not.

It's not a condition we readily accept or acknowledge, but it creeps, it crawls, it draws the hairs upward as we restlessly find ourselves waiting for that nothingness to occur with frivolous exaggeration.

It's not a disease, though we are often put out of ease once the realization infringes the reality that it has suffused itself upon; blankets would be comfortable had they not been worn thin from the tossing, turning, ticking moments as they travel through the oppressive void entrapping time.

It's not death, even with the stiffness of catalyst-like lackings looming without the threats of circumstances venting of the inexactitude of existing in the pure absence of action: dust settling at increasingly slow speeds, ribbons dance in the subtle breeze falling from air vents in cold wafts like the fingers of the crow, heat ensared by the candle's jar won't emanate into the room as the flame dances no more than two centimeters in all directions from its perfectly statuesque spear-like body; eternal slumber would be but little different to its truth, save the general death of not living.

It is, in its not.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Valentines Day and Anniversary Sonnet

The Selfish ways of love have brought us here,
In Three we find ourselves anew and feel
a truth none could explain: intrinsic fear
wrapped in the depths of fallen heart's appeal.

Great distance proves how much we've grown as one;
Such lacking touch, as days go by, did bring
foundations 'pon which grow forests we've won
what hands, roughed by our searching, are planting.

In love, a day in red, remembering
how soon and deep our selfish ways supplant
red shifts away from flames with blue bird's wings;
We fly -- leaves on the wind of true love's rant.

Even as we fly I feel myself fall.
Solidity lost. I love you, my all.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

The Fog of Ailing

A dizzying fog descends upon the world's perception within the variable contemplations of my mind. It congeals in imperfect queues as the strings of consciousness attempt assembling patient interpretations of actions encircling the existence of self at work. The feeling of being lost, absent, deconstructed berates like a pillow pressed heartily against my eyes, ears, temples; overwhelm suffocates my breath in stifled intakes. Here lies no appreciation for the benefit of the human condition. It seethes like soft smoke billowing with tender touches to every feed leading into my reaching thoughts.

I wish a wind would come and take away the cloud that rests between my nasal cavity and my brain, which slithers down my throat into my chest and wraps its thin membranes around the air sacks pulling what air it can into the already infested region. Then, perhaps, my flight instinct would subside and relinquish its fear filling hands of my body, my mind, my breath! I drown in the lulling inexactitudes of every little movement my body makes.

Even sleep pulls at my fear, for waking in the dark frightens every fiber of my confused state coupled with the sudden urgency to inhale deeply; my lungs won't open and swallow the refreshing darkness while the black hole pulls at the blockage barricading the pathways of life. All that remains is the knowledge that I need to calm down, sit up, relax, and move my diaphragm in a gentle, continuous motion that matches the constant breathing experienced throughout the day...

Fear grasps with such intensity in moments without breath.

I can't wait till this cold subsides and everything around me feels fresh and clear.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Develop

This smarts...

The transfiguration of emotional development isn't a condition coinciding with normal human conditioning. I feel as the clouds move across peaks: tumultuous and degrading while billowing black agains the white light of the radiance penetrating the atmosphere. I feel full of life and grandeur, exploring the heavens in a myriad of directions while holding fast the convictions adhered within the previous hour glass's turning. The lift can only be concluded by a fall, and not in necessity of demeaning manners; possibly falling deeper in the cherished divulgence of truth and love and happiness.

In true happiness is where my existence resides, listening to the harkening winds of change as they whip across, around, and authentically through the vales and corridors of choices. One recent choice, however, has brought the voice of my mind, and potentially my heart, into a chasm of seemingly indeterminate possibilities. One remains illuminated without any doubt or fear or loss, really. In truth, I will remain steadfast with this light, conveying my very essence to the continuation of pure and unadulterated love I experience as I tread the lush beauty of our adoration.

This sudden revival of a lost trail has stirred something within. As this internal flame shifts, I feel its mirroring of current emotional status. It grows slowly and assuredly. The choice remains as to allow its festering presence to coalesce into actual devotional awareness of that revived feeling or to smother under denial with the intent of reformulating the existing emotions therein into a more amicable situation. Outright rejection of this heat is completely beyond a reasonable subjugation of my heart. I am a Pisces after all.

Being a Pisces also makes this decision extremely hard. There is one thing I'm unwilling to relinquish, and that is my love: the one love who has so succinctly permeated every expectation of devotion and relationship I ever had constructed in any fantasy imagined.

My clouds mount the peaks with effervescent determination, willing the boundless sky to accept the uninhibited fervor of my heart. My mind wishes the rains to sodden the paths and middle them into indeterminate destinations. My will can make the decision; and I know it already has. Here's my next step.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

2011. Who knew?

I have been quite apprehensive to try and describe 2011 to myself. There were really two different trends that circulated and interwove into and around the timeline of a year; looking back at all of the events I can't help but feel like last year was so long even as the feeling of slipperiness coalesced in the moments. The year flew by like gravity pulling water through the cracks of cupped fingers. Once I move my hands though, the lake beneath my hands seems deeper than I could have imagined. In all reality, the two ways of describing this past year are as the surface experiences that shape the landscape of a tale and the unheeded transformations I experienced in the simplicity of events occurring in twelve months. What is more important or valid? I'm not entirely sure, but both ways of depicting 2011 scare me slightly. In a way, I haven't even finished digesting the metamorphosis of myself... so how can I justly understand and place into words my life?

Well, part of understanding is forcing the indescribable into language and having that language envelope the moments until truth is found. At least, that's how I see it.

Most tales start from the beginning. I must start in the past, a past I dealt with through language here in The Writer's Landscape in poetry and verse; I shall be blunt. The end of 2010 found my mind questioning the foundation of my self and my relationship of eight years. This relationship was the boundary of my self: the cage of my freedom, the prison of my self expression, and the torture of my physical expressions; the harbor of my love, the shelter of my confidence, and the belief in my memories of perfection. The juxtaposition of these feelings was the vortex of questioning of a relationship that started just as I realized who I wanted to become. That entity, that destiny I later realized, was hidden away because of love and devotion. We shall return to this thought in a moment.

Thus, 2011 came into existence with one resolution (for lack of a better word). I resolved to be completely open, honest, and uninhibited with myself and the people in my life. No smoke and mirrors, no subtle lies, no half truths or denials. I discovered that I was lying to myself, telling myself I was happy with who I had become, who I was denying, and the path I was walking down. I believe it was January 21st when I officially broke up with my boyfriend of nearly eight and a half years, after a week of limbo, of talking and discussing the possibilities of relinquishing our relationship or fighting for the love we so to which we vehemently clung. That moment set everything in motion. I was already in my dream school, already taking some steps to become the person I longed to know. That day I broke my heart and didn't realize it; broke it apart into the first of several sunderings I would experience in twelve months' time. The first true relationship coming to the first true death. Unfortunately its dying was long and arduous...

I very quickly met my next love. Call it rebound. Call it truth. Call it the first fold unraveling in my journey toward myself. This love hit hard, hit fast, and hit painfully. After two and a half months, the second sundering crushed my world. The smoke and mirrors I left behind found their way into my world from another source and his words, though of good intent, made the situation undeniably worse...

Beauty came from this quick affair with my heart. Great poetry flowed from me, spoke from a place I've only been able to reach a few times in my life. I also found one of my best friends in the entire world from that brief love. On May 4th, my newest best friend and I celebrated the ending of my first semester at my first pick college. That night, my first night at a gay bar I found the next person who would enrich my life and unfold yet another aspect of my true self. He would help define what I needed from a relationship; because in lacking is the search for want. I wrote something one morning on my iPod, of all places, which sums up his and my relationship nearly perfectly:

Watching boys be boys made me feel even more of an outsider to his world. No matter the love, the intensity of appreciation or admiration in his eyes, the smile upon my arrival or kiss or stare, his efforts never attempted bringing me into his world. However, I know his intentions never veered toward keeping me out of the man's verse. They simply attracted me, and himself to me, and allowed us both exist where we desired. Such an action simply stirred my heart even more. (July 10, 2011)

I wrote it lovingly. Now I see the underlying intensity of sadness that fueled the words. Even now, I long to change "action" to "inaction" in that last sentence, because it would more accurately describe what happened. Words are chosen purposefully and even now I dare not change the verse. After a while, I fell in love with him because I could see who he was and who he wanted to be; but I didn't love him because my heart told me I loved him. Hell, I never even told him in person that I loved him. It wasn't until too late that I desired to let him know.

My necklace carrying my protection in a pendant and charm broke in the middle of July, and the next day I totaled my car. With the totaling of my car, this boy stopped seeing me. His explanations for not seeing me were vague but understandable. After all, when you work till ten or eleven at night you don't want to ride a vespa for forty-five minutes to visit a boy you haven't called your boyfriend or significant other to his face after three months of dating.

July 24th arrived and I flew away to one of the most magical places in the world: DisneyWorld. Seven days to experience being alone amongst crowds of families and friends. It was the most liberating experience of my life. Imagine walking around the corridors of magical displacement and enjoying the post-modern reality created by Disney while seeing the families, loved ones, friends, and lovers walking side by side, glancing in your direction as you walk alone with your iPod as company. By Wednesday I had reached the pinnacle of my loneliness and depression. It was also the day I found out all the information about my totaled car: how much to repair it, how much I was receiving from insurance, and how much I would have to work through in order to get mobility back. It was tough, but Thursday morning I awoke with a new attitude. And that attitude has sustained me since that moment. I realized I didn't need to be with anyone in order to be happy and fulfilled; that my own existence permeates my reality and how well I consume the emotions I emit creates the sensations of loneliness, love, and connection. I went back into the park ready to be alone and happy.

What I found was love instead. It was a magical, fairytale event: love at first sight, instant mutual interest, and a quick phone number exchange. With the few days I had left, I made a bond with someone very special.

Unfortunately, reality called me away from the reality of fantasy. I returned home to my dating world with a new attitude about what I was looking for, which quite frankly wasn't anything solid. I didn't want a relationship, per se, but I wanted to experience life at its fullest. Whoever wanted to be in my life, however they wanted to be in my life (sans commitment) was welcome. I started dating, and dating did I do. I also had a new self-identity that I embraced with fervor. This was a step in life I knew I needed to experience too; and so I became quite promiscuous and embraced the title of "Hoe."

Most people would look at me during this state and be concerned, I'm sure, about my well being and sanity and health, etc. In truth, the time people needed to worry about me was right after the semester ended, on May 4th. The entire summer saw me in more drunken stupors making more bad decisions than I did during the entirety of my "hoe-dom." I was safe. I made practical decisions about who I was sleeping around with. I kept honesty, integrity, and communication at the forefront of every interaction I took part in. Everyone knew exactly where I was emotionally and mentally. I daresay this backfired on me at least twice. One of the people I met during this period I really wish I had made a stronger connection with and actually accepted the fact I was falling for him. I didn't realize this until recently; but I don't regret what happened. We had a beautiful affair for a few weeks, and he moved on because he knew a relationship was out of the question for me at that point in my life. The other time this backfired on me was with someone I still see almost daily, but whom I feel the connection between the two of us had degraded so far that we have little to say to each other anymore.

The ultimate outcome of my promiscuity was finding a love which I never fathomed could exist for me. I found a relationship with the man I've been looking for my entire life, and never really realized it. We started dating at the end of August. After much discussion, very open-hearted and open-minded discussions about life, who we want to be, what we want to do, and how we wish to experience life, we became a couple on November 14th. We created the perfect relationship, in my book; and people still question the validity of our love for each other with the parameters we've set up with each other. Let me explain.

We both know our love is solid, that it is created from a foundation of undeniable trust and awareness of who each of us is. My boyfriend knows that I have a part of me that likes being promiscuous, enjoys flirting with other men and being in the company of people who find me sexually attractive. He knows that I like being around men I find sexually attractive. Furthermore, we both understand that sex is pleasure and the assigned meaning of love and devotion is constructed form a world that we don't belong to. I'm a witch, and he's fluctuating between beliefs as he searches for a truth he feels comfortable with. An open relationship is technically the term we should label our commitment with, but even that isn't truly accurate. We experience sexuality together, and the paths we take to find out what we enjoy is taken together; but we have permission to do as we please. This is the perfection I've been looking for, that no other man has every given me or felt free to take from me.

And here we come to the new year, transitioning from a year of endings, of discovery, of truth and honesty. I've received SEVERAL amazing friends, including one which resurfaced in my life right before the new year commenced. I'm eternally grateful for this tumultuous year, and I feel the words to express it reside within the telling of this tale. Furthermore, the meaning of my transformation exists deeper than the words, in the underlying pretense of shifting mindsets all permeating the choices and paths I owned without preconceived associations. I am who I always wanted to be: a man in love, desperately attached with the heart but free to enjoy the multitude of life's pleasures without judgments. 

Now I have to judge whether these words are enough to convey the reality of existing as myself... and I fear these stories, these marks on white digitized nothingness, cannot truly give the experiences I felt. Feel free to question my world, and I shall tell you more.