The hand with a brush

There are those who paint lives,
and then there are the beautiful hands of those who mix the colors and let them run to make their own unique, existential design.
These hands can support you, give you ideas, see what is really there behind the canvas.
Sometimes they are yours to hold, and sometimes they hold you.
They are the kind of hands that leave prints,
these hands that hold brushes,
these hands that are unafraid to create things beyond human existence.
Sometimes
they add color to you
and sometimes
your lines and shapes are what guide these hands.
They are the hands that reach and grasp the universe,
and succeed in their own ways.
They are the art-inspiring hands that will tell you,
"Your words could be the words to change lives,
they could be the best in the world,
but nobody will know unless you speak up."
They may not make masterpieces,
but I thank my brush-holders, and do my best
to show them the work of art they helped make.




I've been posting my work now for a year, and I will never forget the brush-holding hand that first told me I could.

Create

Our voices are not simply sounds that we make.
Our voices are what is heard in the things that we create.
Your life can be spent trying to get somewhere, to see what you will find,
but your destination isn't as important to the world as what you leave behind.
So make.
Make stories, make music, make paintings, make love,
You'll never know what you can do if you give your brain a shove.
Create a code, a program, an equation,
Create a relationship, a snow angel, a religion.
It doesn't matter by what means you extrapolate,
your life is followed by what you create.

In which I remove a lot of crap.

Hey everybody! I know poetry has been pretty scarce lately, but it's because I've been working on a huge project. You see, since I was a child I've had the problem of hoarding. It's seriously riddiculous. I don't know why I've always had the need to hold onto everything that reaches my possession, or to feel a strange trepidation at the thought of putting things away in drawers, closets, or boxes as opposed to on the floor where I can see them. All I know is that it's a habit that has haunted me for some time. Now that I'm in a tiny college-town appartment, there has been a necessity for few possessions and organization that I have handeled pretty well. However, when I came home for Christmas break, my mother commissioned me to transform the bedroom in which I grew up into a guest room she could use. I knew I had my work cut out for me when I walked into my adolescent filth.

So I've spent this break doing something I haven't done in 14 years; I cleaned my bedroom. I knew it would be a decent amount of work, but I didn't realize it would be such a soul-searching journey. As I ventured further into the piles and piles of junk, I realized just how much of a hoarder I have been. Not only did I hoard physically, in the fact that the floor of my room at any given space had a knee-deep pile of stuff with NO carpet space whatsoever (even under the bed), but I also hoarded mentally with broken dreams, wishful childish thinking, and memories of things long gone that I would not let myself let go of, and therefore they would not let go of me. I spent three days in that room, thinking over every item and it's significance on my life, I was flooded with memories and realized just how much heartache and regret I harbored from which I was refusing to move on.

It was definitely time for a fresh start. I got rid of multidudenous things during this excursion, either by throwing them away or donating them to a local shelter, but I also found many things that were touching, useful, or just plain amusing, and I figured it only fair to share some of these things to my cyber-network of blog friends and stalkers. Why? Perhaps because it seems a journey worth noting to the dedicated readers I have who have endured so much of my emo-ness that they will understand why I had to let go and rejoice with me. Perhaps because I live to entertain. Perhaps because I'm stalling packing up to return once again to the land of academic stress.

The most significant thing I found was my old favorite pair of boots. I'd found them in a thrift store before I started 7th grade. I wore them every day from the age of 12 to the age of 20. These boots were not merely a pair of riddiculously comfortable and broken-in pair of footwear. They were my personality. They were held together by glue, duct tape, fabric scraps, and safety pins. When, in October, I was struggling with a serious mental health disorder that threatened to end my life, my mother told me in encouragement that my boots represented me in a way that was profound. Well worn, held together by whatever means nesicary, and full of more personality, individuality, and character than most people see in their lifetimes.

We saw a lot of years together. They'd been in eleven states, (including Washington, D.C. and Hawaii) two countries, and three schools. They'd walked at least 300 miles, I'd say, and jumped in at least 75 puddles. They'd seen th.e inside of hospitals, been on stages and rollercoasters, and acquired a rather offensive odor, and the inner shape of the innersoles were a perfect cast of my feet. Everywhere I went, people would compliment the compilation of various colors and patterns of duct tape I used to hold them together. (Even though my best friend and father both said they were hideous.) They were really a part of me in a way that I can't really explain. When they finally became completely un-fixable by any of my means, I took them to several shoe repair shops, only to be told by shoemakers that my boots were of a European design that was engineered to disintegrate after six years so as to not take up space in landfills. This news devastated me to a quite pathetic extent. I felt like, without them, I'd never want to walk again. They were, like I said, a part of me. However, they were a part of who I used to be, and I've changed so much since then. It was due time to let go. Also, my new boots, though not nearly as comfortable yet, are quite beautiful.

I also found:

3 Barbie dolls

Enough prescription drugs to kill a medium-sized mule

Surprise onslaught of glitter (Wanna hug?)

Devil Costume

Graded math worksheets of an unknown kindergartner named Caitlin

A Rather Horrid black wig

Mixes for Sugar Cookies (Vegan if I use margarine and egg substitute! Yay!)

Lots of sprinkles, cupcake cups

My Gamecube!!!!

Enough Vegetable oil to power a diesel truck from here to Eugene

Three pairs of character heels

Four pairs of pointe shoes and two pairs of flat ballet slippers

A Crossbow catalog

About seven concert's worth of choral sheet music

On online registration code for "Dragonpoker.com" (Literally Dragons Playing Poker, from the looks of it.)

A comic book printed completely in Japanese. (The pictures are cute...)

Three paperback copies of "Twilight" (I'm not proud of this one)

Computer mouse I didn't know I had

Cowboy boots

TWO copies of my high school's 2006 yearbook

Really awesome black skirt that fits me perfectly. (I have NO clue where it came from)

Brown and Pink felt squares

Diary from first grade

18 pairs of shoes that I don't remember wearing more than once in my life

Enough scarves to hang a small village

The Dungeons and Dragons dice I thought I'd lost to the ages.

Astonishment at the number of poems and short stories I've actually written down over the years. (And these are only the ones that survived)

My favorite pair fingerless gloves. They still smell like trees.

Butterfree and Rapidash plushies

Probably too many pictures (and probably too much time spent looking at them)

4 pairs of tweezers

36 pens

28 pencils

$60. W00t!

A lollipop shaped like a penis

Sock puppets made to resemble: Me, Fred and George Weasley, A cat, an alien, and a band-aid mummy

A rather fetching tiara

2 toothbrushes and a pack of dental floss

Six brassieres that haven't fit me since probably my sophomore year in high school

My OSU acceptance letter

My "things-to-get-done" list for my senior year of high school

A newspaper from 1999

CD's: Carol King, Jaqui Valesquez, Elvis, and Zoegirl

Some of the Rage comics I've drawn

a $10 gift card to Coldstone

The strength to put things I'd looked at every day for years into boxes.

The strength to throw things that I'd previously loved away.

Thoughts of soon to be a lot of happy girls wearing about 1/3 of my wardrobe.

The "for her" half of a KY "yours and mine" lubricant set. (This one has me stumped. I've never even seen the stuff before and had to ask what it was.)

A men's electric razor???

Two pairs of ripped 30-34 slacks (not my size)

Sewing kit

Five fortune cookie fortunes

A bad case of body odor.

The resolve to dispose of my old boots.

Tinkerbell Booklight

The super-long ponytail I cut off after my high school graduation in another of my symbolic soul-searching ventures.

tye-dye book covers

The CASE to my Dragon Age: Origins game...

Some rather well-composed high school essays

About a billion notes and cards from my friends.

Tears over things that I'd wanted to cry over but never let myself.

Tears over things I never thought I'd have reason to cry over.

Laughter at a million memories that have brought me joy.

Seventeen hats

Letters my Dad sent me when he was in the hospital.

Two pairs of fairy wings

My Gameboy color and Pokemon gold version (Yessssss!!!!)

An aching back.

A room in which I can no longer sleep due to my extreme discomfort with change, but will make a fabulous guest room.

The realization that Corvallis is really my home now.

A heart which has learned from it's past, but is finally ready to let go of everything that has weighed it down and be lighter for it.

The desire to no longer live with piles of clutter in my living space, or in my head.

The will to live like there's no yesterday.