Nearer

I hate that the only way you can love me is from afar
because it makes me want to go further
to feel something that I can fully feel
closer.

for Ph ;)

I want to light the insanity in my veins aflame, high and sudden like flambe, letting them glow for you like a glowing plumbing system making my body translucent and red to the touch, dripping hot waxy liquid shamelessness down the searing crevices of decades upon decades of propriety of my own tusk white bones like fossils showcased in the blown glass of my curves deteriorating touch by breath by eye graze before you. ♥

Post Midterm Election Youth

Being a 24 year old, I did not vote because I realized too late that there was even an election going on. My 26 year old boyfriend did vote and was enlightened to the idea by “turning on the television”. To me, these forces that impeded him to vote were white noise, just static in the background. I don't know how much of this can be blamed on school work taking up most of my time and how much of this is my own ideas about voting.
I noticed another trend in voting. My boyfriend voted partly because it is a family ritual and partially because he lives in a town in which most of the population is wealthy. According to him it is in his best interest to keep the incumbent and vote Republican for minor elections and go liberal by voting Democratic in presidential elections.
I'm not exactly how commendable this is. On the one hand, he is doing something for the community, to not rock the boat, by sticking to what the town knows. On the other hand, he seems to ignore the real issues at hand and how a different candidate might be able to help those less privileged in the town (he himself is not wealthy) or set higher standards in dealing with political agendas.
Another trend I am seeing is that of the ironically political person who does not vote but posts a bunch of criticisms on facebook about candidates based on the opinions of others, usually entertainment personalities. I fall into this category. I did not know all the issues but it was fun to make fun of Christine O'Donnell. And it's better than posting how I felt about...my breakup...with my dinner...and that's all I have to say about that...clever comment...and random but poignant quote. My school of thought is, “Fake it, til you make it”.
It seems that politics will have to either work really hard to appeal to us or push us so far, as Bush did in his 8 years, that we need to make a change. We'll find out in 2 years, when the Presidential election comes how much the youth really cares. The trend of the midterm elections voting youth has never been high.
Now we will get to know our once-candidates by how much they screw us, how much our parents complain. It's too late.

Pre-Midterm Elections Youth

It seems the trend of this midterm election for the youth is more about not voting and not knowing, and not caring.
If anyone from my demographic group (I mean 18-20-something year olds) does vote, they'll only do it to support the ideas of their voting elders or simply to enact their rights as citizens, choosing the candidates of the political parties they usually side with.
But by and large, most of my school peers don't really even understand the concept of the midterm elections. To them it seems a random event that won't really impact them. Also, it's somewhat uncool.
To vote for town elections is a “townie” thing, which means you spend most of your energy being a busy body of your town, volunteering at elections and going to PTA meetings.
To vote for state elections is also seen as a waste of time but it seems to hold this stigma about it: Old people, who are usually more informed politically and the intellectual and politically activate but younger residents vote in these.
People my age seem to not realize that they will be affected as far as the elections go. And this will not become evident until something changes and by then it's usually too late.
I think a lot of the youth is overwhelmed with issues dealing way back, before the internet, to the Nixon administration. This idea of too much knowledge is holding our power to assess information about people, to really listen to what they're saying and not saying and how they're saying it. We want to exchange facts for entertainment, with the most important facts. This misinformed mass is not exactly doing America a disservice in not voting.
I prefer that my peers vote for no one, be misrepresented, than be represented by someone who looks nice or has better ads, etc.
Although I am somewhat convinced that the youth voted for Obama in 2008 on two accounts:
1- a very shallow reason, to vote for the first African American president;
2- because they remembered how much Bush messed up their lives and wanted change, killing their brothers and sisters in the military, letting America's value and reputation go to shit in the international eyes, even down to the very elementary level with No Child Left Behind. And resistance from the right was stronger than ever seeing that the Left was succeeding for once, having a strong candidate who motivates even the Right to change for the better.
But coming back to this 2010 election. "Small-time" (I say this as a comparison for the presidential election) politics seem to be more about who has a more clean record, and literally who is less crazy.
Can we really make a choice based on these advertisements, whether it takes a positive stance on a candidate or whether it borderline slanders opposing candidates, it's all relative, it's all subjective. It seems more about the personalities than the issues. The youth is not interested.
They seem to think Obama or any president has all the power. So, why should they vote? Why should they care?

Job Application Reply Letter

Dear Mr. SoAnd So,

We regret to inform you
that the position
is no longer available.

You were our Favorite candidate
even though you did not have
the type of experience we were looking for.

You seemed to possess a kind of
confidence in the subject matter
just by being yourself.

You seemed to be a perfect candidate
until we found out that you applied
at our enemy company.

The position is going to be given
to someone who walks in here
with the inevitable smile on his bright face,
a witty retort escaping his cheek,
with good credit, and an honest, open heart,
a sympathetic ear, and an apology every time
he becomes human and I call him out on it.
He will never make me feel like there's
someone better. And I will not live in a fairytale.
He will simply be in the future.
But he is not you.

Because I am not a job.
I am a vacation.

We wish you luck with your future endeavours.
And hope that our criticism has been most constructive.
We know that it will be. (And, that, is not a good thing.)


Sincerely,
Diana

Leave the drama for your mama

Here it goes. My dirty laundry.

Tonight, for the millionth time I found out something that:

A- made me instantly nauseous
B- I was not supposed to find
C- made me flush with anger
D- I was not supposed to be looking for
E- made my eyes feel dry, wishing they could not see
F- made me question my relationship...again

Being the completely jealous and kind of psycho girlfriend that I become once I sniff something is...off, over the past year or so I have found a shit ton of evidence that I should not be in the relationship I am in.

This has happenned so many times before w/ other ppl. But never has it broken my heart so many times, over and over again. Making me slowly despise parts of him. But affecting me like a venom serum of the conscience, making me completely loathe myself for putting up w/ this again.

Man after man, add in an ex husband and a boyfriend who cheated on me over 20 times. Now add, My Favorite. Add to the mix the one I believe to be my soulmate, for every breath acounted for together (keyword, together) in my mind has been a harmonious step in the direction we were meant to live, in the right direction.

I learned the detective routine from my mother. When I was about 5-6 my mother took my brother and I on a road trip to hell. Her personal hell. She had found out the address of this week's mistress and we went. To break in to her house. I think she was looking for him. But found no one.

I stayed in the car. But my brother being 10-11 participated because he was smart enough to keep a lookout and strong enoguh to help her out in case she needed any help. I heard anguished yelling and crashes of things that I imagined to be glass or porcelain. I looked for a sign of my family, my father even, past the tropical landscape in front of this stranger's house. Nothing.

Then, "Open the door! Open the door!" I looked at my mother dumfounded. Her hand wrapped in this strange lady's toilet paper, parts turned red, those parts dripping blood on the concrete. My mom holding the roll in her gory hand, tapped on the window as she jogged towards driver's side. "Diana! Are you deaf! Open the door for God's sake!"

I did so. And the excitement of it all, flooded into the car. My mother started the car and peeled away. My brother asking a book of questions to add to the encyclopedia that was his scientific mind. Why did you do that. Who's house was that? I saw my mother's intermitten smirk in the rearview mirror as she tried to explain, while not getting into an accident, and not being in too much pain, bleeding all over her white shirt.

I copied her smirk. I mirrored the joy she felt as she tried to explain this to us as a good thing. "I went into that 'Lola's' house and I smashed her things. She has tacky things and doesn't deserve anything for messing with you guys. He takes her out and we are in the house starving. I ruined her house so you can have good things. Ok papito?" I felt nothing but what my mom made me feel, happiness, that she had been brough to justice. That the problems with her and my father were over. My brother was silent, reflective.

Those problems are still not over. Not for me. They may have divorced. But I am not even separated from the memories. Because as soon as I am wronged, I will spy, I will hunt, I will find truth, I will cry and bleed, but I, I will destroy.

Katie Makkai "Pretty"

Pretty by Katie Makkai

When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, “What will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? What comes next? Oh right, will I be rich?” Which is almost pretty depending on where you shop. And the pretty question infects from conception, passing blood and breath into cells. The word hangs from our mothers' hearts in a shrill fluorescent floodlight of worry.

“Will I be wanted? Worthy? Pretty?” But puberty left me this funhouse mirror dryad: teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose, face donkey-long and pox-marked where the hormones went finger-painting. My poor mother.

“How could this happen? You'll have porcelain skin as soon as we can see a dermatologist. You sucked your thumb. That's why your teeth look like that! You were hit in the face with a Frisbee when you were 6. Otherwise your nose would have been just fine!

“Don't worry. We'll get it fixed!” She would say, grasping my face, twisting it this way and that, as if it were a cabbage she might buy.

But this is not about her. Not her fault. She, too, was raised to believe the greatest asset she could bestow upon her awkward little girl was a marketable facade. By 16, I was pickled with ointments, medications, peroxides. Teeth corralled into steel prongs. Laying in a hospital bed, face packed with gauze, cushioning the brand new nose the surgeon had carved.

Belly gorged on 2 pints of my blood I had swallowed under anesthesia, and every convulsive twist of my gut like my body screaming at me from the inside out, “What did you let them do to you!”

All the while this never-ending chorus droning on and on, like the IV needle dripping liquid beauty into my blood. “Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? Like my mother, unwrapping the gift wrap to reveal the bouquet of daughter her $10,000 bought her? Pretty? Pretty.”

And now, I have not seen my own face for 10 years. I have not seen my own face in 10 years, but this is not about me.

This is about the self-mutilating circus we have painted ourselves clowns in. About women who will prowl 30 stores in 6 malls to find the right cocktail dress, but haven't a clue where to find fulfillment or how wear joy, wandering through life shackled to a shopping bag, beneath those 2 pretty syllables.

About men wallowing on bar stools, drearily practicing attraction and everyone who will drift home tonight, crest-fallen because not enough strangers found you suitably fuckable.

This, this is about my own some-day daughter. When you approach me, already stung-stayed with insecurity, begging, “Mom, will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?” I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer, “No! The word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be, and no child of mine will be contained in five letters.

“You will be pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing. But you, will never be merely 'pretty'.”

Needs: The Cavity

To want to be taken care of is something that most women will not admit to. I can say that I have had everything I've been set up to believe by my female role models tainted because it hurts to admit that I have not yet broken in to the "independent woman" category and probably never will. I need to be taken care of. I don't depend on myself fully to make myself happy. I used to believe that happiness was always within myself but when you've been in as many relationships as I have, all of which have made me feel stronger about being able to find love, you kinda start getting lazy. You start to not believe in people, exactly but believe that there is someone out there who will read your mind.

Then again, it's because you start becoming either more hopeful or more adamant about finding the things you want in someone, or a weird mixture-delicately balanced-between both. I don't depend on myself fully for money, sustenance, and shelter. It might take me a while to get used to being all alone, truly alone and self-sufficient. So this is where the decision about going to study abroad comes from. Should I stay? And find the same old Diana, lingering for another chance to take advantage of, not bettering myself? Or should I go and crash and burn, and be ashes blown away to a different existence, starting from mere dust?

And it's like going to the dentist. The cavity is your insecurity, your reliance on others that goes rotten and you only feel it when the damage is irreversible. So you go, and they put a needle in your mouth. And it stings on that space between your gums and your bone (I think?). But maybe that experience is rewarded ten-fold because when that anesthetic hits, if you've suffered enough, you know you won't feel a thing.

Website Versus Blogger

What do people think? Should I get a website for my poetry? Or should I just stick to blogger for a while? What makes me more legit??

Thanks!

History

HaZelGrEenXoXo 1:06 am
(1:06:35 AM): i wish i was in 3rd grade again

the toughest thing i had to deal with is learning english and fitting into american culture in a predominantly latino neighborhood

(1:07:35 AM): i didnt want to rebel against school i was a dumb kid and loved it

Forar1269 1:07 am
(1:07:51 AM): where were u born
HaZelGrEenXoXo 1:08 am
(1:08:41 AM): brooklyn...born a premie when my mom was on a business trip...we moved back to ecuador when i was like 6 months, healthy enough to fly

(1:08:51 AM): lived there til i was 7

(1:08:56 AM): did 2nd grade summer school

(1:09:14 AM): and went right to 3rd grade
Forar1269 1:10 am
(1:10:03 AM): would u rather be there now

(1:10:04 AM): or here
HaZelGrEenXoXo 1:10 am
(1:10:55 AM): u kno...i'm thinking there mainly cos as an american the grass is always greener somewhere else but then i was thinking about how i'd rather not have grown up with these ideals of perpertual self-importance

(1:10:59 AM): ideas*

(1:11:57 AM): the very reason i dont wanna do HW right now and am procrastinating is b/c my mom never taught me how to be disciplines and the US school public school system barely tries to instill that either
HaZelGrEenXoXo 1:12 am
(1:12:20 AM): i kno if i had grown up w/ my father (my mom separated us from him) i'd be a better person

(1:12:42 AM): he's an architect and a professor and he understood me my mother didnt and still doesnt

(1:12:54 AM): but then again understanding a 7- year old isnt too hard

(1:13:07 AM): my mother just never tried

On Morality

I was reading Days of War Nights of Love: Crimethink for Beginners. In the introduction they talk about moral law and God and thought I'd share a few thoughts of my own on the matter.

They mention- in short- that the social construct we label as morality and religion was made to get everyone on the same page. They also ask why people aren't typically compelled to question these.

My impulse answer is comfort. Their answer is fear. But as I think about it they go hand-in-hand.

I've done many terrible things in my lifetime. I've been called selfish, thoughtless, heartless. I have regrets and will never say that I live a life of "no regrets" because that would hardly make for a life well-lived and a mind, conscience and heart constantly well-developed.

I feel bad for the people who can't see past the social construct of morality. I picture horses with blinds on, to keep from distractions, to keep them going, go, go, gone.

I think on all the moral wrongs my name is associated with and I don't feel ashamed. But I do regret the hurt I've caused people. But I resent that their hurt is based on years of perpetual self-righteousness. And in using that word, I don't mean to play their role and be self-righteous but if that isn't the word for it I don't know what is.

Perhaps, I should try and rename this idea: It is perpetual unconscious self-righteousness.

I don't think people are ready to have no written laws. I don't think people are ready to live without religion. I think people are too stupid to understand themselves. I think if there were ever cavemen they were more honorable than our "civilization".

When we try to understand themselves we come up with a misconception-the "self", individuality which completely cancels out the idea that we are civilized by its very definition . But at the same time the idea of morality as part of a civilization seems unreal, impossible because we are so focused on the self. And why shouldn't we be? We are meant to be alone. Death happens to each of us individually. Of course if say a president dies a whole country is affected

This never-ending loneliness is why people have to work to make marriages last, there are sacrifices to be made, re-labeled "compromises".

The word compromise has a very different connotation but think about all the times you've given up something for relationship bliss, stability or just for the mere sake of not being in trouble. I don't presume to think one should be selfish but to maybe question what this means in the greater scheme of life.

The key to killing this idea of morality is acceptance. In ridding ourselves of the ideology of morality we build another one called acceptance. Very simply put, very simple to recognize and use, "shit happens".

One should follow the ideas of right and wrong that are already in place, if the awareness of genuine caring and love were the compass of our actions we wouldn't need moral laws. But if we learned how to accept hatred and negativity to be honest about what holds us back and then question it, the world would be a more harmonious place.

More (clearer) thoughts to follow on this seemingly existential idea.

Instability

Never did I notice until my poetry teacher said it- my life consists of inconsistencies, instability, unlikeliness. It was obvious in my writing. The things that weren't supposed to happen, the places I wouldn't see, I wouldn't live in, and the people I shouldn't have met or fell in love with are the frays of my everyday conscience and the memories revisited, avoided. Improbability is commonplace but not precisely predictable, like expecting warm weather in spring but it reaching 80 degrees. Most people chock it up to the adage "That's life!" Yet I guess I'm too secretive for them to get the full picture. Or am I ashamed to not have had a normal circumstance since the day I was born, hurting my mother to get out 2 months early?

Locks

It turns out whenever I dream nowadays I can only picture myself with long hair although I cut my hair early December of last year. And now that I think back on it, I'm pretty sure that whenever I cut my hair short I also saw myself with long hair.

I wonder if people ever actually adapt. I guess it might depend on the level of trauma achieved or if the hairstyle has made such a strong impression that it alters the persons self-image.

The reason I even thought of this is I had a dream in which a girl I went to high school with cut my hair and we were laughing really hard about it. When I remembered the dream I remembered that I my hair is short. Also, since this dream I haven't had one in which I have short hair. I don't find that peculiar, I'm just stating.

Unemployment: Yoda's Impact on Today's Shitty Economy

I'm not gonna pretend to know what's going on with the economy or let alone try to come up with theories as to whose fault it is and how we should fix it.

I do know this. I'm poor.

Today, I got an e-mail from Residential Services at Montclair State University stating that I wasn't chosen for the Residential Assistant position. My mind didn't go to why. I know why; the interview was terribly awkward. Why? I don't know. I couldn't read my interviewer. My mind went to sulking.

That was the second job this month that I got turned down for. The maybe 20th job this year I didn't get.

I don't know why. I don't even want to start thinking as to why yet.

It's the loss of something I've never had- a professional life. The loss of The American Dream I never dreamed up for myself. Yet, it is the only way I see to survive. I don't want to know why I can't achieve or come close to anything my mother had hoped for me (but never prepared me for).

Is this what happens when we have a dream? We lose it (even if we somehow achieve it).

After all this, George says, "Well at least you tried." I understood that this was coming from a difference place than just conciliation, it was coming from his personal standpoint on the job situation. Either way, there is no excuse for me not having job.

I often hear, "But you're a student. School is your job."

No, my job is to keep myself alive. I am doing a shitty job. (Imagine if I had offspring.)

Yoda said, "Do or do not. There is no try."

Has our economical situation gotten so terrible that we really should stick to these principles for survival? Has it gotten that bad that really and truly, sincerely there is no "try" anymore. Are we about to see deaths from poverty amongst ourselves?

We will not be able to turn a blind eye on it like we have been for the bums on the street. This time it will be our family members and friends. No, this time it will be people we try to help out but for whatever reason they cannot help themselves.

I am part of this group of people who cannot help themselves. I was never taught how. I was hoping for a while my instincts would kick in. But they have not. I'm left with desperation and my thoughts. But my thoughts don't enable me to get anywhere near a job because they are thoughts of impending doom. They have to be converted again and again for about a year now to positive energy.

Yet, I fear I am fooling myself.

We are not in control. And we fool ourselves again because we don't know who is in control. And in our free country, don't know what to do about it.

Where is my education now? Will knowing Shakespeare save me?

And what does this say about me? My education? Because I quote Yoda- a fictional character- does that make me a dumb American? So deeply impressed by Yoda and his words of wisdom that I won't be able to make it in capitalism, the traditional scheme that our country is built upon? Or does that make me adaptable?

If I were to move abroad, how would I be useful?

For Lazy Readers- From a Lazy Writer with an Overworked Mind/Conscience

For those of you who don't know me well enough yet: You will come to find yourselves very disappointed with me as a person at the end of my blogs.

This is not so much a disclaimer as it is an observation and perhaps even an experiment.

The reason I say this is because I have started this new blog and turns out as eager as I am to write in it I'm not sure that I will ever be able to finish a good blog. I call it a perhaps experiment because maybe I could tie myself down to writing in this as I used to in high school. But this time it will be about things that are relevant to the advancement of myself and maybe even the advancement of mankind.

With that said, have patience.

I'm not that insecure that it will be an interesting blog. I am more unsure that I won't make enough time for it and make it a priority. Yet, I should. Writing is my life. I write in my head all day and never follow through by putting it in ink or paper. Why? Lazinezz? Feelings of inadequacy? Both of the above.

After all, all writers have that discouraging voice in their head- however taciturn or maddening.

All writers are schizophrenic but have to learn to listen to the right voice, the voice that brings all the voices to order, the Caesar voice, the one that will rule and tweak all that is wrong with those voices yelling at once. However, it still needs to keep the virtues of those voices and make you write...

the empire that is your mind.