My greatest fear is that I will spend my entire life learning and feeling great passion for development work in Africa but, never be able to do anything about it.

You are just an appetite

and if you stop being greedy

you die


and I, am empty

My Pablo Neruda book smells like soot
Perhaps it was rescued from a burning building
and donated to the Lund Public library due to its insatiable scent
or perhaps its past reader was a middle aged man that enjoyed half a pack with his monday night poetry sessions

I once worked as an emergency restoration worker
I used to clean peoples ash laden household items
I learned that once something smells like soot, it always will

I worked as a treeplanter in the summer
I stayed in a wood cabin with a man that made me eggs with garlic and sundried tomatoes
he was a Neruda fan and had been to his house in Chili
apparently he was obsessed with sailing and all the windows in his house were circular

The Balloon Travelers by Lars Gustafsson

Look at the tall man over there in the top hat.
He is leaning out observing westward.
It is early in the morning, echoing light.

The town is awaiting in the distance with its bells
The peaks of the towers cast blue shadows innocently
It is completely calm, the moment before departure.

From nearby the balloon is huge, like a giant pumpkin
it is shining and growing, it is multicolored.
And the murmur from the spectators, a swarm of bumblebees,

They are cheering and waving at the travelers in the basket,
who pretend not to notice and keep silent about their destination.
They are immovable and ready to depart.

The man in the top hat is still observing,
and he raises the spyglass of shining brass
as if he were looking for clouds or something invisible.

When they rise they will diminish to a point
until they reach the highest air strata and snow,
the whitish snow cooling and dazzling

will fill the air they breathe, touch their foreheads.
In autumn you can see it fall as frost
the heights' breath fumbling over the fields,

and some autumn when the frost falls early
you will suddenly remember them and their trip
and how they still are climbing, as in dizziness higher

through a thinner air then that of winters
with a tone like that of splintering glass
from deep forests of frailest rain.

And how they rise higher and higher through the years
till memory itself is singing frail as glass,
-and it is unbearable, forget me, believe something else:

a pleasure trip, an adventure for connoisseurs!
A gentleman there in light cutaway with bright-blue vest
gives a slow signal with a gloved gesture.

It is free and already it rises,
imperceptible the cheering sinks below.

Is nothing sacred anymore?

I'm in a relationship avec l'ocean
I'm glowing with love pour l'arbre moussu
I miss not you, ou votre coeur qui bat
but, the flowers dans votre jardin sauvage
I'm close avec le sable dans mes chausseurs
And am intimate with la pluie de rosee
I miss less montagnes derriere les nuages
but, am happy to know they are always there

Advice from a friend.

It seems my heart is leading me through some rough terrain. There is never an easy way out of the lessons we need to learn. My heart wanted something --to believe in something, to create something-- that by all rational sense should be impossible. I was caught between two cliffs, to trust or not to trust, to be led by the heart or led by the mind. Impossible things never happen if no one tries them. But, perhaps the things and people we love must be challenged and confronted. There is trust, yes, but there is also this strange battle between the courage to be oneself and the courage to lose oneself. And then there is the sober world. It comes and goes.

I still want to believe that love and the heart have a way of finding eachother in the most unlikely of circumstances.
Until then, I have myself.

Your brother is lazy
Your sister is crazy
And dusk has fallen

Feeling things fray
I quietly pray
We move along slowly

Your father eats bread
For mother is dead
And we share in silence

I untie my shoe
And wait for a cue
Your eyes close in longing

You rest your head
With belly unfed
I'm pregnant with sorrow

The time may not come
To become a mum
Disappointment's my burden

But perhaps you'll find
The choice isn't mine
Pleasing you always

When push came to I meant not shove
As deep within doth flow my love
But for now I must lament
Goodbye written, stamped and sent
For my mind I must prepare
As in my heart remains despair
You do not know what lies within
Courage lacking, heart of tin
Your cold bites have stung me deep
And now I simply cannot sleep
I didn’t know I could survive
Stabbing words with sharpened knive
But harder still has been to leave
For home without, I feel bereaved
Love you still so speaks my will
Just for now I’ve had my fill

Give me your heart
You know this part
Waiting for you
Passing first pew
What you can't know
Cause I'll never show
That my love for you
When I say I do
Weakens my soul
But I have a role
Together we stand
Woman and man
But what do you see
When you look at me
You haven't a clue
And so I undo

Haphazard lover goes from me a spoof
I hadn't known about it but let it be truth
Waver not taper, savour aloof
In the secret mind of a create-vision

A vision of a story run to mart
Got back with chicken instead of heart
Giggling alone in the pleasantness of cart
Cowboy wondering who turned on my create-crazy

Amazed in my company's improvement
When sticks are claiming lower movements
Lykke li are my groovemints
and Music is my doot doot, create-tune

Go on ahead and be a loner in the best kind
Imaginary friends are the best vehicles mind
That you'll never know cause it requires flexibility of spine
or, create-love to be a moment bind

The deepest happiness is painful simply because it is deep

As this powerful current washes down
At the bend that is always wrong
In the miscurrent- I think of the river trip in Borneo

Of a talkative rose knowing everything and nothing
Of voyeurdom ills clicking through lenses
Of circling thoughts distancing,
saddening my craving of shared reality

And then naked, in the river, climbing vines
daring locals with comfort,
leaping over a reserved vail and
living with joy in that muddy moment

Sidebanked others sweating and ticking,
as I often am on the bus when I'm late,
and everyone becomes a hurdle to jump
In this miscurrent- I think of the river trip in Borneo

The craving of intellectual stimulation and the delving of mind into thought is at strict odds with finding a way to fit into the community within which I find my physical self.
To sit contently sullen on a beach in Asia pacific with the warm sand beneath me as I watch the sunset on another part of myself.
To find a way to be a complete version on myself is a confusing and hesitant path today.

I love to watch my students.

Children forgive so easily. They are overwhelmed by emotion and then, like a passing wind, they let it go. They don't hold on to unnecessary negativity, they don't read into things, an apology in an apology, a mistake is a mistake and betrayal is never in question. I hadn't realized until this year just how possible it is just to let shit go. How fucking wonderful you feel when you forgive someone and how unbelievable you feel when you forgive yourself.

I can't tell you why I set such unrealistic standards for myself but, I can tell you that I beat myself up over insignificant events all the time. One lesson I am going to try to hold on to for all my years is one i learned from my kids this year: conscious forgiveness is a needed part of my everyday life. It's an orgasmic release of negativity and stress. It is one of the most human things I've done in a while and is helping me overcome the sometimes judgemental side of myself.

Forgiveness, regardless, I recommend.

i want so desperately to trust my heart

I wish my blog tag picture would fill the bordering box.

If your t-shirt could talk

What would it say?

"Relax for a moment and music holic"

"IT'S SO ME...
STILL I'M HAVING MEMORIES OF HIGH WHEN COPS CRASHAS L LAUGH PUSHING"

"I believe in EVOL SOMEONE U WIL MIS FOREVER(upside-down)"

That's what mine would say, gamsamnida.

As she told the languid account of her misfortunes
the crevaces of her worn and distant face would grow deeper

Her story would never reach further than the foot of her bed
Time itself a currency that she would never have enough of

I absorbed every word as a perfect lesson of a hard life
A life of lessons stewed so viciously it would spill
Where the wisdom could be but caught in those last moments

Rejected was her visitor’s familial claim
There wasn't enough love in that relationship to fill a thimble,
she explained

With acceptance so impervious that I would question nothing
She put death deep within my life

Tonight, for the first time, in perhaps my entire life, I found myself thinking ~I miss the old days. The days when energy bubbled from my veins in the most infectious way. The days when a night wouldn't pass without some drama-ladden story writing itself. The days when I didn't think twice about stirring it up. When my laugh always had a hint of mischeif and at least one set of eyes watched me thinking ~what will she do to next. When life felt like a play and I, the leading actress, pushed the line to see just how far I could go before life rubbed me raw.
Now, I'm so less apt to play a hand in this game. Maybe I threw in the cards a little too early.