Wildflower Soul

I have been advised to think of art as an encapsulation of a moment, rather than a detraction from it so i shall block such troubling quandaries from my head and continue to scribble.

                              Whoever knew the entire Arsenal football team do their laundry in Santa                 Cruz?

At yoga this week i 'held my deepest desire' in the core of my body during the tree pose and offered it up to the gods, as live guitars strummed in the incense filled room and a man blew a didgeridoo up and down my body, as the instructor with feathered earrings massaged my feet with something warm.

Valentines day brought a smattering of little hearts across the miles and a little piercing in my ear; i was here, and i loved and i lived so much that it hurt.

Another Sunday, another goth club. I love the way that people dance here, free, wild, with their eyes closed,  feeling the music and leaving everything to rot on the sticky floor beneath their restless feet. I found a piece of moss gathered from the forest by my roommate to aid her cold tangled in the tassels of my kimono, a wonderfully quintessential fragment of this ramshackle life.

Friday signalled the beginning of my twentieth birthday weekend. It seems that the sticky globules of youth are caught steadfastly on the hands of the grandfather clock: reach out and slurp as many of them as you can catch on your tongue, for the alarm will be ringing before you know it. Bearing this in mind, we cycled through the city to a show at a house in aid of activists arrested in the 'Occupy Oakland' movement. Friends and members of Zami sweated over washboards and accordion as we danced wildly and sweat clung to the skylights, pianos unsuccessfully blocking stairways and balconies. Onto another porch under the sky, wander-lustful dragons breathing cigarette smoke dream into the air above us. 

Saturday brought my housemate's own interpretation of  Jenga involving bicycle whips and interpretive dancing. We ended the night in a hot tub filled with bubble bath outdoors in the darkness, skin tingling hot and cold simultaneously, the cool beer in our clammy hands evaporating with the rising steam.

My birthday itself was spent in the forest by the sunset tree. A wonderful cacophony of bubbles making rainbows in the sunlight and deer ambling through the long grass, garlands of roses and shrine-like gardens built from rocks. Real life nymphs and fairies swung and played wind chimes from the music tree as the hazy sun set over the ocean and the stars burned brilliant peacock feathers across the sky. We stayed until we could no longer feel our fingers and headed home to a bonfire in the back yard. Our friends voices created a circle of harmonies and old camp songs, of sweetness and of love in the glowing embers, most beautiful in their death. After a heart shaped lemon rind cake baked for me and adorned with a tea light, we fell asleep on the floor of the sunshine room together watching a surrealist film about dreams and existence. The violet-electric glow of the television wrapped itself around our bodies, breath rising and falling in unison, lives accidentally yet inextricably tangled together, safe in the hands of the universe. When i blew out the candle on my birthday cake I wished that things could stay this way forever. 

                                           


The following evening i cycled to the beach to watch the sunset. As I watched the sea blush pink and saw the violet shadows lengthen and fade behind the tall palm trees silhouetted against the boardwalk, i was overcome with a sense of the vastness of the universe, but a comfortable vastness. I felt certain that everything will fall into place, eventually. The world is unpredictable but it is constant, it lives and it breathes and will always move, like the surf breaking upon the sand. I sat alone, twenty years old and fought back tears caused by the insatiable concrete beauty of the sky.

 After a long week of mid term essays, i came home to a belated birthday surprise courtesy of my roommate; organic wine and birthday cake number two upon the floorboards and a parcel full of surprises, including a miniature version of London complete with London Eye, so that i don't forget.

I could never forget!

Instead of 'Shrove Tuesday' where the tradition originates from using up the ingredients for food one will be giving up over Lent, here it is 'Mardi Gras' which is apparently a 'celebration of sin' before sacrifice begins. However construed this interpretation may be, it seems rather more appropriate. I went to a Mardi Gras masquerade ball on campus. The 'bump and grind' mentality is frightening to say the least.

The days are becoming saturated with summer here. I watch the sunset from my roof and spend long and languid afternoons drinking beer in the garden, reading and writing and thinking long thoughts. Crammed into another sweaty room, another adventure, another person plunking a guitar as though everything depends upon the power of that moment encased inside their damp hands, i couldn't help but think that these people know about LIFE; raw, dirty, sweaty, unadulterated life. They know how to embrace it here, they know what ought to be the focus. I am learning.

Sing your children
Your children song
Sing your love child
Love is on
See through child eyes
Eyes are old
And old is magic growing
See the child lights
Spinning gold
Everyday girl
They blow away
Leaves falling to the water
Wildflowers
For you today
Sing your birthday
Your birthday blues
Sing your wild light
Wildflowers bloom
They will not forget you
And down/they go
To sleep/so slow
Away/they grow
They go
I wait/I wait all day
Sing your love child
Love is on
Sing your child lights
Sing your child lights
Lights are gold
Sing your child life
Wildflower soul

-Wildflower Soul

-Sonic Youth

Fractured Fragments of a Figment

So i have encountered a literary conundrum:
 Whilst as i writer i have this desperate urge to commit everything i see and hear and feel to paper, in the same fashion as perhaps an artist has to transcribe everything into art, or a musician to music, or a photographer to a photograph, IT IS NOT ENOUGH.
I feel that recording events upon paper, reflecting upon them, takes away from the moment; you take a little piece of that essence and make it your own and thus detract from the present. Imagine you go travelling somewhere and take a lot of photographs - when reminiscing, more likely than not, you will remember the people and places and things in the photographs more vividly than anything else, you will forget how it felt to be there, to completely and utterly absorb yourself in the moment, to get lost in the present. I feel that writing is the same.
Perhaps this is the curse of being a writer, the urge to constantly recreate and communicate your own reality. I will never be able to exactly recreate how it truly feels in this current moment, to sit on my roof in the afternoon sunlight, heat spilling onto my flesh through the red autumn leaves, a jam jar filled with beer by my side, you will never know, by reading this, how it feels, words are not enough Even just penning it here, on a computer screen, where the words are merely particles upon a screen and not even real physical entities i have detracted from the present, i have taken a little piece of it for myself and feel that i shouldn't - i should let the present BE. By thinking about the way in which the heat falls through the trees, by romanticising my current situation i am detracting from it, i am ignoring what it means to simply be here.
 I don't know what to do to resolve this issue, for simultaneously i cannot let this beauty and opportunity and sheer liquid life slip through my fingers. But for now, i shall get drunk on sunshine, on hot tubs in the darkness, on fairy wings and garlands of roses and bubbles in the forest, on didgeridoos and on masked balls, on writing to Bob Dylan, on the golden glitter lying on my roof, on socks and on sun hats, on birthday cakes upon the floorboards and candles and surrealist films. I will live for now and i will try my best to remember. For that is all any of us can really do. Right?

Sunflower City

Bicycle. 

A magical word, almost symmetrical, much like the thing it describes. Flying through the city, milk exploding in my basket, hair streaming against the backdrop of St. Paul's, one hand clutching my skirt, shielding my dignity from the wind. These days i speed past quaint front porches and brilliant sunsets, tasting the tang of the ocean upon my lips, but the thrill is the same. I am incredibly aware of how vulnerable my body is, sharing the road with such armoured metal monsters whilst i rattle by with the bones of my wrists exposed past the ends of my sleeves. I admire the reckless fragility of the boy ahead, rucksack swinging, a pair of weathered boots pedaling frantically; the beauty of escape and the ease of jumping into your saddle and leaving. The rules of the road needn't apply to us, if we don't want them to. Dangerous and beautiful: the most exhilarating way to see the city.

In my creative writing class we were asked to pair up with a stranger and had to lead each other blindfolded to a spot on campus, and describe what we saw when we opened our eyes through the thoughts of a character of our own creation. One begins to see the trees in a different way when confronted with them from the forest floor, gazing up into the gnarled tangle of arms shielding your eyes from the ancient sun.

I embarked upon a dumpster diving mission one night last week. We drove to a supermarket at midnight, gloves upon our fingers and torches upon our heads, whereupon we climbed into their dustbins and retrieved     a myriad of goodies. Do not knock anything until you have tried it. We carried home boxes and boxes of fruit glistening like jewels, bread, cookies, hummus, shampoo, yoghurt, cheese, anything and everything you can imagine. Never buy food again. There is something strangely satisfying about immersing yourself knee deep in the debris of unlived lives.

One hundred paper butterflies found their way across the mountains and cast themselves about my room, each like a tiny individual kiss.

I spent my week spray - painting everything which crossed my path with glitter and cycling along the Californian coastline to the beach. One particular day i sat upon the sand with the ocean moaning and crashing in front of me with no regard for anything but herself and the life within her watery bower. An old hippy called for my attention, making a peace sign and smiling serenely as he passed. A man strolled by with a parrot on his arm, kissing it affectionately on the top of its head as the seals lamented by the wharf. I thought of those long days spent in a classroom, not so long ago, dreaming of fabulous yellow roman candles exploding across the sky and yearning to do the same. Now, here i am, right at the centerlight. 

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I entered my kitchen at midnight during a full moon to find my housemates baking apple pies and listening to Blink 182, completely naked. I believe that one has never lived until one dances with ten nude anarchist punks carving apples to 'All The Small Things.'

I spent Saturday afternoon at a monarch butterfly festival upon the beach. The monarchs were nowhere to be seen but we sat in eucalyptus trees on the edges of the cliff and watched the waves, kings and queens of our own world. A band played and i made a sun catcher out of tin foil. An art gallery downtown hosted a love letter-writing exhibition and i had to talk to a red lipsticked mouth about my 'loved one' and she hand-wrote a sonnet for me to send.

There is a lagoon behind my house and we traversed the walkways in the darkness as the moonlight spilled carelessly into the water. I cooked a vegan stir-fry for fifteen people (seriously) and mastered the 'pigeon' yoga pose. My days are filled with paintings and poetry, bicycles and beaches and my nights are a jumble of acoustic guitars and red wine under the stars.

I am already halfway through my first quarter here, what a strange waltz the ticking hands of time do lead us. 

"I don't know where i'm going from here, but i promise it won't be boring."

  - David Bowie