Magic Markers Tattoo You

Currently, I have two tattoos. My first in an outline of a heart on my inner left wrist. The other is a swallow flying from a cage on the back of my right shoulder. Meanings of tattoos are silly, but well: the heart is an outline to remind me to keep my heart open and the bird and cage have to do with my thoughts on the soul/ body dilemma. Deeeeeep, I know. 

I would like some ear piercings before I get more tattoos, but here is what I am thinking of. 
This is an original drawing of Harriet the Spy done by author Louise Fitzhugh. I loved Harriet the Spy when I was younger and I still relate greatly to her. Plus we're both writers! I would want this done about that size with a very thin needle and on my ribs. 

little anchor on the top of my foot.
-the word 'bloom' in typewriter font. it's my favorite word. i would get it somewhere on my right hand. 

-if i were ever to get an inner lip tattoo, i would have it say something like 'booo, i'm sad' because the only time people see my inner lip is when i fold it downward in mock sadness. 
Other tattoos I like, mostly because of the font. 

Check out:
http://sfchroniclemarketplace.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/07/LV3R12BBQD.DTL
(an article on script tattoos)
Contrariwise.org
(Literary tattoos)
And http://fuckyeahtattoos.tumblr.com/

I first loved you when the world was

blooming like words on lips

and the sun shone so bright

that we would read the morning paper

until eight at night, beneath the oak.

 

by the time we had slipped

into our summertime skin

I’m sure you loved me too

though you never said it

(and I didn’t tell you either).

 

when the leaves changed

you wore your autumn sweater

and I was a cotton-white ghost

who fed you bowls of pasta and bruised apples

on the rooftop terrace.

 

everything was grey in january,

our words froze in midair

before they froze in our throats

maybe because that’s just what happens

maybe because we were waiting for the thaw. 

"Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry."

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?- it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

Where I've Been:
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Dublin, Ireland
Interlaken, Switzerland
Maastricht, Venlo & Venray, Netherlands
Brussels, Bruge & Antwerp, Belgium
Prague, Cezch Republic
Venice, Florence & Rome, Italy
Barcelona, Spain
Paris, France
Berlin & Marburg, Germany
London, England

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost."

I have three days before I am back in America. It is insane and weird, and happy and sad. All at once (but what isn't everything all at once?). This was the most incredible thing I could ever have done. The importance it has played in my life hasn't even hit me yet. Maybe I'm not allowing it to-- I've spent the past two days sleeping too much and eating too often. I want to hug my best friends here, and I want to hug everyone here, all the time. It is endlessly odd to me that all of this will soon be a memory, and even odder and sadder that I one day will not remember the memories. I will only have my journal and my pictures to remind me. And there is no way they can cover even a fraction of how great this was.

For the first three days of being here, I was a wreck. At home my family's old ghosts had come back and I had flown out of the country, leaving them in shambles. I was so nervous that whole first week, I barely ate. I kept telling myself, only 90 days. I was thinking I would leave early, even. Oh course that changed. I've never had three solid months of happiness and constant adventure like I've had here. My biggest fear is that I will never have that again. I can't worry about that though. I am going home to, and coming back with, amazing people whom I love dearly.

I don't know when I will get the chance to come back to Europe again. Maybe for my honeymoon, but if I marry a comedian or a poet, or someone I love, that may not happen. I want to revisit Berlin. I just loved the music and art scene. And it is my dream to retire to a villa outside of Florence, get a vespa and a leather jacket, and wear wildflowers in my hair everyday.

Where I Want to Travel:
Stockholm, Sweden
Oslo, Norway
Copenhagen, Denmark
Warsaw, Poland
Vienna, Austria
Budapest, Hungary
Anywhere in Greece
Croatia
Istanbul, Turkey
Moscow, Russia
Portugal
One Day: Japan, Australian, South America, Africa

I don't know what the future will bring. I don't even know what the summer will bring. I have lived in a castle with 81 other college sophomores and visited ten countries. I've stood with my face inches from works of art I thought I would only ever see in books, I've ended up in Irish pubs no matter how hard I've tried not to, I've sledded on a Swiss Alp, I've kissed Oscar Wilde's grave, I've slept through the club scene in Spain and I've wished at the Trevi Fountain. And I have made life long friends with the funniest, nicest girls one could hope to meet.

And so...
"There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars."

Chelsea Dirck

Chelsea is an art student in Boston. She uploads pages from her journal onto her flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdirck/
They are really simple, but I adore them. I wish I wrote in all caps and could say everything I wanted to in less than five words like she does. I want to meet her and be her friend.

I feel like we are writing the same journal but with different words. 







Her Journal

The Numbers by Kim Addonizio

My friend Justina sent me this poem:

How many nights have I lain here like this, feverish with plans,
with fears, with the last sentence someone spoke, still trying to finish
a conversation already over? How many nights were wasted
in not sleeping, how many in sleep—I don’t know
how many hungers there are, how much radiance or salt, how many times
the world breaks apart, disintegrates to nothing and starts up again
in the course of an ordinary hour. I don’t know how God can bear
seeing everything at once: the falling bodies, the monuments and burnings,
the lovers pacing the floors of how many locked hearts. I want to close
my eyes and find a quiet field in fog, a few sheep moving toward a fence.
I want to count them, I want them to end. I don’t want to wonder
how many people are sitting in restaurants about to close down,
which of them will wander the sidewalks all night
while the pies revolve in the refrigerated dark. How many days
are left of my life, how much does it matter if I manage to say
one true thing about it—how often have I tried, how often
failed and fallen into depression? The field is wet, each grassblade
gleaming with its own particularity, even here, so that I can’t help
asking again, the white sky filling with footprints, bricks,
with mutterings over rosaries, with hands that pass over flames
before covering the eyes. I’m tired, I want to rest now.
I want to kiss the body of my lover, the one mouth, the simple name
without a shadow. Let me go. How many prayers
are there tonight, how many of us must stay awake and listen?

I Love Frank O'Hara

Steps
How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left

here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days
(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still
accepts me foolish and free
all I want is a room up there
and you in it
and even the traffic halt so thick is a way
for people to rub up against each other
and when their surgical appliances lock
they stay together
for the rest of the day (what a day)
I go by to check a slide and I say
that painting’s not so blue

where’s Lana Turner
she’s out eating
and Garbo’s backstage at the Met
everyone’s taking their coat off
so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers
and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes
in little bags
who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y
why not
the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won
and in a sense we’re all winning
we’re alive

the apartment was vacated by a gay couple
who moved to the country for fun
they moved a day too soon
even the stabbings are helping the population explosion
though in the wrong country
and all those liars have left the UN
the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest
not that we need liquor (we just like it)

and the little box is out on the sidewalk
next to the delicatessen
so the old man can sit on it and drink beer
and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day
while the sun is still shining

oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much

Animals
Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it’s no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn’t need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn’t want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

Come Home

The following isn't that great. It is a fictional travel writing piece I wrote for class.

On the cab ride to the hotel, Gia slept. The flight from JFK had worn her out, along with seeing me for the first time in three months. At the airport Gia reeked of loneliness as she hugged me tight. She sandwiched my face between her hands, looking for ways I may have changed.
“I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you,” she said. As the cab buzzed through the dark streets on the way to the city of Florence, I watched the meter tick and thought about my friend’s life since I’d left, about what could make the missing so strong.
Europe had not cured me of my insomnia so I stood on the balcony as she slept in that big bed. I smoked the romantic cigarettes I had bought back in Paris and watched the way Florence shone. The city glows yellow at night, warm lamps shine out of windows cut into buttery-stone apartment buildings. We were not too far from the Duomo and moonlight suited it well. The red roof seemed to shimmer with this past afternoon’s rain and spotlights allowed even my poor eyesight to make out the intricate carvings of saints and flowers. The rolling Tuscan hills cradled the city and stretched out as far as the eye can see. I thought of Hemmingway’s white elephant mountains, sleeping belly-up in the sun. These were purple Italian elephants, sleeping soundly.
It was three a.m, that space between night and morning. I love those times, being caught in the middle, being in-between. If I could live my life in the light of dusk and dawn forever, I would.
…
The next morning Gia and I sat at a street café, smelling like lavender hotel soap and the two espressos we’ve each had. Life stateside was all the same, according to her: stifling, static, boring.
“I can catch you up in five minutes. Rick and I have broken up and gotten back together three times just this past months. He keeps being a total bastard but I can’t seem to let go. My mom decided to build a pool house for the pool. My sister has become a total dyke but my parents are convinced it is only because she’s been watching the L Word on DVD. I miss you—I’ve realized that you’re my only friend who’s a girl. I have no one’s hair to braid and have slumber parties with,” she laughed. “And I wrote you about that other thing. Now please regale me with hilarious tales.”
We left the café and walked through Florence in a whirlwind of my own words. I had been riding the trains, seeing the sights and meeting new people. In a lot of ways it felt as if I had live a hundred new lives and given myself a new name in each city. I was Astrid in Paris, where I ate baguette and loved a boy whose name I never caught. I was Sadie in Prague, where I met a group of other girl-lushes in an Irish pub. We went to their apartment and threw cold pasta and leftover salad around in a fit of laughter. In London I was back to being Frankie, because I was tired and tea makes me feel honest.
“You seem really happy,” Gia said when I had told her what my mouth and memory could manage.
“I am really happy.”
“I don’t remember the last time I saw you like this,” she said, her eyes squinting in the light.
“Come on, I’m not that different.”
“I know you’re right. People always just seem different if you haven’t seen them for a while. New things take me more time to get used to than they do for you, Frankie.”
We crossed the Ponte Vecchio, the city’s oldest bridge, and the survivor of the war. A strong March sun glittered on the water’s surface and we were able to take off our jackets and let the wind play with the hem of our sundresses. We passed all the jewelry shops and I contemplated buying myself a silver and sapphire bracelet. Gia almost convinced me to get it, but I resisted. Our families’ wealth was like a game to us. We wore it like robes—something we could step out of whenever it did not suit our tastes, like when out hearts ached for lipless children in Sri Lanka or the earth burning in a layer of pollution. Most of all, the money we had meant that we didn’t have to do anything. We could lay down in our silks and furs and resign from life, like our mothers and grandmothers had. It’s the scariest sense of security a person could know.
…
In the Boboli gardens we put flowers in our hair and laid in the grass. We gaped at the views, all those red roofs and pine trees which thrive in the warmth. Under a path cocooned by lush tree branches and next to a mossy wishing well, Gia said the things I knew she would eventually say.
“All our friends are dying.”
“Don’t say that,” I told her.
“Why? You know it’s true.”
“One friend died. The other died because he died. It’s cause and effect,” I said, keeping my voice flat and steady.
“This isn’t math class,” she said with harshness that surprised both of us.
“I’m sorry,” I touched her arm. “Can’t we just have fun? Your parents wanted you to get away from all of that.”
“Same with your parents, but none of us expected you to stay away. It’s just been me over there, stuck in that hell hole. Just me.”
“I’m sorry.”
…
We ate big bowls of penne and fettuccini by candlelight and I told Gia more stories. So much had happened and I had so much to say but I could tell Gia was loosing interest. She was angry with me for being gone for so long with no promise of returning. She had a flight back in six days and I was floating around indefinitely. I had escaped.
That night we danced with American art students under disco balls and flashing lights in places with names that any non-Italian speaker could translate. We drank endless gin and tonics and let our bodies move like liquid sun across the floor. We were honest and pure. Gia always had been, she was the good girl. Years ago my world felt so small and happiness was a tree I just couldn’t climb. I sucked in pills like oxygen and exhaled sickness. Europe was clean though—a flat land compared to a steep valley.
After a bottle of wine Gia decided she wanted most to go to Berlin next, but she would only go if we could go by train.
“Are they like black steel and do they go through the Alps?”
“No, they look like white plastic caterpillars. I think that the biggest thing about Europe is learning to not believe the movies.”
We got on the train late the next day after eating a few cones of gelato and making inappropriate jokes about the David. Gia was thrilled for a while—she loved how flushing the toilet was like launching a torpedo and that there was a dining car. She loved the views of the icy, snowy mountains we saw as we passed through Austria. Eventually I pressed my head to the cold window and drifted in and out of sleep.
“Frankie, are you awake?”
“Yes,” I said, lifting my head.
“Talk to me. My iPod died.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know. What we’re you just thinking about if you weren’t sleeping?”
“I was thinking about how much I like riding trains. I like when you wake up and don’t know which country you’re in. You just know that you’re on the move. You know that you’re going somewhere and that someone else is doing the driving. I was thinking how I would like to stay like this forever: always going, never arriving.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“I know. But only half of the time.”
“Seriously though. Running away doesn’t solve anything. You have to come home,” her blue eyes widened.
“If this is what you want to talk about, I would rather sleep,” I said, already curling back into the window.
“Fuck, Frankie. Some things are important. Some things need to be said. Everyone at home is dying,” she put her face closer to mine, her brow furrowed.
“You keep saying that, but I don’t understand. Mark and Carrie died. Two people.”
“Everyone is using. Except for you and I. So everyone is dying.”
“Then its good I’m here in Europe. I’m saving myself. You should stay here too. There’s so much to see.”
“Are you afraid that if you go back you’ll use again?” she asked and folded her arms.
“Of course I’m fucking afraid! That’s what happens at home, that’s what I do at home.” At that moment the conductor hustled over to check the tickets of the crazy girls shouting on his first class train. When he left Gia said without looking at me, “You didn’t even fly back for the funeral.”
I watched the mountains roll across her irises before I whispered, “I’m terrible at funerals.”
“Carrie’s mother couldn’t even walk. Her husband had to carry her in because she was crying so much. Her face was bright red and wet, but she made no noise. I watched her during the service. She would open her mouth to try to breath, but could barely take in air,” Gia’s voice scratched my ears like sandpaper.
“Don’t tell me these things.”
“At Mark’s wake his father had a black eye. Carrie’s dad had punched him. I hear Mark died in her arms, in the tent by the river. The one with all the leeches. Anything’s an overdose with that shit. Carrie put her head in the oven the next day. She was our best friend. And you weren’t there.”
“Shut up,” I said, clutching the armrests.
“They had daisies at Carrie’s funeral and wake. Everyone knew they were her favorite. Remember how she wore crowns of them every spring? Mark’s mother asked me if he ever mentioned a favorite flower. Of course he hadn’t, but I told her he liked tiger lilies.” Her voice frightened me. It was like she was speaking in a dream.
“Please, Gia. Stop talking.”
There are few expressions that are as accurate as ‘bursting into tears.’ I burst, for the first time since I had heard the news in December. My eyes burst all the water they could ever hold, and so did Gia’s. They were gone and would never be anything on earth besides gone. Could any of us cry enough tears to make the shape of a water-Carrie? I fell asleep and when I woke up it was like coming up for air from the ocean floor.
When we finally reached Berlin we left our sadness on the train. Sometimes that’s all you can do. In its wake there was a sort of numbness that melted into happiness from time to time. It wasn’t easy, but she was my best friend and we were together again, traveling. We let our laughter, the bipolar opposite of our frantic tears, bounce through the city’s clean and wide streets. We saw the Wall, that monster that kept families apart but we still would not let any more sadness in. We took pictures in front of it, kissy faces, thumbs up and peace signs, and burned with the need to create art like those graffiti artist had. I picked the Dancing to the Revolution wall as my favorite, and Gia liked the classic big-lipped people one. A few bites into our Berliner doughnuts, a decision was made.
“So you’ll go back?”
“Eventually, in a few months. But I don’t think we should go back to our little town.”
“You want an new town?” she asked.
“I want a new world,” I said.
“One without drugs?” Gia laughed. “Frankie, like that will ever happen.”
“No, I know that’s impossible. I want a new world without people who feel so empty they’ll use anything to fill the holes.”
“Me too. Maybe will go west, where it’s warmer. People are happier in the sunshine.”
“Ok. So we’ll go west.”

Images

I save random pictures I like from other peoples' tumblrs.

FONTANA DI TREVI: Love is a Ritual

I’ve never told anybody that I’ve loved them.
I’ve never been in love.
I used to lie all the time—I’m surprised I’ve never lied and said ‘I love you’ to someone. I almost have, during those quiet times when it would be stupid to say anything else, like “funny weather we’ve been having” or even “I like the way the pillow dents your hair.” I take love too seriously to fib, to use words to fill the silences that scare me so much.
Even the words we never speak hang over us. Like clouds, or rogue balloons. I am brimming with all the love I haven’t gotten to give to anyone. My pink paper heart is heavy with it. That’s why my posture is so bad.
***
Saturday morning in Rome. The air feels fresh as it follows me through ally-ways, past a vegetable stand and a cluster of construction workers. I thought I had gotten myself lost until I heard the water and left the dark ally to see the spray of water in bright sunshine. All roads lead to the Trevi Fountain; I could have taken one of three alleys to get here. It is in the center of Rome, and thus in the center of my day alone exploring Rome. I circled it in blue pen on my map—a marble north star. The figure in the center is “Oceanus riding on a chariot of sea shells, drawn by two marine horses which plunge through a welter of rocks and water, guided by Tritons,” writes Hereward Lester Cooke, Jr. According to him, no one really knows who made the Fontana de Trevi as we know it. It could have been either Bernini, Nicola Salvi, or Pietro Bracci who restored the fountain more than 200 years ago. The water rushing over smooth, pale stone is aquamarine and faceted like a diamond. On each side of Oceanus there are two women wearing silky togas. One holds a corpecopia of spilling fruit. She is Abundance. The other holds a sharp spear and a cup from which serpents drink. She is Salubrity.
***
Coins, mostly copper two-cents, glitter on the floor of the fountain. As the day passes, more and more coins are tossed in, dotting the basin and disturbing its surface. The legend goes that one coin placed in your right hand, crossed over your heart to be tossed over your left shoulder will assure you that you will visit Rome again. The 1954 film, Three Coins in the Fountain inspired more modern rituals: two coins for a new romance and three for either a marriage or a divorce. In the early morning I wish for a return to Rome, and toss in one coin, crossing my heart and listening for the splash above the din of other wishers.
More than a fountain, the Trevi is a building. Behind the water and statues there are four smooth columns which burst into flowers and vines on the top. Where the building meets the blue sky there is a shield with two angels blowing their horns on both sides. Another legend without proof is that it was a virgin who led the Romans to a clean water source outside of the city in 19 BC. She led them to Aqua Virgo, where the water was as sweet and pure as she. She is immortalized on the right side on the façade; a maiden in robes, the center point of four men.
***
Love echoes like footsteps in Rome. I can feel its presence everywhere, in the lemon tree-filled courtyard of the church by the Spanish Steps, waiting in line to see God’s hand in the Sistine Chapel and of course at the Trevi. Couples navigate the cobblestone, connected by laced fingers and steady gazes. They sit on the steps and kiss before tossing a coin. The Romans see no reason why the world should not know how you feel about someone. A few steps from the fountain, on the gate of the Chiesa dei Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio church, there are hundreds of metal padlocks. It is another ritual—you write the name of your lover on a lock, secure it to the gate and toss the key into the fountain. They are mostly just initials, M.B + K.J, hieroglyphics of dedication. There is a red one that says “Together Forever” and a gold one that reads “Ti amo.” Each lock is a ghost of two people who left something behind when they left Rome.
I feel the ghosts, too. There is one on my lips where we last kissed, standing in the train station, luggage in hand. The shortest of absences from the person on my mind will make me wax poetic and make my silly heart beat young. In Rome I feel so young. My years are a speck in the timeline compared to the Colosseum that crumbles with its age.
If it were not for so many things (boys with hearts so broken they couldn’t love me with all the little pieces) I could have been in love in the past, at least once. If it were not for my own mistakes I could have been happy. If I could learn to love the person and not love the love, we could be happy in the future.
It’s like Marcello Mastroianni splashing through the fountain after Sylvia in La Dolce Vita. It is nighttime and the water is glowing. In the course of a week Marcello has been with the traditional Emma and the jaded Maddelena—lover to lover looking for something he cannot name. “I guess she’s right,” he says to himself about Sylvia, the movie-star, “I’m making a mistake. We’re all making a mistake!” Still he goes to her and nearly kisses her only to stop and ask who she is. She tells him nothing and instead whispers, “listen." Listen to the water crashing down around us and stop thinking about everything and everyone.
***
When the sun sets, the Trevi Fountain is transformed. What was beautiful in the day, is powerful and enchanting in the night. The white marbles turns to a glowing orange, lighted by underwater spotlights. People buzz around the layered steps, eating gelato, taking pictures.
I toss in two for a new romance, though I may already have what I want. It doesn’t matter. Wishes are not real. They are as unreal as the idea of love, or the idea of loving love. Only people are real. Love doesn’t become real until you love real people.