I wake up every morning and my heart swells to the size of Saturn’s rings, and then it always breaks into a trillion little glittery pieces right when the sun disappears past the horizon.
Filed by D.H. Lee at 4:20 pm under The Border
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When did my heart and mind and tongue begin to occupy separate spheres?
For a long time, years, decades maybe, I convinced myself I was not worthy of love. Sometimes the things I say and do make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. I have a problem of wanting too much, too quickly — I need to learn how to love the things I have, not the things I want to have.
But there’s something further off that I see, way in the distance, a hunch and a feeling.
This, I will save for myself to remember.
Filed by D.H. Lee at 8:52 am under The Border
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Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”
Look what happens
with a love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky.
– Hafiz
Filed by D.H. Lee at 9:56 am under The Border
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One part hardship
One part heartbreak
One part disappointment
One part experimentation
One part optimism
1/2 part pessimism
Two parts exercise
Two parts good food
One pinch bad food (for balance and hangovers)
Two heaping parts of motivation/inspiration blend (can be found in most major environments)
Three parts hard work
Four parts unconditional love
Four parts balance
Five parts friendship
Five parts family
Two parts unbridled ecstasy
One to four parts sex (maybe more, depending on the sweetness/ripeness, preferably STD free)
One part success
Five parts of patience (found deep in a well of experience, which is hard to get to, but worth the taste)
1/4 part adventure (to taste)
A pinch of sorrow
Religion optional, but not required
Mix all ingredients in a human being, bathe in clean water, surround with pure air, bake in a lot of sunlight. Avoid violence as this can add a jaded and bitter flavor to the happiness, as well as excessive material goods. Eighty years later, lay gently to rest.
Filed by D.H. Lee at 9:58 am under The Border
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I am relearning the quiet language of patience, letting each atom in my body and my heart be replaced with water, until time passes through and I become a part of everything, everything, everything.
Filed by D.H. Lee at 1:51 pm under The Border
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Filed by D.H. Lee at 2:57 pm under The Border
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These years, here and gone like the double image of tachyons moving faster than the speed of light. Here and gone like the electric crackle of my synapses misfiring, always misfiring. I want to pick memories and relive them, the beach, that beautiful sapphire water and those minutes with you that I knew were running out, like grains of rice slipping through open fingers, my God, my God, my God. Trains into Harvard, bookstores, and later, infinite sadness echoing into silence. Further back, Europe, stolen time in a hotel, false alarms, cigars, cherry cordial, all thrown out the window in a panic before the chaperones showed up to confiscate the goods.
What else, what then?
The day you came back from Paris, the day you and I touched down in Dublin rain, the day I received my beloved teddy bear now old and ragged from years of embraces, all of it, everything, everything. People moving apart from each other exponentially like celestial objects moving outward and apart, expanding into territory that may or may not exist, all the moments wrapped into this one little thing, this tiny little thing.
Christmas. Devil’s Lake. The boat and the water. California coastline, packed into a car, stuck in different types of traffic from Los Angeles to San Francisco. A cross-country trip. New Orleans. Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Austria, France. Korea. Your favorite steakhouse. Pan-fried chickens, kites, Montrose Beach, emotions from fury to sweetness. Your funeral. You, betraying me, as I knew was already written in the scripture that lay before us. Every you is a different person and every you has changed into someone, something new. I miss you. I hate you. But most of all, I love you. I hate that I love you. I hate that I can’t forget you.
The revolving you. The evolving you. But always you, you, you.
Why, God, can’t I have some of these minutes back?
Filed by D.H. Lee at 3:15 pm under The Border
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It’s like treading water, he said, except you’re running across rooftops and chasing the moon instead. You keep running at the same pace and every once in a while you have to bob up to reach the surface — and that’s when you jump from one building to another. Even when you are tired, you can’t stop, otherwise they will find you and the game will be over. You can’t afford to lose this game, he said, he.said, he/said.
And when your fuel runs out, you are human after all, aren’t you, it’s just like drowning slowly, you see. Keep running until your lungs are about to pop and they burn like you wouldn’t believe, almost like you’re breathing the sun, and that’s when you can see the end, see the end of the row and you realize this is it, this is everything, this is what you were chasing after the whole fucking time and it’s coming up on you like that one dream you keep having, the one where you don’t have a choice, and the end comes a lot quicker than you think and this is the part
this is the part
this is that one part
where you think it’s gonna stop, but it doesn’t. You just barrel over the edge and for a second, you’re flying. It’s just a second. And it’s not like an angel comes and picks you up as you’re falling, because the earth is coming towards you, and I’d be lying if I told you
it wouldn’t hurt.
Filed by D.H. Lee at 12:29 pm under The Border
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My navigator has died and my compass is spinning, spinning, spinning. There is no longer any direction except for upwards, onwards, and out, the horizon in front of me shrouded in darkness.
I am the sound of neurons misfiring, dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, and GABA flooding my cerebral cortex, balanced out by tablets designed for seizures and benzodiazepines designed to put a bandage over a gaping wound. Ever since the episode, everything I knew became unfamiliar territory, my heart recoiling from the simplest tasks, worried that anything would set me spiraling into something deeper and worse — but at the same time, I’m learning how fragile everything really is, and what kind of tragedy replays in the heads of the homeless and broken, over and over and over; I have seen things and felt things after sleeping in the gaping maw of demons and furies.
Everything is new. Everything is always new. Along with being frightened, light also shines brighter and stronger than anything else I’ve seen, dazzling, beautiful, and as mysterious as anything has ever been.
You’re not supposed to know what I’m carrying. My friends should not know what I am carrying. My employers should not know what I am carrying. I am supposed to be a pariah underneath the guise of someone functioning at full capacity. But we are all that way and nobody can see it, until they’ve seen dark creatures from the deep, stared them in the eye, and come back alive not having fought them — but having learned respect for them.
There’s a name for this monster, and I know it, I’ve cast it into fire and now it’s time to revive the dead navigator.
[is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this false, written by a prankster imagining things or is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true is this true]
Filed by D.H. Lee at 11:38 am under The Border
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“You love playing with that. You love playing with all your stuffed animals. You love your Mommy, your Daddy. You love your pajamas. You love everything, don’t ya? Yeah. But you know what, buddy? As you get older… some of the things you love might not seem so special anymore. Like your Jack-in-a-Box. Maybe you’ll realize it’s just a piece of tin and a stuffed animal. And then you forget the few things you really love. And by the time you get to my age, maybe it’s only one or two things.
With me, I think it’s one.”
Staff Sargeant William James
The Hurt Locker
All I hear right now is the sound of money trickling slowly into a bank account, day in, day out. It sounds, curiously, like a thousand hearts breaking, echoing past memories and things I have always wanted.
All I see right now, is darkness, for you have all gone and your absence is much like your presence — I never really did have any idea if you were here, listening. But that’s all right. It is easier to speak to a room that appears to have nothing in it. Because after a while you believe that there is nothing in it, especially if you have your eyes tightly shut for months upon months.
The deep water is rising, always rising, and the lie was that at some point — I thought it would stop.
Filed by D.H. Lee at 4:47 pm under The Border
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