Almost one year later.

I’m back because I need a forum. Even if nobody reads it.

It comes out over sushi that I’d been mulling over a “solo jaunt,” “next weekend,” “the mountains.” My mother puts down her chopsticks in a single decisive click.

“No.”

“I’m going to sleep in the back of my car.”

She presses the chopsticks into the table. “No.”

She tells me a story about her coworker, who was camping with his family. A man with a machete came out of the forest, threatened to chopthemup! Conclusion: “Anything can happen, Emily.”

How can I live my life if I’m consistently on guard for men with machetes? If I were male, would this be different?

something happened to me this year. i'm at home in myself. i am liberated in myself. 

my roommate and i talk a lot about neo-evolution and the repercussions of immortality. 

"no," he says. "fuck that. i'm going to sing opera and die."

make art: make good art, make terrible art.

love recklessly, make art, and die.

I have come to realize that I am a pretty intensely political person, and that, like many (of the worst) politicians, my politics stem from personal spiritual practice.

My spiritual practice is based out of this:

I believe in the unison of all things and in the sanctity of life that exists in all things. I believe that all forms of life are intrinsically entwined and this infinitely complex network of life is the most precious thing above all things. I believe the purpose of life is to live. 

In a sense, yes, this is essentially environmentalism as a personal practice; I deliberately chose to make it a spiritual one. Meditation has been a part of this choice, and that's a topic for another entry. The point, however, is that I've more and more begun to understand myself as a part of the environment -- my body and actions are part of this total interconnection and are THE SAME THING as the biodiversity of the Boreal or the mutated shrimp coming out of the Gulf of Mexico. I'm not inseparable from these things or the the world around me, I am the same thing.

I have a friend here in Colorado who does not recycle and uses her car to get everywhere, even if it is only around the block. I've helped her buy a bike and am slowly trying to talk about recycling in a way that would encourage her to start because of a conscious and informed decision, and not because this crazy chick from California was shouting at her. We're going to Switzerland this summer and I really hope that she'll see the glaciers and then be told by the locals about how they're almost gone. About how they took up this much more of the mountain. It's crass: I want her to change the way she lives, and articulating that desire to myself is scary.

I have similar agenda with one of my roommates. He is very young. He's never had a gay friend before (let alone lived with one), recycled, voted, or considered his personal carbon footprint. The trick is to avoid blaming; "you could reuse those party cups" is a lot more effective than "you're wasting a lot of plastic."

I was explaining these to my boss. 

"What?" He said, "You want to make a difference or something?"

And that was odd, to me, because I hadn't thought of it like that. I think of it more as a gradual education, because I feel that oftentimes people simply don't know enough. The implication in that is that I know enough, which is completely untrue. Moreover, the whole thing is very selfish. I want them to start limiting their environmental impact so that I have more environment. So that I can BE more healthy environment, so that SHE and HIM and THEM and US and EVERYTHING can be let truly and same-ly thriving as this the one life thing.

go check out http://danielwakefieldpasley.net/
or maybe i'm just a sucker for bikes and the california landscape.

an elderly woman was talking to her friends at a concert last week. "i started college seventy years ago this summer. everybody i studied with is dead now; it's the strangest thing. and you know, i feel so free now, when i say 'no.' why should i have to do that? i'm perfectly content with not doing anything."



cars light fierce accerlerandi in the alleyway behind my apartment complex, as if the racket of gravel on rubber excuses the speed, the rushroar of engines, can quench the insatiable jocular libido of the young and drunk of greeley, who are otherwise employed by screaming or fighting or breaking breakables. the downstairs, for a second year in two separate cities by simple coincidence, provides a variety of ongoing domestic dramas like radio entertainment. last year i was practicing in the morning before work and the neighbor, whose voice, temper, and personal issues we had become well acquainted with, though we wouldn't recognize him on the street, came to complain about the sounds of a "piano, or whatever." i did not point out to him that the sound of scales on a keyboard at half volume at 9 in the morning is much less invasive and truly more acceptable neighborly behavior than screams and crashings and "fuck you motherfucker"s between midnight and three. the current domestically disputing residents are less regularly racketeering but there are usually several household items amid the constant sparkling of broken glass on the walkway at any given time (the grill, which he should take away with his sorry ass; photograps in frames, because i don't love you anymore; the tv, thrown out of sheer passion.)

i have this illusion that eventually the whole world (or at least the human components) will arrive at the simple consensus to be quiet at night. and that maybe i can live somewhere where i don't regularly hear people screaming.

today has been a fantastic day, which, after a week of nervous insomnia unrelated to the surrounding students, and in the middle of a semester which has been an perpetual ass-handing, i've been really looking forward to. one of my teachers sat down with me after class to say that i have made significant improvements from the fall. i ran a good rehearsal with difficult material learned in a short period of time. i played in a masterclass for our resident pisspants professor who took a moment after to note, "really, that was almost perfect. exactly the way it should be."

apparently my dream job has always been to be an opera musical director.

CHAPTER ONE

really the more i learn about The World the more i believe that a lot of Our Problems can be solved by

1. riding more bikes
2. eating less meat

whap-bam-sha-boom mother-fucker! too bad we're all lazy.



CHAPTER TWO

i'm usually very good with internalizing music and creating some sort of personal imagery with which to work through a piece. this is the first piece which so far has eluded me almost entirely. it takes a certain broad calmness - indulgent zen - to play brahms well and i'm too nervous, too figety. "we need to make emily quiet," my teacher said, "physically, that is."





CHAPTER THREE

i've had a hard time adjusting to school again after the break. we drank wine every night and played showtunes and in the morning we'd swim in the ocean. sometimes all i want is to go home and have a baby or two in a little house (with a composting toilet) by the sea and cook meals that the family all eats together.

Chthonic
( /ˈkθɒnɪk/, from Greek χθόνιος – chthonios, "in, under, or beneath the earth", from χθών – chthōn "earth"; [1] pertaining to the Earth; earthy; subterranean) designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Greek religion. The Greek word khthon is one of several for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the land (as Gaia or Ge does) or the land as territory (as khora (χώρα) does). It evokes at once abundance and the grave.


one of the chthonic dieties is gaia.




there is also a band from taiwan.

look at these! look at these! look!

more on the front page of burn. by Tomasz Lazar.