the act of forgetting

when i was getting my cd mastered the other day the song "don't forget me" was playing, and i told bill wolf (master man) about how i wrote it as sort of a graduation song. and the line "don't forget me.." plays a bunch of times, and he says "yes, but people do..." and i reply with an acting-like-i-know-the-ways-of-life-more-than-i-really-do answer of, "yeah.. I know.."


it's one thing for other people to move on and forget about eachother, it's something else entirely to forget who you once were... or to remember and feel very disillusioned in the contrast between past and present.

today i remembered the day i sat on my living room and cried for my friends in africa. i remembered wanting so badly to do something, and i did through the means of... getting my parents to contribute, and by sending 100 bucks to african liaison.

still where is that drive now? that drive to do something good that one feels compelled to do? am i freaking numb to my surroundings from this self centered act of creating my own CD?

the root of all this comes down to who i am, and what separates my natural inclinations from my actual actions... what separates who i am from who i portray myself to be.

i woke up with a weight, i couldn't fall back asleep, but i kept trying to, because i knew if i got up i'd have nothing to do to alieviate stresses. i want to be assured that this party will run smoothly with actual CDs to release that should get mailed this week. i kept trying to go back to sleep, but it just made me sad because i couldn't sleep... there's some push inside me to discover something new, to get somewhere, to keep going, so much that its hard to just sleep, and yet i don't have much means of assuring that i do get places, because some things are out of my control.

i don't know if i'm nailing the source of this pain on the head yet, or if there's something else. i broke down crying in the shower this morning... and i kept feeling like i had nothing firm to my personality. like i'm living in another time and place other than now and people aren't on board with me, because how could they be? and people's desire to fix whatever this sadness is in a phrase or a word of advice seems to make me more sad... like it's undermining whatever is existing in me right now. though i do acknowledge needing to progress towards something.

when the question arose in my head: what am i about? what am i doing? what is it i believe? what do i know?

the only word that came to mind was "love." and that's the only thing i know exists right now. and i believe in it. and i'm here to love. i don't even know how to love all the time though, because i can be such a bitter person... and i can be so quick to judge, yet i never trust my judgments... cause it all seems so shallow. i miss wanting to change the world. i miss chasing big things. i miss relating to some one, even in sadness. and yes, there's a positive side to all of this and i'm growing... but it's hard to know whats real.


i'll leave with some ani words i enjoy about what's real from the song/poem "the true story of what was":

real is real regardless of what you try to say or say away
real is real relentless
while words distract and dismay
words that change their tune, though the story remains the same
words that fill me quickly and then are slow to drain
dilogues that dither down remniscent of the way it likes to rain
every scream, a smoke screen, oh to dream
just for a moment
the picture
outside the frame.

Then in a flash
The light blue horizon
Spanning a sudden black
Is sucked into the vanishing point
And quiet rushes back
To search for the downbeat
In a tabla symphony
To search in the darkness
For someone who looks like me

(Though I'm not really who I said I was
Or who I thought I'd be)

Just a collection of recollections
Conversations consisting
Of the kind of marks we make
When we're trying to make a pen mark again

A lifetime of them!

I say to me
Now here listening
I say to the locusts
That sing and sing to me sitting
Now here on the front porch swing of my eyes...
I hereby amend
Whatever I've ever said
With this sigh




peace-- in whatever form you can attain it or pass it on.