I'd Like To Hear

You tell me that I could make music just like you one day.

You tell me, that even though I'm a sickly looking, unhappy, disobediant and hyperactive little girl with no voice or talent, I can feel what it's like to scream truths on stages and in dirty vans underneath cheap wool hotel blankets.

You tell me that being female won't affect what people think.

I'd like to hear you talk to me, period.

Look, whoever gave me the job of being who I am didn't know who I was going to want to be.

But that's not an excuse.

be prepared to join my journey here.

Waiting.

for the day Maniac comes to Chicago.

Best Day of my Life.

I have my video camera on a plane.
"Record".
I catch the clouds pushing the wings, rocking, wobbling.
I set it down & sigh because this isn't going to amount to anything. It's going to be a duraclean convention. honestly? interesting? huh.
I watch a little bit.
Clouds always remind me of life. I love clouds. I think about how someone decides paths for every person, and divides up the up times and the low times, and how someone has to be in charge.
Clouds were everywhere until the sun ran too far ahead from me to catch it, and I was blind until I woke up the next morning.
The couple of days following our arrival was the exact definition of how I felt about those clouds. up, down, down, up, up, up. [Going to aunt dotty's house to discuss the death of her husband, new shoes, cream cheese bagels, pigeons, other people complaining, me complaining...]
Until the last night we'd be there.
last night.

we are in the cheers bar [the place where they filmed the tv show "cheers".]
and I'm having a great time. the burger sucks, but so does all the other burgers in boston. we're all wrapping up the trip with funny inside jokes about the trip so far.
Mom suggests a little walk to the swan boat pond and everyone is quick to agree- except Grandma.
but, hey, thats normal.
we're walking and I look at these trees. big willows, and twisted leafy ones that are WAY more pretty than the ones we have here. I adjust my gaze for one second to carry on a conversation with my mom. Fluid as the godd*amn air in my lungs I catch this man's eyes on my mine and they sit long enough for us both to keep walking and turn our heads completely around. what now seems like a millennium later,
all the weight in the entire boston city collapsed on my chest and I say in the lowest and most urgent voice I could:
"Mom, that was shawn harris."
"No, it IS not." She laughs.
she doesn't know that I KNOW him. my free time is about learning about HIM. how he looks now, how he looked in high school, how he looked in 2004, 2006, and on the backs of every album cover. My mom doesn't know I know what things he eats, how much he updates his blog. She doesn't know I feel the sick from them leaving us, the butterflies when I think about california and seeing them, or the content that swallows me up and poops me out when I'm listening to their music.

and she obviously doesn't know that this is Shawn Harris.

I push the invisible weight off my body and I can almost hear it land.
"I know it, mom, I know it is,"
"then go ahead," I feel like it's sarcastic, but I know I'm taking it as invitation.
"WHERES THE CELLPHONE?!? GIVE ME MY CELL PHONE!"
I'm glancing back and I see him walking. My heart is pounding out of my chest and I'm convulsing with so much adrenaline.
"what? sara, you have your cell pho-"
"THE CAMERA! I MEAN THE CAMERA!"
I'm scratching at her fanny pack.
she pulls it out and I run.
I run like I should've ran to catch that sun the night we came.
I run like nothing I've ever done has meant as much to me as this minute right here.
It feels like the more I pump, the faster he and his group walks.
I swing around his right side and touch his arm.
"Hey"
I'm huffing hard. It hurts to breathe and I'm looking straight in his eyes.
"Are you... Shawn? from the Matches?"
he laughs like my mom did.
"Yea, I'm shawn, or I would be..."
he goes on a little bit and cracks a joke with his friends. I can't hear him through the pounding in my ears from the hot blood and I blurt.
"Can I get a Picture?" I smile and I'm still looking at him.
"yea, sure, sure."
I hold my camera and I can see my hand shaking. I snap it.
"maybe if you turned the flash on-"
"I can take it if you want me to" a small voice made it past my ears.
"yea, yea- she can take it"
I hand it to a woman with long black hair and exaggerated eyeshadow. she looks his age.
we smile.
it flashes.
I feel him pat my back two times super light as she walks up.
I approve it an go to walk away but his eyes held me.
I'd most likely never ever see him again. I didn't mind being nerdy because I knew this was BIG.
He leans over and says,
"but really. have a cool day."
"Thanks."
I Run.
I Run, I Run, I Run.
I gag, tear up, and stuck my arms out like a fan girl.
I can't breathe, and I Run.
I'm still Running.
Running to the rest of my life where I can be who I'm meant to be.
Running to new places,
Running from old.
Running to see anyone & be anywhere
Running from whoever's in control, because I know that someone has to be chickensh*t crazy to let me be so happy ALL the time.

But whoever that person is just gave me a hint and I'm going to stick by it.

;]

long live the matches, daydreaming, & believing that everything, from the new shoes to the sudden death of a great uncle, happens for a reason.
& Long Live excitement.


love.

I do.

sitting past midnight.

the grease bleeds onto the water, and i'm still stuck being a human, aren't i? I'll still never cry hard enough to roll time back. I'll never defeat gravity or the laws of basic instict. I'm haunted even if i feel stupid, and the stupid girls are never plagued by ghosts. I'm still way gone with innocence and it's deciet.

Humans are gravity and basic instinct.

fail me.

fail me right now before i say anything else i mean, but i should regret, because i can't do anything about it.

I miss you.

I do.

I love you.

and I do.

and I really. Fucking.

Thank You.

Summertime

It's memorial day weekend and I can't wait for summer to just be here. I've missed the pool, the computer, the clean-ness, sleeping, and most of all: Green Day. 

21st Century Breakdown came out just last Friday, May 15 and it was neccessary. neccessary is the only way I can put it, because it feels like the last 5 Months or so I've been in rolling through this personal phase of my life where I'm not sinking myself into new music, or I'm not ignoring everything completely.. just living my life is all. I'm finally focused on school and nothing else matters right now, I guess, but because of summer coming up, I'm excited for that change. Green Day is my summer soundtrack, and this new cd and tour is making a possibility for a connection to be made- I'm sure anyone who I've ever talked to about concerts know what I'm talking about- and I'm waiting for that connection to be made. 

sorry about my poor writing quality my mom is yelling at me for some reason and I gotta goo.

Themes and Days. + the Theme for the Day.

Today's theme is that bad sinking feeling in your stomach.

Happy VD.

Chicago

Maybe if you looked out a window to look down on Chicago, you’ll realize some things about your world.

It’s no sunny boardwalk. It’s a balanced and constant shade of dirt and grime and alarm clock.

The sickly mishapen concrete slabs wear down every shoe that slides across it.

Similar, the winter.

Scuffed off the shoes of the homeless that weekend.

When you look outside, you understand how spiderman could gently carve the sky scrapers.

Superman.

Batman.

You can then understand the toyness in the buildings, the playground and the innocence of the small-looking stepping stools and the imagination laying over the roofs.

Now that I’m being forced to leave I can’t help but think what my town is doing.

And all I can come up with

Is nothing.

Probably sleeping in their walmart waiting for something.

Probably sleeping in their tv’s, wishing for someone to bring food.

Probably sleeping underneath the local beer bottles on a bar stool,

Wondering where their daughter went, why their relationships have turned mind-numbing, and dry, and frosty, and uninspiring.

Probably sleeping while they roll into bed to sleep some more.

Well,

I say,

Their city is awake and wide.

A wide, wide city with singers and beggars and steel-framed buildings and cancer and faces and facades.

They may be as paper as the buildings,

As clean as the yellow taxi-cabs they ride,

But at least they’re up.