Lady Vagabond.

I just finished reading Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke.
I started it earlier this morning and am quite pleased with myself for having read it, cover to cover, in around four hours.
The letters were haunting and beautiful, but they were permeated with this deep sadness and lonesomeness. Rilke advocates, on several occasions, retreating into oneself and waiting for life to happen to you. They brought me to tears. Waiting for life to happen is no way to spend your time alive....in fact your waiting for life becomes the only thing your life actually is.
I am all for solitude, and self reflection. But I cannot imagine being that alone all the time. I can't understand how a person could live.
I especially liked the seventh letter, which was all about love, sex, and gender. None of it was garish. Rilke seemed to have a respect for these things which was beyond progressive. And he is right, the youth trivialize them and make them mockeries of their truth.

As I was reading about Rilke's travels I found my mind crawling back to that time so long ago in Sydney. We were barely there actually, and I was so young that all my memories are clouded with a child's vague perception. The time I spent there seems almost a dream. How long ago was it? At least nine years I think. I have changed shade many times since then.
And now cousin J is getting married. Now there is an excuse to go (assuming I'm invited). I need to find a way to get there. I need to put together the funds. I need to get away from America for a while and (as Robert Frost says) come back and begin again.
I desperately want to go again. I was too young before. Too small to ingest it and carry it around forever in a box with me.
I couldn't have possibly lifted the weight.

I must admit I'm feeling the pull of travel again. I've too long been in this one place. I get so tired sitting still. I need adventures and experiences. I need them like air. I need them to thrive.
I want to go.
I deeply and profoundly want to go, from a very small dark part of my soul.

I must find a way.

(this can also be found on the diary of n.marie)

I was reading Ted Hughes and was struck in the face by a memory of sitting in the back room of that bookstore I worked in so long ago. That back room that smelled like a little old lady's living room or den. Eating my chicken cup soup (this was before I was vegetarian) and reading Birthday Letters. I was thinking of my favourite poem from that book, The Ventriloquist....

"...As you lay on the bed
    I leaned to the locked door.
The doll sat on the roof and screamed
    I was with a whore..."

Then I found myself thinking about Anne Sexton (who is my favourite ever) and the little picture I made of her.

blue suicide

"Her boredom is exquisite and excessive"
-Ezra Pound.

There are some floats,
inside my head,
inside my head
again.

Here I am on Vox......

I'd like this to be a more art focused blog, I have another blog, (www.n-marie.blogspot.com) which is full of various kinds of ranting and raving. I'd like to be more classy. I'd like to be more cool.
We'll see how that works out.

Since I am obsessed with journaling (I'm halfway through volume 18 already, I only started it in december) I like to scan journal entries and put them up places around the internet. I'm beginning to think that no one is appreciating what I'm doing here, essentially documenting an entire life. This could be really useful stuff in the future, you know when the historians are sifting through things trying to figure us out. I'm sure they'll be totally engrossed by how utterly self obsessed I am. (Because really, only the self obsessed keep journals/diaries.)
Anyway, a month or two ago, when it was still really hot down here in the great american south, I went outside and I was struck by one thought, which I carried around, inside my head, all day............and eventually plopped down in between virgin journal pages.....

honey

At any rate, I'm still in New Orleans, and wishing I was somewhere else.
And I'm addicted to hummus now.