This is Mambo no. 5.

The truth is shaped like this: I am tired now -- but I am not tired all the time anymore. The mid-day caffeine wears off by late evening, but by then I have usually done enough to allow myself to be exhausted. This is how things go now.

For a thousand nights I spun completely out of control. I don't mean that in a dramatic, wild, self-pitying manner. I'm simply saying that for a thousand nights I thought I had direction, but I did not. The stars used to whisper things to me like, "What happened to Miss Independent?" and "Stop screwing it up or you'll regret it," and "Have you stepped on the scale lately? You're letting yourself go," but I, insomniac, mumbled to the oblivion, "Do you hear something?" and followed after the cries of, "Addy! You beauty!" and "Addy! You've got legs for days and hair for years!" and "Addy! You. You're perfect." It's easier to hear lovely, screamed lies over whispers of truth from the depths of the sky.

Look. I'm not trying to tell any of you how to live your life or say that these are my mistakes and I am perfect now so save yourself the pain and learn from me. What I'm telling you is that mistakes are part of life. You're not going to get out unscathed, I can tell you that much. You're not going to come out of this, not out of high school or out of life, unscarred, natural hair color, un-inked, flawless.

Allow me to enlighten you on perfection: You're never, ever going to get there. Not in your eyes. Not in God's. Not in the eyes of your mother or your publisher or your director. Perfection is an ideal. It's what will tie you to the bed every morning and hold a knife to your wrist and snicker, "Just say the word." Perfection will drown you, perfection stuck Sylvia Plath's head in the oven, Bukowski drank perfection into oblivion. Perfection will rain on your parade, rain on your nice hair-do, rain on your newly-washed car.

Now I don't know about you, but I know about me, I've had 17 years to learn about me, and I've gotten tired of realizing every single day that I will never reach perfection, a truth so perfectly articulated by a ballet teacher:"You will never reach perfection."

But I don't feel good. I don't feel healthy or skinny or spiritually present, and I think it's because I keep letting perfection strap me to the bed every single solitary morning. So I think I'm going to wake up now, for heaven's sake, because I'm sick of rope-burnt wrists and flat hair and fear, because "you will never reach perfection," I know, I know, "but you should never stop striving." Remember that part?

So remember me. Plant Forget-Me-Nots at my grave; bury me beneath the sky of a merciful God. Remember the long, skinny fingers of my life. Take care of the words I'll leave behind. Let me answer the rumors before you taint them: Yes, every day is Hamlet, and no, I don't think about you often.

The truth is shaped like this: I'm never going to die -- the best never really do, but I'm not going to be perfect, I'm coming out like the rest of you, scarred, fake blonde, tattooed, blemished, but today is the day I say to perfection, "I hope you'll clean that up when you're done," because I say that with a little caffeine and the right shoes, I'll conquer the entire universe.

Integrals.
All my love,
Addy

A realization (among other things).

I fell in love with someone like you.

Someone with your eyes and your hair who smelled like you used to when I would wake you up early. They had your voice and your house and your mouth.

But I fell in love with someone who had longer fingers than you do. I fell in love with someone who never stopped holding me like you did or looking at me like you did or whispering the things you whispered to me in June. I fell in love with someone who had better musical tastes and laughed louder and read music.

I guess it took me five months to realize I was in love with someone who didn't exist, but I suppose that's okay, because at least it only took me that long.

New. York. A. Week. From. Thursday.
All my love,
Addy

The space between perfection and despair is called nostalgia.

Sleep?

No, not yet, not right now.

It's 12:36 am as I type this, and I'm still fully dressed, and the truth is that I don't even know what I'm doing here. Like, here. In this blog. Because I don't even know if I like blogging or if I'm trying to hang on to those days when the people who came up in my reading list were my friends, and they had blogs that were beautiful and unique and then they disappeared off the face of the earth.

The point is, Becca, Lehi drama girl? Thank you. I'm glad you like this sort of thing. You can always comment, you know. That goes for all of you, because I'm still trying to figure out if you guys, the ones in the corner with the tiny icons, actually exist, and if it even matters to you that I create something you might like to read.

Also I'm crying. Because nostalgia hit me hard today. And it hit fast, like clotheslined me, train to the stomach, I don't think I'll ever find Avery and Kyle and Matt and a cardboard-cut-out Kaitlyn in my bed in December ever again. I've never hated the way we're rolling with the punches so much, just keeping secrets now because that's what people who don't watch fireworks together on New Years Eve together do. I feel like putting my fist through a wall over that. No one calls me because the phone doesn't ring. I'm not blaming anyone. 

And Benjamin -- I just had this vision of Benjamin today when I was standing in that foreign auditorium and I knew exactly what it would be like if he'd been standing there next to me: Someone would've called him the best actor they'd ever seen and he wouldn't have known how to take that and then he probably would've picked me up and paraded me around like I was the best thing that ever happened to him, because, in a way, we were the best thing that ever happened to each other. You guys, me and Ben? We literally wrote the same stories sometimes without even knowing it. We would've made up a stupid song together. We would've rolled our eyes at how generally annoying and weird theater people are en masse, loving ourselves a little too much, but feeling okay about it, because deep down we love you, too.

Train to the stomach.

Hailey James is the most incredible person I've ever met.

Train to the stomach.

My uncle died on Monday. We visited him for the first time in months on Sunday afternoon. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I was in the right place at the right time. For once.

Train to the stomach.

I went to the film festival. The writer shook my hand and told me I could be him when I grew up.

All I think about these days is the future, and that's a train to the stomach.

There are people in my bed because we're going to the funeral on Saturday. Funerals are for the living, though that does not make them any more or less beautiful and sad and imperative.

And yes, Ross Lee, I think you're very handsome, which I figured I would bring up someday, but apparently Kaden beat me to the chase. If you're reading this, I admire you from afar and would you like to hang out sometime.

Aubrey (Audrey). Cody.

I think it's time I dealt with the fact of waking up tomorrow (today).

Goodnight, I guess.

I'm sorry about this one.

Macbeth 2:2
All my love,
Addy

Speak for Yourself (installation no. 5?)

So yay for SFYS again. And yay because some of you showed up and some of you read and I love you all a whole dang lot. I must say it's a little intimidating to read with a larger-than-life Anis behind you, but it's nice and also inspirational. I hope you know I paid $50 to get in there because of this: WE'RE PUBLISHING A BOOK. It's full of beautiful things like Avery Taylor and Rachel Smith and me and Roah and I hope you will buy it and read it, because (however biased I am) I think it'll be nice. Plus Kyle's making new t-shirts, and I can't wait because apparently they have some cool skull on them? I don't know. But I'll be sporting one soon enough.

The point is, this was my contribution to SFYS last night, brand new thing, written day of, and here you go. I'll say no more.

Lunch with Eve: Discussions on Apples and other Forbidden Fruits

Eve ate that apple because she was bored.

Sex-starved and overly-curious, she ate it because she could.

I know this because she told me over lunch last weekend.

Allow me to blaspheme for a moment here: Eve, eating that apple,

she was a real first-wave feminist, so, like, take that, Gloria.

And me? I ate my own Forbidden Fruit,

hook, line, and sinker.

So Eve and I discuss liberation and regret.

She says, "Time heals all things."

I'm impatient.

Eve got half the Bible for some catharsis,

but I have another idea: At the age of 17, haikus for

every boy I've ever kissed; some were serpents, some were fruits.

They go like this:

1: Took you long enough,

You darling, awful kisser.

Love you just the same.

2: Your lips are so big,

and I still hate you some days,

but you're so practiced.

3: You said sorry 'til

I believed there were things to

be real sorry for.

4: Your tongue on my teeth,

you hear what you want to hear.

I never said "love."

5: I still think you are

a liar who broke Marley's

fragile innocence.

6: To this day, I think

you are my soul mate, 'cause we

write the same stories.

7: In May, your first kiss.

What we meant was we think you

deserve the kisses.

8: I should have listened

when Connor White told me you

act like a teen girl.

9: By now, I've used up

all the syllables I have

to write about you.

10: That night: French kisses.

My dear, nous l'avons cassé.

Je suis désolé.

11: Paid you with a kiss

for your photography skill.

It was a win-win.

12: You? Forbidden fruit.

I'm dancing with regret now,

but it's not your fault.

So now I ask, "Eve, what now?"

She says this: "Me and you? We sure aren't the Virgin Mary."

The irony is not lost on either of us.

"I'm not much, but I'm all I have."
All my love,
Addy

Life without Iphone is still actually life, dang it, and other epiphanies as of late.

So here I am mourning the loss of my cell phone. Literally, like, soul dressed in black, angry at the world because I don't have a cell phone right now. How pathetic is that? Of everything that came crashing down around me, I was more worried about this gorgeous piece of Apple technology than really anything else. Clearly, I need to get my life together.

I exhaust myself, too, everybody, not just you. I know that I wear you out, work you sour, talk to loud, talk too often, interrupt you, overwhelm you -- I get it. I'm working on it. I mean, I'm trying to apologize to you, or sort of explain myself, it's just that I'm really, really spilling over with so many words that I don't know what to do with them.

What I'm getting at is that I'm trying. I'm trying to stop mourning my own stupid cell phone and stop interrupting you when you're talking, because I don't mean to. I don't mean to be overwhelming. I'm not ever going to be "the quiet girl in the back of the temple" (get it, Laura?), I realize that, but I'm just going to make this attempt to get my life together for heaven's freaking sake.

Anyway. In this quest to get my life together and whatnot, I've made some interesting discoveries, even in just a week and a halfish, but mostly this: People, just by nature, are better than we give them credit for. They'll come swing by your house in the morning and give you a ride to school in their warm, stick-shift car for no reason other than the fact that you asked if you could please pretty please have a ride because the bus is truly awful and going there in the freezing cold with (no offense) the bus people is just a really painful experience.

And, in my own oh-so-biased opinion, I think my people are the best people (I don't see why I would've picked them as my people in the first place if I didn't think they were le creme de la creme anyway). My people harmonize so lovely, and I like their haircuts, even if everybody else isn't used to it yet, and I guess this is my apology for how long it's taken me to realize this about every last one of you. You're lovely even in the pictures of yourself that you hate. I even like your nose.

In other news, I'm still trying to figure out what the point of this blogging thing is, which is funny because I've been at it for six years now. Is it a place to put pictures of your mission call and then your temple marriage and then your babies that's art-ier than the Facebook? I don't understand it. I never asked for all 147 of you go come over here and read something I had to say. But I guess the point is that I keep blogging here because I can write. I really can. I just came this way.

I'm not trying to brag. We all come seemingly able to do something or other. Like, some of you just get it when we talk about derivatives and linearization and I'm like, "I'm sorry, but can I just write a sonnet about this or something?" Some of you can sing, my gosh you can really sing or really dance or really actually care about people and listen when they talk or maybe you can teach -- no matter, what I'm saying is that we're all just sort of born doing something and you can't quite explain why. At least that's the way I see it.

But I'm having these epiphanies of being and self and relationships, and here I am writing about revolution: Revolution, it seems, finds its way quite literally into the bloodstream of the young. It is in those years between leaving home, developing personal opinions and beliefs, and realizing the fragility of both government and life that revolution plants her most beautiful and fertile seeds, creating revolutionaries with just enough life behind them to understand the importance of sculpting a future worth dying for.

For some reason writing that paragraph and tucking it in between discussions of ideas getting their hands on bayonets and the way Victor Hugo has created Marius as a sort of characterization of himself as a young man makes me feel... better. Because I can do that. I can write that. I can create these things like you can derive and linearize.

The point is, I'm trying to say thank you for being lovely to me and to everybody else. People are usually better than we think they are, and for heaven's sake, it's time you realized that in yourself, because I feel like the day you realize you're good at whatever it is you're good at is going to be the day you can stop mourning your own dang cell phone.

Oh, and look at this. Morgan Jo Nelson made my blog all beautiful, just like she is all beautiful.
All my love,
Addy

The Obligatory New Year's Post.

Who even reads this blog anymore? Who even blogs anymore?

Anyway. There's a part of me that just wants to write about destruction. All I do is destroy. Run things over and absolutely demolish. At least, that's how I feel this week. The thing is, I don't even have the excuse of saying I'm into destruction because I don't like to hurt myself, it's basically just that I have trouble learning from my own mistakes. Basically because I'm 17 and selfish.

Whatever. You live and you learn. C'est la vie. Life happens. Young and foolish. (That's what I'm singing this week.)

But to write about destruction would be close minded. I build a lot of beautiful things this year, even if I managed to ruin a lot of things lately. And I didn't even really destroy so much as misplace a lot of things. The point is, even the things I did really actually destroy are lovely even in pieces. They're smoky and gilded and full of things I've never gotten a taste of before. Yes, I screwed some things up, but I don't regret it one bit -- which is not to say that I would do it the same if I was presented with the same situation again, but simply that I've learned from all of it. I learned from skinny legs and shears and Spanish and silence. The shears are so summertime, back when everything started. I miss the Spanish. I hate the silence. I'm over the skinny legs.

The New Year's post feels even more obligatory to me than the Christmas post. Christmas posts feel too cliche and I can't ever bring myself to write them. I'd rather just celebrate and let everyone else post pictures of angels and tinsel. (I love your angels and tinsel, though. Don't worry.) The point is, I feel like I can really write a New Year's post. It's cathartic on my end. I worry less about being cliche for some reason. I did it last year (you can read it here), and it was good. I'm proud of that. It's so exactly who I was then. So I'm back. This is an obligatory New Year's post. Or something.

The point is, this was supposed to be my year of risks, and I don't think I took enough of them. It's whatever. How many of you actually went to the gym every single day after resolving that? New Year's resolutions were made to be broken. Yes, I took an entire day of ski risks last week, and yes, I spoke French to the Parisian at Zenkoji. I took risks, yes, but I didn't take enough conscious, healthy, in-the-spirit-of-a-new-year risks. That's my resolution for this year, to take conscious, healthy, in-the-spirit-of-a-new-year risks.

It's going to be a huge year. HUGE. It simply doesn't get any bigger than this year. Gradution. Move out. College. Gosh. Don't even get me started on all the things this year is going to bring. I read through parts of my journals from this year and I don't even know how to put this year into words. I didn't know what was coming. And I don't know what's coming this year, either. You just never know what's coming. That's what I've learned this year, pretty much.

This year: Love and loss and heartbreak. Weight gain. Weight loss. Kisses. Lies. Recoveries. Tears. Cancers. Remissions. Iphones. Groundings. Senior year. Blonder hair. Longer hair. Makeup. Snow. Job. You. You. You. A thousand times you and missing you and wanting you back and wishing this time was the right time, but I'm 17. I'm 17 and it just isn't the right time for anything at all it feels like. Spanish. French. Kittens and hoodies and nope, I'm not wearing a bra right now. TMI? Who cares. Rent. Mourn.

This year made me tough. While 2011 taught me to be soft, 2012 taught me to be hard. This year was the year I did whatever I wanted. And yes, that ruined a whole lot of things, so 2013 will have to be a year of discovering how and when to be soft and how and when to be hard. Sandpapery.

"Last year I abstained
this year I devour

without guilt
which is also an art"

This year was combat boots and coffee. Dye my hair, kiss boys, run faster, drive faster, punch harder, yell louder. Defy. Don't answer the phone.

And this year was heartbreak. Both a beautiful year for love and an absolutely awful year for love. Platonic and romantic. June was perfect. A handful of days in December? Perfect. One day in January. But there were some awful heartbreaks and mess-ups and break downs, but at least this was a year of love, you know? At least I had a little love here and there.

And here's a thing I didn't write, but I could've, for the most part. It makes so much sense to me: “We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving… We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins… We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive are our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers… We are the daughters of the feminists who said, ‘You can be anything,’ and we heard, ‘You have to be everything.’”

But this year. This year I will at least resolve (and maybe, if we're lucky, keep to the resolution) to turn soft and lovely anytime I have the chance, but also remember to act my rage. Passive aggression won't solve everything. I can replay situations over and over in my head and come up with the perfect thing to say, but that doesn't change that I didn't say it in the moment. Sure, I was roughened up, but I certainly wasn't the girl who stood up for herself. I will stand up for myself this year. I'll be a New Yorker soon enough and I'll die if I don't.

I have no idea what's coming, I have that much figured out at this point. I have an empty journal, and it's time. I always know when it's time for a new journal, because they come at a new chapter. So here I come. Watch me fly, watch my sky-write, watch me pass the AP Calc test. Combat boots and coffee, soft and lovely, armed with words and hair and all the things my parents taught me, the things I forgot and remembered and destroyed, and here I come, here I go, let it snow, watch the rain, wait for the mail, I'm as ready as I'll ever be.

PEACE OUT.
All my love,
Addy

de Kooning, Amiens, and other places I've searched for God.

I put a lot of Hope in my own future. I think it's because I have a lot of Doubt. Just in general. So I put a lot of hope in myself and the places I will go and the people I will know because I just don't feel like there's anything else I can do.

I put a lot of hope in the fact that someday I will see Amiens and in that moment, I will see the face of God. And I put a lot of Hope in the idea that someday, I will know for sure that "God" isn't just something you throw around in poetry when you want to drive it home, make a point, get people to listen to you. Then again, I might not. Because Faith is not an equivalent to Knowledge. Faith is not Knowledge, Hope is not Knowledge, Belief is not Knowledge, Knowledge is Knowledge, and if you Know God? Kudos to you, because I can only have Faith in Him.

The point is, I have places to go. I don't think I believe in some sort of predetermined Destiny or universal Fate, but I do like the concept. I think it's a creation of your own. And your parents will try to steer you. And the people you fall in Love with help sculpt it. I think we each have this process of unconscious Discovery that starts when you roll over in the morning, in that space between awake and asleep and I'm pretty sure the things that exist in those moments are, like, the rawness of your Being.

In case you were curious, and I don't Know, you might be, in my own space between awake and asleep, there are a lot of words and a lot of Renaissance paintings. A lot of times there's music. In my own space between awake and asleep there is never, ever silence, I can tell you that for sure. My suspension moments are not quiet. You probably could've guessed that.

And here's a truth: Sometimes, what I want to do is simply what I'm told to do, just because I don't like to deal with the debacles that ensue if I don't. I know that's hard for you to comprehend, but that's it. I do exactly what I please. Because everyone has to do what they're told for some amount of time. Really, I think they do. Even de Kooning attended the academy, and you know what de Kooning did next? He stamped out the cubist movement. Even de Kooning did what he was told for a little while there.

Anyway. I have a lot of Hope in Amiens and Botticelli and Victor Hugo and fresh snow and Maya Angelo and airplanes and Christmas mornings and New York City and Sunday afternoons with You and the fact that my life line on my palm is really long.

In my mind, I will never die. I will stay forever, trying to comprehend the mysteries of the universe, convincing myself that these are things I can understand. I never claimed I wrote because I already understood the world. I write because I'm trying to figure it out just like everybody else, and sometimes my figuring comes out eloquently (other times it does not).

But what I think I'm really getting at is this: I don't think I'll ever be able to do the things my mother does. She is more beautiful and more creative and more wonderful than I will ever be. I don't think I'll wake up one day and understand children or suddenly be a the mom who runs every class party, you know? I think the people who already do things like that right now will, though. The student council girls will be able to do that. I will be forever in awe of them.

I will be able to teach my children about Moliere, though. And they will be beautiful and tough and have healthy body images. We'll have an art room where they can throw paint and spill things and make messes and mistakes, because the messes and the mistakes I've made are the things that have made me.

I realize this post is crazy, isn't what I think I've come to let you people expect from me, but I'm sassier than I think you think I am. Passive aggressive? Maybe, but there's a lot you don't know. And I won't ever claim I know you through and through either.

Interrogative pronouns?
All my love,
Addy