I had a dream that there were wolves everywhere. Wild brown ones, trotting along the hill crests. Their mouths were red and white slits of sharp teeth. Looking at their smiles made me wonder how many rabbits must have died in them. And other bigger things that would struggle and scream.

Standing at the sliding glass door, open only a cat-width so the little ones could get inside before the wolves moved in, my oldest sister reassured me, "It's only one season a year, we can get through another one."

When things warm up, they come down into the valley, she said. But pretty soon they'll go back home and it will be peaceful here again.

 

[By: Tim McDonagh, via.]

TO DO:

1. Learn to admit my own faults.

[via]

2. Ban mental shortcuts.

[via]

3. Think about others in the same manner that I think about myself.

[via]

4. Continue Spanish class in the fall.

[via]

5. Hold on tight. Summer is coming.

[via]

I guess you could call them stress dreams. I am always with a small group of people I care about (family, usually, mostly) and we are trying to navigate our way through buildings and a town to get away from some force (usually a single man) that is trying to kill us.

I don't know if it has ever come up, but I am really terrible at interpreting my internal map, the lay of the land, directions, etc..

And it's always me leading this group, scared but unwilling to show it, stern, with a single purpose.

Up tight, dark stairwells on the backs of buildings that no one ever uses anymore, up to doors so tightly locked and secured with dust and time that they don't even wiggle. In the car, while it's running out of gas, sputtering too slowly down alleys while electricity poles and street lights start falling all around.

Telling everyone to hush, hush, be very quiet and don't move, in some old church somewhere that smells like blood (old brass) and candle wax, hiding behind the fancy velvet curtains, just standing there, straight and still as can be, all of our hearts and abdomens unprotected.

I don't know, man. It makes the mornings tough and the days look like tundras from where I wake.

Compromise:
Weaken (a reputation or principle) by accepting standards that are lower than is desirable.

[via]

I can't wait for the knowledge that comes with living for a long, long time. It will sit inside me, smooth, round, and cool, like a river rock, having been washed over and over. The rest of it all, schedules, names, directions, instructions, they'll all flow around my rock, impermanent, on their way to nothingness.

I will know what to expect out of the past, and I will greet every future thing calmly.

[By: Robin Lambert, via.]

Around most people, I don't talk a lot. Sometimes I catch one of them with their eyes round and excited and I realize I've been talking for a long time. I'm not usually very open.

And that's fine.

I watched a documentary last night about Nirvana's "Nevermind" album. It got me thinking a bit about having a depressive personality. I wondered for a while about my feelings of being different, the same feelings that cause me to feel alone when I am not alone. And then I realized, whoooooooosh, this documentary exists, "Nevermind" exists, because someone else felt that aloneness too.

If we could all gather together, even for the first time, I think we'd have a lot to talk about.

So, really, it's not me, it's you.

[By: Jonathon Saiz, via.]

What makes some people never know cautiousness and live permanently in that "it won't happen to me" perspective, while others constantly fear and expect their own end?

Conditioning from environment and circumstance, I guess, right?

That's been on my mind.

You know what else?

The side braid:

[via]

 

"If you really want to see the world different, you have to use different tools to change it than the tools that made it as it is."

[via]

 

 

First, you learn to do things from watching how the people around you do them. Then, much later on, you struggle to unlearn.

This morning I am listening to the new Shins album (it's okay so far) and feeling petulant about being taken advantage of. Myself, I don't really like asking people to do things for me. So it boggles sometimes, what people expect of other people. And even more boggling, what they feel is worthy of a "thank you"! Not much, as it turns out.

Barry tells me I should expect less out of everyone. He's right, I know, but it's hard. The outcome is to my benefit, though, so I will keep working on this.

[By: Lindsey Bull, via.]

[via]

"So I knew it was some Oprah bullshit from the start."

Right now I would really enjoy one pancake, two scrambled eggs, and two discuses of faux bre'fast sausage. They have this at City State Diner in my neighborhood but my neighborhood is far away from my work desk.

This morning I feel cheerful because there are only FIVE WEEKS UNTIL MAUI.

I shall not hide my excitement for fear of over-saturation. I don't give a foot. Or a toot. Or a fuck.

In other news, I like to snack on grapes and raisins at the same time. I put the two ziplock bags next to each other so they can see each other. Fear makes the grapes taste sweeter.

[By: Geoff McFetridge, via.]

Trying to figure things out for the unknown future.

...but, perhaps, this is exactly what we should not be doing.

One time, a long time ago, I heard someone talking about how unfair it was that they weren't wired the same as most people, how they couldn't have even one drink like most people could, that they would be tumbling down a very steep hill in no time, surely, from one small taste. That is unfortunate, I thought at the time. It's nice to have the freedom to choose.

I like to have things figured out, you know, not leave the whys and hows in the bin and walk away with only a bunch of outcomes in my hands. So I've been looking for the answer to why-me and, in turn, why-not-them.

There's a new face to jealousy these days, when someone gets to dabble in the dandy because they have no history of can't-say-no. Who's to say that my past is any more present than their future? I do, I do say that, and I need to, because it's the safer path.

Dandy is just too dandy, I guess, as it turns out. Which was fortunate, I guess, at one time. I guess.

[By:  Jean Giraud, via.]

Every time I wake up, whether it's from a nap or from a night's sleep, I have to readjust to being alive, it seems. I feel mad and sad and any human interaction is clouded by this.

I've made many a friend and lover cross at me upon waking for no good reason! It's kinda funny but not really. I remember being very young, it was this way back then too.

I just need about ten minutes to blink and reorganize my reactions to consciousness, is all!

Just give me ten minutes and then we can smile and talk. Ten minutes. Sometimes fifteen.

[By: Rikka Sormunen, via.]

 

[By: Natalie Andrewson, via.] 

Sometimes everything takes on the color of walking down a tall street alone.

"The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation."
Neil deGrasse Tyson