There were moments of dreams I was offered to save
I live less like a workhorse more like a slave
I thought that one quick moment that was noble or brave
Would be worth the most of my life.

So I pointed my finger, shouted a few quotes I knew
As if something that´s written should be taken as true
But every path I have taken and conclusion I drew
Would put truth back under the knife.

And now the only piece of advice that continues to help:
Is anyone that´s making anything new only breaks something else.

When my time comes
Ohhhhh oh oh oh.
When my times comes
Ohhhhh oh oh oh.

So I took what I wanted and put it out of my reach
I wanted to pay for my successes with all my defeats
And if heaven was all that was promised to me
Why don´t I pray for death?
And now it seems like the unraveling has started too soon
Now I´m sleeping in hallways and I´m drinking perfume
And I´m speaking to mirrors and I´m howling at moons
While the worst and the worst that it gets.

Oh you can judge all the world on the sparkle that you think it lacks.
Yes you can stare into the abyss
but it´s staring right back.

When my time comes
Ohhhhh oh oh oh.
When my time comes
Ohhhhh oh oh oh.

Oh you can judge all the world on the sparkle that you think it lacks.
Yes you can stare into the abyss
but it´s staring right back.

When my time comes
Ohhhhh oh oh oh.
When my time comes
Ohhhhh oh oh oh.

sometimes breath alone is hard.

and it's times like those when you need little birds.
just a few
little birds.

i miss my grandpa.

I woke up at 5:30 this morning--restless and back aching.

I keep thinking that I'll be dreaming, but then I'm not...

God, when is this supposed to get better?

I don't see this ever getting better--

weeds//sidewalk-cracks by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

pup-hating.

All my life I have said that I don't like dogs.

All my life, my opinion about dogs has been an understatement.

--nothing like dog-sitting for 4 dogs as a favor to your godmother (who you love so much you just can't say no to)--to remind ya how ya felt about the stinkers.
(The word "stinker" is totally literal here).

something really magical happened

It's worth an in-person explanation, but I think I met an angel. Not a metaphoric one. The real deal.

texting between friends.

Self: YMCA is playing “Sweet Child of Mine,” haha, shocker…

Drew: The Mville Y plays the worst music! Puddle of Mudd and stuff. Baaad.

Self: In a way, Mville YMCA makes me want to go faster and harder though, haha, like I am running away from the Land of Bad Beatz.

Drew: Some people believe in putting cheese in front of you, others believe in having a wolf chasing you; the Y must feel the wolf is more motivating, haha.

"I'll spare no expense to make it right"

something about jumping and praying and changing and telling myself that I know I can be happier than this.

sometimes you're only half the person you wish you were

and sometimes you're not even that.

Speak, Memory: on Nabokov, time, body, and musing.

The beginning bits of Nabokov's Speak, Memory captivate me, like voice and nostalgia captivate me. He writes:

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between to eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged--the same house, the same people--and then realized he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated ... I rebel against this state of affairs ... "

Nabokov goes on to deconstruct contemporary assumptions about time-- says he won't take the bait-- that time is something he doesn't believe in. But he's dead. His memory isn't flashing flip-book faces any longer (except, perhaps, in text: call it a Grecian lark, but some part of me connects to that old mantra of immortality through fame--if only fame weren't fame at all, but a series of humble engravings whose etchings echo down the well of humanhood, that is, to say, if only fame were fame with a twist: with a writer's humility, which is, in fact, a writer's self-consciousnessness: a dancing meta). And sometimes I wonder if I could really do it: the writing thing. Not the teaching-writing thing. The writing-thing. Wonder if I could congeal all the octopi tentacles of thought smothering me and create something theoretical that isn't just a rouse and something like poetry, too. But then I wonder if that isn't just a bit escapist (or worse, a selfish attempt to dodge Nabokov's abyss, to appeal to some deconstruction of time). Yeah, then I wonder if I shouldn't just quietly dig my fingers in the dirt instead.

Folks always distinguish between the ethereal (spiritual) and the corporeal (bodily), but I think there is this other place of residence, too: the intellectual: not a person, but a place. And then I wonder if these boundaries between the three aren't as unreal as time to Nabokov.

series of nightmares last night that all could have fit into a bad slasher flick: storm, bodies spewed, creepy nurse, car that wouldn't work, 911 call that wouldn't go through, etc.

miserable.

family family family.

I guess I started tumbling?
haha.

check my tumblr--Rosemarieblues--out here.

(Rosemarie is my grandmother Lehane's first name. She hates being called "Rosemary" like the spice. She is feisty and I love her a whole damn lot).

this is my great grandmother, Lena Lehane's, handkerchief:

She hand-embroidered the whole darn thing (and made the lace, too!). The L in the corner used to stand for her name, and now it can stand for mine, also.

**disclaimer, blogging may become less frequent if I find tumblr a better substitute. This'll still stay up for loved ones if I feel like putting anything more intimate up, though, so keep your eyes out. Love you all!

graduation station.

graduation station (photo series) by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

someday.

it all comes back to feeling liminal.

one part of me can't wait for everything to close and to swallow me.

the other keeps asking, "is this it?" "is this it?"

lions, and tigers, and bears!

I have seen three snakes these past 30 days, easy.

The first: dead and flattened on the road in front of my house (right by my mailbox). (sad).

The second: alive and slithering, in my front yard. I was sitting on a blanket, reading, and it popped up from a hole right in front of me.

The third: a big long scary black one in the middle of the bike path, sunbathing on the concrete. I nearly crashed into Avery, going around it.

I've also been attacked by beetles in my sleep.

And was bitten by a spider in my sleep last night (have the battle wound to prove it).

Fished a (giant! 3 inch long! .5 inch thick! zebra striped!) slug off my kitchen floor the night before (the second one!)

And some dark, indistinguishable creature (either a big cat or a raccoon) has scared the dickens out of me twice, scampering past on my front porch, while I've been scrambling for keys.

(Nattada and I are strong, and not too squeamish. It's our home, and we can share it with the critters/elements; it's a lesson, I think, in recognizing that we are big and small in a world that is at once big and small).

On the plus side, there is a family of deer living in my back yard. They keep nuzzling outside my window. I see them often.

And I found a four leaf clover by the same mailbox where the snake was smushed.

Also on a moderate tangent, I've been floored/humbled lately by the number of people (including strangers) who have looked after me lately. There is certainly a lot of sadness in this world, but there is also a lot of kindness. Yeah, a lotta kind kind, baby.

then again, too few to mention.

My Way Remixed from Iñaki Rodriguez Araluce on Vimeo.

"my useless, uncalloused hands"

title from Cristina García's The Agüero Sisters.

The tension between intellectualizing and acting pervades my skin (until I'm crawling) every time I vere to some dyadic end. Wholeness in living requires some balancing act that is inevitably ungraceful. Maybe liminality (between work and thought) is like vulnerability in relationship; uncomfortable, but necessary and enriching (when you don't fight it).

I've had a perpetual layer of dirt under my fingernails since Saturday.
And I haven't been writing.
I swear, my body's been going through detox.

Tired of its "useless uncalloused hands."

Tired, too, of being by itself.

(The rabbithole is bright and magnetic, but best shared--lest you find yourself lost, and in danger of losing head).

Anyways, I'm off to ride my bicycle.
And Thursday, I'm going back to Good Earth Farm.
Farm-magic reminds me how simultaneously small and big I am,
and when I ride my bicycle, it always feels like I'm flying.
I like that.

Always,

L

weeds//sidewalk-cracks by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

lost and found.

Wallet. ("Lost" at Jackie O's Pub and Brewery May 24, 2011. Found at Jackie O's Pub and Brewery May 24, 2011).
Klean Kanteen (custom ordered with my name on it, just so I wouldn't lose it. Left in Dayton).
a four leaf clover (maybe my best Spring-season for 4 leafers yet; I found 7 this week alone!)
(artwork by yours truly).
Journal. (it was in Marysville. I am a silly rabbit).

I've also found 2 missing earrings this week.

It's like I crawled out of my 60-page-honors-thesis-monster tunnel and have eyes for new (and old) things again.

weeds//sidewalk-cracks by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

New Arcade Fire! Whaaa?
(!!!!)
listen here.

insides

("Shadow Dance" by Martin Lewis).

("Mother and Child" by Gustav Klimt).

For every route, could haves/should haves/might haves in infinity.

It's a dangerous game: the either/or, the re-writing of choices.

There so many pulls inside me.

So many entryways, leading to new entryways.