you're my playground love

some days when my head is spinning with worries, and i forget how it feels to breathe, i look to the music and other's eyes to bring me back to a state of calm. i am a sucker for imagery matched up with song, anyone who reads this space is most likely well aware of this. there is something so interconnected in my mind, and heart, that weaves together a photograph or a painting with the lyrical refrains and melodies.

i miss the barefoot simplicity of my younger years.

but some afternoons i grab the babies and we run off to play in the park. the slides are my favorite, and i still climb up into them and let my body slip. i struggle with control issues that dictate many of my life choices, but in that moment of sliding i allow myself to free fall. i remember the appeal of parks and playgrounds, we all had some magnet pull to them, no matter how we were dressed, or where we had been.

how many times did we climb to the top in dresses, not caring at all?

playground love ~ air (from the film the virgin suicides)
& the video

my mother would braid daisies in my hair, but only that one summer when she had allowed me to grow my hair long. he used to weave together a crown of daisies for me, i remember. i always figured i'd wear them in place of a veil when i married, though i've married twice with no flowers anywhere. suppose it isn't the same, they were never weddings, not the way a girl dreams them to be. perhaps it was all just meant to stay that way, memories and the wishes of young love.

i have not given up on dreaming, though.

polaroids remind me of my childhood, of aunt annette and her shoebox collection. she kept it under her bed, pushed to the back and flush with the wall. some were blurry, others were taken at uncomfortable angles. but there were a few that told stories in their particular play at shadows and light. i never found out who took them, whether it was her, or if these were stolen/found images. i know my family history is fraught with petty thievery.

i like to believe she took them, and hid the camera somewhere i never discovered. her secret mystery.

i kiss you on the brain in the shadow of the train

"the pebbles forgive me, the trees forgive me,
so why can't, you forgive me?
i don't see what anyone can see, in anyone else,
but you."

the only constant is change

"change moves in spirals, not circles. for example, the sun goes up and then it goes down. but everytime that happens, what do you get? you get a new day. you get a new one. when you breathe, you inhale and you exhale, but every single time that you do that you're a little bit different then the one before. we're always changing. and its important to know that there are some changes you can't control and that there are others you can."

dan ~ half nelson

tied to a night they never met

lover's spit ~ broken social scene (featuring feist)

"all these people drinking lover's spit,
swallowing words while giving head;
they listen to teeth learn how to quit,
to a night they never met.

you know it's time,
that we grow old and do some shit;
i like it all that way."

early mornings with music stuck in my head, and the smell of coffee brewing in the next room. these are stolen moments when words criss-cross and light up my fingertips, while dreams still in their feigned disguises remind me of my hopes and fears. i discovered this song in a found mix, it was hidden amongst the familiar and unknown, the way most beauty is. it reminded me of an afternoon, a saturday, working at tower in chicago. there was this girl who was visiting from new york, and we had one of those conversations usually shared with those people you trust your soul with. but sometimes strangers have that ability to peel back the surfaces, don't they? she laughed and half-whispered a moment shared with a boyfriend she'd recently lost, and i listened. she asked about this band, and i told her i'd only heard them once, in a bookstore in portland, and how the boy behind the counter with the pale blue eyes had told me the name. she bought everything i recommended, laughing at how i now held a secret of hers, so she might as well take back with her the things i sang along to. i have no idea what her name was, but i wrote her into something last night. and this song played, repeated, and played again.

but now i'm gold

silver lining ~ rilo kiley

"and i'm not going back,
into rags, or in the hole,
and our bruises are coming,
but we will never fold."

i know more than i knew before

i feel it all ~ feist

"oh i'll be the one who'll break my heart,
i'll be the one to hold the gun.

i love you more.
i love you more.

i don't know what i knew before,
but now i know i wanna win the war."

nabokov's son pushes to release his last work despite his father's dying wish for it to be destroyed; an unfinished novel called 'the original of laura'. it sparks a conversation of how my name has been ever associated with death/dying/loss, because even at the start i was named after a man who falls in love with a dead woman, or who he thinks is dead, laura (1944 film). years later i'll fall for a series all based around the death of a girl found "dead and wrapped in plastic", one laura palmer. i could go on, really i could, but i don't think i want to.

though it is funny to have a new friend tell you she wrote a story with a girl named laura in it, a prostitute, who dies at the end.

today though, in my early attempts to start feeling better, i'd rather concentrate on "winning the war". i don't need my name immortalized, i don't need anymore songs or stories, i just want to be the one falling, the one breaking my own heart, the one holding the gun, as long as i'm being truly alive.

the way i love you

to love somebody ~ ray lamontagne and damien rice (live)

"in my brain,

i see your face again,

i know my frame of mind,

you aint got to be so blind.

and i'm blind, so very blind;

i'm a man, cant you see,

what i am.

i live and breathe for you.

but what good does it do,

if i aint got you,

if i ain't got you?"