inspirational4lyfe. Nina Hagen was /the/ punk goddess for me when i was young. (along w/ Siouxsie Sioux) like you really can't tell me ***nothing*** about her glory. bow.

important >>>>

"I grew up hard and am still hard and I don’t care. I did not choose this face or this body and I have learned to live with it and love it and celebrate it and adorn it with tremendous drawings from the greatest artists in the world and I feel good and powerful like a nation that has never been free and now after many hard won victories is finally fucking free. I am beautiful and I am finally fucking free.

I fly my flag of self-esteem for all those who have been told they were ugly and fat and hurt and shamed and violated and abused for the way they look and told time and time again that they were “different” and therefore unlovable. Come to me and I will tell you and show you how beautiful and loved you are and you will see it and feel it and know it and then look in the mirror and truly believe it. If you are offended by my anger and my might at defending my borders and my people you do not deserve entry into my beloved and magnificent country."

— Margaret Cho

' Desolation' pencil art by ;;;; Dasha Pliska

hello april

GIRLS:

• ice cream in your impala, a fire
• to a wonderful shade of romance.
• dipped in water, 
• red nails on a knife
• glide marvelously.
• sly coquette with a crown gold silhouette,
• stuck in isolation

BOYS:

• sinister war heart, band-aids dripping battles
• on the kitchen counter.
• a chill of sex on the horizon,
• quite the innocent hound dog -
• no, you're not ripe for pickings
• of a winner.

Poetica for my own

In the weakest of
Moments sickness becomes an inspiration.
Illness, flaws dance surely
With harmonies inside my head.

Wicked stanzas of unintelligible intelligence.
Art becomes deadly for my kind.
It is vanity and an ego that can take one whole.

In the weakest of
Moments sickness becomes the monster
That lives for fame.
Out of misery I give birth to words,
Set flames on syllables and tongues.

Defected,
Ordinary.
Blemished.

Suddenly the newest craze.
The hippest of the trends.
To walk around abound in
Psychological mysteries.

I paint my life with gold. Flecked, and
Rusted.

I paint my life with Silver. Simple, and
Rusted.

Illness is the creation, my motivation.
And it carries no ordinary pain.

My process has no explanation.
And I wear it all quite nicely,
Airbrush quality.
Oh these lips, they speak with words
That impale one another.

I write so I can pretend to know better.
My illness and I are flawed, we are perfect, we spike
Through trees with pens.
Devour the naive.

Finally, something that represents my interior

Artist: Clara Lieu : (link it)

Statement: This project is a visualization of personal experience with depression and anxiety. The condition brought on frequent episodes where I felt emotionally and physically out of control. Unable to “release” myself from these episodes, I waited for the physical limitations of my body to end them. Recounting the affected years, I realize how accustomed I became to depression’s influence; many emotions and feelings belonged to it and not my own personality. After an extended, untreated struggle, a diagnosis brought relief, and the process of unearthing myself from the disease began.

(I swear this hit me harder than anything else has in recent times. I can't even begin to explain how shockingly vivid this is to my usual state of being. I feel for their pain. I experience their pain.) 

“If the world gives you the blues, if you wake up in the middle of the night with waves of fear and senseless panic washing over you, I am your friend. If you’re overcome by desperation that makes your mouth open for a scream that never comes out but just freezes your face in mute despair, then you and I have something in common. If you can’t understand them for the life of you, even though you’ve tried so hard, when that dislocation makes you feel like you’re the only one of your species on the planet, I know I can confide in you. If this endless ghetto of lies and heart break, this life-long run of fences and flickering neon signs, night sweats and suicidal urges make you feel like stopping, just stopping, like stopping breathing, wait. Wait. You don’t have to tell me your name. You don’t have to prove yourself to me. I accept you. If you’re finding life to be the one thing that’s trying to kill you, I want you to stay alive to rise with the sun and fight back.”

- Henry Rollins

Happy Festivus

Getting ready, packing, panicking. Mom is cooking. It's just us 2. Whatever. I'm in my room reading my handy Encyclopedia of Drug Abuse. Let's enjoy shall we?

Psilocybin: The active hallucinogenic ingredient of the mushroom Psilocybe mexicana and some of the other psilocybe and conocybe species. Ritual use of psilocybin among Mexican and Central American cultures is known to date back  to at least 1500 B.C. 

Some tribes of Indians in Mexico have used certain mushrooms with hallucinogenic properties in their religious ceremonies for centuries. These mushrooms, specimens of the genera Conocybe Stropharia, and Psilocybe were considered to be sacred and were named teonanacatl, or flesh of the gods.

In 1958 Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist, isolated psilocybin and its congener, psilocin, from Psilocybe mexicana. Psilocybin is the only naturally occurring hallucinogen identified thus far that contains phosphorus. In pure form psilocybin is a white crystalline material, but it may also be distributed in crude mushroom preparations, intact dried mushrooms, or as a capsule containing a powdered material of any color. It is usually taken orally but may also be injected. Doses generally vary from 4 mg to 5 mg, although 20-60 mg is not unusual. The potency of psilocybin lies somewhere between that of mescaline and LSD and the effects are reported to be much like those of LSD. 

Effects: When taken orally psilocybin is one of the most rapid acting hallucinogens: initial effects may be felt 10-15 minutes after ingestion. Reactions often reach maximum intensity after about 90 minutes and do not begin to subside until two to three hours later. The effects of psilocybin usually last five to six hours in all but doses larger than 8 mg probably prolong their duration.

Psychological effects include increased pulse rate, respiratory rate and body temperature, dilated pupils and elevation of systolic blood pressure. Larger doses, 13 mg or more, can produce dizziness, lightheadedness, abdominal discomfort, numbness of tongue, lips or mouth, nausea, anxiety and shivering. Psychological effects with small doses may include mental and physical relaxation, detachment from surroundings and sometimes coexisting feelings of anxiety or elation. With larger doses individuals may experience difficulty in thinking and concentrating, visual distortions and other changes in perception.

(also known as everything I experience on a daily basis sober)

mother nature and I hold hands.

2004. Sometime in the Spring. I was 16, in high school, and completely boiling. 

I remember a specific date. Not the number, but the instance. I was going through a lot of conflicting emotions. Angst, sadness, emptiness. It was a terrible day. Actually, it was a terrible year. I felt inadequate, alone, scared.

Back then I used to walk a lot. No music, just the streets. I would leave the house to clear my head and that was enough to recharge me. I remember this particular day because it was one of the worst, and one of the best.

That day I went down to Lake Washington. I sat down on the steps by the water and tried to clear my head. I thought, okay, I just need a breather. 1 inhale, 2 exhale, 3 repeat. I remember closing my eyes and emptying every thought from my mind, every feeling, every ache from my body. It was more than what I was expecting. I remember hearing the waves, and each time they hit the edge of the steps - it was almost as if it was inside me. Hitting my lungs, but in a blanket sort of way. No suffocation. Does that even make sense? It was a weird moment, a beautiful moment. I don't know why I keep thinking about it. Although, maybe I do

On that day, in that year, in that season, I was still. Pure. As if my soul was lifted from my being. It wasn't just envisioning, I was feeling it happen to my body. Each wave hitting me, the intensity coddling, and freeing. In that moment -  A higher state of consciousness. Meditative perhaps. 

I was water.

Today I went down to the lake and tried to clear my mind, listen to what's around me, become it. 

Never quite got it. 

I don't know if I will ever experience that euphoric state again. 

and when the night gets silent, the little girl comes out to sing.

ahh my grandfather. The rebel, the drunk, the abuser, the prisoner, the poet, long deceased. He died in prison. He urinated on cops. He had mistresses all over town. He had violent outbursts and owned guns he stole from mobsters. He shot a man in the eye. He got stabbed 3 times. He was in gangs. He wrote incredible poetry. He was the life of the party. He was terribly exhausting. Dangerously opinionated. My mother compares me to him. Says I am an outcast of the family.

Just like he was. Who knows: I too might end up in prison with tattoos all over my body and a lonely heart.

I wish I knew more about the man. I wish I knew him when I was little.
I don't know much about my family. Everyone feels like strangers in non fiction books. All I have are names and photographs from the 60's and 70's.

Река времен в своем стремленьи…

Река времен в своем стремленьи
Уносит все дела людей
И топит в пропасти забвенья
Народы, царства и царей.

А если что и остается
Чрез звуки лиры и трубы,
То вечности жерлом пожрется
И общей не уйдет судьбы.

6 июля 1816 

(Translation)

The current of time’s river
Will carry off all human deeds
And sink into oblivion
All peoples, kingdoms and their kings.

And if there’s something that remains
Through sounds of horn and lyre, It too will disappear into the maw of time
And not avoid the common fate.

Gavriil Derzhavin (Гавриил Державин)
© A. Wachtel, I. Kutik and M. Denner
www.russianpoetry.net