Geometry Without Words

hello friends! i am writing to let you all know that i have created a new account which i will try to write in more frequently. i haven't been writing in this old one that much because it's just too damn sad. my new account is under:

http://seas-2-far.livejournal.com/

and i will be trying to add all of you to this new one soon, so please add me!

Saying why don't I begin again
With turpentine and patches
With cold, cold Campbell's from the can
After all I'm still a jerk playing with matches
It's just that he's not around to play along
I'm still an ass hole playing with candles
Blowing out wishes blowing out dreams

i want to start writing in here more often. i think that it's very theraputic. i looked at a lot of my old pictures from europe today and it made me really want to travel more this summer. i'm positive that i am going to, there is no stopping me on this. i need to get a job though, the slacking needs to end. besides, all that i do now is sit in my closet and get stoned and listen to music. it would be the ideal lifestyle for me in truth, but the funds are a slowin' Lately I feel like all anyone my age, well not everyone, mostly guys though which is unfortunate is drugs and drinking. It's such a boring topic, if all that it consists of is, "last night i got so wasted, i passed out on my lawn,,," I feel like i have way better things to be doing (like getting stoned in my closet and reading House of Leaves) that I never want to go out anymore. Ever. Then I feel as if I'm being antisocial, and I feel bad for turning off my phone, but these days my best friend is pretty much myself. Missy told me this is what happens to people that live alone. My father makes so much more sense to me now.

Lately, actaully for the past month, I've been having really stressful dreams about people in really stressful situations, but none of it has to do with me. It's like I'm just watching a film of things happening and I'm compleatly uninvolved. what does this mean? I actually wake up and find myself glad that I am no longer experiencing these, pretty, awful dreams. they aren't nightmares because they aren't happening to me personally, and usuallly no one is dying, i'm just sick of being a bystander. i'm starting to wonder if this is how angels feel if they exsist. is this what they do? watch from below? is god setting me up to become an angel?

this is pretty pathetically hilarious. jess's "new girlfriend" sent this to me. It's the first piece of hatemail i've ever recieved, so i'm putting it up for all my friends to laugh over.

ok so, first of... i have a name. its Rachelle (or Shel)... not artifishel. so lets try calling me by that from now on.

and second... i suggest that you stay out of jess's life from now on. you fucked things up for him pretty bad by doing what you did. he blames it all on himself... but it takes two to tango.

if you knew that he had a girlfriend... then you should have never been calling him crying about everything and playing the 'pathetic' role with him and taking him away from me.

jess lied to me about his intentions with you (i'm sure just to keep from hurting my feelings... but a lie is a lie) and so at this point... i dont trust him. but he's not your concern... so what i should be saying is, i dont trust you.

he wants to be with me and he tells me that he loves me and i love this kid more than anything in this world... but if i try and work things out with him and forget about everything you two have done this past week (... everything), i'm not gonna attempt to do it with you being around or calling him or emailing him or having anything to do with him.

i'm not trying to be a bitch about things... but you took the love of my life away from me... and if i decide that i want to give it another shot with him... i'm not gonna lose him again. not to you.

i'm not a bad person... and i left jess alone while he was up there spending time with you. he contacted me. so i never once tried to take him away from you... he decided that on his own.

this week's been hard on him... as i'm sure it has been on you. please dont hold anything that i'm saying right now against him. he's an amazing person and he does care about you and your feelings and your well being. and i really dont want you to react to this email irrationally. please just try and understand where i'm coming from. and please respect my feelings also. no one wants to be heartbroken... and if you and jess arnt gonna work out... please try and let him go so he can be loved and taken care of by someone who is willing to treat him well and take care of him. whether or not i'm the right person for him... i guess time will tell... and maybe one day down the road i'll be able to be comfortable with you two being friends... but right now i'm not. i hope you understand.

//shel

These past few days have been a haze. I know it's all just jet-lag, lack of sleep, my period and the fact that I have a nasty cold that are making me so out of it. I can't formulate proper sentances. I feel as though I've forgotten all the basics of normal life. I have no idea where the fuck anything is anymore. My passport, which I used to constantly be checking was in it's safe spot in my purse, constantly obsessing over, is now stuffed in some insignificant box that I need to go through and sort out one of these days. I need to go through my clothes, my dishes, my books. Just getting my day started is a constant maze. I change my outfit six times, forget to brush my teeth and walk out of the house without any shoes on. I stand under the shower for a half hour and turn of the water and am drying myself when I realize that I compleatly forgot to wash my hair and my body, the entire purpose of the shower. I'm constantly looking for something that's packed away. There are pictures that need to printed, frames that need to be bought and art that needs to be constructed. I don't want to be this zombie anymore, I want to feel normal again. I know it's only been two days since I've been back from Europe, but there is so much that needs to be done. I never knew that putting my life back together would be such an exhausting process.

this is going to be a ridiciously long entry, just to warn you. i have a lot on my mind.
i just got back from prague. it was, oh god, so beautiful. i loved the caffes and bars, how music was ubiquitous, saw an amazing orchestra in a decaying church that they basically dug out of the ground a century ago, the paintings on the cellings fadded, peaking through the decay as if to represent how long it takes to cover up a lost civilization. i didn't want to leave, i wanted to change my flight, buy a bus ticket to hungry and come back later. i would have if i had been traveling by myself, becca's not that crazy and it would have been expensive. i met lots of very interesting people in my hostel, several girls who were traveling for a few months by themselves, which i was very impressed with. i've never considered traveling alone because it's dangerous, after all the traveling i've done thus far, i think i would prefer to travel alone. i know that it would be lonely, but i'd like to have the freedom to do whatever i want and i think it would teach me a lot about myself. i'm planning on trying to come back to europe soon, and traveling through eastern europe. i want to go places that will really change my life too, like India or China, but that's too crazy for me to even think about right now. I found that traveling is not really like going on vacation, it's hard on you physically and mentally. I was exhausted and dehydrated the entire time I was in prague, water is hard to come by in restaurants, they practically brush their teeth with beer.
i came back to england to a ragging party in celebration of mario's birth. it was grand fun, i love everyone i've met here so much and i am terribly sad to be leaving. i gave so many hugs, i'm going to cherish these friends always and i hope they continue their adventures and always find happiness. i can't believe the semester is almost over, it has flown by. i have a huge paper to write and absoultly no idea how to do it, none of the questions make sense to me. school here is just a blur and it all seems so meaningless, lifeless, presitiqous. I don't want to go back to school next semester, but I have too, I've come too far to quit now I feel, I wish I would have dropped out after the first year, when I started to feel that it wasn't right for me, but now it feels too late. Jess wants me to move to Tampa and tour with him. I want to tour with him, I want to see the whole United States, but I don't know if I can stand living in Tampa. I've considered touring with him and then going back to Wisconsin, but I know that wouldn't be right to do to Jess, that in order to be with him that means living in Tampa. And honestly, I don't want to take off school to live in some trashy city in a state that I hate to be a bartender. So I don't know what to do because I love him, even though I shouldn't I do and I want to be with him. I told him I'd love to live with him over the summer because that wouldn't affect me academically, but he doesn't seem to think taking a semester off is a very big deal. and technically it's not, i'd just rather take a semester off for a more legitiment reason than a guy. then again, part of me wants to do it to go on tour and to have fun and not worry about school constantly, because i suck at it and it's not right for me.
Depending on what happens this spring semester, how my life works out, I hope to do more traveling. It is the thing that makes my life seem most fullfilling at this point in time. I am thinking about joining AmericaCorps, just so I can travel around the United States and try to live a little less selfishly. I don't know if I can handle being apart of such a strict organization. I don't know. i'm not ready to come back to the states though, i wish i could continue traveling. i wish my mom hadn't bought me a plan ticket home, because then i'm sure i wouldn't have come back. i don't know though, i might feel more ready in january.

Today was beautiful. A blanket of amber leaves shelter the elderly grass, barely damaged by the rain, it fell gentle today, bringing moisture to the chapped hands that the changing of seasons brings. All these destinations, all the the wrong twists and turns, lost in foreign countries where the only things i know how to say are hello and goodbye. I rely on my eyes to do the talking. my fingers are stained with tobacco and red wine. Smoking kills smoking kills you will die oh so slowly and painfully. the clouds are bigger here, thicker like soup in the sky and the ground feels like a pillow. oh, if only i could stay here in this moment forever, how does such open space, such emptyness make me feel so full? My head aganist the window of a train, the land chases after me waving goodbye. An aching for sleep blackens my eyes, my hair drenched with smoke from the opium we smoked with a gypsy in his lovers tomb, a bathtub. He told us you are not with someone unless you can feel the beating of their heart beneth your palm and for a moment I forget which country I am in.

Today was the huge Caffe Espresso Labor Day party that Hymie throws every year. It wasn't as exciting as everyone made it out to be. Maybe I didn't drink enough for it to be exciting. These past few nights I have dreams where I'm wandering around spinning rooms, drunk and lost. It's made me paranoid about drinking, afraid that the ground is going to start spinning. I also started feeling sick from the sun. Work has improved greatly over the past few weeks. Jolynida told me I always have a job at the Caffe, which made me feel really good, even if she was just saying that. I feel like I have no feelings anymore. I never want to talk about anything that upsets me. Mostly I just don't care about much anymore. I think part of it is where I'm at right now. Realistically I have a little under $3,000 to my name to take to Europe with me, no plane ticket home, no apartment to stay at in the winter, and virtually no desire to return to Milwaukee. It's not that I don't like the city or all the incrediable people I've met or school, I just feel like that part of my life is done and I want to try something else. I sort of want to stay in England, but I also want to keep my life simple and go back to a school and a city I know. I can't believe that next week on Friday I'll be leaving, but at the same time I feel really ready. I feel like I've really pulled my life together these past few months, well, maybe weeks. I haven't smoked any pot recently, I drink less, don't go out every night and most importantly pulled myself out of the trainwreck I was in with Ian. I'm hoping that the country air will clean up my complextion which has been terriable since me and Jess got back together. Regardless, I have a lot of people in my life that truly love me with honorable intentions which makes me a lot less scared about the future. I'm happier right now than I've ever been.

"The heart is dumb, the heart is blind, but the lord is kind, promise me you'll cherish this tarnished offering"

We kiss on the mouth but still cough down our sleeves
Travelling swallowing dramamine
Look at your face like you're killed in a dream
And you think you've figured out everything
I think I know my geography pretty damn well
You say what you need so you'll get more
If you could just milk it for everything
I've said what I said and you know what I mean
But I can't still focus on anything

today jackson and i were sitting by our pond watching the fish eat, i let them nibble on my toes, it tickled instead of hurting- then we couldn't find my dog anywhere, we thought he ran away but then soon realized that he was sitting underneath the chair i was sitting on- my little brother said, "sometimes you lose things even when they are in the plainest of sight" and i thought that was wonderful.

Okay, I'm feeling a lot better today. These past few weeks have been really strange, out of balance and surreal. I haven't felt like myself at all. Last night I felt like I was really sinking low, just absoultly miserable about everything. I sat on the couch, got stoned and just thought and thought and thought about everything, all the stupid things that I have done this year, man there were a lot. Then I tried to think of everything I have learned from them, and how by fucking up so much this last year is bound to add up to something. Sooo, I'm going to try not to stress so much about everything. I want to enjoy life and not worry about all the things that don't really matter. I'm cutting away the fat, letting go of everything that holds me back. I'm going to start being more honest with myself and be positive.

I'm kind of in shock about the end of the semester. It just occured to me that after this week there will be finals and lots of work, and then the following week will be my last week in Milwaukee before I pack up all my worldy belonging and return home, to factories, smoke stacks and railroad tracks (that's how I described Green Bay in an essay). I got a job waiting tables at an unscale, artsy restaurant near UWGB. I just pray to god that I don't get fired. I haven't even told Missy this, but the real reason I decided to go home this summer wasn't to save up money, it's to clean up my act. I still feel like my life is miserably unstable and on the brink of a full collapse. I need a place to level out. A place where I can't drink in the afternoon and attempt to sleep it all away. I want to close my eyes, but I don't know what I want to open them too. I feel compleatly lost, like the birds ate the trail of bread crumbs I threw along the way to remind myself of who I am deep down. Part of me wants to enjoy these last few weeks, but part of me just wants to have it all over; school, moving, this shitty year of unrequited love affairs and failed relationships. I feel as if I have nothing to show for everything that I have gained/lost/learned from this year. Nothing. Not even a scar.

Lemon Skin

Six years old
Sucking lemons to fend off hunger
Seventeen years old
Sick with a stomach full of ulcers

When this is over
I’ll understand the delusions and paranoia
We’ll blame it all faulty chemicals
Not the demons in our mind
Hemmingway blew out his brains
Why can’t I?

Eighteen years old
This as the last winter you’ll
Be able to keep yourself warm
Nineteen years old
My palms are already too wrinkled
For the gypsy to read

When this is over
I’ll understand why my hands get so cold
Even in the summertime
And when I start eating again
I’ll be able to walk to school with you
Without getting dizzy

Twenty years old
Sucking on lemons to fend off hunger

This morning I was coming off a night that had gone badly. Frankly, I was sliding down a pit, feeling really shitty and low. I was sitting at the front desk at work, rubbing my aching temples and reading Bukowski when I looked up and standing five feet away from me, staring at me was a ridiculously accurate replica of Charles Manson. His eyes were bulging out of his head, I could see all the whites around his pupils. He was staring at me with this creepy smile on his face and I think I jumped a little. I knew who we was before he even handed me his ID. He’s been calling everyday and I’ve been having really long, tortuous conversations with him about books he claims to never have checked out. I looked at his record and he has all these books about quantum physics, math and trees, learning Arabic and the existence of aliens. Last week my boss made me go upstairs and look for the book he claimed to have never checked out. The book was located in this dusty corner of the library that I don’t think anyone has been in besides him for the last twenty years. They were all these books from the sixties and seventies about aliens probably written by new age, Charles Manson worshippers, hippy freaks. His name is Poploic or something like that. I’m sure it’s after something universal and he had it changed. I wonder what his real name is. I bet it’s something simple, like Jim or Allen. I wanted to ask him what kind of ice cream he likes.

rock rock rock lullaby asleep on a train
my dreams have been so vivid these past few nights
i've been lost in foregin countries without any shoes
my parents were having a party because the world was ending
and all my friends were there drenched in beer shouting goodbye
madonnas rocking me to sleep
asking me where the bruises on my neck came from
shrug shrug shrug shrug
passion or pain
how much of a difference is there
i could never trust you
my lease is almost up
i want to go home, home. home
i know once i get there i'll be homesick for here
but i'm looking foward to clean sheets and a pantry of food
i'm looking foward to a huge backyard and drinking wine with my mom
getting stoned and working on our tans
while my little brother sprays us with the garden hose
dreaming about Prague
working some shitty job that I hate
and when the leaves turn orange
I'll be in the United Kingdom
i want this semester to be over
I'm doing awful in school and the weather sucks
I've been walking home everyday

I feel heavy today. I woke up this morning nausaus, afraid that maybe I was going to vomit on the bus to work. I could be pregnant, but I can't even begin to think about that now. I've come to realize that when I am depressed I paint my eyes black. A man with red eyes was on the bus this morning. I spent last night with Michael, I had an alright time, but felt like crying when I got home. I feel so stupid when I am with him now, and he thinks I am snobby, but I want to have a conversation about something that matters, that's all. The only people that I want hang out with are artists and intellectuals because they inspire me and are so narcessistic they don't get offended when I say something that is pretentious. But artists and intellectuals are capable of making life feel so pointless and cruel. Sometimes I just want to laugh about stupid things. I hid in the art books at work today, being meloncholy. I'm not going to apologize for my feeling anymore though. I know that I can be neurotic and overdramatic, but I am human and I have the right to feel those emotions. I'm sick of sedating myself, and I came home almost realived that I could still feel this pain about a stupid boy I don't even know. Tyler told me that I am searching for something, he can see it in my eyes. Last night we broke wine glasses and glued them to white canvases. I feel that I am searching for anything. I feel like I am just trying to survive. But why am I moving away? Why do I want to travel so much and do so many things. I am not seaching for love, that's what most people are searching for I'm sure. Love scares the hell out of me at the moment. I am going to go out tonight and drink my heart soggy. As Connor says, "The mask I polish in the evening by the morning looks like shit." Sorry to lay this all on you all, I'm not not 21 and I don't have a bartender to tell this all too.

I fell in love with a bad bad man
Every since i met him
I've been sad sad sad
I'm a jailbird to your music
A criminal in your prayer
I watch you when you sleep
Even when you're not there

Rainbows wept color all over the streets
When you went away maybe one day we'll meet

My apartment is a mess. Last night Missy found a beautiful, Victorian loveseat on the curb. It was an exquisite find, but we don't have nearly enough room in the living room for it. I met with a fine arts photographer yesterday who wants me to model for him after Easter. I spent about an hour yesterday looking at Connie Imbogden's "The Seduction of Raw Flesh." I want to meet a fine arts photographer that is experimental and abstract like that, just because it's the direction that modern photography is going in. Dennis is more traditonal and scenic. It's very pretty though. Last night I had a dream that I was on a train to France with Madonna, she had her head in my lap and I was stroking her long hair. I was wearing a white slip and she asked me where all the bruises on my legs came from and I told her either I was drunk or my boyfriend beat me, I couldn't remember. I woke up in the morning, expecting to find them there, a map of my past drawn out for me to examine. I am at work right now and everyone is freaking out about the recall on cat food. It just baffles me, because here we are freaking out about our pet cats and dogs when hundreds of people are dying in Iraq. Hundreds of children are starving, and we never mention them, except as a ploy to get our children to finish their supper.

"the truth shuffled in
that bitter old woman
opening her toothless old mouth
there never was Paris
You just dreamed it
On a savaged mattress
In a room with a floor that sagged
toward the windows
No Paris, no Japan
Or butterflies from Brazil
It was all just a hash pipe
that you smoked."

Money won’t buy you class. I often fall asleep in my city flat to the sound of a hooker’s stiletto’s strutting down the corner. I can’t imagine living somewhere where there aren’t fifty restaurants on every block. I am in real need of a full night’s sleep that isn’t induced by alcohol. I always wake up for a second when all the streetlights turn off in the dawn and the entire city turns blue. It’s beautiful.

“We do not construct our children in our own image, we construct our children in the images we have of them.”

I shelved the photography books at work today. I spent at least two hours filling my mind with a plethora of haunting, enchanting and mind-blowing images. I saw ruined burial grounds with flowers growing out of the bricks. I saw light spilling chapels where the architecture is silent. I saw damaged bodies. I saw vile deformities. I saw someone’s chest split wide open and hands removing organs to put into someone else. I saw dead homeless people in gutters. I saw the murder of Japanese culture by American Capitalism and mass production. I saw a remake of Andy Warhol’s “Marilyn Monroe” constructed solely out of neon colored condoms. I saw blue haired kisses. I saw life.

I love my job.