Title

You're face is all I see.
Waking up in warm arms, I can smell you on my skin.

Foreign and familiar; not mine, oh yes...it's yours.
So is this, this hot, damp mess of organ and tissue.
Taking on a shape dissimilar to what is common.
It melts and spurts and empties it's crimson secret.
it's yours.

"That's just my battle scars" shouting, cheeks aglow.
But silent and honest accept
it's yours
it's true
and keep it you will,
the scars, already, distill.

Untitled.

twitch poke prod
sharp metallic black, round.
swift flash bright light
swirling and swaying
every muscle screams in torment
the veins tumultuous
blood cold, ice and cold
then hot in a moment,
singing from in to out.

Untitled.

Tiny sounds called notes.
Patterned properly create a key.
The lock is stiff and brassy and rust,
cock your head to the tilt, and breathe.

Unlock a world, a realm a space,
white, light, bluster and float.
blue air, cold with comfort,
light it up, let it glow.

To dream is to be unconscious,
knowing, willing, still.
But music gives you no control,
just spins and throws and thrills.

Powder and green ribbon,
the story is not yours.
unknowing, just floating.
unwelcome and what for.

Dance it will, for you, perform.
presence, essence, thrown.
till quickly it bottles and bloats,
and tumbles down forlorn.

silence reaps and creeps to play
sharp, black and shine
darkness where there once was ray.

Feeling:

Feeling: Just got a new book. BACK FLIPS IN THE AIR.

FOlIAGE

There are three billion people in the world,
and when you look at it like that,
everyone starts to look like a robot.
But if you think really hard, you start to imagine
that every one of those three billion has though as hard as you,
maybe harder.
Everyone has a to-do list, or a bucket list, or a hit list.
Every one of those three billion has tiny particles of thought,
little sparks of electrical brain power shooting out in every which way.
Little seedlings of dreams and hopes and plans,
just like you.
They seep out of their brains like vines and wrap around you so tightly.
No matter how urgently you will this creature
to bud and bloom and get it all over with it keeps growing,
just keeps spreading until one day,
one day your little golden spark of thought that decided
"ya know what?" I'm different - I'm strong" leaps out
and lights that growing vine on fire and there you'll be.
More rigorous, more glorious than just the budding of tiny flowers;
there you'll be.
Set ablaze, on fire with indifference and difference and boldness and strength,
refusing to allow yourself to wither.

Synesthesia from Terri Timely on Vimeo.

Original

It's like the world's on fire.

But it doesn't glow the color of the sun.

Just trickles and trumps,

like servants to a sire.

And all you want to do is run.

It's thick there for a moment

when you're flitting on the end

..gusts and gasps...

turbulent; unkempt.

Then drops, it seems...

...obediently, flat.

Up rises the truth,

Reaching, stretching out the vat.

I've been trying to write more, now.

For me, the words have to match in color and texture or else I can't put them together. Which is awful, often.

Focus

It's hard losing someone.
End of statement.
Whether an end of communication or a death or whatever the reason. Loss, of something as significant as another person with an effect on your life, is a hardship. Simple.

But, think about this.
If someone tells you not to itch your nose, what is the first place you feel the next itch?
If you stub your toe, why does it seem you continue to bang it around on things out of nowhere?

Focus. What is on your mind? That person that you've just lost.
Therefore, who are you going to think about? Who will every song remind you of?
It's really not rocket science.

Distractions can come in may different shapes and forms. You don't necessarily need to replace that person in your life. Particularly in my own current exploration of focus and distraction, I've taken to my left brain creative side to distract me. I've started painting again, I've started writing again, I've started admiring the qualities in peoples' faces again. Fluent enough and -you got it - my nose is no longer itching.

Granted there is psychological reasoning behind the feeling of longing, or the remembrance of a person based on, for example, a song or a place. BUT, create a new memory to match. Cover it up. Put a bandage around your stubbed toe and you'll stop banging it.

The art of moving forth.

Having Trouble

Having trouble these last few days.
I dug up some old art workbooks and ran through them, eager and interested and tickled with the past.

They are representative quite literally of the most innate reactions, subconscious doodles, and heart churning words and thoughts --- that this feat was not just a glance at an old photo album.

As I was flipping through the pages, I realized how obvious it was throughout my childhood that I had violent synesthesia. It was written all over the pages. In all it's glory, it's beauty, it's aesthetic perfectioin --- it breaks my heart into fifty million pieces and draws up the nastiest brown/yellow/purple/gray hue which to me is just the same as a small child hiding under a staircase being ignored while his parents scream at eachother in the kitchen.

I was the weirdo. The thinker who's thinking didn't make sense. I was the one scoffed at, alone in the corner of the art room throwing colors and media together, completely entertained by the colors in her head that nobody else could see. That's fine with me. All of that? That's fine with me. What's not fine is that in four years, fourteen doctors and dozens of tests and brain scans, nobody thought I might be synesthesic? I suddenly feel like less of a person. All this time, I had been so eager to share my imagination with someone, and the idea that it is physically and mentally impossible is the loneliest thing.

I remember so distinctly faces cringing at my ideas and thoughts and descriptions which don't make sense to the normal brain. I feel three feet tall. I wish you could see what I see.

White light. White white light.

Mulling; Tis the season after all.

Mulling over a few ideas, over mulled cider. Giggling the whole way through at the irony, and fascination of my own word usage. Did you know that 75% of the English language is derived from Greek/Roman language? I couldn't quite figure out "Mull", and it's root. Giggling more.

So why is it that my best friend of 5 years, asks me how I am, and after a year of silence between the two of us, I say "doing great, thank you", when honestly...I've been up the night before sick, am drowning in homework, am a completely stressed out mess at work, and am trying to juggle a new mortgage?

In the meantime, the young man from Bio asked me how I was doing last night after class....and the whole of it came spewing out as if we were best buds and he was my favorite shoulder to cry on.

Seems to me there are different levels of acquaintance/friendliness/TRUST?/and comfort that you can have with/for a person. But why? Is it just the idea that souls understand certain souls better, and our souls know it, so they'll only open up to those other souls responsive enough?

I stir around the cinnamon in my mulled cider and wonder why I'm such an actress sometimes. How I wish I could tell everyone everything and lay it all out on the table. Wouldn't that put an end to such great assumptions and exaggerations?

I suppose by the bottom of the mug that this must be a natural form of protection. You can't tell just anyone, everything for fear of misunderstanding, rejection, improper advice or simply pure ignorance. I find it sad though. All of those reasons have to do with humans being ill-minded and selfish.

Someone pour me a glass of something a little stronger.

FABRICATED

I know this road. I've driven it a million and a quarter times on my way one place or another, in my 20 years living here. I know this bend, I know there's a field there to my right, it's all subconscious, natural, comfortable. What's different today though, is that the sun happens to be setting, and the leaves were glowing in that way that means the chlorophyll that kept them green for us all summer has worn out, and so their showing off their undertones of color and letting that be reflected by the light. And reflecting it was! I was so distracted, so in awe.. I had to pull over!

Thus stems my little rant -- if one can't notice things like that anymore, where are we?...innocence in children staring at you with wide eyes, sunsets worth being recorded and treasured for all time, breezes, smiles? and the lack of chlorophyll everywhere this time of year? If we are so wrapped up in who Blair slept with on Gossip Girl, how will we ever remember to notice how beautiful this world is? I'm not saying you have to be a complete blah ooing and awing all the time, but just at least notice!


Here's the thing though: if this life of fabrication and drama is all anyone ever knows; it becomes their life, and they start missing out on all the naturally occuring beauties that this world has to offer!

(I know what you're thinking -- stop it!)

It's an art form, almost, I think: Noticing the little beauties like this. But it takes time (which is something people think they don't have anymore) and it takes a bit of relaxation. Happiness is simply pure relaxation. I challenge you to look around today. Just look around.

So many people are wrapped up in preserving the earth, minimizing carbon footprints, the works! (Love you Green-Freaks, really I do!) But really, what if we just pay more attention to it. Love on it and appreciate it. I think that's all anything or anyone really needs. The earth just feels ignored. It whispers "Good Morning" to you every day with a sunrise, and tickles you all day with the wind. Tucks you in at night with the sunset, and keeps the light on with the stars. I think that if for one second we allow ourselves to loosen our grip on our fabricated lives, we can see how genuinely valuable life is naturally.

Love is the only thing thing we have
to give back to God.

If you're gonna say it, mean it.

Photo By Leighann Kowalsky. All Rights Reserved.

So, I'm on a bit of a quest here for clarification of a commonly used phrase that I've come to despise over the months of mulling that I've done. Don't think this is one of those fleeting, radical, attention seeking blobs of a vent. I have been really analyzing this, trying to assign words to my thoughts for quite some time. Quality ahead. Continue.

I'm a busy being. I don't get to keep up with the goings on of everyone I've ever become acquainted with. So all I ever here is "I miss you".

They all "miss me". We all "miss" eachother. We don't post, "lets meet up on saturday, or anytime, really!" on someones Facebook. We simply express that we "miss" them.

Why can't someone say, "I love you" or "I care about you" or "I'm thinking of you " ? Ever? There's such an absence of emotion in "I miss you". It's empty, lacking effort, sort of ironic, isn't it? The phrase "I miss you" is missing something deeper...

It has become a lazy way of saying "Remembered you for a sec...don't really care what's new...just want you to recall that I breathe in an oxygen mix of air, and breathe it out shortly thereafter".

I sought out what the phrase "I miss you" really means, or really should mean. I think I'll start using some of these instead.

• fail to perceive or to catch with the senses or the mind;
• feel or suffer from the lack of;
• fail to attend an event or activity;
  
• neglect: leave undone or leave out;
  
• fail to reach or get to;
  
• be without;
  
• fail to experience;

What I just don't like, is why it's so easy them to say "I miss you", and so hard for me to really believe it.

Good Read

I'd like to recommend the book "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer to those of you who enjoy a book that you need to read 5+ times in order to get every bit, dog ear page after page to re-read moments that you loved, and cry---then laugh---then wonder---then laugh again (while crying). It's deep. Real deep.

A few quotes that I dog-eared I've shared below. I'm excited to see what else Foer will come out with.

"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living"

"You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness."

"It's the tragedy of loving, you can't love anything more than something you miss."

"Just because you're an atheist, that doesn't mean you wouldn't love for things to have reasons for why they are."

"I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want."

"Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn't have to invent a thing."

"The secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into."

"I tried the key in all the doors, even though he said he didn't recognize it. It's not that I didn't trust him, becuase I did. It's that at the end of my search I wanted to be able to say: I don't know how I could have tried harder."

Life is Beautiful

Photo Credit: Leighann Kowalsky, All Rights Reserved

Alright, so. Here's my little list of reasons why life is spontaneous and wonderful, and when you choose to, it can really light things up at the best (worst?) times. Two violently beautiful events have occured so far this morning, and its only 11:23am.

Twiddling thumbs, on hold waiting for the Bank in the United Kingdom to pull me off hold and help me! My phone is ringing off the hook, and I just need one simple exchange rate number to get me back on track "doing" for the day. Elevator music is singing softly in my ear. Then I hear those first two notes....Recognition overcomes instantaneously. My favorite Debussy song starts playing in my ear, whispering sweetly too me how life certainly has a sense of humor. I feel my shoulders loosen up a bit and I close my eyes, melting into the piano notes ringing through the phone line. Love it.

This song seems to find itself in my life quite often - it's last visitation was close if not equally as romantic. Prepping for a master class with Keith Saunders, director of Harlem Ballet Theater, vastly out of my league in the studio at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, and the pianist lays down those first two notes. Shoulders relax, eyes close, life is beautiful.

I rant.

OK- so I think I've solved this whole 'massive influx of young divorces' thing. If you'd like to give me a million dollars for my wisdom, my bank details are as follows.

Average marital age is between 18-25 years.

In the last few months, experience has led me to believe that each individual goes through a certain change in their life, aroundabout the age of 25. (give or take maturity). Quarter Life Crisis? Yes, hello! Well if people are getting married at 18? What happens when they change at 25, and your partner changes at 25, and the people you've become don't like each other any more? Or even if you marry at 27, but your buddy hasn't yet grown into the person they'll be the rest of their life, and when he does at 28, you hate him?

I believe that in order to love someone purely and endlessly, you must not necessarily love yourself, but know yourself. An awareness of flaws, beliefs and ideas. Know your weaknesses, and I'm not even saying you have to embrace them! Just know.

Think

Photo Property of Leighann Kowalsky. All Rights Reserved.

This evening I spent 75 minutes in a lecture hall discussing whether or not LIFE could be found elsewhere, beyond our earth. First of all, how unbelievably loaded is that question?

What constitutes life? What is proof? Etc.

Needless to say it quickly and momentarily became a philosophy class. (just before it turned into an argumentative debate, thank you Bryan)

Beyond opinions, proof, faith, life, definitions and formulas there is an attribute that every mind must take into consideration. Every human being has an unbelievably intricate brain that processes information in an unbelievably different way. Each of us has had a life's worth of experience that forms our opinions, ideals and morals, and each of us draws from that experience unconsciously.

This is all well and good; quite lovely and phenomenal, actually.

What gets me is when I can hear the Discovery Channel Narrator talking, and not the 20-something college student. So few young people draw their own conclusions. It is disheartening to see brilliant minds just spitting back out precisely what their parent told them at the dinner table, without first digesting that information, putting it to the test and questioning it's likelihood based on one's own experience. This is the very definition of a creative mind! Original thinking!
Take every thought captive. Process, question, and for goodness sake think for yourself!

Kids Say the "Darndest" Things

Every weekday morning, I rise at 5:30AM and drive a fifteen year old girl to school. Let's not talk about why, as you will slowly learn that I don't exactly think or operate on the same level as most.

The dialogue between us generally fluxuates daily between simple complaints of her fellow classmates or teachers, and more serious, innovative thoughts. I adore the latter conversations. She is so insightful for her age, and has actually been raised to be very aware and knowledgeable of the world around her. Today's topic? Awkward.

According to "Google Definitions" (yea yea yea, I've got an old Webster's at home I promise --- I'm not completely part of the technology generation, thank you.) the very first entry for awkward is as follows: causing inconvenience. Now among other definitions such as "lacking grace or skill in manner or movement or performance", "hard to deal with; especially causing pain or embarrassment", or "socially uncomfortable; unsure and constrained in manner", I think the first encapsulates.

Now she came out very bluntly and said decidedly: "Is it strange if I'm awkward on purpose sometimes?" And together, we discussed why not. Here's our synopsis:

An awkward moment or situation doesn't have to be NEGATIVE, and it's nature is directly determined by the person(s) involved. It could easily be an ice breaker or a conversation starter; a moment to put everyone back on the same level of hierarchy. It's all determined by the person(s) reaction. If my fifteen year old were to trip and land on her face in front of the whole school, she could choose to be scarred for life from that awkward moment. The key is, instead, to get up and laugh at yourself.

Renovations

I've never renovated a room before. I've never even re-finished furniture before. But I'm currently mid-process in renovations of 'ma chambre' and am finding it difficult in ways I hadn't expected.

Painting of walls, rearranging of furniture and disposal of unnecessary clutter are actually the least of my trials. I have found that the bedroom is a bit of a look at the owner's soul as well. Whether they keep it neat and clean, frayed and cluttered, the color of the walls? Is the bed made? It all tells a bit about the dweller.

Well frankly, mine was a mess.

The paint on the walls had been there for 10+ years. It was never kept clean, with piles of piles in the corners. Not enough hangers to keep clothes in the closet at all times, and not enough shelf space to keep books off the floor -- not to mention the bed was NEVER made.

Of course this post has to get theoretical at some point, right? Well buckle your seatbelt. I'm growing up. And my bedroom is a reflection of that. I'm taking control, sweeping out the old -- literally scraping the scum off the walls--and applying a finish that I have chosen, and that I like. Directly relative to the paths I'm choosing in life, It's my choice, and I'll have to live with it.

(So of course as I paint-thinner the crap out of my walls I'm internally cleaning out my secret place as well --- everyone thinks I'm crazy for the amount of tears spent in painting my room.)

Character Development

Photo Credit: Leighann Kowalsky. All Rights Reserved.
Nearly every English 101 class will teach you the basics about Character Development; probably in regard to the way a character changes, transforms or just simply becomes more familiar throughout the literary work or film.

Recently, I've been working on developing a character for my own work. Her name is Tara, and she has an entire poster board of a web-chart defining parts of her life: traits, favorite things, catch phrases and silly thoughts.

I feel like Tara was born, and is growing up right before my eyes. I believe this is the most literal form of character development that an author or artist can witness, and I personally have never had quite so much fun with it before! I feel as though I am an actress about to play the roll of "Tara", and in order to do so properly I must know her every experience. The mind-blowing thing is that I created Tara, like an imaginary friend she is so real and so fake.

Name in Lights

Photo Credit: Leighann Kowalsky, All Rights Reserved.
If I were a rockstar, I would take a photo of every audience from the stage before I performed, and make a photo album out of it.