The L Word(s)

As I considered an obsessions List for February, I realized (and just now realized this is Valentine's Day month.. how apropos for the title) that so many of my current Loves feature significantly the Letter 'L'.  Seriously, it's a bit weird.  

Let me start with four musical obsessions on the agenda this month.  

Labrinth.  Love this dude.  He has not yet released a full album but what he has released is deliciously contagious and perfectly danceable.  Check out Earthquake.  Trust me. It is the song that first turned me onto him.  

London Grammar.  Okay.  They are drama, and they are pop-y and ridiculous and so melodramatic it almost makes my teeth hurt.  But Sights…. Boundlessly beautiful.  And this gal can SING.

Lorde.  Yes, once again I am Late to the game on that one.  Her music is fun and funky and youthful.  Hello pop-music gladiator (yes, I am slightly obsessed with that Lingo Lately- as exhibited by my previous post), nice to meet you.  And Listen to you. 

Finally, I give you Bastille.  Yes I realize that his name does not start with an L.  It does, however, have the double L going on.  Plus, it is his song Laughter Lines that does something to my soul. This song is beautiful and epic and Lovely to the point of pain.  It is a song about aging and aging again, and remembering, remeeting, revolving around one-another; and the way in which love grows even as we grow up, grow old, together or apart.  I Love it. 

Moving on to other obsessions: this poem blows my mind.  A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day.  There's that pesky L again.  Lucy.  Love. 

Language.  Language is the skeleton key.  It is culture and belief and insight; Language is experience. And I want to Learn them all.  I may be setting myself up for failure, but I need to know! 

That's all for now, I think.  

Until next time.  L all around. 

Winner-Take-All

I cannot tell you why one hates oneself.  But I can tell you how.

Or rather, I can at tell you how this one specific self practices hate.

It starts with a mirror and ends with a gladiatorial battle of the wills (and in my own defense, this is not nearly as vanity driven as a mirror would have you believe).  Gladiatorial.

Because what I see in the mirror is not a person.  What I see in the mirror is a conglomeration- the gathering point of all bad things.  It begins as a person but then, with fracturing subtlety, mutates into a living list of all my faults.  Every horrible thought I have about myself becomes a limb; a strand of hair; an eyelash; a sinew.  My bones become coated with suffusive badness- the infrastructure of disease; the infrastructure to a demon.  Humanity subsides to said disease and demon.  And that demon is a bloody gladiator.

How do you hate yourself?  How do I hate myself?  With boldness and with boundless control; with vigor.  You break your heart, you break your soul, you break your spirit. And then you lose your mind trying to put them all back together with some semblance of grace and goodness.  And for every ferocious inch that you fight, that demon inside of you will laugh and take two back, if not three.  The demon that my body becomes in the mirror has won equally as many battles as I have.

I say equally as many because I am still here.  I struggle every single day and I fight every single day.  But I am still here.  For whatever reason, this damaged brain and brutalized heart, soul, and spirit have decided they, too are gladiators.

I suppose I am writing this because I have to fight.  And sometimes the writing is the only fighting I can do.

Until Next Time..