As I've written more, I've realized that the best writing usually requires a kind of painful and scary revealing of the self--of your most tremendous or heartbreaking or secret experiences. Because these things that you can't quite find the words to talk about every day, these are the things you'll write about later. "Later" is the key word. I think it was Wordsworth (maybe Coleridge?) who said something about how poetry is made of emotional recollection. You have to go through something, then you must recreate it. You twist it. You make it fuller of color or make the picture sharper, or maybe cast it in black and white. By doing this reshaping, you disguise it to a certain extent, which is often necessary when talking about something so personal, whatever the subject may be.

So writing. I mean, if you wanted to, I guess you could write about something impersonal and disconnected from yourself. You could describe a flower or something. But I think that even in pure fiction, the author puts forth a huge chunk of him/herself. Anything real requires you to dig deep. To feel again what you felt at the time. But it isn't necessarily dwelling on some event, or some unnecessary nostalgia. It's purging, or it's reaching an understanding. I write almost exclusively for myself, to relive, often.

You felt like

The thrill of riding my bike at night.

with wise stars above me,

concrete below me,

it all went by too fast

and we were breathless and young.

Your expressive hands

were rain in the summer,

a weight along my body

grounding me,

fixing me to that place where we were.

The time might have passed, the clock has run out, and I'm here with empty hands. I've spent these years, I've handed out my days and I'm down to the last little bit. And still feeling numb, still feeling careless as the trash piles up in my car and I drive around this town that feels full of love and ache all the time. I've driven these same streets so often, my car tires must have worn grooves in the tar, as evidence that I've been here. I've BEEN here, and I've loved here and I've become here. And how do I explain that maybe we've become the same thing? I know we're made out of the same stuff, you and I. How do I tell you that we match up? And it's hard. I know that it's really fucking difficult and you don't like that.

Can we put that on the shelf for a bit? Be young? Throw off the darkness and forget that I've aged in this past year more than I've aged in my whole life?

Undress our hearts

“

You sleep till noon
You die but come to life
The leaves change their colours

You ache - get up and dress
In a raincoat - you keep going into the bleak day

You tear out heart-roots that you stamp on
With your hands in your pockets, been through enough
Walking in wet grass until

It shines on me through the branches
I look up and revive - the leaves change their colours

We feel warmth, create roots
Undress our hearts
We head towards a good day

We plant and we give life and we blossom
With our hands out of the pockets in earth you delve
Now we remove an ugly thought

Time will heal all things, gives life, kindles fires
Flames of the soul
No longer cold, start life again
My soul comes to life, paints the world

”

—	Illgresi by Sigur Ros (English Translation)

There have been a few people who have stumbled into my life and managed to light it up.

I light up when I'm around them. I seriously come to life. I can't even control it. It's an addictive quality, of wanting to feel that alive again. It's rare. I feel like I'm glowing when I'm around them. I'm happy, but that's also an understatement, I feel home. I feel like I'm back.

I hope there are people in Cali who make me feel like this, or at least a person, who makes my eyes light up when I see them.

"I'd like to think I'm the mess you'd wear with pride."

"If [he] happens to suggest a love based on trust and respect,

tell [him] I've been wasted since last week."

I don't think I'm ever going to get over first love. It smacked me in the face when it hit me. But now it's the kind of nostalgia that's incredibly bearable. Even kind of sweet, because I have all of these good memories that I can't seem to let go of. I don't want to let go of them.

I never thought he'd make me nervous.

I just realized I haven't written in my journal for a good two months. In those two months, write-able things have happened. For one, I graduated from college. This long hiatus made me wonder if I've grown out of journaling. I've kept journals for FOREVER. Since I was in the first grade, to be exact. It's part of me. It's almost a compulsion, how my fingers itch for a pen. When I would go on vacation and not bring my journal, I would get anxious and impatient to get back home and write again.

I actually think I might really want to write right now. I might do that as soon as I get off my computer.

This summer is what summer should always be. Everyone's around this summer, hanging out, drinking, going to the pool. I absolutely love Memphis and these months. It seems sweeter because I know I'll be leaving soon.

I. Love. Wilco. Summerteeth. It's even a beautiful album title. It's not one of those albums I fell in love with immediately. It was sitting in my Itunes just waiting to be noticed, all like "Hey! Look at me!" but I stupidly ignored it for so long.

"And in the beginning, we closed out eyes. Whenever we kissed, we were surprised to find so much inside."

Work's going really well. I feel like everyone wants me to do well, everyone's on my side, doesn't mind helping. So nice, cause that's not always the case.

I ran this morning and went to yoga this evening for the first time in a loooong time, after eating many heavy Toomer family dinners as of late. Both kicked my ass, but in a good way, I feel great.

I was walking home from yoga, and the cicadas were buzzing (or chirping?) and it reminded me of my childhood, playing out in the neighborhood until it got dark. The trees are still green and not dead yet, the branches were still dripping with rain, hanging over my street. The air felt light but was still a little Southernly humid. So now I'm sitting out here on my porch, with a whole summer filled with possibility stretched out in front of me. My new Mac that actually has battery life (thus my ability to sit on the porch on my computer) on my lap. The mosquitos aren't out yet. This kind of contentedness catches me off guard sometimes because of how many months I spent wallowing in a pool of my own angst. Haha. I really hold onto it though, when I feel that contentedness, and I appreciate it.

I start work tomorrow, another serving job. It's just temporary, thank god. I'm not dreading it too much. I think I'll be a lot more consistently busy than I was at Bronte. Anyway, this is boring. I definitely need something to do with my days, something to get me tired and make me appreciate my free time.

Another note--I got back from the beach a couple of days ago. Being at the beach always makes me think on the year before and how the events of it have changed me. I felt particularly different during this beach trip. A whole, whole lot has happened in the two years since I'd been at the beach. What made it strange was we stayed at the same condo, went to the same restaurant, pretty much had the exact same trip.

Had that relief of being HOME. It's terribly cozy here. I'm gonna curl up tonight in my bed, watch some Netflix, and wake up, make some coffee, eat some breakfast, go to work.

And jeez! So much unexpected kindness being thrown my way! I was walking into work today for orientation feeling a little nervous and unsure of myself, and random dude goes "Hey! You! You're Gorgeous! Gorgeous!" People have been making me food and making me laugh. It's glorious!

Relationship advice

from Allison Toomer, age 8.

"He should always be nice to you, and you should like the same things. Frinstance, if you like fruit, and he doesn't like fruit, then you'll break up."

"We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked up at each other for the last time."

-Jack Kerouac, On the Road

I'm not normally one to believe in a greater Plan or fate or destiny or soulmates or anything. But I can't ignore this feeling in my gut that there's a reason I'm in Memphis for the summer.

Obviously, there are a multitude of more predictable reasons. I'm about to leave this place that has felt more like home than anywhere I've ever lived. So of course I ache for a few more months, just to wrap things up. Spend time, waste time, try to figure out how it all ended up so complicated.

I've been having a lot of gut feelings of certainty. I don't know if it's extremely wishful thinking or if some part of me deeply knows what I'm meant to do and who I'm meant to be with. My mom always talks about bad things that happen--they're "part of a plan." All works out for good in the end. I don't see that though, so I don't believe it. I think I have big things in my future, but I don't believe it's predestined. I think that what I choose to do rests almost exclusively with me, though I may be verging on hubris by saying that.

Still, though. I can't ignore this feeling in my gut.

Advice to myself

Don't feel guilty for every little thing.

Speak in a way that is compelling, amuses you, and isn't so damn apologetic.

Don't feel so watched all the time. Everyone has their own shit going on and mostly don't think that you're being awkward.

You probably feel tired because you haven't moved from the couch in two hours. Get up and do something, talk to someone.

You want to be an English major, you BE an English major. And do it unapologetically.

Don't hide what's important to you because having an opinion isn't sexy or appealing.

Don't be afraid to write with a permanent marker and make big, glaring mistakes. The stakes aren't so high right now.

Next,

Fall in love.

Come closer.

Wrap yourself up tight in another, in the rainbow-colored days and sleeping bags, and lose yourself.

Go to a new place, with unfamiliar faces and a strange climate, and gradually shift, grow up, navigate through the tunnels of yourself.

Find something new every time you wake up.

Collect "I've never done that before."

Go to bed alone for what seems like too many nights, head full of ideas for poems.

Pray.

Go looking for something else every day, walk the streets like you are creating your own world.

Never stop looking.

Never grow content, with your tv set and food and home.

Get restless, find it hard to sit still.

Fall in love again and be thrown out of it hard against the wall. Again.

Or maybe just slip out of it and leave town.

Again.

Be in love every day

"To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must write dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfume and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish for you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories--science fiction or otherwise. Which means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world."