Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Gemini

Constant conflict.
Both sides are always right, both are always wrong.
Lean one way, and you lean with the weight of the world.
Lean the other, and you can't keep your ground.

Constantly searching.
A separation.
Magnet, drawing in, trying to click and find the other half.
A matchless sock.

Constant expectations.
Proud public face.
Dynamic, influential, inspiring.
Follow me.

Constant turmoil.
Always searching.
Always off-balance.
Dark, tumultuous heart
hidden from view at all times.

Ecstatic and exuberant
and
simultaneously
Brooding and macabre.

Constant confusion.
No one knows what to do with you.
You don't know how to explain.
As you try and speak and express
you silence and stifle yourself.

So tired, ready to sleep.
But so energetic, ready to go.

Push and pull.
Crash and burn.

Get it together.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Naked raisins

Upon chit-chatting with a friend in Holland, the topic of traveling one another's country came up. She is coming to the United States in the spring, and I gave her the following advice, bearing the most recent screening approaches we're adopting in mind, "Just don't wear any shoes, underwear, bras, clothing, liquids... coming into the US, I'd dehydrate myself like a naked raisin."

I said it with snarky sarcasm, but then I got to thinking... that really is what we're going to be reduced to. As I tweeted the other day, the one positive thing about this is that there will be no question about what a "normal" body type will be in this country. The naked body scans may very well quell the fears of girls all over the world with body dysmorphic disorder. We'll see all the undergarments used to pull in people's guts, reduce their thighs, boost their boobs, enlarge junk in various trunks. There will be no hiding that we don't all have airbrushed bodies like on the cover of "Sports Illustrated" and, try as we might to pass ourselves off as their competition, we're all just as lumpy and dumpy as the next one.

Of course, I really hope that's the case. Because if it's not, then I'm going to feel like a potato.