SPANISH SAHARA

"beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. but you are the eternity and you are the mirror."

things that i regret

- not continuing with intellectual pursuits. i'm not 100% sure when and why i lost all motivation to try at school, but i would have been about 16 when i dropped the ball completely. i suppose at some point i realised that i was smart, but not all that smart, not anything special. and at that point i just couldn't really be bothered anymore. that and i'm pathologically lazy and unmotivated. it makes me sad to think, if i did so well in school without lifting a finger, imagine what potential i could have had if i'd just bothered to stretch myself a little further.

- loving people who didn't love me. in retrospect so many of my dealings with males have been a complete waste of time. i wish i hadn't spent so much of my life pining over other people instead of moving on. even for someone with such little self-worth i should have known i deserved better than what i had been given, and had a bit more self-respect.

- being painfully shy during childhood. i'm still a bit shy - i can't talk in front of a class without going red and falling over my words a bit, and i'm a bit quiet around people who intimidate me. but the 12 or 13 year old me would balk at the things i am capable of doing now. i wish i had tried to get out of my comfort zone a little more in my childhood and early adolescence, then maybe i wouldn't have been so lonely and scared sometimes. it makes me sad now to think of all the things i could have done if i wasn't so socially withdrawn and terrified of being rejected.

bluebird

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?

- Bluebird, Charles Bukowski.