in other words

"I always knew that one song had to be just one voice, and that's it -- with the uncomfortableness of that too. Almost like when you are at a party and somebody stands up to do a speech and everybody is like "oh my god". You just say your bit, and then you sit down. So it has that feeling. At least I tried to do it." (Björk, speaking about show me forgiveness, XFM 8/25/04)

show me forgiveness
for having lost faith in myself
and let my own interior up to inferior forces

the shame is endless
but if soon start forgiveness
the girl might live

it's hard to describe the love i have for this musician, writer, and artist. she is weird as hell and behaves / dresses so strangely, and yet when i look at the body of her work i have nothing but respect. she is fearless, vulnerable, and asks questions that need asking.

this time of year is pressing on my lungs, either crushing me into silence or provoking long-kept streams of sentences, revelations, hypotheses. i am gaining perspective on shattering events only to find that i was not the reason for such failure. it is not something i lack (or is it? the nagging voice persists). i'm not sure that anything deserves blame other than a painful generational pattern. cast it off, i say . . . this darkness has not gone uncontested, but has prevailed nonetheless. can it be shone through? can we do it? dear God, please say yes. if we are powerless, our will stolen in the face of devastating odds, i don't want to be here anymore. i don't want to keep wasting my hope on a wall of concrete.

there is something within me that says, hope. try. stay.

i am trying to move past merely saying "okay," to my circumstances. that's just resignation, and i hate resignation. where are we if we do not hope for better days? no, i am trying to gain access to the promised land of "yes," of embracing my life as it stands with the knowledge that it will not stand this way forever. i say "yes" to what these struggles are doing in me, the walls they are breaking down, the tarnished surfaces they are restoring. i say "yes" to how these days are enriching the soil of my future; how the salt of my tears is preserving something precious within me.

courage, friends.
courage.
i am here. i am not running away.
i am living this for all it's worth.
in the words of robert frost,
the best way out is always through.

His embrace : a fortress
it fuels me and places
a skeleton of trust
right beneath us
bone by bone
stone by stone

[from who is it? :: bjork]