Brett Harman.

I never knew you.
This fact makes me sad.
And this second fact makes me wonder.

You inspired so many people.
I hope to be half as inspirational.
Half as intent on living.
Half has optimistic,
loving,
hard working,
and vibrant as you.

This is my prayer to you.
Watch over him and lead him in the right direction. Because I don't think I've been doing that. I may not love him to the extent that you did, but I am genuine in my desire to see him happy.
You are his hero.

Thank you for making such an incredible impact. An impact that reached farther than you probably ever dreamed it could.

never realized.

there are certain rules for putting yourself out there. you have to make sure you have something to say. Something that speaks. Something that's real. not TRUE. I didn't say speak the TRUTH. I said speak about what's real. your reality is so far from mine. who am I to tell you what's real and what isn't?

I break.
I break every time.
And then he came along and
I still break.
My spirit was lifted for 2 weeks,
and then I fell even farther.
That's what happens, ya know:
You drag yourself to the top of the mountain and realize that there's nothing left but downhill.
If you're like him, you'll enjoy the view and begin your journey.
If you're like me, you'll fling yourself off the peak.

DRAMA
my excuse is that I'm young.

so many hands.

I find myself beginning with "so where do we go from here?"

There's so much interest in knowing the future, so much obsession with finding The Path.

Breaking up the scar tissue and pulling apart what makes the body taught, I find a new sense of purpose. My fingers relax one by one until all pieces of Past are fallen by my feet. It's a start.

Now we walk.

Careful not to slip trip tumble, we crunch orange leaves of memories and prickly sticks of old regrets. I want you to take my hand, but if I tell you, you'll just nod and say you Will. So I push my tongue between rows of teeth, against the back of my lips, and I smile small.

Hello New Day. Hello Yellow Morning.
He greets the rising sun like it was his own Mother. I can't do the same. We don't have that in common.
Hello Today. Hello Mellow Mourning.
He just thinks I'm sweet and funny, nods, and reaches still toward the sun. I just burn. I think, "I burn for him."

Where do we go from here?
No answer.
Now we walk.

waterways.

I suddenly feel like so much is wrong.
I suddenly feel like excitement has drained--quickly-- from all of The Things.
Can you see my bones through my skin?
Can you feel when my eyes melt away from you? I can't look away all the way.

He can see the blood blue through my skin. He thinks that's love. He says he doesn't trust lust. He has his religion. He has his politics. He has his blue-making-invisible eyes.

Red is his color. I can see it around him.

grateful.

It baffles me just how blessed I have been my entire life. I have literally never been in want of anything, despite desiring so many things and truly needing nothing. The best people I know are the most riddled with hardships. These people are also the strongest and most resilient. If I turn out to be half as thankful as they are, maybe I'll be fine. Goal.

cannot think.

I cannot think of a better time to write. I cannot think of a more lonely table, a more far away feeling... Getting a nicotine buzz just from breathing the air beneath my nose. They're not coming anymore. Delicate, weighted eyelids shut out the burn but not the night. There are too many lights, colors and colors of light... I can't even feel my fingertips anymore, but they're not coming anymore.

as opposed to yesterday.

Today, I jumped out of a plane in my mind. A plane hovered at the very roof of my skull. I jumped and never landed.

Today, I knotted up my shoulders. I ruined a massage. I thought about an illness that makes one's glands swell up. I felt pain.

Today, I gained an enemy. Scrunched up inside of the corner of the darkness in my body there was an enemy. I fed her cake and asked her to come in. She did. We are now enemies.

Today, I left my childhood behind. In a beautiful park with sycamore trees and clean, clean sand. I left her in a park with a dripping Popsicle in her hand and little scrapes on her knees.

Today, I fell in love. With myself. She ain't half bad.

Decide.
Commit.
Succeed.

thankful.

One of my Chapman writing professors, published author Martin Nakell, has an Iranian pen pal who is a student and aspiring writer. Recently, I found Vahid on Facebook, and connected the two men. Dr. Nakell sent the following email, which really served to put into perspective how blessed I am to be an American.

studenti --

thanks to sera, vahid got the request to be my friend on facebook. incredibly, the regime shut down facebook (as well as other sites communicating with the outside world) after the last presidential election and the riots that followed. so vahid cannot access facebook anymore.

i just got this message from vahid as well:

Some terrifying news is that they have arrested a very big number of those who were exchanging political news and spreading the events on FaceBook, too.

whew! a good thing i or we weren't on facebook with vahid after all!

'til tuesday, have a good weekend of enjoying our freedom, yes?

dr. nakell

Streets.

Let's take a walk. Look up at the clouds. Drink warm things.

[inspired by the story of an Argentinian man reunited with his son after 30 years apart - from the POV of the kidnapped mother]

There are so many things that I want to say. Thinking on vulnerability, my mind crunches down and pushes against my temples--leaving a space and building a pain. It won't think anymore. I won't think anymore. Vulnerable is weak. Have I written that before? The girl is grinding her teeth. I want to hit her so hard, until I can't tell the difference between her tears and my own. But I also want her to touch me, to lay her hand on me and not know what I am thinking when our heartbeats match heartbeats and our tears touch in a different way. But this is weakness. Have I said that before? I have sinned--unlike these men have sinned--but I have sinned nonetheless. I have felt danger in the pit of my stomach and instead of turning away, I have run toward it. Feeding another life can either feel parasitic or celestial. And I felt neither. I only felt myself, and what I believed. Now I sit here--griding teeth, breaking water, swelling anger--and I realize: I am not a vessel and this is not a temple, and my body cannot keep you safe.

when it rains.

when it rains, i always feel compelled to write something.

i don't want to feel like i'm falling into any sort of cliche, but even if i was...

when it rains, everything is so delightfully rich and saturated.

when the light outside is dimmed by rain clouds, my thoughts are brightened.

i see a little clearer or, at least, i dream a little more.

i don't know the artist of this lovely portrait, but i am enamored with it.

wish.

Hey all, my birthday wish this year is for people to donate to a relief fund to benefit those affected by the earthquake in Haiti. For those of you, like me, who live in California, think about how likely it is that we have a devastating earthquake within the next decade. We would want help rebuilding our lives, too, if we were unfortunate enough to need it. I am turning 22 years old, so I donated that much, but even $1 or $5 would be much appreciated by World Vision. OR you can text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 through the American Red Cross. Thanks for listening.

- Sera x

issues.

It's an issue of believing in myself. It's an issue of loving myself just enough to never deny myself anything. I've never had a true commitment to myself. I want to be able to say that I love myself more than any other person, but in the way that this love inspires me to be the best person I can be. True self-love does not detract from any love I may have for other people. This love of self inspires others and brings me closer to those people.

Confidence is part of it. I admire women who have enough confidence in their true selves to voraciously go after what they want and to say NO to what they don't.

Dreaming is important. If I don't try, I can't succeed. Yes, I might fail, but those knee-scrapes and ego-bruises make me tough. Sometimes I worry that my dreams are "irrelevant" or something equally vague. My dreams are just as important as anyone else's.

Self-esteem is not the pinnacle, as many would think. Self-love and self-esteem are too separate entities. I do want to hold myself in esteem, as it were, but I need that initial realization that I am worth it. Right now, I feel that hard work is the only path to this end.

Keeping an optimistic view of my own future and the futures of those around me, I am ready to step forward--even onto the thinnest of ice.

it means shadows.

Neruda could not help but frown at her garden.

Her favorite smell was that of warm jasmine, which seemed to hang thick on the air like invisible fog. But those plants were choked by three kinds of weeds. She had planted dozens of different colors of spider lilies and named each of them after an auntie. But those plants were losing strength in their graceful stalks and touched their heads to the ground. The troubled waters of her little pond had dried up. The sound of the hummingbird’s rapid wings had ceased. Her small but satisfactory plot of land looked grievously deserted.

I wish I had never left this place. I can feel the anger coming from your roots.

“Rudy! Get in here!”

Don’t call me Rudy.

I hate being named after a poet’s pen name. It’s like being named after a place that doesn’t exist. Pablo Neruda stole his last name from another poet, a dead guy from Bohemia. Brilliant, just another dead thing about me.

Inside the little pink cottage that had once radiated with such love and beauty, Neruda felt the tremor of death. After her grandmother had gone to plant roses along the road among the stars, Neruda could not bear to enter the house. After her grandmother had gone to the deep place to keep herself eternally, Neruda could not bear to cross the threshold of the front door. After you left me alone—before showing me how to plant Echinacea, before teaching me how to cut onions without crying, before telling me the secret to loving a boy—you went and made them bury you in the ground and made me bury you in the heart.

“Rudy, come and see this!”

Don’t call me, Rudy.

I couldn’t walk any faster than I was. Every little bit my shoe sank into the pink shag carpet would bring back an insistent memory. Sitting on the floor, cutting out paper dolls. Tumbling down the soft steps into the sunroom. Getting rug burn from tickle fights and wrestling matches. I think everyone seeks the permanence in time and grieves her limits on earth, but we can make enough memories so that we have an escape. We can live in those memories like we live in a cottage and dream in perpetual safety.

Neruda finally met her sister in their grandmother’s bedroom, a place that would always be their grandmother’s bedroom—no matter who was sleeping there. The girls stood next to each other, touching hips and staring down at a large trunk.

“Do you think this is what mom was talking about?”

It is human nature to be carefully destroying herself and preserving herself incessantly. Did she give us some pieces of herself? Did she gather her favorite things? Did she leave warnings and notes of wisdom? Did she finally reveal all of her secrets? Or will this just be more death? Death trapped in a box. Neruda knelt in front of the large wooden chest, half-covered by a coarse pink blanket. There was a crude carving on its lid that read, “significa sombras.” She fingered the letters her grandmother had made. She lifted the lid.

There is a new angel coming to us now.

marrow.

“You are human. But my bones don’t break.”

“I don’t know why you always talk to me about these things. I can’t feel the way you do.”

“Then how do you see without eyes? Hear without ears? Smell without—”

“I don’t smell.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know. I just can’t.”

“How do you know you can’t?”

…

“After all that, why can’t you feel without skin?”

“I can feel. I never said I couldn’t feel.”

“This just keeps getting harder to understand.”

“I just feel differently.”

[just a view]

(Original photo by Richard Avedon with Audrey Hepburn)

I digress...

No picture for this one because the person, about whom this post is being written, doesn't quite deserve one. That person sent me the following ANONYMOUS comment:

"You seem like someone who is trying to bring together many disparate parts of yourself. I would say stop trying so hard and let it happen, but that might involve explaining myself and who I am more clearly, which, sorry, I'm just not up for right now. Take my word for it; your art will improve and feel better if you stop trying so hard to cure your despair, and just let the art do that for you. just a suggestion."

Now, please, readers and followers, try to stifle your indignant laughter. I already know this person is a _____, and I have a feeling so does he. But bear with me while I respond to his "suggestion."

Dear Anonymous,

Ummm, who asked you?

But since you already took the liberty of butting into someone else's life and making completely unwarranted judgments, let's just break it down piece-by-piece, shall we?

"you seem like someone" - Is the title of my blog Please-Feel-Free-to-Be-Very-Rude-and-Make-Character-Judgments-Without-Having-Any-Sort-of-Right-or-Reason-for-Doing-So? No, I didn't think so either.

"I would say" - Who are you? Oh, wait, you decided to be cowardly and not tell me. Better question: who do you think you are? And: why do I care what you would say about anything?

"stop trying so hard and let it happen" - Let me clarify something for your narrow, narrow mind. This blog, as so many blogs are, is a place where I can purge my thoughts, share my poetry, or simply just write. Although I have not been on here in a while, I still value the chance to let my photography clients know that I am also a writer. I think it enhances any relationships I might have with them. None of the aforementioned things involve me "trying so hard" to do anything. But thank you for the first of many inaccurate assumptions.

"but that might involve...up for right now" - If I was forced to choose, I'd say that this is the most ridiculous part of the entire thing. Just to let you know, the fact that you had the audacity to judge someone without telling them from whom the judgments were coming, speaks volumes about your character.

"take my word for it" - I changed my mind--this part is the most ridiculous. Why the heck would I take your word for it? Why? I have no respect for anyone's "word" that is not attached to its speaker.

"your art will improve and feel better" - At the very apparent risk of justifying myself to you: I do not consider myself to be an artist. I am a photographer by trade and a writer by major, but I am not so engrossed in the art world that I would call myself an artist. I have no desire for my work to "feel better," but thank you for the veiled insult that it needs improvement.

"stop trying so hard to cure your despair" - This statement just oozes with pretentiousness and disrespect. Despite having made my share of enormous mistakes, I am an extremely genuine person. (You would know that if you were indeed someone in my life about whom I actually cared.) I do not "try hard" to meet the standards of people like you--people for whom I have no respect and/or no knowledge of their existence. In addition, it is completely appalling that you would speak to anyone about his or her issues with depression. I can confidently say that I have no "despair" in my life. I am extremely blessed with wonderful friends and a family who takes care of me. Any lamentations on which you picked up in my blog posts are true feelings of which I am not ashamed. But in regards to those people who do turn to art to "cure despair," how could you condemn them for it?

"just a suggestion" - No. This was a judgement. No, this decidedly was not simply a suggestion. Furthermore, even if it was just a suggestion, you have absolutely no right to do that either. I do not know you; you do not know me. Your "suggestions" are not welcome. How about you tell me who you are and then I can approach you when I'd like input? Or is that too much basic courtesy for you to send my way?

Now, I suppose, it would be appropriate to use the trusty cliché, "How dare you?"

Readers, I hope you have enjoyed this little moment of compelling drama brought to you by some unknown, sad, little person. I believe that sticking up for myself was necessary, although not everyone would agree. I will leave you with the wise words of Tupac Shakur: "If you don't know me, don't judge me."

- Sera x

frenzy.

it's that sinking feeling after a day of lightness
lightheadedness
lightfeetedness

lightspinningness

lightness of being

it's that feeling that your mistakes keep reoccuring
no matter how often you stand outside yourself

with a look of maturity on your face

and a book of lessons

and a mop

And you tell the future

Half a World Away

1 a moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection
2 chandeliers tangle and untangle
5 miles into the heavens
5 there they revel in the endless stretches
5 half a world away
4 "you are a very special young lady"
1 she had a big yellow wig that made her face look too small and smelled like
6 her cigarette changes position and her face changes expression
1 "I do this, this, because it feels good"
2 toxic
6 in a mad rage
5 ruggedly beautiful
7 "remember remember"
7 her voice has a strength that is a metered by a calmness
8 "we are being punished"
9 tell us
7 "sometimes I wonder where we would be"
9 tell us
7 "if he hadn’t failed"
9 tell us
2 "never stop fighting"
7 my entire world was erased
5 absolute isolation half a world away
2 fragile without breaking it
4 "burn burn"
9 tell us
1 "boiling wet insides"
9 tell us
2 "you’re only given a little spark of madness"
5 half a world away from their homes
3 two houses shall be sitting
1 they walk away with another fleeting memory that almost got away
8 "am I in the place of God?"

[ask about my process]