back to basics

Just a poem. First draft. Written forever ago. I wrote one today for my yiayia (grandma, in Greek) who died yesterday. I'm not quite ready for that one, so, enjoy.

You snort roofies through a paper cup

Hoping to drown yourself and let the

Numb rape your existential memories

Into dumb creatures staring at you like sheep.

Let the cavernous hole in your brainheart

Be filled by the smoke of the bubbler

Crowd surfing over your larynx and

Into your lungs. Let it make you forget that

There is hunger in the world and in

The pit of your stomach.

Shoot powder mixed with liquid life

Into your aorta and watch it bring

Color back into your cheeks and

Wonder at the thumpcraziness

Of your crazy beating heart.

Bake dreams into chocolate chunk cookies

And let the newness register in your

Stomach lining until you become

Happydrunk with the concept that

You can escape from the reality

That you have so carefully tried to

Avoid by using excuses not to face your

Biggest mistakes.

<3

PS. I'm blogging more. Aren't you happy? 

6 months and a few odd days

My nibblet's half a year old. Seriously. Here she is, in her JSB owl dipe, smiling at something hilarious I said. We went to the zoo on Sunday with some new friends and their son. She wasn't too interested, but she did seem to like the monkeys. Since then, we've been making monkey noises and she thinks it's the funniest thing in the world. :]

She: says mama, babababa, still blows raspberries, fake laugh/coughs, once said "gu day" on accident, and loves things she can't have. Her favorite parts of her toys are the tags, she's tried apples, bananas, carrots, and a bit of watered down apple juice but her favorite thing is still boobie milk. She loves banging her toys on the floor/table/surface of anything, throwing them, chewing on them and waving them around. Her favorite person is still JP, with my mom as a close second. She's given JP kisses, tries relentlessly to eat his tattoo, and likes dancing and talking with my mom. She loves walks, and trying to eat sticks, grass and flowers. She likes cuddles, tickles, Baby Einstein, taking baths, napping in our arms, when we sneeze and trying to steal our food.

This kid. . I love this kid so much. She's the best. Right now she's making a surprised "Ah?!" noise at her toys. . and yelling at them. She's the coolest. I could snuggle her all day. She's my favorite reason to smile, and making her smile and laugh is my mission on earth.

She's the perfect baby and I couldn't imagine life without her. <3

<3

ode to the girl in somber

 I wasn't going to post this. It's a first draft.
But today would have been Raven's 20th birthday. This is my present. It's all I can give. 

~~

You never looked at me without looking deeply.

Piercing through me, your eyes made a beeline for my heart,

And there- you found something that belonged to you.

Passing notes and pictures back and forth

While the preacherman soliloquized about hope,

We found it, buried among ferns and thorns.

“Softly,” you said, “don’t break my consentration”,

But I barreled through your brain on awkward stilts

Just to press my lips to your consciousness.

I call this place home.

I’ve never eaten ice cream with a fork.

I have never attacked it, forced it to bleed before

Letting it drip through my lips like pearls of butterscotch.

You were a huntress.

I was far away the day you set sail,

Singing noisily, breathing through your nose,

Holding flowers to lay at your gravestone.

I would have stayed and sang with you.

Lately, every breath has a silver lining,

And this frigid winter may be ending

But I find no solace in this.

Winter is where I have made my home

And I have never ventured into spring.

                                          

You were my first reason.

<3

just simply baby diapers!

Hey guys,

Just a quick update! I'm now an affiliate for JustSimplyBaby.com. Basically, that means I get a percentage of the sales that I direct to their site. It's a tiny amount, but I love cloth diapering and promote it as it is, so I figure it would be nice to get paid for it too. 

These diapers are really great, and they are super, super cheap! Fuzzibunz or BumGenius (the most popular brands of cloth diapers) go for $17-20 dollars and give you one insert, where as JSB gives you two. 

Anyways, interested in trying cloth diapers but don't want to spend tons of money? Use code "ARAS1" at checkout and you'll save 5% off your order. If you spend $100 or more you'll also get free shipping. It's a pretty sweet deal.

Don't know enough about cloth diapers and want to know more? Well, you can always comment below or message me on facebook or through my email (jasperspromise@hotmail.com) or look through this page for more info and then if you have any questions shoot me a note then. 

That's all, as you were. ;]

<3

3 months

My little girl is growing up way too fast, guys. I know its cliche but, damn, this growing up stuff goes really fast.

So what's new in the life of Willow? Well, she smiles all the time, laughs when I kiss her chin, only wakes up once during the night (score!), can grab things pretty well, is rolling over from her belly to her back and loves, loves, loves her feet. . though she has trouble reaching them.

We've officially switched from disposables to cloth, which is hard work since we only have 6 of them. I have to do laundry about twice a day, sometimes three times. We totally had money for them and then the break pads on the car went all wonky on us and life pooped on our faces-- but, we're saving up for them. Again. For, like, the fifth time. But, that aside, they're great! They're soft and chemical-free and they make me feel kind of self-important.

She's in 0-3 month clothes now, all cute and chunky. Her pediatrician says she's just under the 50th percentile in both height and weight, so she's short like me and skinny like. . . neither JP or I.

I'm working on getting a job. It's proving to be sort of tough because I need to write up a business proposal, a newspaper ad, a insert etc., but I just don't have time! It's coming though, and I'm better at it than I thought I would be.

Hm. That's about it. Sorry, nothing too interesting.

religiousity pt. 2

Ok, where was I?

Ah, yes. So, this whole time I had been struggling with the a fore mentioned things there was something else that I struggled with, but mostly subconsciously. In conversation and in my head, being raped by my youth pastor made me stronger as a person and as a Christian. That was half true. It did make me stronger as a person. It forced me to figure out who I was by throwing me into situations I never would have encountered in my sheltered life. I didn't automatically trust anyone, and I didn't trust anyone who automatically trusted just anyone. . . I suppose it made me jaded and cynical, but that look works on me, ok? The fact that I never took anyone at face value anymore made me question pastors, teachers, and ultimately Christianity. I honestly believed that my rapist had a connection with Jesus, yet he did awful things. This led me to believe that Christians are more likely than anyone to be screwed up because they want all their other Christian friends to think that they're good Christians and holy and all that shiznit. So, by that logic, most if not all Christians harbored some secret life that they needed to hide to keep up their current life, but most non-Christians didn't give a shit what people thought about them and "sins" weren't sins to them, so they were free to show their real self to people. I realize this is some major all or none thinking, but I still believe it's true, just to a lesser scale.

To clarify, I know lots of religious people that I respect. Some are Mormons, others are Christians and a few are Catholic. The thing that sets these people apart from most religious people I have met is that they're real and outsiders in their own religion. They're the first to admit their lives are not perfect, they indulge in things like cigarettes or alcohol or craaaazy unorthodox thinking. They're normal people. They're not Christian or Mormon with a shot of regular human, they're humans that believe in something bigger than themselves.

That was the big deal breaker for me. And who can blame me? You get fucked over by someone you trust, you hate everything they believed in (pun intended). That's the way it goes. If anyone looks down on me for not being a Christian anymore, I seriously think I have the best "excuse" ever.

So, I knew I didn't want what I had but I didn't know what I did want. That all changed when I started going to college. I saw so many happy, well adjusted people that were different religions or no religion at all. They weren't mentally whipping themselves for every sin they committed like a bulimic for every calorie she consumed. They were happy being themselves, warts and sins and all, and for once, I wanted to just be happy. Not asking for forgiveness for things that were natural and made me happy.

I was still going to church for the semester before I moved to Jacksonville and I felt myself getting even more disenchanted with that whole system. It seemed more and more to be a business that had deviated from the only good things it had in the first place. Jesus was a pretty cool guy according to all accounts in the Bible. Church for the early Christians was getting together at a friend's house, doing some hippie style singing, reading a bit from a few books they all enjoyed, eating and sitting around on throw pillows. Most modern day churches are totally different. They're awkward and forced. You walk into a giant room where you face one man and listen to him give his interpretation of part of a book that doesn't make much sense. There is no discussion. You can't ask him to clarify. You can't holla back at the man.

When I moved away I had a chance to do my own thing without the scrutiny of my parents, which opened me up to a lot of new experiences. I had a chance to go to a party and get shitfaced, and realize the next morning that that was not something I enjoyed. I tried sex, and decided I liked it. I wondered why something completely natural is bad. Why would god put a sex drive in his creation before they supposed to have sex other than to tempt them? What was marriage other than just a piece of paper and a promise?

So that's about it, I think. There's been other little things, but mostly this stuff. Since all this happened I've come up with my own hybrid form of religion that makes me happy. It offers me a sense of comfort and if I don't go to heaven or whatever, at least I didn't spend the 70 or so years I had here on earth miserable and always apologizing for doing things that make me happy. Now, I focus on nature, and take from Wiccan tradition, Native American spiritualism, Buddhism, and a few religions and philosophies. I'm happy. I'm not ashamed of what I believe or who I am or having sex out of wedlock or any of that stuff. I celebrate nature and all it brings with it.

<3

religiousity pt. 1

I've been meaning to write this blog for a while, all the while promising a few different people (mainly Curtis) that it'll get done, so here goes!

I was raised Protestant. My dad is an ordained minister, and is constantly reading the Bible, making lesson plans for his Sunday school lessons and otherwise spending every second that he's awake doing Christiany things. He enjoys that stuff. It's his greatest pleasure. My mom was raised Orthodox and converted to Christianity in her twenties. She's currently not going to church, but listens to Christian radio all day, reads the Bible every night and very much still believes in Jesus.

I went to Christian school for 9 out of 12 years of high school, and was (for the most part) a dedicated Christian until senior year of high school. That's when things started clicking in my head. I'm sure that anyone looking at this would say that going to college was what changed me, but the wheels were turning long, long before that.

If you look at my older posts, they are extremely religion-oriented, though they start becoming more liberal towards the end. I was genuinely passionate about Christianity.

So, what happened? A number of different things. I'm going to try to go through each one and explain my thought process. This will be fairly detailed, so I'm making it into parts (not sure how many, part of this is going to be a discovery process for me as well).

Ever since I was about 5 I've wondered what kind of shit we (the Christian community) would be in if we weren't the religion. What if Buddhism was truly the only way to heaven? That's always been in the back of my head, but since no one really knows and I was immersed in Christian culture, it never bothered me that much. I chose Christianity, if it didn't work, oh well, I tried.

What really got me to question Christianity itself was the suicide of someone I knew (though not very well at all). It really bothered me that there were no answers. Where did they go? Heaven? Hell? Most people I asked seemed to think it was more likely that they went to hell rather than heaven, and that really bothered me. Because I struggled with depression and suicide for years and knew the complete nothingness that exists when you contemplate taking your own life I didn't think it was fair that a loving god would (probably, since the Bible never says) send someone in that much pain to a place of even more torment. I think it was also selfish, since I wanted to know that if I did feel the need to take my own life it would be worth it. I wouldn't just end up miserable again as soon as I died.

Anyways, I thought that wasn't right. Next, I realized that the majority of Christians did not approve of homosexuality. One of my friends was gay, and I did not like the thought that this person, who was much nicer than most of the people at my church, would go to hell. Why would he go to hell simply for loving? And how can any sort of love amongst consenting individuals be wrong?

I never really questioned my sexuality, but I did know that if I decided that I was a lesbian (I'm not, guys.) I would want a god that would accept me-- as I am, which was what the Judeo-Christian god claimed to do. And I suppose you could make the argument that he does take you as you are, but then changes you to fit his list of rights and wrongs-- which, can be absurd (I realize these are Old Testament rules, but Christians still follow some of those even if they are not in the New Testament).

The whole "why does god allow evil and suffering" debate never really bothered me. It seemed to me that if there was good in the world, there had to be bad, right? Makes sense.

I know that a lot of my blog followers are religious, and this might offend some of you. That's fine. Also, I'm not really looking to debate and I'm definitely not looking for someone to change my mind. I've done my research and I've taken my journey and I've come up with a decision that works for me.

Part two will probably be up in a few days. Maybe a few weeks. Having an infant is hectic.

<3

PS: Would any of you be interested in a blog about different aspects of Christianity as seen through the eyes of an ex-Christian, Pagan? I'm thinking of topics such as speaking in tongues, baptism, witnessing, etc. Leave me a comment and let me know.