All posts in tuesdays with tara

tuesdays with tara – volume forty-three

By On September 23, 2011 In music, tuesdays with tara With 1 Comment Permanent Link to tuesdays with tara – volume forty-threePermalink

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“Find me inside the calm of the storm where lovers decide what comes with the dawn.”

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I knew exactly what I was saying; exactly what I wanted and didn’t want. I knew with a certainty what would come of it, having slugged through it before. It exists for us, anyway. It refuses to dissolve. Each time it gets stirred anew, it calcifies that much more; hardens before my eyes.

It is the one place where you cannot see. It is the one place where you cannot hear. It is your own personal fight. It is your battle of the wills. You are fighting against yourself. It is something you will have. You will stand your ground. You will not relent. You will never truly hear. You will not seek understanding. You will get what you want in the end because I do not want to be a part of this war. I never did.

But there’s something that you should know:

You will get what you want. Not because I will let you have it. I never had that kind of power, nor would I want it. You will get it because you can’t fight someone who has lost their will.

You begin this thing, this tug of war, and my heart beats frantically like a bird trapped in a small space. You come at me with daggers pointed, jagged defensive and hurtful words, and you are not the person I fell in love with. You are someone else entirely; someone I don’t even want to know.

I have given my heart to you in its entirety. You cannot return the favor. Such is my lot. It may ultimately be the decider of our fate. I may decide that I deserve better. I may be right.

There’s something else you should know:

You will get what you want. It will come with a very heavy price tag, so I hope it will all have been worth it to you.

I will love you less.

And this is exactly what you will deserve.

The Irrepressibles – ‘Forget The Past’

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our girl’s penned 42 more of these. you should read 42 more of these.

tuesdays with tara – volume forty-two

By On September 13, 2011 In music, people, tuesdays with tara With 2 Comments Permanent Link to tuesdays with tara – volume forty-twoPermalink

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“I wanna laugh and I wanna cry. I wanna spit, but my mouth’s too dry.”

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New directions: It’s funny how they sometimes find you instead of the other way around. I mean, seek clarity all you like. Pray for it. Ask for it for Christmas. Don’t mean you’re gettin’ it.

I spent the lion’s share of my twenties engulfed, inexplicably, in some sort of cocoon of misery. I was angry at everyone and everything. Happiness was something that taunted me, coming close only to elude my grasp at the last minute. My motivations to propel myself in a forward motion were thwarted time and time again by an invisible barrier.

Fighting an imaginary enemy is exhausting and endless. People who are innocently trying to love you will suffer for their efforts. The downward spiral of shame and self-loathing becomes an oasis which you will fill with alcohol, tears, emotional blackouts; weapons of your own choosing. It’s no way to live. It’s barely living at all. When suicide is not an option, but every day you wake up filled with a sense of dread, what is one to do? How does one get dressed and go to work? How does one get out of bed at all?

When I reflect on that time in my life, I feel tremendously grateful that I found a way out. There was no magic pill involved. There was no epiphany. There was no mental breakdown in a sweat lodge. I just evolved beyond it. I just kept marching forward. Eventually, the anger that I used to carry just below the surface of my skin began to subside. My smile became genuine. I started cutting myself the occasional break. I could look within and see something besides the ugliness that once clouded my vision of who I was. I started to love little me. I started to embrace my life as something worth living, worth cherishing. I don’t know why this happened any more than I know why I slid so far in the opposite direction. There isn’t always a satisfying answer, despite our desire to sew it all up and put a big bow on it.

My thirties have been a decade of solidifying. My sense of self worth, my personal identity, the direction in which I hope to take my life; all of these things are very clear to me now. They are no longer concerns that I lose sleep over; that I drink a bottle of wine over. Knowing what you want out of life is a powerful thing. Knowing you may not get it and being okay with that, even more so. Allowing myself to be in the flow of life, taking what feeds me, getting rid of what holds me back; these are the actions of a functioning adult. They aren’t things that I take for granted because they are not abilities I have always had.

Lately I have been basking in the satisfaction of a life lived well. I am proud of who I have become, happy with the choices I have made, amazed at how things seem to be falling into place effortlessly. In other words, I feel as though I am living as I ought.

It’s a new direction.

It’s a good’n.

Black Lips – ‘New Direction’

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this your first tuesday with tara. tsk on you. you should have started this months ago.

tuesdays with tara – volume forty-one

By On August 31, 2011 In life, music, people, tuesdays with tara With 2 Comments Permanent Link to tuesdays with tara – volume forty-onePermalink

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“You got the drunken letter home. I can hear him on the telephone.”

Somehow, it was inevitable, our friendship, like two shoals of ice, drifting helplessly on a certain collision course. I was young, dislocated and sad. You were half-cocked and clinically divided. We were both thirsty and so you took me to your bar.

I was impressionable and you poured your words into me. Three drinks in, teetering on my bar stool, Portishead on the jukebox, a cigarette dangling from my dry lower lip, I received your gospel, hung on your every postulation.

We held on to one another on those late night walks home. We couldn’t have made it any other way. Like two characters from a Bukowski short story; singing show tunes in a pizza parlor, soaked in booze and goodwill, turning out our pockets in hopes of finding enough left for a slice.

But you disappeared. Often. You weren’t just quirky, no. You were schizophrenic. For this, you needed medication. But there were months when the money ran dry. And there were months when your mind wandered elsewhere just long enough that you fell off the page. Your lights were all blazing, but you wouldn’t pick up the phone. I watched you from the street, pacing like a furious animal, holding your cat to your chest, smoking on the fire escape. I called to you. You finally looked down at me, but you could make no connection with my face. I felt that you were not there. I knew no one could bring you back in that state. So, I waited. There was nothing else for it.

You fell for a girl in your building. I say girl because she was just shy of twenty and yet she seemed to me to be pushing sixty. She was brash and bawdy, mouthy and coarse. Her language and mannerisms were aggressive to the point of being abusive. She immediately took a dislike to me, being the only other female with whom she felt she must share the stage. When I made the others laugh, she glared at me with heated malice, wishing me away, wishing me harm. It bothered me that you wanted her. It bothered me she knew it; took advantage of it. I wanted to protect you from the world and people like her were a big part of that. But you did what you wanted. You went your own way. It was something that I deeply understood.

And in much the same way that you blew into my world, you blew your way out. Without much of a warning, you were gone. Looking back, I probably could have seen traces of a goodbye in your hug, your wave at the door. It’s not anything I would have wanted to admit to myself which is why it would only register many years later.

The worst part of it for me has been the not knowing. The suspicion that you may have gone far away and taken your own life; that you may have just given up the constant wearying battle. That you did what you wanted. That you went your own way one last time.

Joel Nicholson – ‘Bobby’

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for many, many, many more tuesdays with tara, visit her archives.

 

tuesdays with tara – volume forty

By On August 2, 2011 In music, tuesdays with tara With 2 Comments Permanent Link to tuesdays with tara – volume fortyPermalink

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“I found your long black hairs. I felt your poltergeist presence in the frame of the bed.”

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I will be the first one to say it: it surprised me. It doesn’t usually happen to me, that kind of nervous hysterical jealousy. To say that I am confident, comfortable in my skin, is to speak the truth. I don’t shy away. I don’t skirt the topic. I don’t bury my head. I reach out and grab it; pull it towards me and stare it down. That’s how I deal. I don’t often retreat into my head so dramatically that events begin to pass through a sour filter of my own melodramatic creation. No. I don’t do this.

I will tell you the truth now. I won’t mince words. I felt your ghost. I felt your breath on my neck. I felt your hand on my shoulder, so close did I sense you. I wondered if you had cast some sort of spell in your wake. I thought I might be a victim of some form of witchcraft. And that spell was  one that forced me time and time again to feel you, to see your face, to think of you, when you were the last person I wanted in my head.

Honestly, I want to say this to you: I felt like your prisoner. I knew you wanted it that way. This form of insidious torture was the only way you could get to me. I had what you wanted; what you suddenly wanted once I had it. I predicted it from the moment I first heard your name. He didn’t believe me, but I didn’t need him to. It was enough for me to assume a protective stance in dealings with you. My guard firmly in place, my wall impenetrable, or so I thought.

But the more I tried to push you out of my mind, the more you flooded it. It bordered on obsession. I want to remind you of something: this is not me. This is not what I do. I am not prone to believing in these sorts of fantastic uses of power and yet, your hold on me was undeniable.

In time, the very mention of your name was enough to produce tiny electric shocks under my skin. And when he went on the defense in your honor, it choked me with an icy fear. It threatened to take me under. All the time I wanted to scream, “Let him go and let me go and let us go and let us be.” It’s all I really wanted to say and all I really needed to say. I didn’t want to say it to you alone. I wanted to say it to him, as well. I wanted to choke out your solidarity, the shadowy presence of it, so that I might have a chance to plant my own garden. It wasn’t too much to ask. He chose me, you will remember. He mourned you and he moved forward and what was lost is forever gone.

It is only now, many months later, when I can pull one of your long black hairs out of something and not feel my stomach curdle. Your ghost is not here in this place. It has been banished and sent on its way. I do not know if it left willingly. It doesn’t concern me how it departed; only that it is gone for good.

Please tell me that it is gone for good.

 Timber Timbre – ‘Bad Ritual’

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for 39 more ‘tuesdays with tara’, spend a few days in the archives. you’ll be happy about that decision.

tuesdays with tara – volume thirty-nine

By On July 12, 2011 In tuesdays with tara With 2 Comments Permanent Link to tuesdays with tara – volume thirty-ninePermalink

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“There’s no erasing the love I’m chasing.”

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. It was inevitable, this. This falling is so steep and fearless. It forgets that I am its boss. I mean, it is mine, right? But this falling; it rules me. It does what it may. And last night, when you looked into my eyes, it happened; the “it” that we are all looking for when we gaze into another’s eyes: where did I stop and where did you begin? The fluidity of the moment gives me pause now upon its reflection. To say that I am yours is, in essence, not even scratching the surface of the longing that is in my heart.

You are away tonight. I was prepared to enjoy some time to myself. Instead, I found myself longing for you; feeling your absence like a fresh wound that I couldn’t properly dress. It stings even now, though it is only some twelve hours since you left our home.

And you’ve gone and done it now, haven’t you? I wanted you before and now I need you and to say that this scares me is putting it so mildly, it’s nearly dishonest. It chills me. It will cause me to lose sleep. It might even cause me to drain this bottle of wine and weep.

I remember a night, months and months ago, when I sat under the stars, shivering in the early morning, with you on the other line, the entirety of the country between us; the rising panic in your voice. You wanted to love me, but you were afraid to do so. And I threw back my head and I let out a sigh and then I lost my patience with you. I ask you to forgive me now for that action. All of a sudden, I grasp the meaning of the urgency that was in your voice. It was a realization of gravity and the inevitable loss of control. If you choose to love me, and I you, we will lose a certain amount of self sufficiency in the bargain. If you left me, I would move on; yes, yes, just as I have always done, but I would be forever changed. I would be forever scarred with the loss of what once amounted to hope beyond my wildest imaginings. It could well be an event that breaks me in a way that I shudder to fathom. It may well be an event that causes me to lose my easy laughter; something I know you love about me.

So, how do we do this? How do we fall farther and deeper and not fall victim to a sense of cold-blooded dread?

I only know of one way: we just do it. We just hold hands and jump. If you jump with me, I will do my best to deliver the very best of me. If I was saving it for anyone, you have proven yourself worthy of it. It is yours for the taking. I know you will keep it safe. I can give it to you because I believe in this.

I don’t know how it is that something can kill you and save you at the same time, but I thank you for it all the same.

Joel Plaskett – ‘When I Go’

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if the fantastic writing and cult following haven’t given it away already, let me dispel any rumors. tara noble wrote this. as she has every other ‘tuesdays with tara’ [save for that one time she channeled Patti Smith]. thus, ‘tuesdays’ with ‘tara’. the rest of the week is devoted to self-loathing and a constant push for validation – ‘wednesdays thru mondays with aric’. but this… this is all Lady T. make sense? ok. thanks.

tuesdays with tara – volume thirty-eight

By On June 28, 2011 In life, tuesdays with tara With 1 Comment Permanent Link to tuesdays with tara – volume thirty-eightPermalink

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“And the hardest thing about this love is that it’s never gonna’ last. And the hardest thing about this love is that you’re never coming back.”

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I have things that I want to say to you. It doesn’t matter to me that you will never read this. It doesn’t concern me that these words will never reach you. You know all of this already. You know because you did this. You did all of it. You did it to me. You did it to us. You are the one who will have to live with it, as well. It did its work with me, to be sure. But if there’s one thing about me that you vastly under-estimated (and let’s face it; it wasn’t just one thing), it’s my raw strength; my ability to take one on the chin, dust myself off and keep moving forward. You did not break me, though there were nights where I wondered if it were the case, nights when I laid in a pile on the floor in a pool of my own hot tears, feeling as though I had finally been broken beyond compare.

You got scared. It got real. It got real and you freaked. It’s really as simple as that in the end. You don’t like yourself very much. You think you are full of dirt and shameful ways. You didn’t understand why I would even want to be with you; why I would want to know your heart. You feel it is a dark unknowable place that you must never truly reveal. It is your right, after all, to go through life hiding behind a shield. But you betrayed my love in the process. You hung me out to dry and you did it in the most cowardly way possible.

I can’t blame you for being afraid of bearing yourself to someone else. It’s damned frightening. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate the full weight of such an action is probably not going deep enough in the first place. But you threw your words into the wind. You made promises and swore oaths and then you went back on all of them. I found myself standing in the hallway at five in the morning, my eyes swollen from crying for hours, not knowing where you were, and all I could do, all I could muster at the sight of you, was to bring my hand across your face. You were breaking me even then, but you were doing it so slowly that even I didn’t realize what was happening. It was the beginning of the end, that morning. It was the first stage of your cowardly departure.

And when you chased me like a dog down a highway median, I still wondered how my life had gotten to that point. And when you tore the arm off of my wool coat, I asked myself who it was happening to. And when you dragged me through the bushes, and I tore at your face with every ounce of strength I had in me, I was sure that none of it could be really happening. You loved me. So why was any of it happening?

In the end, I decided that maybe you were right to want to hide your heart from me. Perhaps there is within your heart some darkness with which you cannot ever possibly reconcile. This is no longer anything that I concern myself with. You are no longer anyone who can hurt me.

I want you to know one thing and one thing only, in the event that you do not know it: what you did to me was wrong. What you did to us was sad, but what you did to me was wrong.

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like Tara? shame on you. love Tara? welcome to the fold. there’s 37 more of her offerings here. you’ll thank us

 

tuesdays with tara – volume thirty-seven

By On June 14, 2011 In life, music, tuesdays with tara With No Comments Permanent Link to tuesdays with tara – volume thirty-sevenPermalink

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“People say that old road is haunted. If you travel on it long enough, you won’t get off it.”

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Stories. We all love to hear them. We may even love to tell them. But what of the stories we tell ourselves? What of the stories that become such an entrenched part of our inner fabric that we begin to assume them as fact; the way things are, or were, or will be.

Internal dialogue. We’re all entitled to our very own. We sometimes make the leap of faith to allow another person into that sacred space where such thinking is contained. This is not an easy gesture to make. If I choose to open that place and usher you inside, I lose some of my power. Whatever it is you choose to see, to perceive, to come away with, may be entirely apart from what it is I assumed was tucked inside there. And what are we to do, then? Are we at an impasse? We are. It is a stand-off of epic proportion. I stand before you and I say that what it is you have seen deep inside of me is one way. You stand before me and tell me that what it is that you have seen deep inside of me is something else.

And who is right?

Naturally, you assume that you are correct. It is, after all, your mind, your conscience that has been peered into. It is your very soul that you have bared and so, does it not then follow that the power of its contents should rightly belong to you? That any and every interpretation of what has been revealed ought only to appear as it has been presented? And yet, is this not an impossibility? Is it not the case that once the leap of faith has been made, and once the space has been opened; in fact, once you have opened that door, are you not then subjective to what it is that might walk through?

Is it not the case that you cannot tell me how it is that I feel? Is it not the case that this very fact, may actually, chill you to your very bones? And yet, this is where we stand. This is where we find ourselves. You empty the contents of your emotions. I absorb it and decide what it is I can do with it. I cannot promise you that I will always make the wisest choice. I also cannot promise you that how I feel will be something that will leave you with a sense of well-being or peace. It may, in fact, be the very opposite. This may happen again, as it happened today; as it happened a month ago. It is where we are. It where we might find ourselves tomorrow. What, then, are we to do about this? Well, for one, we can let go. We can forget all about the need for power. We can forget all about the need for control. We can remember love. We can remember that. It’s what we’ve got.

More than anything, in times like these, I want to say this to you: please come back to us.

Grieves ‘Bloody Poetry’

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written, as it always is, by Miss Tara Noble. visit 36 more here. this girl’s the jam. when she’s not living in a campervan.

tuesdays with tara – volume thirty-six

By On June 1, 2011 In tuesdays with tara With 3 Comments Permanent Link to tuesdays with tara – volume thirty-sixPermalink

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“I’ve been wasting most my time living for the day when my bugs will be figured out. “

How To Make Life Stay: A Manifesto of Sorts

I have always been full speed ahead and it has gotten me into plenty of trouble.

I burn.

That’s what I do.

That’s who I am.

And I don’t think that is ever going to change, no matter how old I get, because I think that is my essence, my core. I look to other people to be rational and patient and think things through. I jump off cliffs. People either really love that about me, and find it thrilling to be with me, or they freak out and hightail it the other way. Either way, life marches on. The most that you can hope is that along the way you pick up clues about who it is you really are and how others perceive you and that these are close enough for comfort.

I am the kind of person who feels it is important to have a proper goodbye, a clean end to things. I really put all of my energy into doing what needs to be done so that there are no loose ends at my back. Knowing how unpredictable life can be, I obviously do not always have control over that. I have learned when it is necessary to relinquish the reins and allow things to happen as they will. I am floating somewhere between control freak and go with the flow all the time. The goal, of course, is to immerse myself in the stream and let it take me as it will and I feel I am doing my best to realize that sort of happiness.

One of my biggest problems is a nasty case of hopeless romanticism plus an unfettered imagination. It can be a very dangerous combination; especially when the one receiving the laser beam of my attention/affection is the wrong person altogether; as has so often been the case. A realistic review of my relationships shows a rather distasteful trend: I have poured more energy and effort into the relationships with men (boys, really) who treated me the worst. I don’t even want to go into the myriad of psychological excuses for why that would be the case. The fact of the matter is that it was just plain stupid of me and that kind of behavior absolutely had to stop.

 So from here on out, I will be a force to be reckoned with. I know exactly what I want out of life, what I want out of a partner in life and am prepared to settle for precisely nothing less. As much as I value my personal space, (and I am a person who really needs that to function properly), I am someone who wants to be on an island of two in my heart. I want just one person who has the unique ability to make me feel better about myself. Someone who not only respects me for who I am, but encourages me to shine as that person. Someone who will hold me and make me feel like it will all be just fine somehow. I want to be with someone who is made infinitely better by my presence in their life and shows me their appreciation of that in little ways on a daily basis.

 I will not stop until I have found all of that; no matter how many potential heart breaks I need to open myself up to, no matter how much disillusionment may spring up on my path trying to knock the wind out of me. Everyone deserves that kind of love, that kind of connection. Nothing I have ever done in my life is so horrible as to exclude me from such a cosmic arrangement; at least that’s my belief from where I am sitting at present. I obviously doubted that in the past. No more. Let me not waver from this conviction, though I will falter time and again.

O’Death – ‘Bugs’

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for many, many more ‘tuesdays with tara’ – visit the archives.

tuesdays with tara – volume thirty-five

By On May 13, 2011 In tuesdays with tara With 3 Comments Permanent Link to tuesdays with tara – volume thirty-fivePermalink

“How the light has dimmed and how the fear of everything is creeping in.”

I was trying to steady myself. The car was much too new, too smooth, and I was terribly car sick. I was eating ginger lozenges one after the other, staring straight ahead out onto the road. “Two hours more of this.”, I thought to myself, “Just two more hours. You can do this.” Then you did something that caught my attention: you drove past the entrance ramp to the highway. You drove on, quiet and intent.

We made our way deep into a neighborhood. You had lived here once and I knew that. Were you being transported on some sort of nostalgic whim? I waited patiently; eating my lozenges.

“I just want to show you something, if that’s okay.”, you said at last and I gave my consent, meek as it was in my discomfort.

You parked the car at the side of the road and your gaze fell upon the parking lot across the street. And then you said, “This is where my life changed forever.”  And I looked patiently while you worked up the courage.

Sometimes you fall for someone you ought not to have. Sometimes, you fall for someone who happens to be a perfect fit for your weak spot. Sometimes, you fall for someone who wants to destroy themselves, but they don’t want to go down alone. They want someone to go with them. You decide to go with them.

You didn’t know how long you had been out. You woke to a tapping sound. You opened your eyes with great effort to find yourself staring into the barrel of a gun. There was a needle hanging out of your arm, blood on the dashboard. You looked over at her and there was even more blood. Her needle had torn her vein and the blood ended up all over the windshield and her window. Another officer tapped his gun on her window, but she didn’t stir.

She didn’t die.

Not that time.

She would, a week later. You would receive the news in jail. And this is when you said to yourself things such as, “This stops now”, and “I choose to live”, and “I have to turn this around.”

And you did. You fought your way back. You try each and every day to make yourself whole again. You have boxes full of pieces and only some of them are labeled. You tell yourself that it’s going to be fine, despite the night terrors, the wolves at the door.

David Bazan – ‘Wolves At The Door’

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for much more Tara, visit the archives.

tuesdays with tara – volume thirty-four

By On April 26, 2011 In life, tuesdays with tara With 2 Comments Permanent Link to tuesdays with tara – volume thirty-fourPermalink

“But you’re still, you’re bright, you’re quiet in the heart of it.”

When I look back now, the images appear in my mind like talisman: a little green room in a dark bar. A hollowed-out tree at the edge of a lake. A claw foot bathtub garden. They are a few tokens of a past; all symbols of a life, of a friendship. They are suspended above my head in reverie, these tokens, and I reach out as if to hold them, as if it were possible to experience their sweetness anew.

In those sweet golden days the weight, the burden of living this life, of garnering experience, getting battered and bloodied, was a refuge that we gladly sought. We had no one to think of but ourselves. Utterly free to make asses of ourselves; and we often did, sometimes merely for sport. It was one of many exquisite luxuries of that time that we would only be able to truly admire when it had long sailed away from us.

I thought I knew myself and I was wrong. My image of myself turned out to be much at odds with the reality. It was jarring. I was encapsulated in a falsehood of sorts; held prisoner by my own devices. I was completely unaware of the source of my distemper but it fell upon me like a woolen cloak, clumsy and suffocating.

I didn’t mind the night fits. The darkness seemed good company for melancholy. It was when I fell apart in broad daylight that alarmed me most. Busses rumbling by, friends conversing as they walked, birds perched upon street lamps, everything humming along and me on the floor in my pajamas in a puddle of tears in the middle of the afternoon. Surely it was unseemly. Surely there was something terribly wrong with me.

And then came that night. I had been up waiting for hours in the dark for him to come home. In my misery, I watched the clock as the hands slowly dragged themselves around, but still the sound of the key in the lock didn’t come.

I had been crying for some time. It was one of those crying jags that scoured me clean, like a seashell that’s been bleached. I felt empty and impossibly light, but in a dangerous way, as though there were nothing left inside.

So I opened the window. The night air blew the curtain into my face. I scrambled out onto the fire escape. I made my way up the ladder on auto pilot. I was already in a trance at this stage. I made my way to the very lip of the rooftop, sat down and dangled my feet over the edge.

I was six stories up. I looked down and tried to absorb what was passing by below on the street. I wanted to see busses and people and street lamps. What I saw instead was like looking out a windshield in a bad storm. Streaks of color and light and noise, all of it slurring below me, and drawn out as though I were trying to see it all, hear it all, from underwater.

I don’t know how long I sat there like that. Long enough to have become cold without realizing and long enough to have become treacherously fatigued. I started to fall forward. There was no conscious intent in that motion. It was just something that happened to me.

And then an arm wrapped itself around my neck and pulled me from that edge and I was saved. I had been spared a certain horrible and senseless death. He didn’t know why he stopped working early that night. He didn’t know why he found himself rushing home. How could he have known? And yet when he stepped into the room, saw the curtain blowing in and out in swells, he knew where to find me.

What if he had continued with his work? What if he had gotten caught at a light? What if he had made himself a sandwich before seeking me out?

But none of those things happened. He pulled me back. He saved me from myself.

Gregory Alan Isakov – ‘Unwritable Girl’

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33 more ‘tuesdays with tara’!

 

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