Lyrically Speaking

The face I still make when I am mad. When I was younger, my mother was my world. She was the person I thought could do no wrong. I saw the drugs, the alcohol, and the absences for days at a time. I did not register them as faults but personality traits. They were who she was. They were not bad. Nothing she did was bad. I had this rose-colored image of her that I wasn’t able to shake until around age twenty. For twenty years I watched and allowed my heart to be let down time and time again just waiting for the moment when I would finally have a mother. Like a puppy, waiting by the door I diligently sat craving her love and attention. If that was just part of who she was, why did I have to feel so empty on nights when she was gone? To say I have abandonment issues would be an understatement. Last week, my mother was arrested. When my brother told me the news, I stared blankly for a moment. I did not ask why. My brain automatically assigned my feelings to resignation and lack...

I am a sucker for a good melody, a piano and catchy lyrics. I ’m also a sucker for songs with my name in them. I suppose this is why pop songs can get under my skin and make me groove before I know it. I can’t say I love everything the music industry churns out – Jonas Brothers, Justin Beib – but as I see teenage girls swoon, I can relate to what I used to feel so long ago, the young naive passion for something that seems so tangible and yet such a silly fantasy. Vanessa Carlton ’s song  White Houses  is just one of those songs that has always been a favorite of mine. In my mind I see memories of my life swirled into the lyrics like a movie playing. “Love or something ignites in my veins and I pray it never fades” Emotionally, I’m a sucker for memories and the past. I find comfort in the history of others and my lives. And maybe it’s sick that I replay the past for the good things and the bad. When I moved to New Jersey my aunt sent with some of my other stuff a Trunk ...

Burned Out Hearts JC Photography Detroit, Michigan When I drove my first Jetta, I began seeing them everywhere. When I bought my Jetta, it was multiplied. As if to say, "Hey, you're the same as me!" When I fell in love for the first time, I saw his name in everything that I did. I picked it out in street signs and clouds. I saw it in storefronts and movie credits. When I moved away from Arizona almost 7 years ago.. I saw Arizona plates everywhere. And then again when I moved from New Jersey to Michigan. My eyes zeroed in on those yellow Garden State plates. It didn’t stop there, When I left Michigan, it happened again. I easily find these things among the sea of Arizona plates. Michigan, New Jersey, & David. They flutter into my line of sight then seep into my memories and cloud my brain with Reflections in my Utopia JC Photography Tucson, Arizona a yearning and lust for the pieces of my heart that these people and places have. I remember laying wi...

When I was younger, around 11 or 12-years-old one of my mother’s friends husband pointed a gun at me and his nine-year-old son because the son had failed to do something impossible that was requested by the quick to anger military man.   It terrified me. From this point, I feared guns and the people who carried them. This included cops. In effort to overcome my fear of guns, I pressed my uncle to take me out to a shooting range as he had grown up in the south and owning a gun to him, was like me owning hair ties. Turns out, I’ve got great aim. I was able to overcome this fear of guns and understand that not everyone is bad, and some people are responsible.   So lets talk about recent headlines

The Ocean tried to kill me. When I was three-years-old I learned how to swim. And by learned how to swim, I mean my grandparents plucked the flotation devices that encased my arms from me and shoved me into the pool. I survived, though slightly water logged I managed to keep myself a float and from there it was smooth-ish sailing.   In my spare time I double as a mermaid, because of my obsession with water and swimming. Anytime the weather is warm enough or the pool is heated, I can be found soaking up the sun and submerged in a body of water (usually a pool.) This is truly my element. While I can swim, I am not a fast swimmer and 60% * of my ability to swim is due to my large mass and buoyancy. I always said it would be hard for me to drown because I am my own flotation device. Sunday proved me incredibly wrong. So very wrong. Not only did I find sand in places I would have never thought they could go, like my eyebrows guys. But I also managed to almost drown in a s...