it burns. you don't care. you never lost. it was long ago and i whisper. days like these feel like trees set ablaze. towels wrapped in leaves and words written on skin, so lighly only you could ever tell. and that didn't matter. all that mattered was the way your dress swayed and the way your lips were red. the elephants in the desert don't care. the white speck on his floorboards and the golden flame in her hair. those were the things. the lamps and the cars. the lace tied around her body, so tight she couldn't breathe and she fucking loved it. with the sky so high she felt like she could touch it, the light so far and so close. i held her. but we didn't do anything! she always said, and the birds flapped their wings hard against the wind. there was no peace in the rustling leaves. no truth, no strength, no desire. nothing that made you want to stop and nothing that made you want to go on. only whispers against the cold glass, so frosty it left icicles on your chin.

in other words, i have nothing i want to say today.

i wanted to write about my ballet class, but now i'm faced with a blank screen and an empty schedule, i can't recall what it was i wanted to say.

my ballet teacher told me my pointes fit me beautifully. i could get new ones since these are getting a little soft, but they form to my feet so well now, they look so pretty. i smiled and got a little awkward. i danced the advanced ballet class on my socks, tonight just wasn't a ballet shoe kind of night. it always feels so lovely, i prefer the soft fabric over canvas and leather most any day.

dancing in the heat made our feet swell, our pointe shoes tight around our feet, and we were practically gleaming with sweat. girls sighed and fanned themselves but i loved it. i want to work, i want to sweat. i was in that kind of mood.

it was a really good class. i can't imagine giving this up in some ways, and yet.. what do i do?

i sat in the windowsill with a leg hanging out and thought of the wind. i'm heavier but i still feared it would pick me up, swoop me into the air then drop me. a heavy drop, only seconds long but enough to smash me to death. i thought, and i ate strawberries. contemplated a glass of wine i never drank.

tonight i watched louis theroux's extreme love: autism. part of me feels like i could love those children anyway, and deeply. sometimes just watching them makes my insides feel warm and soft. part of me feels like i couldn't, too worn out by their lack of conventional beauty. the latter sounds so terrible. maybe that's honesty.

i'm proud of how i ate today. nuts, berries, a little egg, fruit, vegetables, quinoa, mint tea. i feel so much better and lighter than i do on days when i eat more fat and sugar. i'm hoping this makes my skin a little happier, too.

good night.

starting today, i am going to write a little something every day for the next seven. en plein public. for no real reason other than that i want to, just to see what will come rolling out, even when i feel empty, lost for things to tell the world.

today i'm going to tell you about this book i bought for my friend a year ago. it's called friendship, family, love & laughter and it's a book filled with pictures. i loved it pretty much instantly, the title made me smile first, then the cover and the rest. it seemed to breathe love, even the pictures that made me want to cry right there - standing in the middle of the shop. in the hope that my friend would be as enamoured with it as i was, i bought it for her. maybe it will cheer her up when she's sad, i thought.

now, i don't know if it does, but after giving it to her it didn't leave my mind, so a couple weeks later i bought it for myself. sometimes i go through times where i forget i even own it, but i'll always find it again, and it's just. beautiful. it never fails to make me feel.

an old couple, one in a hospital bed, both laughing hard with their mouths open. a dad holding up his adoptive nine year old daughter completely. two homeless men hugging in a centre, one kissing the other on the head. a visibly emotional military pilot hugging his wife and baby goodbye. the quote on the next page, saying where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts. newlyweds that have fallen backwards on a hotel bed, her hand in his, wearing matching blissful smiles. an old man trying to climb in through the windo by standing a bike, flowers in hand. young twin girls kissing through a window. fifteen indian boys lying back in the mud, arms raised in victory.

i could go on. picture after picture of beauty, both crushingly sad (the old man crying with his head leaned against his wife's gravestone) and stupidly happy (the kid being flung out of his dad's arms onto a bed, captured mid-air), and everything in between. i'm always smiling half the time as i leaf through the pages, and crying the other half.

and i love it. (if that's not obvious by now.)

op de fiets door de stad, in de regen, met een glimlach. want geluk. en de lichtjes in het donker, de studenten aan de tafels buiten, drankjes in hun handen en gelach over hun lippen. de geur van sigarettenrook en liefde. en ik was blij, want ik fietste daar, tussen de lichtjes en de lachende mensen, door het dikke gordijn van regen dat zo vrolijk tegen de stenen kletterde en door mijn kleren sijpelde. het maakte me allemaal niets uit, met spieren nog warm en moe van het dansen en muziek in mijn oren. de hoge gebouwen verderop en de voorbijrazende auto's met koplampen die wel kampvuren leken. knusse huisjes, zo hoog en smal en lief.

die groene bossen zijn mooi, het gevoel van rust met de geur van jonge natuur en drassige grond, maar dit. dit is stadsliefde waar ik nu warm van wordt.

this is currently the background on my phone.

i had a really lovely weekend not too long ago, and i tend to cling to those kind of things. especially when the future doesn't seem particularly bright and happy, i'll usually want to either stay in the past, or go back it. those moments where i was blissfully happy for whatever reason. i could say 'well, and that's no way to live', but it is a way to live, it's just not the way i want to live. it makes me unhappy, because it's such a hopeless longing. that moment is never going to come back. there's no fun in wishing for it to return, all it does is cause sadness to bloom inside me.

so. i read that. the there are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind. and it relaxed me a little bit. i'm learning to let it go. it makes me feel better, like i can breathe a sigh of relief. even if what the future holds are not things that are actually better, they're still good things. there are good things ahead.

and really, i should remember that all we have is now anyway. now. now. now. now. now. now.

now.