hidden allies are the best thing ever.

half thoughts.

what more magic life has to offer.

some things will get you fired from the godmother position.

a lion must cross his eyes to see the butterfly on his nose.

when I walk alone on an empty street it still feels very crowded.

you can only recognize what you already know.

like creatures in a cage.

do native americans need to accept the right of America to exist?

people who've never had to think 'who am I' are luckier than they know.

my lip gloss tastes better than my breakfast burrito.

To be responsible and interesting takes a level of secrecy.

I still feel this way about my corolla: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuCFRaFWjwY

every day one must get human ready.

if you sit on an avocado will it hatch into a dinosaur?

status scares ppl.

observations that are rudimentary and unimaginative like "ron paul is crazy" can't pass for something well thought out.

everyone wants to write about singers.

the tables are always turning.

to be a time capsule

how to create one's own citadel.

a song that sounds like rain at night.

a consciousness so digitized he doesn't know how to live in his body anymore.

sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between good intuition and lack of discipline.

to like making ppl violate their NDAs.

finding it hard to regenerate.

misery is contagious.

to an extent one shouldn't care what others think of them. but then to an extent, holocausts happen.

the simplest answer.

whenever history tries to repeat itself, slap it.

comfortable lies.

spent too many years with melancholy to feel it now.

art is revenge of the weirdos.

hidden allies are the best thing ever

some people don't know the name, but they will.

the hijab isn't a piece of cloth, it's a relationship.

no matter how red a lip color purports to be it always ends up coral on me. the hunt for classic hollywood red is an ongoing personal first world problem.

bra straps are like socks. they get lost in the laundry. it helps to have bras that are all one color so then you can switch straps and not feel totally weird.

most people don't get past the pain barrier, they feel the pain and stop; the pleasure and the rhythm of excellence is past the "teething" period.

cutting hair is like dismembering appendages.

common problems with uncommon solutions.

favorite sweaters and old love letters.

when I see Asian kids silenced, ignored and otherwise treated like furniture by parents stringing them along at the mall, I want to pass them a note that says "don't worry, one day you'll be free."

chicken wishes.

How do you decorate a soul?

How do you trust someone who doesn't practice gratitude?

All a woman wants is a guy to fight for them.  All boys want everything to come easy.

you're only as relevant to a person as you want to be.

how many cookies can a salamander eat?

when you say something to someone and suddenly everyone is looking at you.

dinner parties are the exchange of pleasantries, courtesies and some beneficial knowledge, and depending on the crowd, salacious gossip.

the consequences of choosing an unconventional life.

when you feel shaken and all that can be heard is the wind, you wonder if you even exist.

writing is the act of preserving one's sanity.

when it's cold in the morning, remember you are the one with warmth to give.

time sheds light on the relevance of company kept.

people who steal your passion and throw it away.

an introvert with walls thicker than the west bank.

people who inherently seek to investigate the substance of a person.

how can you be alive with the people who make you feel dead.

kinds of capital.
money
assets
labor
social network
intellectual ability
spiritual wisdom
culinary skills
emotional comfort
experiential insight
sex appeal
creativity
reproductive capability

"my boyfriend made this lunch for me" said no woman i've ever met.

a passionate performance to an empty audience.

things you didn't know you needed until they were right in front of you.

suddenly you wake up and all your friends are lawyers.

it scares me when the words stop.

to understand but to not be understood.

"you don't want him, you're just yearning" she said.

Some people really can only hold one truth in their head at once.

The only people you should change yourself for are the ones who make you better.

how to break a mind.

neglect is as deadly as hate.

writers don't react to the world normally.  we're curious about things even in dangerous situations.

next on the news was a goat that did something, too.

why would I want to be like people that suck?

you only have as many options as you create.

if human choices were so simple you wouldn't have lawyers and psychologists.

even when you can have anything you want, the problem is wanting the wrong things.

if the stories dry up we turn to ash.

some days it's possible to think life is miserable and meaningless, and that's what religion and movies are for.

gorgeous dresses in the mud.

when you treat ppl like they owe you something, they don't want to give you anything.

it's a sad day when no song makes you want to dance.

a lot of strange things come out when you keep your hand moving across a page.

In the years before social disintegration, there were sudden rays of hope. 

most people go through life trying to avoid difficult choices.

dead people sure do give the best advice.

once you decide the war can't be won all at once, the battles become easier to fight.

mirrors say things.

we live in a selfish, self-destructive society and the only people who can heal it need to step up their game.

incomplete realizations.

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”
― Sylvia Plath

some songs you don't expect to become associated with certain memories.

there are such things as break up foods.

the curse of interesting people is alienation even among other interesting people

fairly uncomplicated people.

the mind is a prison with its own torture traps.

the mind is a prison with its own torture traps.

lingerie shopping for another sarah.

shredded dragon lace.

dead, wet roses

it's not art it's sanity preservation

meet them at the gates or let them slaughter you on the throne.

squandered thoughts.

a thousand years of roses.

trembling breadcrumbs on an uncertain path.

a mask of snow.

sudden chaos.

the kind of vengeance that reveals itself over time.

little candles burn for me.

peace of mind is short lived and hard won.

if you want to destroy a person's happiness make them talk about their dark space.

say too much and give it away or say nothing and gain nothing.

better to burn the roses than watch them die.

the mind can be an army.

citadels are built stone by stone but havens are a feeling.

People who like to tell me what freedom is.

Patria.

dhahir and batin

fantasticals and orneries

in the absence of bread knife, use scissors.

havens and citadels.

there's a fine line between feeling needed and feeling used.

doodles are the emotional map of a conversation.

girl meets boy.  boy devours girl's pet goat for Eid al-Adha.  girl finds new boy.

books under pillows.

Getting people to think differently is like giving them a root canal.

has to protect the process.

first loves and last wishes.

Most people are terrible listeners.  Take advantage of that.

just when you thought the greatest risk to your task is papercuts the paperclips are hiding among the thumbtacks.

compelling idiots.

be happy with the story that you're in.

ppl who take up unnecessary journal time. 

fought and lost but fought all the same.

sweet potato korma and pumpkin dal

cameras in war zones.

the invisible hand of fate just gave me the smackdown.

some emotions last longer.

the angel of death comes in sweeps.

I bring people through the ranks and then they forget I ever existed.

time for the angry boots.

"If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed" -Mark Twain

when the gospel choir in the church you wander into blows your mind and you think wow I didn't even have to pay for that.

Some ppl will find magic whereever they go.

carpet means you can't throw paint at the walls.

soft power is fine until the moment warrants a bitch slap.

Humans. They make you care about them despite your better judgment.

people who can't handle nuance call it contradiction.

My Chinese landlady keeps trying to hook me up with an Indian programmer in Vegas who used to date a Russian stripper. I think I like the Russian stripper.

some bridges are always burning.

It can take 30 miles to dance with the right person and 3000 miles to talk to the right person.

emotions are exhausting.

The kind of vengeance where you know you can help someone but you choose to do nothing.

when you text someone and they're not dead.

the older you get the harder it is to find someone who knows your story.

flakes.

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.”
-Edward Abbey

better make use of this baby face while i still have it.

I'm going to eat a sandwich.  And then I'm going to ignore you.  All of you.

Because a soul can travel into other lives it's important to remember that one has a body.

the illegal and the necessary

skill without ethics

glass towers

Brinkmanship (alternately, brinksmanship) is the practice of pushing dangerous events to the verge of—or to the brink of—disaster in order to achieve the most advantageous outcome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brinkmanship

more interesting than what one believes is why one believes what one believes.  (in reference to the theories of any thinker stemming from personal experience, a tangible thing that becomes an abstraction)

there are many parts of this dinner I do not trust.

Weapons of the small minded.

the lady in the stars.

the kind of vengeance that is sweet and slow.

opinions are very inconvenient.

The methods of rebels are always crude because they don't have the means of empire.

I don't mind someone being boring as much as I mind them trying to make me boring.

what can hide in a mind.

Ok I'm pissed.

I'm sick of people in the science professions and their superiority complexes. As a science person until my college years (placing at state science fairs at MIT, doing research at Harvard's biolabs, being generally hardcore), I have a tremendous and continuing appreciation for the sciences. I have also been humbled by the immensely valuable and very different critical thinking skills acquired in the humanities at a liberal arts college, and further humbled by the intricacies of human motivations through work with actors and the study of film. So, when science types say they listen to NPR and watch CNN, and don't need a political science degree to know what's going on in the world, I want to facepalm. Or when they mock someone who wants to study ethnomusicology, or when they say they can know just as much as a liberal arts major by reading a few books, they sound incredibly demeaning to not just an entire body of knowledge they realistically will not care to access, but to the people who develop and refine systems of thought that shape and define large-scale human experience - systems of thought that that their minds will never experience because it is a taught skill set that neither their upbringing nor their science education has given them. It is a skill set that enables people to deconstruct books and news and draw their greater implications in the context of socioeconomic / historical patterns.  It is acquiring the knowledge of how to learn.  Science types, because their field offers financial security and social prestige, confuse their status for knowledge.  And because the humanities gets very personal - it deconstructs a person and how one thinks to reshape how they should think - it's hard to correct a grown adult fixed in their worldview.

This isn't to say there are some science types that know how to learn.  They exist and they're wonderful, and they're not the kind of people to undermine the humanities because they know its value.  I'm upset about the types that are judgmental and have superiority complexes, people who don't know what they don't know.  Specifically, they take the piecemeal information and doses of speculation that comes from their social life, whether it's dinner parties or water cooler chats, and consider that an enriched understanding of the matters discussed when it is in essence just entertainment. 

I've been rolling with the anarchists before the academics knew they were relevant.

if wizards only spoke to men, who would know the dragons and elves?

if a girl can dream up a mother, a mother can dream up a child.

Euphoria in the middle of utter hopelessness.

Happiness on stilts above the murky water.

No day is complete without an act of compassion and an act of vengeance.

If you're going to go in, go in deep.

Wisdom without patience equals headache.

The awkward moment when you walk in on someone googling you.

Terrible lighting for a dance.

Even the strange have children.

The dead are better company than the living.

wisdom without patience equals headache.

people forget where their ideas came from.

rattle the normal

a slave keeps things close that make him feel free.

feelings, like people, can disappear.

Ramadrunk on Rooh Afza Limeade

sleep isn't a decision, it's a happening.

I was going to write some things but the point of them vanished when you went away.

The problem with people who think I am sweet is that they are wrong.
I always have to determine how much I am interested in preventing their inevitable disillusion.  Most people live within tame boundaries cultivated over years of socialization, and have never set aside their mind as a place of freedom whose contents when articulated out of necessity might still shock, disgust, challenge and horrify. 

To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her less
The nearer her they get.
~ Dickinson on Nature

Realists don't write poetry.

you're as old as the stuff that you read

a good guage of public essence

Some people really do have no inner life.

all peaks are lonely.

all communities have outer and inner guards.

Worse than being with someone who makes you feel alone is being with someone who doesn't know your value.

the academic fools himself that he isn't ruled by emotions.  the artist fools himself that he can't govern his.

there are songs that make you want to sing along and there are songs that make you listen.

vengeance is not enough, hope is.

the point where dual narratives become one.

people didn't understand how characters can become us

everyone has an opinion about how I should liberate myself.

before people get behind an idea, they get behind a person.

society is for instruction, solitude is for inspiration.

psychological prisons

need to be a smart mango.

real miracles are internal.

I think the lady next door has come to realize I am a werewolf.

As creative as people who like comfort and predictability can be.

Monsters are generally nicer than humans.

an invisible life.

People who confuse the whole truth w/ being told only what they need to know.

That conclusive feeling when the pen cap clicks "done!"

the mind is the only place that's free.

subtle intimacy is ten times more powerful than overt flirtation.

Remove nozzle, select grade.

Minivans, too, can drag race and win.

The problem with humans.

people who hold puppies and wear diamonds.

what if being an old soul is a reward and not a curse?

Never Endings.

prayer is where you regenerate the parts of you people have eaten.

why give someone a peacock who is colorblind

Strangers are easier to like.

Not all beasts live in castles.

Hot chocolate is like cuddling in a cup.

There are few things scarier than watching scientists try to make sense of history.

people only see what they've built themselves to see.

dragons think they're better than butterflies.

a perfect patch of sun.

some people are made of honey and some people are made of sauerkraut.

too much zinn and chomsky makes a girl cranky.

nice people let idiots live.

my hardass chinese landlady just tried to hook me up with a tenant in vegas.  dodge and evade strategy with authority figure somehow won me her respect over last 3 years.

this time with more dragons

to know something is going to happen but not when it's going to happen.

adventures are better in secret.

It's possible for dangerous things to become quaint.

It's hard to hold your tongue when you know people better than they know themselves.

It's important to save one's opinions for the times it's necessary to speak, speak thoroughly, until the point is evident and applied to the audience's decision making process.

The old Andalus and the new.

people who are live and let live don't lead, which leaves the leading up to those who want to assert their way of living on others.

Before a major life moment, it's important to plan one's scene of preparation and scene of aftermath in order to manage the story as it should be remembered.

To me, to be a friend is to give advice. To have a friend is to receive advice. I can be a friend for many people, but often the only friends I have are words on a page.

need more wall space.

too much subservience leads to subversion.

Sometimes your jinn won't stop talking.

some kids feel like they're either invisible or a nuisance.

a name can travel farther than a person.

People don't write songs about Massachusetts like they do about California.

people who don't take advantage of coincidences don't write history.

A curiosity in a curious place.

Once you break down a script, the jinns start talking.

Sometimes you have to put your face in the cake.

if you treat good people like enemies, they'll become enemies.

patriarchy makes good food taste bad.

Sometimes in an LAX bathroom you look up in the mirror and the person next to you is a Mennonite chick adjusting her headgear, too.

Some days you're just itching to use the word "tomfoolery".

Some people disappear faster than they should.

Some days make you feel like you'll own the world, and some days remind you of your eternal insignificance.

Logic deters drama.

People underestimate how hard it is to control the oddness.

it's enough of a feat to coexist with yourself.

It's important to keep weed like tendencies when you've convinced everyone you're a flower

When you're different people are always trying to invalidate you. Fuck them.

little do men know about aunty warfare.

there's only so much a chimpanzee can do with a rubix cube.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a discussion about women's rights in the Middle East will deflect into a rant against Israel.

It's a fine line between a challenging friend and a worthy foe.

real ninjas don't sweat.

There are friends who will make a movie with you, friends who will help you move and friends who will bust you out of an internment camp. 

Guys are terrible at understanding human relationships, unless they're strategists or dandies.

If you want to curse someone, wish that they have the ability to see things for what they really are.

today's commute seemed like it was production designed with a particularly high volume of white cars as a 605 entourage.

noisy airplanes are a nuisance, but once they were impossible.

celebrate what you can, when you can

funny how things you didn't know existed until recently start showing up all over the place.

only remembrance makes the past relevant

inner seas

opinions are expensive.

the best stares happen in stairwells.

it's easy to eulogize talent when they're gone. not so easy to keep them company in their darkest hours.

it's hard to find people worthy of loyalty.

what's the point of skill without courage.

you can't think about the options until you acknowledge the opportunity.

know, know hard, what you're giving up.

Everyone thinks the past is so far away.

The hobbits fought Galadriel's proxy war.

If a rose didn't have thorns people wouldn't understand its value. (so every rose needs its thorns.)

Once upon a time we had toasted ketchup for dinner. Now we feast on fries like kings.

who's idea was it to force pastel and plastic on babies?

100% of dictators are assholes but 70% of all assholes belong to the film industry.

if transformation were easy it wouldn't be profound.

sometimes empathy and a vivid imagination outweigh experience.

people who act normal when they're alone waste their freedom.

Make sure your sudden hatred for criticism isn't just dehydration.

there comes a point where the only people who want to talk to you are salesmen.

the only way to be free is to be anonymous.

everyone wants to own the hero after the work is done.

the only way to use the invisible shield is to know it's there.