lovella

after having spent an amazing weekend with kathleen and carrie, two of my best friends, i wrote this to them in an email and realized how fortunate i am to have friends like them, friends like all of you. thank you for making my life worth living, and i look forward to creating these kinds of freindships with you... take time to tell friends you love them

I am so overjoyed that i was able to spend time with you this weekend. fall in love with you, with us, thoughts, laughter, friendship, a new city, airplanes, ethiopian food, funny boys, poetry, new friends, blankets on the floor, hookah, snow, orange, digi cams, walking, starving, journaling, talking, loving, loving, loving. you make life worth living. it is a beautiful feeling, life, to have friends like you, friends who can read your journal, listen to your voicemails, sleep on your floor with blankets you told them not to, write down the stupid shit you say, wait for you while you pee, buy you chocolates, tell you what clothes to buy, listen to your poetry, chop off your hairs, approve of your boy, appreciate your necklace making skills, eat veggie food, put thier feet in their mouths, run to the airport at 3am, give you gifts, just really truly love you for all that you are and are not and will be and will never be. real friends.

posted by Lovella Rose @ 8:33 PM 1 comments

I went to this event the other night, where veterans read from this book called “The things they carried” by Tim O’ Brien I think. Then the veterans spoke a bit about their experiences. One of them was named Frank, who is a veteran from Vietnam who sits next to me at work. He works with the Iraq Veterans Against the War. We also listened to Jim who is a vet from this Iraq war. He is a member of IVAW. Jim was a medic and saw some really awful stuff. He talked about women in the military and how they are on the “front lines” too, but that there really are no front lines and that the war is everywhere. He was so passionate and talked about getting the soldiers out of Iraq now and how important it is for everybody to be talking about the war and how wrong it is.

On the way to work the next morning on the subway I started this short piece reacting to what Frank had said about his experiences:

23 years he choked on his words
holding Danny and Michael
deep inside his stomach
the stomach blasted
bandaged
aching with words
gurgling their names
turning
twisting in knots of silence
of promises
a cold glass of milk was all he’d ever ask for
to get him out of that place
a space no words can ever define

some of this might not make sense, so here are the explanations:
Frank couldn’t talk about his experience for 23 years
When his stomach got hurt, his friends Danny and Michael tried to help him and they were both killed right beside him
In the book, the author talks about how the soldiers make all these crazy promises to god and their mothers and themselves and he talked about what his promise was

damn its Friday at 6pm and I’m still at work, I gotta get out of here!!!

I’ll be in NYC on Sunday February 20th, please let me know if you are available for lunch or dinner that day because I will have some friends in town and I’m very excited for them to meet you!!! And if you want to go out on the town that night, we might be available…

Love you all!

posted by Lovella Rose @ 5:57 PM 0 comments