Harmless

I am not mean

enough

——————— or honest enough

to stew in

real

depravity.

Eyes Alert

So much to see

So many people to be

Artwork by Dawn Arsenaux and Mari

Little Girls Lost

She is

glitter-coral nail polish

chipping

like the white on an aging picket fence–

no more lavender ribbons

or dainty satin shoes

to protect

her virgin skin

from the dirt

of the earth.

Just the

picked

and peeled remains

what used to be

brand

new

“Little Girl Lost” by Angie Hoover-Hillhouse

For more information on artwork, click images.

Art Heap: Sunday Funnies

Pug Love by Retrowhale

We Are Creating The Future by Pope St Victor

Let’s do Lunch by Sammy Slabbinck

Danz Trio by Marco Puccini

Aesthinia by Alejandra Giraldo

Letters from Limbo

I don’t know

if I am looking in

or looking out

that window in the middle of the sunset

but sometimes

my ears melt

into my teeth

and I am content

to be a thing

swimming

inandout

Oblivion

“Halfway to Heaven” by Angie Hoover-Hillhouse

Artwork: “Fight or Fright” by Dessi Terzieva

A Wrinkle in Time

in the corner,

where the top lip turns into the bottom lip,

is a fine crease

that reveals the laughter

and devastation

of life already lived–

it is not red and tough

like the scar of a healed incision,

but gentle and strange–

and sometimes concealed

flattering lighting.

And although it is elusive

it is there to stay–

a faint reminder of the years

resting in lost

memories.

“A Wrinkle in Time” by Angie Hoover-Hillhouse

Artwork: Valbona by Dessie Terzeiva

Art Heap: All Mixed Up

Mental Traffic Sign by Filmout

Sister by NIcholas Lockyer

Spirit They’ve Vanished by Greg Seiber

Saturn’s Guilty Conscience by David Delruelle

Dif-02 by Hugo Barros

Loaded Quotes: Post Modernist Indecisiveness in The Bell Jar

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Europe and Africa […]

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

– Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

———————————————————————

At 24, I related to Sylvia so much that it frightened me. ( If you’re not familiar, her story doesn’t end well). I felt her words in my bones. The fear of death without growth, the heaviness of responsibility, the inclinations to find life both meaningless and meaningful… I saw myself becoming her: A lonely, deflated, narcissist sipping on an agonizing cocktail of self-loathing and superiority. I think maybe that is what drove me to start making decisions in my own life.

What I understand now is that the right decisions are only right because you’ve made them. Whether you decide to be a missionary in Africa, or a pinterest-obsessed house-wife, you will be OK. The problems arise when your mortality weighs on you so heavily, that you neglect to make any decision at all. Maybe if I don’t choose, life will stop moving and I can just stop dying. But it won’t, because no one get’s out of this world alive, and if you don’t make your own decisions, Time will make them for you.

Don’t get me wrong. I can’t order at a McDonald’s without calling 12 friends for advice first, but I am much more capable of dealing with the big stuff in my life now that I realize I will die, and I have to make my peace with not having enough time to do ALL THE THINGS! Decisions-real decisions– require sacrifice and commitment. So, there is no moving forward without accepting the death of those lives that will never belong to you.

Here’s to breaking out of Limbo

– Angie