I'd like to say upfront that I have never been that fond of poetry, which is odd for someone who likes music a lot. Maybe it comes from too many years of having to read it against my will in school or maybe I was exposed to too much of the dark side of it...I'm not sure. I do know I love Emily Dickinson, but that's about it.  My poetry expertise is seriously lacking.

 

Even so, I like _My Strength_ because it's sincere, often sweet and very much for anyone needing to find inner strength wherever they can. Sincerity and sweetness can go a long way for someone who truly needs both in their lives during trying times. All the proper poetry technique in the world means nothing to me if there is no heart to it and Debra George's poetry definitely has lots of heart.

 

My three favorites from this collection are "Anger" ("This will be the last that /Anger causes me dismay/Just keep in mind that /anytime you go to that dark place"), "Crazy" (Captured in the middle/ nothing's funny yet you giggle/ Feeling out of place but you/ still try to act civil) and "Disgust" (But you’re in another place, /and they take that as being rude.)* There is an honesty to them, an easy to relate to quality about the whole collection that I like a lot.

 

The author herself writes in the beginning: "I wrote this for all of those who encounter emotional challenges in their everyday life. We are all human and experience a spiral of different feelings." One of my favorite passages is from "Yearning: "...just the feeling alone is the entity that carries you."

 

_My Strength_ is meant for those of us who get exactly what she's saying. I'll keep this on my Kindle app because of that. After all, one reason many of us read is because it gives us great comfort to know we're not alone in our thoughts, even the most isolating or odd ones....

 

*Just a side note: I put the breaks in as they appeared in the Kindle edition on the

iPhone app.

Bread, specifically David Gates, is exactly what I need right now. I love his gentle voice (that goes so well with his kind face) and I need a good cry and if a person can't cry over songs like "If" and "Lost Without Your Love," then what songs can you cry over? I swear...if actresses need help getting ready for a scene where they have to sob, they should just listen to David Gates.

 

I found this article on him very interesting, especially since its focus is on "Diary" and why it's such a rare kind of song for pop:

 

“Diary” actually surged as high as #15 in 1972. Maybe the one thing that Gates overlooked when assessing the song is that is the lure of a great twist ending. It’s the kind of a thing that’s a little easier to pull off in a movie when there are a couple of hours to set the surprise up. It’s a much tougher task in a song, but Gates pulls it off while still delivering a resonant story of unrequited love.

 

http://www.americansongwriter.com/2013/09/bread-diary/

 

The lyrics to "Diary":

 

I found her diary underneath a tree
And started reading about me
The words she'd written took me by surprise
You'd never read them in her eyes

They said that she had found
The love she'd waited for
Wouldn't you know it?
She wouldn't show it

When she confronted with the writing there
Simply pretended not to care
I passed it off as just in keeping with
Her total disconcerting air

And though she tried to hide
The love that she denied
Wouldn't you know it?
She wouldn't show it

And as I go through my life
I will give to her my wife
All the sweet things, I can find

I found her diary underneath a tree
And started reading about me
The words began to stick and tears to flow
Her meaning now was clear to see

The love she'd waited for
Was someone else not me
Wouldn't you know it?
She wouldn't show it

And as I go through my life
I will wish for her his wife
All the sweet things she can find
All the sweet things they can find

It seems perfectly fitting that someone who writes and sings as David Gates does has remained married to his high school sweetheart since 1958. As the article above points out:

 In one of the noblest gestures under extreme duress in pop music history, somehow this guy musters up the strength to give this couple his blessings: “And as I go through my life/I will wish for her his wife/All the sweet things they can find/All the sweet things they can find.”

I think that's why I like the song so much...because it captures true love, which is wanting the person you care about to be happy, whether she feels the same for you or not.
\

Sometimes I actually fantasize about doing this:

 http://www.wikihow.com/Fake-Your-Own-Death

I don't know why I didn't know it's against the law to do so...so I guess that's out for me. I would never intentionally break the law, but I so want to just make a completely fresh start with my life. I've f**d it up very much.

I'm so out of sorts with my parents these past few weeks and someone I like now hates me (though she's too much of a lady to say so) and the more I try to do the right thing, the worse I make it. 

The road to Hell really is paved with good intentions. People can't read your mind or your emotions so all you have to show for who you truly are is how you behave and I behave like an idiot more times than not. 

Still, I will not give up on trying to be a better person and starting over:

  http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/emotional-fitness/201001/10-ways-and-reasons-you-can-start-over

I am truly enjoying this book. Entertainment Weekly critic Melissa Maerz reviewed it recently, giving it an A-:


For hardcore film obsessives, there's no movie so thrillingly obscure as one that doesn't exist. ''Lost movies appeal to our sense of doomed artistry,'' a film scholar tells our heroine, Ceinwen Reilly, in the absorbing debut novel Missing Reels. ''We build up heroic concepts of certain directors. Then, when their work is lost, we imagine what we're missing as even better than the movies we have.''

That sums up Missing Reels' romantic view of cinema nicely, although these words might be hard for Ceinwen to hear. She's living in New York during the 1980s, when the revival-house scene is booming. And when she's not dressing up like Jean Harlow to work as a shopgirl at Vintage Visions, or forcing her gay roommates/BFFs to watch Shanghai Express, she's hunting for her own lost classic, The Mysteries of Udolpho, a silent film that may or may not star her downstairs neighbor Miriam. When Ceinwen meets Matthew, a dashing British mathematician, Missing Reels starts to feel like a classic movie itself: There's a dramatic screwball romance and an exciting hard-boiled mystery, as well as one too many monologues. There's also enough trivia to delight any cinephile. Glancing at Ceinwen's outfit, Miriam says that if she really wanted to look like Jean Harlow, she wouldn't wear underwear.

The film-snob debates in this book will remind you why so many great relationships are built upon shared passions. That's true for Ceinwen and Matthew, and maybe also for Farran Smith Nehme and you, if you're a movie buff. Once named GQ's Film Blogger of the Year for her classic-film criticism site, Self-Styled Siren, Nehme knows how to mix real-life history with fictional directors, actors, and films, making the true stuff just as compelling as the imagined. By the end, you'll be desperate to see The Mysteries of Udolpho. So maybe it's a good thing that like all the best movies, it doesn't exist.

--November 28, 2014-Entertainment Weekly

Some great quotes about unrequited love...

Just like I don't think anyone in her right mind would "choose" to be gay knowing all the pain that goes with it, I don't think anyone ever chooses to fall in love (or like or crush or whatever you want to call it) with someone who doesn't feel the same. 

These are just some really "I get it" quotes about unrequited love. I've written about this before, but then deleted the posts, as if deleting words could somehow delete feelings...if only. :(


"Unrequited love is a ridiculous state, and it makes those in it behave ridiculously.”
― Cassandra Clare

 "What made you feel that stomach-churning agony for one person and not another? If Bridget were God, she would have made it against the law for you to feel that way about someone without them having to feel it for you right back.”
― Ann Brashares, Girls In Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood 

“There is nothing so mortifying as to fall in love with someone who does not share one's sentiments.”
― Georgette Heyer, Venetia 

“I think if you like somebody you have to tell them. It might be embarrassing to say it, but you will never regret stepping up. I know from personal experience, however, that you should not keep telling a girl that you like her after she tells you she isn't into it. You should not keep riding your bike by her house either.”
― Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
(I don't think it's ever a good idea to tell someone how you feel, but I found this interesting anyway.) 

“Let her remain where she is. A constellation away.”
― Eric Gamalinda, My Sad Republic 

 “I get what it's like to want something, but to try and force yourself to really believe that you don't.”
― Cora Carmack, Losing It

 “Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.”
― Cesare Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere: Diario 1935-1950
  
And from a song called "Tears You Apart" by She Wants Revenge:

It's cute in a way, till you cannot speak

And you leave to have a cigarette, knees get weak

 escape was just a nod and a casual wave

 Obsess about it, heavy for the next two days

It's only just a crush, it'll go away

 It's just like all the others it'll go away

 Or maybe this is danger and you just don't know

 You pray it all away but it continues to grow