Worth It

Talking to my mom was an unpleasant experience today. Nothing I said was good, nothing was right. She kept discussing my brother's graduation from basic training in the navy and how they bought a camera for the ceremony- which everyone is going to. Both my parents were in the army and are big supporters of going into the military which I won't ever do because I simply do not hold an interest for it. They are still resentful of me because of that.

Nothing that she ever tells me is positive or uplifting. Today, she told me that my Dad might lose his job if the city decides at their meeting tomorrow to close down his department. If that happens, they will have to sell our house and move, possibly out of the state.

"I told your father that I grew up poor and I would go back to it if I had to." Mom told me on the phone.

I was steamed, "But what about Neil and Ethan [my two youngest brothers]? You can't possibly have them grow up like that!"

She just sighed on the other end. This is what I cannot stand about my mother. When put into a potentially disastrous situation, she won't get up and strive to make things better. She thinks everything will come to her, success and money will magically appear dropped on her lap from the sky. It won't and doesn't work like that.

"Maybe this is the universe's way of telling Dad to do something else." I told her.

Mom snapped, "Heather, for once, can you just mention God when you speak?"

Then I had to listen to how I shouldn't fool around with boys or have flings because everyone on campus will think I'm a slut, that I drink too much which I don't, that I'm young and the companies will love me and spit me out in 20 years, and that I shouldn't love boys who hurt me, that I keep returning to people who hurt me and I should just forget all about him.

I wanted to cry when she finished. Nothing I ever do is good enough for my parents. Nothing. They don't see any value in my internships- all they ask me is how much they pay. They think I spend too much money on clothes but don't understand that most of my wardrobe is garnered for a 20-something working at success.

They didn't even care when I told them I was made assistant stage manager for my school's upcoming play, the only thing they asked me was if it paid and when I said no, that extracurricular activities don't pay, they got quiet.

So when she finished, she asked me if I had anything to say to her.

"I had a dream you died last night." I blurted out. Neither one of us spoke. It was true- I did have that dream.

She thought I just said it to make her mad and our conversation ended shortly thereafter.

I chose the above quote because I plan to live my life just like that. It bothers me so much that my parents think I don't know how to live my life, that nothing I do can impress them unless there is money, big money, attached. I will be fine when I graduate- most likely, I will continue to work and live in California. My Mom is so against that, my Dad is warming up to the idea more and more as the days go by.

But this really needs to stop. I'm sick of them hanging up on me when I say something they don't like. I'm tired of petty fights over my uncertain future. I don't have the energy to sit there and make up reasons to be mad. We're adults here. This is beyond stupid and embarrassing.

I'm sad that I even have to blog about it.

Tomorrow I'm going to call her and have a mature conversation.



Goldfrapp's new single "Rocket", I love this song.

Love to you all,
Heather

Superhero(ine)

Coco Rocha makes a badass superhero, doesn't she?














I'm a tad behind on homework and all right now and am spending tonight and tomorrow playing catch-up with everything. It rained terribly today and I took a nice, long nap to the sound of the raindrops smacking my window.

Yesterday may or may not get a post of its own. "Prophetic" describes that day perfectly, and really the only way to understand it was to start at the very beginning 5am and end at 1am. Okay, yes I will definitely have to write about that one tomorrow.

I'm hooked on Skins right now. It's an amazing show about a group of teenagers living in Bristol, England. I think Cassie is my favorite though it's too soon to tell. She has this marvelous dreamlike serenity about her.

Love to you all,
Heather

If I Were

Thanks to Melanie's Randomness, another excellent blog, I was able to take a quiz that was much better and more fun than the usual generic Fbook test or 25 Things list.

I would love to know your answers! I really think this says interesting things about each person who takes it.

And to all of my followers and everyone who leaves behind heartfelt comments (everyone applies here)...you guys are so wonderful. Thank you for all of your feedback, especially during entries when I'm tossing my heart out on the blog table for examination.

Now, for the quiz!

If I were a month, I’d be October.
If I were a day of the week, I’d be Saturday.
If I were a time of day, I’d be 4:45 am.
If I were a planet, I’d be Jupiter.
If I were a sea animal, I’d be a starfish.

If I were a direction, I’d be a shortcut.
If I were a piece of furniture, I’d be a bed.
If I were a liquid, I’d be the third glass of bubbly champagne.
If I were a gemstone, I’d be a sapphire.
If I were a tree, I’d be a magnolia tree.

If I were a tool, I’d be a hammer.
If I were a flower, I’d be a magnolia.
If I were a kind of weather, I’d be the cool breeze on a nice afternoon.
If I were a musical instrument, I’d be a piano.

If I were a color, I’d be ivory.
If I were an emotion, I’d be completely charming.
If I were a fruit, I’d be an orange.
If I were a sound, I’d be wind chimes.
If I were an element, I’d be gold.

If I were a car, I’d be a Jeep.
If I were a food, I’d be a sandwich.
If I were a place, I’d be a bookstore.
If I were a material, I’d be silk.
If I were a taste, I’d be tart.
If I were a scent, I’d be lavender.
If I were an object, I’d be a pen.

If I were a body part, I’d be my eyes.
If I were a facial expression, I’d be the smile that comes from laughing so hard I cried.
If I were a song, I’d be “What It Feels like for a Girl” by Madonna.
If I were a pair of shoes, I’d be the heels you and everyone you know would be coveting for years.

And as she sits upon her place/Her innocence laid on her face

That title comes from a song I love, The Infanta by The Decemberists. It makes all of the bones in my body wake up, it's that good.

I don't know why, but I've been thinking about ee cummings' poem "I Carry Your Heart" for the last 24 hours straight. Let's have all of that beauty copied here, yes?



i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

-ee cummings



Let me ask something, in all seriousness here.

Say you have someone in your life (or you want to put back in your life) that makes you feel like doing the following things:

screaming until you can't anymore, laughing, crying heavily, hugging, kissing, potential bone jumping in the middle of the sidewalk, listening to, hitting, throwing beverages of the Cherry Coke variety at, excited to see and nervous to see and maybe feel like throwing up around...

Are you in love?

I keep telling myself no, because of so many circumstances. There's always time to blame and being busy with my own life and the million things I seem to never stop doing. And the fact that we haven't properly talked, like talk talked in ages.

But lately, I'm late with everything and can't focus. I'll always be busy. I guess I'm scared that one day, all this rush to get somewhere will cause me to miss out.

I just need to sit and think for awhile. I'm starting to sound like a broken record. Though I'm scared to because all of these thoughts make me feel like I'm out of breath.

It sounds like desperation, but as a girl who has considered herself long to be no man's woman, it is beyond a shock to my system. I feel like I've been dropkicked. For some time now.

It's so hard for me to pretend nothing is going on in my head, to keep moving and dressing up and wearing that same red lipstick and wondering, if when he sees me, do I ever look better than before?

Sometimes, knowing just a sliver of the mind would be nice.

In that case, I should focus more on my own.

Love to you all,
Heather

And Then You Came Along

This is a little story I wrote for my school's literary magazine. I would love to hear what you think of it, I really adore and appreciate all of your feedback. It means the world to me :)

Here it is:

You Can’t Fall in Love with Me
By Heather Taylor

My dream that night was filled with midnight blue and royal purple speckled skies. The decayed field I so often stood still in was alive with the most aquamarine shaded of blossoms.

I am running for the first time through this field with its sharp blossom petals sticking me in my shins, my blushing knees, my bruised ankles. It doesn’t matter. You are at the center of the field, on a beautiful ivory swing that hangs from a magnificent oak tree. The tree of life, all lit up with vermilion apples, dripping sweet juice from the branches onto your hair, the color of rust and copper mixed together.

Oh, you remain my joy still Cliff, even if I am not yours. The dreamer in me sees our happily ever after in my diamond clouded blueish green eyes arrested by the beautiful, if not injuring, fantasies in my mind. In my reality, I am the dreamer. Here in my sleep, I am the realist, the girl who is more prone to letting her tears flow and resigned to the loves of my life leaving. This realist says that I am in lust with being toyed around. A wooden puppet that thrives on the strings you pulled on me, yanking me in all the directions you loved. Maybe I should not want that feeling, but the realist in me was too late. The diamonds hardened my pupils and I got lost in their brilliance.

Cliff is wearing a pair of worn blue jeans and a simple white shirt. I am running in the thinnest of beige nightslips Gentle breeze tickles my arms. I am running. I told you I would meet you halfway.

You asked me why I was so wonderful to you and the answer came courtesy of the dreamer, because you are special. If you listened to the realist, she wouldn’t have said anything. As a puppet, your next move would be to pull my strings.

My long hair does not fly in the breeze because it is somehow shorter. Those flower petals must have freed my scalp with their velvet scythes. I look behind me and fat strands of yellow are wrapped around the stems of all of the flowers.
I should have never said what I did. I didn’t mean to have you walk away.

You do know I didn’t mean that, right? That it was the puppet in me, trying her best to respond the way you wanted it to be? For years, I’ve been slowly changing how I say words to men. How I say what they like and lock what I feel away in my mind. Not my heart. That’s becoming a place that’s filled with people I can love at a distance.

I should have never looked back at my hair. Cliff has gotten off of the swing and is walking away in slow motion. He doesn’t turn around to look at me. How unlike my old evenings when he used to try to say words to me and I slid onto bright red toboggans with my hands against my eardrums. Hear no evil.

I want to catch up, I feel like I need to want to catch him. My feet stay rooted in the soil, bare and squishy and streaked with thin lines of dirt, dark as coal. I was a naughty girl once. Now just a girl who wants to scream until her vocal cords break apart when she thinks of you.
Cut my strings, free the wooden puppet girl.

I sit down in the blossoms and pluck several. My fingers well up with crimson blood, but I blithely wind the sky blue wonders together in a circle, fit for a wrist. They become a corsage. It is my new shield. In the Age of Loneliness, without my parents or brother or sister to fight my battles, only I can protect myself.

The shield of flowers smells so sweet. Lilac scented with just a hint of me. I curl up in a fetal position and stare at the speckled royal queen’s lavender sky as the flowers continue to scalp me with their silky petals.

Would being the dreamer right about now be the better me to be?

Some of the story was borrowed from real life.
Though I wonder if he'd ever know.

Love to you all,
Heather

Alright Everyone, Gird Your Loins!

Blast from the 2006 past tonight. I've been thinking about The Devil Wears Prada all day (please read the book, the ending is so much better) specifically Anne Hathaway's wardrobe in the film.

That, and Stanley Tucci's amazing one-liners. "Let me know when your whole life goes up in smoke. Means it's time for a promotion."



I'm having a love affair with her shoes, that's for sure. The entire outfit is mad hot, with all those gold accents.



You know, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it. This coat got an "ehh" reaction from me. It was okay. Cute and functional, but nothing like the bad boy only a scroll below these words.



Does this look ever get enough credit and photo opps? I think not. If she had worn her hair up in a bun with a scarf, I probably would have passed out at the sheer chicness of it all. That jewel tone color is awe-inspiring.



I loved this outfit so much. I just have a thing for white collared shirts, black skirts and layered strands of pearls. A fact, about me for sure.



Oh, and blogspot?

That's all.

Love to you all,
Heather

Rebel Girl

How many girls are so lucky to have three men at one point or another in their life who remind that girl of her longtime crush, James Dean?

I don't know any girls, but me in this category.



Wish I knew where the feeling came from or where it originated. I can't remember, it's like I woke up one morning and just knew, as only a 17 year old could.

Watching his movies, buying a poster to adorn my walls with (see above photo for how it looked), and this old puzzle I put together of him. I could not explain my fascination with him to my questioning parents. That's like trying to explain a weepy dream to someone and that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you realize they don't understand because it wasn't their dream.

Of the three guys, only one has stayed with my mind all these years. The high school boy of course. Not to sound like a weirdo writing this, but we really do affect the lives of others even if we know it or not.



Overnight, this little note I penned blew up on Tumblr. This is a condensed version of something that happened a few years ago with this guy I graduated from high school with. I'd make it more detailed, but sometimes simplicity speaks louder than details.

Confession:
There was a guy in my senior year h.s. class who reminded me of James Dean. Goddamn, he was beautiful. I was so shy around him. I never spoke to boys back then. He always complimented me and I blushed really badly.
2 years later, I kissed him.
Still the best kiss ever, despite the fact that I was drunk and wearing a pink and black wig.



James and Julie Harris in East of Eden, definitely my favorite film of his. Their chemistry is like no other when they are on screen together.



So gorgeous.

Love to you all,
Heather

Goodbye

Alexander McQueen, rest in peace.
3/16/1969 - 2/11/2010.



Yours was the kind of brilliance and creativity that will never be forgotten.

Love to you all,
Heather

I Love You, Franny Glass.

I've loved her for years, but it wasn't until two weeks ago that I reread this magnificent book. Now I carry it with me everywhere. Even moreso since Salinger's passing.
How often does a person read a book only to find their every thought and feeling at one point or another reflect back to them on the page?

Observe what I found that resonated with me.

“‘Oh, it’s lovely to see you!’ Franny said as the cab moved off. ‘I’ve missed you.’ The words were no sooner out than she realized that she didn’t mean them at all.

She found herself looking at Lane as if he was a stranger, or a poster advertising a brand of linoleum, across the aisle of a subway car.

“I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect…”

“There’s an unwritten law that people in a certain social or financial bracket can name-drop as much as they like just as long as they say something terribly disparaging about the person as soon as they’re dropped his name…”

“I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting.”

“Just because I’m so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else’s values…I’m ashamed of it. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of splash.”

This book makes me feel alive and sparkling! The best kind of feeling that I haven't had for some time now.

Though I must say, I always did find it oddly romantic that Lane kisses her coat lapel.
It always reminds me of a boy I went to high school with who signed my yearbook with very kind and thoughtful remarks and then kissed it and gave it to me.

I also like the Zooey portion of the book, but love the Franny part best.

Briefly, I'd like to mention that as of late, I've had many internship opportunities and settled on one yesterday, with the Fender Music Foundation. I'm so very excited, everything went wonderful at the interview and I'm all on track to help out with social networking. Yay! :)

Love to you all,
Heather

99 Days

You know what?

On this road to adulthood, the journey to growing more mature, responsible, and wise, I've regressed. So very often I feel like a little girl playing dress up. Make believe I'm grown up for the day.

It creeps in in subtle ways that I'm not an adult yet. I giggle at everything, eat my sandwiches without the crusts, fidget at my desk during class without using my Blackberry as a method of fidgeting, bite at my nails, and still make collages of photos I like.

I have moments where I'll be dressed up, talking with adults around the water cooler (we have one at my job) and it all feels very perfunctory. I'm not going into adulthood willingly, you'll have to drag me kicking and screaming into it.



I love nothing more than to sit in bed and listen to some good music.



And write and daydream. Doug Funnie and I are on the same wavelength.



I have a friend Phoebe, who I consider to be one of the wisest friends I have. I told her about how I felt about growing up and feeling like I'm not really there and that these days, more than ever, I feel the need to goof off. She told me that she went through something very similar herself, that most people go through this on the way to becoming an adult.

Good to know. See, this is where the differences lie between my friends and my parents. My friends just tell it like it is because they're feeling all the same emotions I am and sure we're freaked out, but we all find beauty in simple things and just love being in each others' company. My parents just say to act like an adult, network, and always, always tell me I want a job with lots of money. Cause money = happiness. Cause my life is just oh so fulfilled and great when my wallet is fat.

There is no success life line on my left hand and a thin one that tapers off on the right one.

My head and heart life lines, however, are long and deep.

Fine by me.

Love to you all,
Heather

Go Ask Alice

Miss Mia Wasikowska in this month's Teen Vogue. She's absolutely stunning! With this haircut, she reminds me enormously of Mia Farrow (circa Rosemary's Baby) and she has the most incredible doe eyes.

Beautiful.

I need a copy of this magazine in my life.









This is a short one today- I haven't posted since Saturday! Crazy how school can take over everything in your life.

Love to you all,
Heather