i'm currently homeless and real busy, hence the lack of updates.

for now, you should check out my mom's blog. i just updated it with a new layout so if you love donuts, my family, or moms, you'll probably be thrilled to see it.
-h

texture study 2, originally uploaded by mrpittman.

and i'll be the first to cross every line you've drawn
last to admit that i've done anything wrong
scared to move because i always hit something
i hit walls, hit the roof, hit the blank spots in my head
but all the stupid things i have to say
they all skip town when you come around

i'll keep my mouth shut because i don't want to spook you
and i'll keep my heart shut because i'm searching for excuses
like 'i've been hurt before' and 'everything i touch just falls apart
when the truth is i'm just scared to touch
porcelain, glass, and questions i could never ask

ballet recital., originally uploaded by mrpittman.

...He thought he saw the Great Dance. It seemed to be woven out of the intertwining undulation of many cords or bands of light, leaping over and under one another and mutually embraced in arabesques and flower-like subtleties. Each figure as he looked at it became the master-figure or focus of the whole spectacle, by means of which his eye disentangled all else and brought it into unity--only to be itself entangled when he looked to what he had taken for mere marginal decorations and found that there also the same hegemony was claimed, and the claim made good, yet the former pattern thereby disposed but finding in its new subordination a significance greater than that which it had abdicated.

...wherever the ribbons or serpents of light intersected minute corpuscles of momentary brightness: and he knew somehow that these particles were the secular generalities of which history tells--people, institutions, climates of opinion, civilizations, arts, sciences and the like--ephemeral coruscations that piped their short song and vanished. The ribbons or cords themselves, in which millions of corpuscles lived and died, were the things of some different kind. At first he could not say what. But he knew in the end that most of them were individual entities.

If so, the time in which the Great Dance proceeds is very unlike time as we know it. Some of the thinner more delicate cords were the beings that we call short lived: flowers and insects, a fruit or a storm of rain, and once (he thought) a wave of the sea. Others were such things we think lasting: crystals, rivers, mountains, or even stars.

Far above these in girth and luminosity and flashing with colours form beyond our spectrum were the lines of personal beings, yet as different from one another in splendour as all of them from the previous class. But not all the cords were individuals: some of them were universal truths or universal qualities. It did not surprise him then to find that these and the persons were both cords and both stood together as against the mere atoms of generality which lived and died in the clashing of their streams...

The whole figure of thier enamored and inter–inanimate circling was suddenly revealed as the mere superficies of a far vaster pattern in four dimensions, and that figure as the boundary of yet others in other worlds: till suddenly as the movement grew yet swifter, the interweaving yet more ecstatic, the relevance of all to all yet more intense, as dimension was added to dimension and that part of him which could reason and remember was dropped further and further behind that part of him which saw, even then, at the very zenith of complexity, complexity was eaten up and faded, as a thin white cloud fades into the hard blue burning of sky, and all simplicity beyond all comprehension, ancient and young as spring, illimitable, pellucid, drew him with cords of infinite desire into it’s own stillness.

He went up into such a quietness, a privacy, and a freshness that at the very moment when he stood farthest from our ordinary mode of being he had the sense of striping off encumbrances and awaking from a trance, and coming to himself.

waldo. katie. (UPDATED), originally uploaded by mrpittman.

just a picture. while i think of things to write.

were i some sleeping adam, to wake and find you resting at my rib, to share these things that God has done, to walk you through the garden, to council your steps, your bewildered eye, your heart so slow to love, so careful to love- that i stepped up my aim and became a man. though He made you from my rib, it is you who is making me, humbling me, destroying me, and in doing so, revealing Him.

wake up new york
we'll drive five thousand awkward miles
we'll drive until we find your smile

east coast on parade
it's pretty out the window
but beauty in the passenger seat

i came knocking at your door
came throwing rocks at your window
i come kicking down the door now
i come with your smile

sleep tight savannah
wake up more beautiful
always more beautiful

2.
picture of us
far away form home
you shoulder's on mine
but your heads the other way
its a perfect picture
of the way you stand today

so don't sing
because it breaks my heart
to hear your voice
if your not singing about me
and dont pose for my photographs
if you're going to look at him tonight
don't drive me across the country
if you left my heart in tallahassee

we've seen the whole east coast
but the only thing worth packing for
is the thing that hurts me most
i'd rather have you breaking my heart
than have it wholly to myself

here i built fortress in the woods to escape from being there
here i learned to love cigarettes and rebellion
here i escaped into my self-pity and fear
here i cried and laughed alone

here the shooting stars meant that you loved me
here nothing had to make sense
here the memories were palpable and unbearable
here i never wanted to leave to go back to my room

here, where the azalea bushes srpang and memories of innocence went to rot
here, where the watching windows could not see me
here, where the cinder block headstones held up the weight
here, where the world stepped off my shoulder

here, here alone i feel at home

• watch your mouth - derek webb / sandra mccracken (i hardly ever say to you, the thing I really mean)
• what you want - derek webb (greatest song on the face of the earth.)
• the nicest thing - kate nash (i wish you couldn't figure me out, but you'd always want to know what i was about)
• october - rosie thomas (some days when she is slightly down, tell her it’s okay to frown- it makes you just fall more in love with her)
• no one's gonna love you - band of horses
• i wish that i could see you soon - herman dune (and i'm like... the sooner the better)
• to make you feel my love - bob dylan / derek webb and sandra mccracken
• trade my love - sandra mccracken (i would trade my love, for all your fears)
• springtime indiana - sandra mccracken (never been good with my thoughts, even worse with my words, but you read like familiar poetry that i have never heard)
• brightest - copeland
• one who knows - dar williams
• he stopped loving her today - johnny cash (buy it on itunes. not the other guy's version)
• wanted - andrew osenga (download the free EP)
• i want you (she's so heavy) - the beatles
• miserable at best - mayday parade
• perhaps she'll wait - bebo norman (fumbled them around until they fell, much safer ground- just keeping to myself)
• there cannot be a close second - copeland (so forgive me, cause i don't know what to do, when you look at me)
• brothers on a hotel bed - death cab for cutie (the whole albums Plans should be on here)
• oh, it is love - hellogoodbye
• such great heights - iron and win
• polaris - jimmy eat world (i look at you and know, the world was beautiful)
• hanging on for hope - the new amsterdams (her smile will make you weak, and proud)
• we are not as strong as we think we are - rich mullins (they say that one day joshua made the sun stand still in the sky, but I can't even keep these thoughts of you from passing by)
• mixtapes/cellmates - rocky votolato
• all my life - rosie thomas
• just to see you smile - tim mcgraw

jolly jo's child care is down the street from my house. it lists over on a hill in midtown, servicing the low end of the income scale, people who need to leave their kids somewhere while they shuffle carts at publix. there is a pair of plastic "f-14 tomcat" bouncy seats in the yard, allowing the children to indulge in fantasies of shooting down early 90's iranian jets during the gulf war. there is also a punching bag. i have never seen any children there, but i imagine there are a number of very tough pre-schoolers that spend their days 'going to the mattresses' and sitting in the plastic jets making explosion sounds with their mouths as they fight to maintain america's interests in the middle east.

before the sun faded the paint on the playground equipment, before we all grew up, children played there while i made my own playdough at a church that saw 8,000 people on most sundays. this church has indoor playground equipment and an arsenal of slip-n-slides that were rolled out once a month to allow the middle class baptist kids of florida to enjoy themselves amidst the cacophony of bruised knees and hose water.

i think the kids is midtown needed the punching bags more than they needed air conditioning and regularly maintained play equipment. while i was listening to threats of "we can call your father" these kids were getting a head start education in the heartache of being alive. they took out their frustration on a punching bag, i ate my own playdough. and while no one ever hit me and i saw my father on a regular basis, they knew far more about life than i did. at that point i probably could not have handled the knowledge they were acquiring, but it makes me wonder exactly how much you can shelter a child before you start to harm him.

said that girl is gonna ruin you
and i only hoped you would
now i guess i'm spoiled
looking for a colorful girl
in a black and white world
what about that other girl
she's pretty when she's wasted
and tonight she's pretty wasted
but she's back in the hallway
making out with strangers

dear 2007,
you win.
--hunter

dear 2008,
i am going to kick your ass.
--hunter

all my life i have been sitting here, heart in my throat, eyes open, waiting for the return of innocence and the arrival of love.

and love passed by. i felt its grace by my side and its head on my shoulder. i found that it would not fill me. i am just a little paper cup filled with all the wrong things and burst at the seams, unable to be full of anything.

but i have tasted its flavor and watched in horror as it ran through me, searching for something to take hold of, but finding only tears in the seams.

all my life i will be sitting here, heart in my throat, eyes open, waiting to return to innocence and for the return of love.

all my life i have been sitting here, hands shaking, legs pacing, mind spinning-- waiting for the advent of hope and the courage to open my eyes.

i am just a pinwheel. twirling frantically and lopsided, all flashes of color and illusions of motion. always in motion but never arriving, toes dug into the ground.

and i saw hope but it spun me around. comfort came on the wind and filled my paper sails, fleeting, deceptive, turning me upside down. upside down, praying to be righted but not knowing which way to turn with eyes closed.


don't leave me sitting here all my life, mind spinning, legs pacing, hands shaking... waiting for the advent hope and mustering up the courage to open my eyes.

all my life i have been sitting here, pretending that i am strong, keeping my chin up, buckling under the weight of my own uncertainty.

i am light in spite of the crushing uncertainty, it is not enough to anchor me. i am just a discarded receipt tossed around in the wind. a faded slip of paper, telling stories of once being valuable, once being attached to a name. now spent and useless,
littering the ground, i am crumpled and dreaming of the days before i was only a remnant of a transaction between two people.

all my life, sitting here. all my life with my chin up and my heart buckling... pretending.