Journal
By Lauren

It's Saturday morning and I'm puking
Tripping again
coming down from ecstacy and the gods shake their heads
two sicknesses at once slide through my being
Somebody's toilet's clogged, and I got nowhere to go but down-town
The dime store clerk is getting laid
She looks like a girl I used to know...
I grin because I am looking thinner
Beauty comes with heartache
destruction just comes

The band's playing tales of girls lost in this wilderness
cities bleeding with faith
This song scratches at my soul
I'm scarring
Dull syringes are filled with heaven
dance for dinner drugs and diapers
The night echoes I AM MY OWN SAVIOR
SAVIOR
SAVIOR
Save her

The Streets are busy-- all headlights and smog
gigantic eyes and oddly shaped heads that look like a Picasso painting
or a good hit of acid
the cathedrals are filled with lonely people
the walls look barer than they should be
cigarrettes have burned down to the filter
Smoke stains my eyes...

These reflections remain stagnant in my mind
like phones that won't ring anymore
front doors, open a crack
visions of myself twenty years from now
hallucinogenic enlightenment.

Interruptions.

.Exordium.
an excerpt from lauren's book-in-progress,
"The University of Mind"

One day you are traveling a distance, on a road you don't even know the name of, and some kind of prophetic influx of ideas sweeps over your entire being, causing a transposition of your soul. Somehow you completely change direction, and are able to rationalize it by rambling incoherently about the stars and their position in regards to your aura. You realize your status as an outsider at this moment, a wanderer, a subculture of your own. This seems appalling at first, but then provides explanation of your strange social existence. Why your only friends have been anarchists and nyphomaniacs, living in some sort of alterior world where crudeness is conversation and any addictions are celebrated personality characteristics. Why "normal" people often ask for your telephone number out of curiosity, but never call you.

You first reaction to this discovery may be disturbing, but when you yze the situation, you realize that you are no longer blind. You are enlightened, because you know the game well enough that you were smart enough to leave it. The fact that you do not truly fit in anywhere proves that you are not wearing any masks. You'd rather live in a commune or by yourself than with somebody who wears Tommy Hilfiger and knows all of the words to the "Thong Song", and because of that, you don't get along well with that many people. You listen to music because you enjoy it, not because everyone else in any "anti-conformist" group listens to it.

It dawns on you that you were always sort of strange, even as a child. Maybe you insisted on wearing a tutu everywhere you went, or made monkey noises when you got excited. Your mother took you to a child psychiatrist because your imagination was "a little too vivid". It turns out that you weren't schizophrenic, but an artist- even at that age. You probably came out of the womb with an afro and a hell of a lot of things to say, but held it in until the world could handle it. You come to realize this all at once, and you move to Oregon to live in the forest and climb trees. You write poems on dead leaves and sell them for 25 cents in the city. you dropped out of college because you wanted to learn.

This is your education.