Lord, save me from my self-destructive habits.

Je suis seul à nouveau

"Do you ever feel that being really special means that you are going to be very lonely?" S. said on the phone to me tonight. If only, if only...everything I've ever blotted down in half-filled journals and neglected fairy tales is about little else. Perhaps it is the fate of all of us who are creative, whose hearts live in the forest, to love too much and give too much, and ache when we aren't loved and cherished as fiercely in return.

"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper the sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given your sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight."

Someday you will find yourself holding back tears amidst the cluttered racks of a dusty, darkened bookshop. An older, spectacle-wearing gentleman will sigh uneasily as he squeezes his way past, carrying a dozen titles. Your heart is so heavy, you clutch onto the Medieval History shelf and pray your knees don’t buckle beneath you. This is when it calls out to you from three hardcovers down. The book. The book you require to loosen your weary soul, and rest your troubled mind. It’s a book that, three months before, you would have immensely enjoyed and devoured. But, like all perfect and predestined things, it is at this exact moment you most need it. Wisdom revealed, innermost doubts and hopes articulated on each and every yellowed page. A book full of everything you thought you lost or buried.

If you have yet to experience this liberating moment, don’t anticipate it. Don’t rush out and look for it the next time you feel you’re slipping away from sanity. It will happen when you least expect it, when you didn’t even realize it was what you were seeking.

How to Live Like a Parisian

Wake up whenever you’d like, go to bed whenever you’d like
Make coffee, lazily put jam on your baguette
Sit on your porch and smoke, while reading Sartre
Sit on your porch and smoke, while reading anything
Think in French
Wear stripes
Wear black
Wear scarves on your head, all the better if they are Hermes
Have no money, but spend it anyways
Edith Pliaf records
Godard movies
Carry around a flask
Wander around the city and hear people murmuring,
“Oh, there goes that Mademoiselle, something about her is so

Je ne sais quoi"

mes jours, mes rêves

I'm reeling around Mercury,
Jubilating across constellations
Swimming in and out of galaxies,
"Don't ever go," I'll whisper as I shoot out
Across the stars

(but you've already gone

to be another's cartographer)

My lashes, dripping wet,

And no gravity to let new planets

Fall.

Je suis une fille perdue loup

Once upon a time my favorite word was vicissitudes.

(Do other people classify time by what their favorite word was then?)
I devoured books and organized them in piles.
These books make me nostalgic.
These books make me almost happy.
These books make me irrevocably sad.

I turned off the lights, shimmied under the feather filled duvet, and turned on my flickering book lamp. Squinted to see the words swimming in front of me, and turned each page with fervent anticipation. These were the days when no author was too long winded, no story too ambitious, and I had enough passion for the written word to finish every chapter in the space between dusk and dawn.

Now my favorite word is ineffable.

But I haven’t finished a book in months. My mind wanders all over the first page, my eyes glance up at every noise. I am bored, listless, and make it through the first half of On the Road on sheer will power alone. I would have read this books in five hours even two years ago, I remind myself with great disappointment.

Poetry I still devour, but only because I need the words themselves to make sense of things. Words are the only thing I experience, understand, grasp. Don’t ask me what effervescent, woebegone, opulent means. I can’t define words, I feel them. I see them with glassy, starlit eyes. (Ask someone what their favorite word is sometime, it will explain almost too much about who they are. Even more so if they don’t have one at all.)

Will I ever find a cure for this apathy? I press on to March, hoping that spring might awaken my book lust once more.

"Courage," the Grey Wolf said,

"It doesn't come easily,

But it's what you need.

No one should keep their ghosts as pets."

Hello, I'm Tiffany Wolf. It's my first month as a certified gypsy. I'm sad to say that I spent the first week of it in a rather pathetic bout of depression and self-loathing. When you've spent so much time as a sad person, it takes a whole lot of bravery to teach yourself to be happy.

Even moreso, when you've spent so much of your life as an unpaid actress, being forced to play a role, it takes courage to figure out what even makes you happy to begin with. But I'm determined that the words I write won't be fit for a Shakespearean tragedy, as been a common theme in all past projects.

What is making me happy on this eleventh day of February? Heart shaped earrings, bangles, Earl Grey tea from teacups, and Dolly spinning the afternoon away. Mornings spent exploring my new neighborhood, and evenings getting lost in stacks of dusty books.

But I'm not ready to give up all my somberness. As Sally Sparrow once said, "sad is happy for deep people." Poignant sadness. Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie sadness.

‎"Your skin is something that I stir into my tea
And I am watching you
and you are starry, starry, starry"

Oh, hello there.

I am Tiffany Wolf:

Gypsy

Explorer

Book Reader

Girl

Would you like to go on an adventure?