I wish there were a way for me to casually ask a person “Hey, do you know of any good psychics around?” without it sounding like I might be someone who wears a lot of velvet and/or chokers in her spare time.
I write things. I don’t know what to call them. I’ve never been good at decisions. So, when I write, if I write, anything making it onto paper goes under the heading of the current date and time. Numbered days.
November 30, 2010
November 22, 2010
Holding That Grudge
My biggest regret ever is holding that grudge. If I had just realized how unimportant the people who hurt me really were, I could have moved on so much quicker. I could have been happy again so much faster.
[Male, 23]
Okay, bro. I feel ya. I’m-a hold on to my most recent grudge just a few more days. Promise. I see what you’re saying, though.
July 8, 2010
Elitist Jerk Move #28
I dislike Tegan & Sara. I just do, internet. Don’t try to convince me otherwise.
Twee covers of the Boss don’t need to exist in my musical landscape.
This conversation re: T & S happened the other day:
me: I hate that girl.
friend: You know it’s two chicks, right?
me: No. And, I don’t care to know.
I’m not sure why, you know, THE NAME OF THE BAND never gave away there were two people in it. Even though the aforementioned friend had forced me to watch the video linked above before, for whatever reason (stupidity), I just figured out, like, a week ago Tegan and Sara comprises *two* ladies who annoy my ear parts.
See? Jerk move.
April 6, 2010
april 6, 2010 11:07 a.m. - write for ten
10:56 a.m.
It was late, they were drunk and hungry, and she had the sudden idea to make cheese tortillas for everyone.
“I can walk over to my place in two minutes you guys, seriously.”
No, they said. It’s too late.
There were brief and overlapping discussions about which pizza places might be open at 4 a.m. In the end, it was decided no food purveyors were available, save the steel-plated gyro stand across from the main string of bars downtown.
She darted out the door to the protests of her friends. They realized the beer in her veins made negotiation impossible.
The walk ended up taking more than two minutes, as the police had set up a DUI checkpoint in between the two apartment complexes. She, freshly 21 and still enjoying the novelty of it, breezed through the barricades, shoulders back and head pointed forward. The officers seemed not to notice her precise footsteps.
She retrieved the needed supplied from her refrigerator, using only the dim light inside as guide. Her roommates would not have appreciated the late intrusion.
Once back amongst her friends, she stood at the stove, one hand on her hip, flipping the tortillas with her bare hand as she had watched her grandmother do hundreds of times.
In the morning, the pads of her fingers were red and tender from where they had touched the hot, flat circles of flour.
April 5, 2010
april 5, 2010 10:33 a.m. - write for ten
Haven’t done one of these for a while:
10:21 a.m.
the pain of this, the idea of me leaving, is sharper than the leaving itself will be.
i think of you, at home, scrambling to answer the phone when i call you at my lunch break, a ring of cigarette smoke at your head and our two cats running never-ending circles at your feet.
i’m pretty sure you will survive.
it’s the little things, the nuances of my eventual departure from the life we have built together for the past five years that are the most difficult to think: for example, the extraction of your extensive leonard cohen collection from my beat-up old computer, or the t-shirts i’ve bought you, soon to be more tangible to you than me, folded lonely and clean in the dresser we will no longer share.
10:31 a.m.
(his hand, his smokes & the ashtray i bought him when he moved in.)
March 21, 2010
jan 9, 2009 8:53 a.m.
jan 9, 2009 8:53 a.m.
with the long-limbed grace of seasoned danseur
you turned slowly from the dark visage of your patio at night
to peer at me from the corners of your eyes
you’re still tall
i rose up on the balls of my feet
my own lackluster relevé
neatly
but gracelessly
closing the space between your pursed lips and mine
January 19, 2010
jan. 19, 2010 9:23 a.m. - Write For 10
9:03 a.m - 9:13 a.m.
this weekend, i met up with old friends at an old haunt.
part of the evening i was on duty, as it were, an expensive camera attached to my right hand. the remainder of the time was mine to reminisce over clinking glasses and amplifier feedback.
a friend recounted a memory he had of me.
timewarp, 2004: a group of us were returning home after the bars closed. in my stupor, (i would never, ever have the courage to act as such without many pitchers of good, black stout) i crawled into another friend’s bed. this particular friend had long weathered repeated and unrequited romantic advances from yours truly. he was - and is - a nice kid, too nice to tell me to lay off.
as we were falling asleep, i was whispering a string of praises to him. the apartment was a studio, without the (blessed) interference of walls and doorways. evidentaly, what i was saying could be heard clear across the room.
i said, in what i’m sure i thought effectively encapsulated my affection for this person; “have you seen the way the light moves through you?”
he, in response, “no, i don’t think i’ve ever seen that movie.”
those listening that night managed not to laugh.
hearing this story re-told friday, i managed not beat myself up too much about my obvious, and for the most part, now exorcised naivete.
October 5, 2009
october 6, 2008 10:28 a.m.
I don’t like Mondays.
I’m not sure what happens, but Monday always brings with it the sort of seething self-doubt and general misanthropic pall better withstood on, say, a sun-dappled Saturday afternoon, with light pouring through a bedroom window and spotlighting slow-moving dust particles.
Perhaps it’s because Monday is a stark tombstone marking the end of another weekend. But, these days, it’s not like the weekend ever really stops. It seems to bleed into the other days, separated by thick black lines, like water dripped onto a calendar.
There are empty beer bottles to collect and full ashtrays to be dumped well into Wednesday.
August 24, 2009
july 16, 2009 4:09 p.m.
i don’t know what’s wrong with me. the weather has been getting nicer, sunnier and generally more conducive to an uncluttered mind and sunburned cheeks: quintessential summer.
i am floating again, no ballast. however, i can find at least temporary docking in the screen-lit one-liners typed by pratical strangers.
i can’t write this.
here’s what it is: you are spending an inordinate amount of time worrying about people you do not and will not ever know. why? is it because you are unsastified with your own (creaking and old) station in life? does thinking about these people and forcing upon them fleeting and surface-level contact offer release from your stifling apartment, inside which stands a grime-coated sink and a bedroom floor clotted with knots of tangled clothes?
the answer must be yes. has to be yes. how else would your neurotic pursuance make sense? perhaps that is a subject worth (brief) pause. sense may not be something you can exctract from this particular case. it’s happened before; lack of reason or discernable motive, that is.
so what is your course of action?
the sensible thing to do would be to change or banish wholesale the aspects of your life from which you feel compelled to escape. Ah. Yes. The “sensible” thing. But, what have you ever done based solely on sense?
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