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.

11:11am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZL1tWyTsYSh
Filed under: write for ten new shit bla bla college timez 
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.)

10:46am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZL1tWyTij1H
Filed under: jesus, this one is fucking depressing write for ten new shit bla bla 
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.

9:35am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZL1tWyKRNlX
Filed under: new shit bla bla write for ten 
January 12, 2010
jan. 12, 2010 9:07 a.m.

(My first in what I hope to be many Write for Ten exercises.)

8:57 a.m. - 9:07 a.m.

it’s been snowing for days on end, now. any shared joy in the right to complain has been crushed by the sheer breadth of this particular cold snap, stretching from the eastern seaboard right on down to louisiana and florida.

in my home state, the heart of it all, don’t you know, resilience to the cold is bred into the people the same way melanin levels protect the dusky skin of lovely, lucky Equator-dwelling populations. last night, while smoking a cigarette under a starless black sky, the kind that bounces the chill right back into your bones, i saw a young man bundled into a wool peacoat, thick scarf wound twice around his neck, trudging through the snow in madras plaid shorts, green and pink.

that’s ohioans for you.

9:21am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZL1tWyJj7rI
(Notes: 4)
  
Filed under: write for ten new shit 
November 30, 2009
nov. 29, 2009 1:43 p.m.

sitting on this sunshot plane

which

through the misfortune of departure

has become a stale-air tube

stranger-fillled

carrying me back to a life and a home

no longer supporting the weight of either word

4:54pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZL1tWyFkltS
Filed under: fall plane travel new shit 
September 18, 2009
late assignment. points deducted.

Dicking around on the internet today, and I decided to visit Learning to Love You More (remember that site? and the assignments?)

I decided to do assignment #52:

Write the phone call you wish you could have.

REPORTS:
Using a black pen, draw a picture of your cell phone. Be very precise and make your phone look as realistic as possible, you can trace the shape of the phone if you want. Please make your drawing by hand, not with a computer. In the window where the caller name appears, write the name of the person who you wish would call you. If you have to, use a fake name. Don’t draw anything except the phone, leave the rest of the paper blank. In a separate email document, type the conversation you wish you could have with this person. Use dialogue format

So, here goes.

phone sketch

little boy blue: hello?

me: uh, hey. This is J——, uh, from Kent. We. Um. Used to know —

little boy blue: I know who you are. How did you get this number? (pause. incredulous scoff) i haven’t had that old number in, like, years.

me: Your website.

little boy blue: Okaaay.

me: i know. it’s creepy.

little boy blue: yeah.

me: yeah.

little boy blue: (annoyed) so, why are you calling?

me: okay. right. um. this is going to sound really crazy, so i’m just going to get it all out there: uh, i friend requested you on facebook. you didn’t accept the request - -

little boy blue: (under breath) i can’t believe that’s what this is about

me: (continuing) - - you didn’t accept the request and then it hit me: i must have done something to you severe enough to ignore a stupid friend request four years after we knew each other. then i started thinking, “what could i have done to the kid?” it’s not like i insulted you, or stole anything from you or, intentionally tried to cause you harm, you know?

little boy blue: yeah.

me: so, whatever i did, it was something i did without thinking, unintentionally. and, the only thing that made sense was: you must have really liked me, didn’t you? (no pause, no breath) i mean, i should have seen it, but i didn’t. i remember one morning you told me you were glad i stayed over again because your pillowcases were starting to lose the smell of my hair.

little boy blue: did i say that?

me: yes. you did.

little boy blue: (quick exhale) yeah. i know i did. (pause) i’m not single, if that’s where - -

me:  (quickly) no. i know you’re not.

little boy blue: i mean, i was, for a little while.

me: i know. you were with that one girl - she was so beautiful -  for a long time, right?

little boy blue: yeah. years. but, there’s someone and  — i don’t know what kind of point you’re getting at.

me: no, no, it’s not that. i’m not single, either. i just wanted you to know something.

little boy blue: (silence)

me: i just wanted you to know i’m sorry. when you met me, and even now, i don’t, uh, i don’t… this is hard to say. (deep sigh, a pause, and then staccato) i just never thought someone as beautifully fitted together as you could actually be interested in someone like me. for a long time, a long time, my ugliness, my abhorrence wasn’t a question. it was a fact. I KNEW I was sub-human, unlovable—

little boy blue: (confused) but you’re not  ug- -

me: (overlapping) that’s not why i called. i don’t need you to say that shit. i called, like i said, to tell you i’m sorry my self-loathing precluded any chance for you and i. i liked you. i was just afraid you were settling, and I didn’t want to let you. i’m sorry i blew you off and ignored your calls. i don’t want to make excuses for myself. it’s just i couldn’t see, could never see, you liked a girl and were honestly trying to get to know her. i know the rejection hurt. and i’m sorry.

little boy blue: (voice smaller, slightly softer) i thought you were just being a bitch.

me: i know it comes off that way. i really wasn’t. it was nothing you did or didn’t do.

little boy blue: I wondered.

me: when i realized all this a few weeks ago, i was crushed, broke my little heart. i’m not trying to make you sorry for me or anything. i couldn’t believe i had hurt another person that way. i never meant that. anyway, i was sort of frantic over it, and i decided i needed to sift though all my old college papers to find something NICE i had written about you, if it existed. something kind so i could convince myself i wasn’t this awful person, running around, ripping peoples’ hearts out, you know?

little boy blue: you aren’t an awful person.

me: thanks. debatable, but thanks. so, it was the last pile of shit i had to look though. i hadn’t found anything, other than your name on a list of bridges i had burned, dated fall 2006.

little boy blue: yikes

me: yeah, i know! i didn’t want that scrawled line to be the only tangible connection I had to you. i was panicked that list, that mention was all i had. then you know what happened? as i was reshuffling though the last random papers, your card - you know, from the design firm? - fell right into my palm, i mean right into my palm, face up like it was hitting a target.

little boy blue: i remember that thing. shaped like a price tag? Cloud-blue type, with serif?

me: yes. you gave it to me in september, uh, before the spring, before all that. black squirrel festival. i bought a poster from you. i was wearing a purple shirt i had borrowed from my roommate. you were wearing blue. you said, “you’re pretty,” with the kind of wonderment and enthusiasm children exude in their most honest moments. that was good enough, remembering you smiling and squinting into the late summer sun.

little boy blue: i think it’s a nice way to think about it.

me: one more thing. or, things, i guess. the last time i stayed over, that morning? you had to be somewhere. Maybe something to do with your graduate portfolio review. you got out of bed and i watched you get dressed. your fingers danced over the hung clothes - arranged by color, you’re an artist of course - like you were playing a piano, an arpeggio. (crying now, softly, but noticeably) And. I, uh - When I found your card the other day, I put it in my wallet. It’s still there.


little boy blue: Uh, i don’t know what to say. I’m sorry you’re upset. I guess I’m glad you called? Still a weird thing to have done, you know.

me: (still sniffling very weakly) i guess i’m glad i called, too. i know it was stupid. take care, okay? Keep doing well in New York. Say “hi” to Angie for me. You know, she really was fighting for you for a minute, there.

little boy blue: she’s a good friend, that’s all. you take care, too.

me: bye

little boy blue: bye bye

4:27pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZL1tWyBPSK0
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: cell phone dialogue hand sketch i think i am going to regret this learning to love you more way too fucking long new shit 
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?

4:19pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZL1tWyAB6Ub
Filed under: bla bla new shit