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February 11, 2004
Fun Sized Inspiration "I've got 32 cents and an antacid... think they take checks?" She tosses the powdery orange antacid into a nearby bush. I laugh. "Typical." She glares at me. "Shut up, cow." We sit at a small, square table that rocks back and forth if you lean on it. I watch her try to manage her burrito. Its contents plop out the end and onto her plate. She just stares at it a second. "Dammit." She over-salts the chips and always ends up with crumbs in her elegantly long brown hair. "There's crap in your hair," I say. She rolls her eyes and brushes it away with her strangely tiny hands. "Carny," I accuse, pointing to her hands and grinning. "Dyke," she retorts, without pausing. I duck my head in mock offense. "Oh shut up, you know you love me." "I know. Dammit." She laughs in a way that says, "I win." And she does win most of the time. I watch her daily in her most mundane and striking moments. She came into my life quietly, but it didn't take her long to turn up the volume. She's secondary purity, clad in a torn, stained, blue Old Navy sweatshirt. She's sarcastic gluttony, compact vibrancy, surprising eloquence. She reads smutty vampire books when she's not absorbing something else -- Vonnegut, Shakespeare, an all French horn performance of Bohemian Rhapsody. She's a spunky Zoloft survivor, a straight-talking bitter saint. She's a 24-hour beauty in an 18-hour bra. I imagine myself years down the line, walking into a symphony hall in some big city (Chicago?) and sitting in the audience watching her, the lights glinting off the ever-present French horn between her carny hands. I see myself standing up and yelling something obscene at the end, finding her after the show, and laughing as she calls me a cow. I see her making fun of me for whatever enthusiasm I find in having children, if I have them. I can imagine her snorting and saying, "So you ARE a girl..." As I watch her drive away in her poor, rickety Geo Prizm (unaffectionately known as "The Blue Beast" ), I'm not sure where she's headed, but I hope it's to somewhere I can find. January 20, 2004 Expressions of Denial: One Girl's Devotion forgive me not for these trespasses unprecedented I am but a child amongst miniature women love me not for the glitter of my jester's hat I cannot be your puppet -- my strings are tangled and in the drizzly-rainy-darkness of your driveway at almost-8-p.m. on a school night when we both have other places to be -- I will kiss you -- let them stare. In this twisted beauty, this broken splendor, this dirty peace, I know nothing -- I feel beyond feeling, beyond body -- let them stare. Under the concerned glances of so many well-meaning friends, through the haze of this splintered perfection, beneath the smell that I have come to associate with odd moments of inexplicable peace -- let them stare. Through all the moments when I am unsatisfied, too skeptical, with too many questions, too many doubts -- through the moments when you're trying to figure out whether or not I'm trying to figure you out -- you know the doubt in my walk, the uncertainty in my stance, the strength in my lips against your forehead -- let them stare. I will call to tell you goodnight. I will sleep better having done this. Let them stare. January 6, 2004 Dustbin Painting a chair after-hours at school. An art project overdue. I am recreating a couple of Picasso's pieces -- blue period, like my life. I am alone, except for a guy I sort of know who is also finishing his chair. The door unlocks and opens, neither of us looks up. A short, Hispanic man walks in, trailing a large plastic trash can and a broom. Typical Lee High janitor. They all look the same after a while -- wordless, small, clad in their nondescript uniforms. I never look at him, absorbed in my various shades of blue and grey. I am tacitly aware of the third being in the room. Somehow he enters my thoughts, between my musings on the combinations of color and an Our Lady Peace song. I wonder if it's ever hard for him, cleaning the art rooms. Not only because of the delightful messiness of them -- splattered paint, errant clay, stray paper with stray drawings by stray artists -- but because of what those rooms represent. Beyond the juvenile, bubbly sketchings of the popular kids in their Hollister clothes and newish Ford Mustangs, who have forgotten what it's like to have vision, there are those who astound. The un-united youth of a West Texas town, expressed in chalk and charcoal, construction paper and tempera paint, copper and silver wire. It is the manifestation of some level of potential, of some level of beauty, vibrance, love, of unadulterated humanity that the youngish man behind a broom never quite reached. Is it hard to clean up after all of us? Does the residue of our unrealized opportunity only come out with bleach? Or does it even occur to him? Perhaps he never looks at us, in the same manner in which we never look at him. We are two different universes, churning, passing through one another but never colliding. There is an invisible shield, a heavy silence, an unspoken barrier that separates us from him, and perhaps him from us. He may be one of the most important, yet unnoticed people in my life. He washes the day away -- the clutter, the noise, the dirt, the saliva of locker-lovers, the layers of dust and hate and love. He is the silent salvation of the boxy beige building that withholds such life. He exits the room with little more than the clicking of the door, and the retreating sound of the wheels of his trash can on the tile floor. Tomorrow, as I push my way through clean double glass doors, I will not remember his face. December 7, 2003 Sleep, Little Three Eyes? I surfaced from sleep to the sounds of her brushing and flushing in the bathroom. The sheets were still indented from her body, her pillow was still warm. I yawned and stretched, my muscles relaxing, sinking further into the depths of our bed. I listened to the sound of the hairdryer, the sink, her humming and drifted along the shores of sleep. She had turned off the alarm clock. Not that it ever wakes me anyway, but it wakes her. Then she wakes me. It's always gentle, subtle, more of an invitation into the land of the awake than a call to duty. My groggy mind grappled with why she had not roused me yet, whether or not I remembered to buy paper towels yesterday, where the phrase "hands down" came from... The busy rhythm of her getting ready stopped abruptly. I squinted a little. She poured out of the bathroom, her hair half dry, half in her pajamas and half in what she was going to be wearing that day, the scents of soap and toothpaste trailing behind her. She ran a couple steps then leapt from a location that seemed impossibly far away to my sleepy eyes and landed with a playful bounce next to me on the bed. "Go back to sleep, you goober!" she demanded, in a mockingly stern tone. I smiled and shut my eyes, turning my head to the side and giving a couple of emphatic snores. She laughed and poked my ribs. "Dammit. You're not supposed to wake up without me here." "I know. I'm sorry?" "Bah. Well, you don't have to be up yet. I'm getting ready for that damn interview." "Oh yeah." "Did you forget?" "...Of course not." "Oh hush." She rolled off the bed and landed in a walk, making her way across the cluttered floor back to the bathroom. Her preparations roared back to life; a radio between stations flowing from our small bathroom. I chuckled to myself, recalling the incident that made her so vehement about being there upon my awakening. One night I had gotten up to pee, and she'd woken up to a vast absence on my side of the bed. There was this fleeting terror--that's how she put it--that I had abandoned her, that I would not be coming back, that the balance would be forever tilted to her side. She sat up and just slumped there in the silence that she thought might never cease. Then the toilet flushed. She said it made her jump, and she made a startled noise as I stumbled back into our bedroom. My eyes had not yet adjusted to the lack of light in the room and I found myself tangled, falling, fallen on the floor in a rush of darkness and carpet. Her breathless panic had rendered the moment something like a power surge. I lay there on the floor, laughing, her black bra hanging around my ankle, feigning its innocence. She laughed as well, crawling out of the bed and pulling me to my feet and into a hug without skipping a beat in between. "Don't DO that..." she'd said, wild-eyed and trembling slightly. So neither of us ever did, after that. I stretched my final stretch, making a growl-like noise that seems to make stretching just that much better. I rose from the bed, creaky, achey, tired. Class at some point. What day is it? I discarded my pajama pants and adorned a random pair of jeans from the floor in one mechanical motion. I located a bra (under the bed) and proceeded to rummage for a shirt to wear. She passed behind me, searching for her shoes, I assume. "My interview is in an hour. I have to catch the bus. Damn public transportation. You missed a belt loop. I don't know how long I'll be gone. I'd better get this damn job. And it's Thursday, by the way." I yawned and slid my belt out of its loops and stared at it a second. Thursday. Biology? I think so. I debated dropping the belt on the floor and not wearing it. I sat on the bed experimentally and decided I'd just go ahead and wear the damn thing. I wound it carefully through every loop and buckled it, giving it a secure pat. She had her right shoe in her hand and she was standing in the middle of the room, holding it against her hip and scanning the floor for its mate. In my quest for a shirt, I found her left shoe and tossed it to her. She nodded and pointed to a worn, battered hoodie with a patch on the elbow from where I'd torn it climbing a chain link fence, and disappeared back into the depths of the bathroom. I retrieved the hoodie from the chair over which it was draped, tugged it over my head, and suddenly felt ready for the day. I puttered around our bedroom, kicking random clothes aside, mostly waiting for her to be ready. I had decided that my class today was, indeed, Biology. I was picking up my backpack when she emerged from the bathroom, the harsh light of it illuminating her in contrast to our characteristically dim bedroom. She tugged at the corner of her shirt and smoothed her hair. "You look fine," I said, and her shoulders dropped a little. She returned a sheepish smile and nodded, "You look homeless." "But I'm not," I replied, sticking out my tongue at her. "Well, I'm..." she paused, a break in her thoughts. "Nevermind. Time to catch the bus." I walked her to the bus stop where we stood in the chilly morning. Her breath clouded infront of her lips as she tried to stand straight against what she knew was coming. She really needed this job. The bus came, she boarded slowly, eyeing the elderly bus driver as she paid her fare. I watched her pick her way past middle-aged men, over-weight women, sleepy-eyed college students, past every window like an old-timey film strip. She settled herself in the last seat, and sighed, turning to look at me, standing there with my backpack at my feet, alone on the sidewalk. The bus lurched into motion and carried her away, off to the anti-Nevernever Land of downtown. She watched me through the back window of the bus as I picked up my backpack and started my trek to class. I was late. She knew it. It was something neither of us had mentioned. I sat in biology not thinking of recessive genes and the differences between phenotypes and genotypes, but rather of her, seated uncomfortably in a large chair, trying to answer the questions the way we'd practiced. I chuckled at the thought that she was, perhaps, trying to pretend that the small man behind the desk was me, and was not having much luck. I tugged my hood up over my head and tried to focus. My professor seemed small, insignificant. I squinted my eyes to make him blurry, rather like an insect trapped inside a light bulb, flitting hopelessly, making contact with the glass occasionally. I tried to construct the image of coming home, pushing through the door with my cheeks red from the wind, finding her curled up on the couch reading something, being able to tell whether she'd found success or not just by looking at her. I gritted my teeth and tried to concentrate on my insect-in-a-lightbulb professor, trying to ignore the thought of his impending electric doom. Eventually the droning of the class enveloped me, wrapped its wispy fingers 'round my wrists, and allowed me to think of nothing, the background music of her humming, her voice, the rhythm of her breathing becoming faint. As my mind had its final musings before succumbing to the torpor of Thursday morning biology, I wondered if she'd slept well. December 1, 2003 Childish Musings on Love Why is it that some people have difficulty saying "I love you"? I, myself, am guilty of this. It seems silly now that I think about it. Love is everywhere. All you need is love. Love heals all wounds. Why is the verbal expression of love so elusive? It is, most likely, the avoidance of pain. "Love hurts." In my view, it is not love itself that hurts, but it is rather the human byproducts in a relationship involving love that prove painful. Among these are jealousy, rage, dishonesty, and indifference. Love truly feels good. It's why people do such unusual things in the name of love; it's a high, an addiction. You take the good with the bad, I suppose. Love can often outweigh the sum of its negative adversaries. So why, then, is the declaration of love such an obstacle? Love is simple. I love everyone on some level. Love is primal, basic, instinctual. Love is empowering, overpowering. Love is universal. Perhaps it is the question of duration? If you love me now, will you love me always? There are always promises of forever. I am hard-wired to love permanently, unceasingly, unwaveringly. Am I alone in this? And maybe the question should not be of forever. Forever is immeasurable. What about right now? The Now is a popular concept. But it's hard to fully live NOW without the dilutions of past memories or future fears or aspirations. It's too entirely overwhelming. But again, there is a simplicity in nowness. How simple is it to merely see? Perhaps there is a human need for complication. But love conquers complication. A weathered love seems so much more formidable than a newly formed love. But love is love, and all of it is important. There should be no lost loves. I want to love without apology, without limit, without boundary. You cannot love too many, too much, too vibrantly. Love is everywhere; an all-encompassing ether surrounding the atmosphere. You cannot run out of love. It can not be exhausted, polluted, depleted. Love is economic perfection; unlimited resource to satisfy unlimited demand. Perhaps the trick isn't to find love, but rather to see it. It's in everything, everywhere, in every person. Perhaps there are blinders--deterrents--results of hatred? To see love is to shed the corruption of the every-day, the mundane slipcover we all seem to adorn. It "protects" us from the one thing we most desire--love. Be not discouraged by the scorn of little voices of little minds--love with reckless abandon--be free in your compassion and your convictions. Love like you knew nothing else. Love always. Love hard. Love well. Love. November 2, 2003 You Seem Placid The day started with him. Passed quietly, as my days rarely do lately. Driving home I didn't listen to music. I relied on the muscle memory of the school-to-home trek. It was a mindful mindlessness. The passing of the cars, the beeping of a bulldozer, the pulsating bass of a large truck that pulled up next to me--none of these could interrupt the stillness. I pulled into the garage, thankful that it was empty, went inside, let the dog in, went for the mail. The birds chirping, the sound of my shoes dragging in the grass, the noises of my dog sniffing and snorting and scraping around the yard--nothing penetrated this unusual serenity, this soft, thin layer of silence. The world was not quiet. But I am. The world didn't stop its sirens for me. It didn't stop the gunshots, the groans of the starving of which one person perishes every fifteen seconds, the screams of newborn babies, the rubbing of countless crayons against paper in tiny hands, the imperceptible sound of a butterfly unfolding its wings. These things rang on. Mother came home yelling. I realize that she never just talks... she always projects. I think I squinted as she talked. "WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU?"... everything is so loud. Does she have to be so loud? I feel like I do when I go outside in the wee hours, especially in winter. The subtle dying and living of everything, the cold strength of the air, the utter aloneness and togetherness of the world. So this is what it's like to be part of the stillness. September 29, 2003 Something Primal It was almost funny to her then, in that moment when she thought that maybe things had actually gone as planned. She laughed the kind of laugh that is almost more of a shiver than a laugh, the kind that will transform into a sob if one is not careful. She couldn't stand the light, the harshness of it on all the things that littered the floor, littered her life. Shoes thrown carelessly, jeans a crumpled being, a black bra tossed randomly, almost viciously, defeated, unable to restrain her any more. She was in the midst of everything, the pulsation of everything. She quickened then, rising from the floor, from the mess of her life. She seemed to vibrate, emitting a kind of heat, a kind of energy, a kind of animal. She was free then, pushing the door open with more strength than she had intended, than she knew she possessed. She escaped into the night, the crisp air of the wee hours, the cool, calm light of the moon that cast shadows across her body, across her mind. She moved with the swiftness of a beast half her size, drawn to something, drawn to anything away from the warm, homey, suffocating arms of her too-large brick house. She became something different, something new, something born of night and cricket chirps. And in this she found peace. August 21, 2003 Eulogy of Summer Sparrows scatter as I walk across the courtyard--late, as I prefer to be. It's cheerier when it's empty, when the atmosphere is free of angst and drama and hormonal displays. I'd like to think the sparrows like it better when it's just me, tardy and indifferent. The preacher and the clapper graduated. Earlier today I saw a retarded boy wandering aimlessly over the crooked round stepping stones, and thought of the clapper, though not fondly, as he had a habit of meandering too close to people. I often wondered at his fascination with clapping. What else went on behind his filmy eyes and eternally bewildered expression? He just clapped. Sometimes he'd hop vertically, as if celebrating something. Perhaps his life was just a perpetual celebration of the sound produced by the collision of hands. I was glad when the preacher left. He often rattled gibberish as he paced between two trees, infront of a bench he offered salvation to every day, even when there was no one sitting on it. I suppose he was trying to speak in tongues, or make people think he was. Sometimes he'd bow down and bless people, clinging to their trendy New Balances and dirtying the knees of his slacks. Other times he'd gather them in circles and pray until they cried, attracting horrified crowds who wondered what the hell he was doing to those poor people. The security guards broke the ring of spectators in the same manner that they came between couples and hurried people to class. The year after the preacher graduated, they put a table in the exact location of where he used to pace back and forth in his long trench coats and button down shirts. I thought it was fitting. It's different being a senior. I had to direct a frantic sophomore friend of mine to the math hall. I don't ever remember being lost here. Though I don't remember being found either. Perhaps the worst part about being a senior is the ominous sense that the end is near. Perhaps we should get a homeless man to sit in the courtyard with a sign that says that, since we no longer have the clapper and the preacher. I keep looking for "the seniors" who are technically graduates, but will be forever seniors in my mind. I miss them constantly--in classes, between classes, in the parkinglot, in the bathrooms, watching the clocks, in the moments when I realize I've been sleeping against my desk. I miss my scheduled hugs--Amy after first and fifth, Jenny after second, fourth, and right before home. I cannot have closure with my school day because Jenny is not at the end of it. She's my age, and in my rigid, everyone-faces-forward English class, but that's not enough. I watch two girls loiter and talk in the shade of a tree, in the exact location of the daily AmyLogen encounter. She was always headed where I had just come from. I watched the pair of girls stand there, their feet where mine and Amy's had been, their voices vibrating through the same space, and I felt an inexplicable jealousy. That was supposed to be me and Amy. I doubt she misses me as I miss her. I doubt any of them do. It's hard to gage something that. And though there is nothing obviously amiss about my school day, it doesn't quite settle right. It's like a quilt left in the closet too long. It's moth-eaten, but beautiful; incomplete, but it still keeps you warm; not quite the same, but smelling of memories. August 20, 2003 Discussion in Technicolor The chair is large enough for someone else my size to sit beside me. I am pressed against the wide arm, my body sinking evermore into its vast purple softness. I realize that my hands have not stopped moving, my thoughts have not stopped barreling between my mind and my mouth, my skin has not stopped vibrating. It is the flow of this presence, the nonexistence of time (it's a debatable thing, anyway), the fact that I am alive that seems to rattle through me. She laughs loud. The coffee cups are props, the table, the shorthaired woman and longhaired man behind the counter, the distracting fish tank, all background, all silent. We have escaped the realm of interruption, of radio stations and rapid information, of higher education and instant automation, of blazing sidewalks and gum on your shoes. We are neither expected nor expectant. She dreams in black and white. I watch the movement of her lips, trying to penetrate beyond the sound, the formation of her words. The motion of her tongue, her lips around her teeth, the muscles in her face, the gestures of her hands, every pulsation, chemical impulse, every frequency of every particle in her, around her, through her. I want to live in this forever, curl up in this, breathe this, spawn and flourish and thrive and die in this. She rolls her eyes and tells me not to worry. And this is what I was meant for. The rhythm of this existence in her existence, this present in her presence. I ramble because I cannot find my barriers. I say I'm fine because I am. I don't want to leave, to get in my car and drive back to this house, these walls, this yellow enclosure that presses against the throbbing of my life. The book, the representative of her entity, her message to my life in pages and binding, lays on my bathroom floor, on my nightstand, on my pillow. I am ungraceful and I cannot help but become tangled. I accept the compliment. August 15,2003 Apology Rejected "Forgive me?" she said, her hands hanging limp and weary at her sides. She'd never meant for things to be this way. She'd never meant to hurt him this way. It was almost funny to him in this moment, looking at her with her pretty head tilted at the precise angle to make him want to touch her, yet knowing that doing so would somehow contaminate him, rob him of something he had very little of to start with. He'd never meant to let her hurt him this way. Some part of her knew, though. Some part of her was eerily aware of what was coming, what was to follow his laughter and his kisses, his submission to whatever it was in her that he could not resist getting tangled in. She knew. She just didn't want it. She watched him stare at the wall, or something on it, beyond it, through it. She watched him push his long hair away from his face, rub his chin, squint his eyes, throwing his thoughts into animation. She reached then, her hand for his, their fingers tacitly recognizing one another, their shape, their movement. She reminded him of the silent physical agreement that they had come to, that part of him was hers, and part of her was his. Something in him had known this would happen. She was too moody, illusive, just too much of something all the time. At first it had welcomed him, but later it was ominous. He knew. He just didn't want it. It was a long silence in which she was already planning the next day, what they would do, where they would go, how they would make it up to eachother. She didn't tense as he opened his mouth to speak. "No." August 8, 2003 A Study in Short Sentences I am Logen. I hate my first name. I am a June baby. I was a fat baby. I was a weirdly short, small child. I wanted to be a vampire. I guess I still do. I love scars. I've played soccer nearly my whole life. I am an athlete. I am a good student. I have really thick hair. I am a cutter. I am questionable. I weird people out. I amuse myself. I amuse others, compulsively. I am a writer. I find inspiration in the weirdest places. I like rain. I like autumn. I hate the town I live in. I am in love with Austin, Texas. I want to ride a moped through Amsterdam. I am innocent. I like it that way. I drive fast. I love giving massages. I love hands. I can't whistle very well. I've been in love, in my way. I adore girls. I adore boys. I guess I just adore people. I watch people without them noticing. I think too much. I am an insomniac. I like blood. I've been told I'm tough. I've been told I look like Demi Moore. I don't understand that. I love the beach. I have a dirty mind. I am a good girl. I cannot recall large pieces of my life. I am attempting to fix this, to own my past. I love old things. I like the way peanut butter looks when it's just been opened. I have people who really fucking love me. I am random. I say "hey" instead of "hello" alot. I'm good at accents and sound effects. I'm learning to play guitar. I don't have self esteem. I am not bothered by much. I am laid back. I am brutally honest. I am very blunt. I am a teenager, therefore, I know nothing. I am strangely self aware. I startle my mother with that on occasion. I have a good family life. I was dealt a good hand. I like bands no one has ever heard of. I am a little kid sometimes. I've grown alot. I don't watch much TV. I love Sylvia Plath. I'm a slacker. I like t-shirts that are too small. I shop in the little boy's section. I don't like carrying a purse. I don't think about my own welfare very often. I am incapable of hate towards another person. I literally love everybody. I love old cars. I like boys with long hair. I have a thing for pain. I like being bitten. I like to give people goosebumps. I'm touchy. I'm mouthy. I have to be doing something with my hands all the time. I'm lazy. I have weird sleeping habits. I say the word "grumble" instead of actually grumbling. I look people in the eye. I have a t-shirt that says "Free Hugs (Insert You Here)", inspired by Stu. I got 43 hugs in one day. I like hugs. I like kisses. I'm a make-out fiend. I'm not very nice to boys sometimes. I multitask date. I once got permission from a boyfriend to make out with two other guys on vacation. I'm persuasive, to say the least. I'm manipulative, though I try not to be. I don't like attention whores. I don't like people who whine. I have infinite patience, however. I contradict myself. I have an uncanny intuition. I'm fiercely protective of my friends. I'm a loyal person. I've discovered that once I care about someone, I never stop. I'm a masochist. I've found that deep down inside, I am everybody's bitch. I'm working on that. I laugh when every one else has stopped laughing. I like long nails. I'm low-maintenance. I wear weird clothes. I like to disconcert people. I find rumors about myself humorous. I make my friends' boyfriends uncomfortable. I love to make people laugh. I'm a night person. I love people who write. I don't know how to receive compliments. I say unusual things to people. I don't really care what people think of me. I don't want to become my mother. I love animals. I hate myself most of the time. I am often looked down upon for not having religion. I don't like being told I'm going to hell, even though I laugh about it. I believe in something, though, I promise. I love life. I have so many things I want to do. I love oldschool Nintendo. I have panic attacks. I'm a wrist banger. I have found beauty in my insanity. I know there is something exquisite about self destruction. I have been drunk once. I know that peer pressure is real. I hate cigarettes. I love the smell of winter when the wind blows just right. I have made out in the rain. I have lived the perfect romance. I'm a sucker for curly hair. I say what I mean. I like things to be simple. I am both feminine and masculine, which I think makes things easier. I adore Angelina Jolie. I love e.e. cummings. I black out if I get up too fast. I say "Tell me something true" alot. I love other people who cut. I like President Hoover. I really don't like President Franklin Roosevelt. I raise an eyebrow at people who are the other way around. I have a hard time raising only one eyebrow. I can wiggle my ears. My arms hyperextend. I have sharp elbows. I like old music. I laugh in my sleep. I have a thing about people's height being at a consistent ratio with my own height--therefore I despise tall shoes. I dress comfortably. I don't drink soda. I don't like authority. I'm a rebel in my own way. I like James Dean. I think Kurt Cobain was a genius. I think Hitler was, too. I think there are few things more delicate than a dead bird. I've always been a little morbid. I make faces at people across rooms. I am often at a loss for words. I don't like closed minded people. I don't like homophobes. I want to kiss a girl. I want someone to be fascinated with me. I am easily amused. I like being intrigued. I'm too busy, most of the time. I know all the states in alphabetical order by memory. I know the square root of 2 and the square root of 3 by memory. Things like that scare me. I know that I am really a strong person. I don't give myself enough credit most of the time. Neither does anyone else, actually. I like the dark. I love the color grey. I think most people are beautiful, in their way. I like goths, but not the cliche kind. I have one piercing--the cartilage of my left ear. I own a nose flute. I can play the ocarina. I think Ani Difranco is sexy. I want to retain my innocence. I'm falsely apathetic. I'm truly empathetic. I was shameless. I am in love with Kellogen. I've only broken one promise my whole life. I've only made one person cry on purpose--and she died about a week later. I like irony, even when it hurts. I don't cry very often. I hate it when people cry infront of me. I hate hurting people. I would rather hurt myself. I often do. I like sleepy music. I look young. I slept with a stuffed tiger named Hobbes for years. I still do sometimes. I have a comfortable bed. I love simple things. I've found that carrying a kazoo guarantees a good mood. I am undefined. I love strong jawlines. I love shoulders. I love collar bones. I realize that my life is beautiful. I want to live, despite certain urges. I have an unusual capacity for love. It is moments like this that I know that I am worth something. July 30, 2003 A Composition in the Language of Sleep From an actual dream: The hallway is nonchalantly pastel. I seem to have a purpose, a destination. She approaches out of nowhere, it seems. She's small, slender, adorning a long sleeve black shirt and blue jeans. She wears her blonde hair in a haphazard ponytail and flaxen strands stray around her shockingly blue eyes. She grabs one of my wrists and leans herself against the wall, pulling me close to her. I've never seen her before in my life, but she seems somehow familiar. She giggles almost frantically for a moment, then silences, seemingly fascinated with my face. She runs her fingers along my jaw, holding her breath. "What have you been doing?" I ask her, accusing though I'm not sure why. "Oh, what do you think?" she says, stroking my hair. I take both her hands and hold them against her chest. I try to get her to look me in the eye. "Answer me." "Always wanted someone like you. The dark one. The quiet one." I release her hands to search her pockets and she stops me, lifting my face by my chin. Her eyes seem to gain focus. "Dark one. Strange one. I want you, you know that?" I look away and drop my hands to my sides. I will not take advantage of her state. I hold out my hand, not looking at her. She places the bottle in it and leans her head against the wall, laughing lopsidedly. I shake the small unlabelled plastic bottle and it gives a near-hollow rattle. I sigh and shove it in my pocket. Time seems to jump here. It is later, she is quite herself. We're on different sides of a room full of people. She watches me as I weave through the occupants of the room, smiling at those who make eye contact with me. I see her and stop, becoming the only stagnant body among so many moving ones. She makes no expression, no gesture. She just watches. She watches her dark one. July 22, 2003 Mister Sandman Thunder usually doesn't wake me. I thought about that as I lay there, staring upward at the fan blades placidly rotating. I listened to the rain drum against the roof and tried to retrace my steps back into a dream. I jumped when the knocking came, both hands forming fists. I took a moment to compose myself. I sat up and eyed the shutters a moment, waiting. Knockknock... knock. I leaned over and slowly opened the shutters, halfway expecting to find the jeering face of a psycho killer. You know, with the crooked teeth, long scar down one cheek, and one eye that bulges more than the other. I never expected to find him. But there he was. He was soaked; his hair was matted against his forehead, droplets rushed down his cheeks and followed the line of his jaw. Or was that really rain? He had one hand pressed flat against the glass; his lifeline, heartline, his scars mounted for display. His other hand was half-cocked, resting against the window where he'd been knocking. His mouth was slightly ajar, his breath coming quickly. I marveled at the shape of his lips, the paths the rain drops were finding over them. I remembered every moment of those lips. Every word they'd formed, every kiss they'd administered. I remembered being happy, that no sorrow had touched me in his presence. Before noon on a bench swing, kissing him. Nothing was ever that good, that real, that alive. The time when he and I transformed into us was one that has been unmatched. I wore his hat and gave him my ring. I learned the structure of his face, the pattern of the concentric yellow rings in his eyes, the texture of his hands. We were uniquely cliche, in our way. I lined up my fingers exactly with his on the glass, his top knuckles exceeding the tips of my long nails. I could feel his heat coming through. Lightning illuminated his face, allowing me to see for a moment that he'd come further than I knew. I unlocked the window and pushed it open, letting the rain invade the confines of my house. We met in the middle, his body to the elements and mine protected. I pushed myself through the window, against him, against the wetness of the grass and of the earth. I kissed him with the violence of too much time passed, of too much distance between. Our hands, our legs, our lips tangled in the wee-hour rain. We had retraced our steps back into the dream. The then thunder woke me. Alwayswaking.Alwaysnothing. July 18, 2003 From the Wreckage She tells me she found me infront of the door. I'm somehow surprised that I made it that far. My car had encountered a tree about 12 blocks from my loft apartment and I had managed to escape the wreckage and get as far as my door on foot. She said the key was even in the lock. It had been months since I had woken up to something other than a vast emptiness on the other side of the bed, but it still seemed natural that it should be occupied. In my half sleep I sensed her presence and made some movement in her direction, causing an intense pain that seemed to come from every particle of my body. It woke me up, at any rate. She was laying on her side on top of the covers, fully clothed, propped up on one hand, and looking at me. The afternoon intruded through the thick curtains that she had chosen so long ago. "I kinda thought you'd sleep forever," she said, expressionless. "I kinda hoped I would," I mumbled, my voice low and crackly from sleep. I started to rub my eyes, but as my hands reached my face, they were not greeted by skin. There were bandages covering my cheeks and forehead, and upon further inspection, all over my hands and arms as well. "Do you not remember the run-in with the pack of angry kittens?" she asked. I must have looked horrified because she smiled some. "Your windshield broke, I'm assuming." And then I remembered. "Oh! The car!" I tried to sit up, but she placed a hand firmly on my shoulder, pushing me back against the bed, an action I remembered and obeyed. "Totaled." "Totaled?" She nodded with an almost gleeful expression. She'd hated that car. I relaxed against the excessive amounts of pillows and gave up all hope that I would rise from my soporific sepulcher before tomorrow--or maybe the next day. "I made you something to eat. I'll bring it up. Then I'm going to work and you'll have to fend for yourself," she said, rising from the bed and leaving the room down the metal spiral staircase. I put my hand in the warm spot she left on the blankets. I heard her fiddling with things in the kitchen, humming. I still slept on my side of the bed. I could never bring myself to occupy the whole thing, as if I was waiting for her to slip in beside me and warm her cold feet against my calves. Coming home to an empty apartment never got to the point where it wasn't surprising or disorienting or saddening. Walking through that door and tossing my keys on the kitchen counter where they would remain solitary without another set to keep them company was never okay with me. Sometimes I'd toss them on the couch so they'd fall between the cushions and I wouldn't have to look at them sitting alone on the counter. Things were messier without her. I did less laundry and often wore the same thing on consecutive days. The kitchen was littered with take-out boxes, as the only food items I had in stock were the ingredients to her unusual little vegetarian dishes that I could not make and would not eat unless she begged me. Her plants, however, were alive. I watered them every morning; even on the mornings I didn't go to work or shower or eat. I'd pretend to be her, cradling the pitcher with my left hand and tilting it with my right, humming the same song she always hummed as she performed this ritual. The plants were her only belongings she did not take with her. The drawers that held her clothes stood empty, naked, disappointed, blaming me daily for their loneliness. Her side of the bathroom, the closet, the nightstand remained stark, untrespassed upon by any of my belongings. Like the bed, they were waiting for her to slip back in. But she didn't. She moved into a much smaller place on the other side of town. Not that she told me that. I followed her from work one day in a car I borrowed from a friend. I saw her there in the parkinglot of her new place, carrying a sack of groceries and wearing a new shirt, and I drove away. I think it was the groceries that made me cry the first time. It meant she wasn't coming back. I cried sporadically after that, sometimes for mere seconds and sometimes for days on end. I lay there in my bed, our bed, listening to her bustle in the kitchen. I was hung over, defeated, broken, and wondering why she was bothering with me, what had made her come there to find me, a drunken, bloody mess, crumpled on the welcome mat that she had selected from a seemingly endless aisle of welcome mats that all looked the same to me. She never told me why she came. She was just there. She brought my food--chicken soup, crackers, and some little peanut butter things she made that she knew I liked. "Here. Eat your meat, savage," she said, setting the tray on the empty side of the nightstand. "Thank you," I replied softly, reaching for the bowl. "Well, I have to be going. Middle-class America is callin' my name," she announced, leaning down and kissing my forehead between the bandages. I looked up at her. I clenched my jaw, attempting to ward off tears. "I'm... I...," I stuttered, straining. "I know, bug." She started down the stairs, each footfall against the unforgiving metal resonating in my troubled head. "Hey," I said, my voice cracking. Her face reappeared above the floor level. "Did you put the spare key back?" I asked, choking on the words, the thought of her leaving again. "You need to eat, get some rest. I've called your neighbor across the hall, and she'll be by to check on you later. Take care, okay?" Then she was gone. I heard her hurry out the door, and moments later I heard her car start somewhere below. She hadn't given me time to call after her about the key. I ate. I got some rest. I woke up the next morning and watered her plants. I showered, replaced my bandages, and called the police department to find out about my car. It had already been taken care of. I hung up the phone and looked around my kitchen. She'd cleaned up. My keys weren't on the counter so I decided to search for them. I unearthed them from the couch cushions to find that they were not as I had left them. There was an extra key, one I'd never seen before. I held it up infront of me and stared, almost expecting it to tell me what it went to, what threshold it unlocked. I wasn't there when the neighbor came. July 13, 2003 Whatever In Me I've been practicing soccer at the fields next to my junior high. I spent one year of my life in those halls, miserable. Maybe not much has changed. I try to remember the way it looked inside, which halls I walked, which rooms only existed for one period each day. And from the outside, it is hard to place. Perhaps it is the angle that makes it unfamiliar. Perhaps it's just been too long. Or maybe it's just different from the inside. I think it's that way with all things. It's hard to see both sides, the outside and the inside. It's difficult to really see anything you are close to. Distance makes things clear. Maybe the entire human race is farsighted. So perhaps this life--the one I'm in--is ridiculous to those who are not close to it, who are not inside it. The fetal position on the bathroom floor at 2 a.m., wondering just how much toothpaste I'd have to ingest to not wake up anymore. Stepping back from that, it's just kinda funny. But the experience of it, thick with emotions, and salt, and the coolness of the tile against my neck. The feeling of 2 a.m. when you're losing control, the movement of every particle of time, the heaviness of living, breathing, blinking, processing... It lacks humor. Maybe everything is funny if you look at it right. July 9, 2003 Monday Disturbance your hand on my shoulders my army unprepared for a battle such as this such as you were there and everywhere and on me forcing me to compromise like it meant something like I meant something perhaps I am used more than I am useful don't touch me and what am I anyway? I was shaking against your body against your ugliness your cruelty I was shaking as I slid down the door frame crying on the tile floor harder harsher than I had expected but maybe I should learn to expect more or maybe just less than what I thought I was vulnerable to staring sweaty hands somewhere forbidden by heat and anger and why me? why me out of everyone you knew? this choking shock this fright this overwhelming sense that there is dirt all over my body my body is MINE my body is MIND so get the fuck out of my house out of my head I am not your whore I am not your property I am trespassed violated ventilated so maybe it's about revenge after all it's about damn time June 25, 2003 A Passing She pushes her shoulders back, sending a sharp pain down her spine. The pale light of the computer monitor reflects off her face, giving her a ghastly appearance, like she'd been dead for a few hours. Her eyes are bloodshot; pupils mere pinpoints. Her lower lip is split in three places; two have dried over, the third produces a thin line of blood down her chin that she occasionally wipes with the back of her hand. She tries to ignore the ringing in her left ear. Seems she's had to ignore alot of things in her life. The fist-shaped holes in her walls, the scars on her arms, the dreams she only pretends to forget. And it's funny to her now, as she leans over the bathroom sink, staring at her hands (the left clean, the right smeared with blood), that she has, indeed, ignored so much, and been ignored by so many. She remembers vaguely being lost in a department store. Racks of clothing loomed like giants, each a different monster hungering for a different one of her vital organs. The Pretty Ladies in their business suits and excessive makeup continued with their organizing, stacking, folding, ignoring the small blonde child wandering alone. When she found her mother, she was critically appraising overpriced shoes. She'd never noticed the absence of her only daughter. Most of the students in her junior high and highschool classes wondered if she was mute. Perhaps deaf? Blind? Mildly retarded? They didn't give her much thought after about the first week of school. She was the kid who sat in the back and dismantled her pens but made straight A's. If she had been an academic failure, maybe someone would have noticed. But she wasn't. She wasn't much of anything, really. That was, perhaps, the last thought that passed through her head. She lay on the floor, the computer monitor reflecting off her body, her delicate shoulders, her pale neck. She's been dead for a few hours. Oh, she'd been thorough about it. Her note was on her computer screen, and she'd printed a copy, in case of computer failure. She had cancelled her appointments for the next few days and told her mother she'd be at an all-day spa where she could not be reached. As she informed her mother of this on the phone, trying to sound something like perky, she could hear the ice clinking in what she knew was scotch and soda in a glass with the bright pink lipstick mark on the rim. "Oh, honey, that would be just fabulous! Maybe you'll get to feeling better and stop being such a stick-in-the-mud!" "Maybe, Mom." No one would be looking for her for a while. It was clean, too. She managed not to throw up, not to drop the pills, not to look too gruesome. It was the landlord who found her. He came the next day to check her water heater. At first he thought she had just come home drunk and passed out there, and he shouldn't disturb her. "Kids these days..." he thought. He almost left without noticing. Very few people were there to mourn; no one really knew her. This disappointed her mother. She'd bought new shoes for the occasion. Funny, how everyone just seemed to ignore the fist-shaped hole in this girl. June 20, 2003 Catharsis in Black witness the results of productivity the bruises of producitivity the implosion of self loathing anger frustration rage the explosion excretion the hatred that cannot be innured to something of impurity of violence and I cannot feel if I'm touching you if I'm hurting you if you're hurting me if we're bleeding or crying or breathing and this light is too harsh to hard to fit for this end this begininning and don't touch me don't come too near because you'll be sorry when I'm not here when I can't love you when I can't inhale exhale blink this thing that presses me to the sheets to the floor to the wall beats me bloodies me collapses me from the inside take those pretty pills get a life without me in it fuck me til you've had enough and don't ever fucking call don't make me think you need me want me use me and don't tell me otherwise inject yourself into my system and don't fail these troubled nerves make me higher make me dumber make me anything but this anything but what I am what I will be what I have become am becoming my twisted evolution my faltered revolution my sickening resolution leave your tracks and be on your way June 11, 2003 Catharsis in Blue I'm sorry I can't be there I'm sorry that I'm sorry that I hate myself that you're bleeding and I'm not there why can't I be the one that makes things okay for you? is that not my job my purpose the only reason I'm here anyway? I smell like him and think of you and kiss someone else completely. why can't I be what you need what you want something that you could touch feel not reject appreciate reciprocate this is not how things were meant to be and maybe if you wouldn't ask I wouldn't have to lie to you to lie under you this is not me in my bitter clown ways this is not me with the wounds this is not me I cannot find me because it is so utterly in you and that means I'm twisted, you're twisted, we're twisted beyond recognition and our friends in the morgue will only shudder in response and I can't be what I need to be I can't feel what I need to feel I can't live up to my psuedopotential the promise of my life the promise of my life to you and I cannot give up the things that hurt me that breathe me that make me real and true and deader than I am alive aliver than I am dead and maybe I just can't function with out you intact maybe I just can't function without you maybe I just can't function maybe I just can't June 10, 2003 Catharsis in Red stop telling me what time it is I think I know by now but I guess I'm always just too late just too wrong and this love is getting spread a little thin don't you think? because I love the things i will never see and will never love me in return but I can't help myself and maybe this is bad because you still stand so close and know so much and remember so many things I cannot forget and how can I say I miss you and hug you close body to body touching feeling warmth heat you me together familiar wrong and kiss someone else? how can I love you why aren't you gone why are you mine and why can't I have the one thing I truly need? spread across the wires breaking through breaking down breaking under me and over to you and this is not how we were meant to be far apart close together hugging you loving you kissing you scattered across a country why can I not concentrate deliberate calibrate and maybe in the long run the short run where are we running anyway? and break this bone shatter this life splinter this girl and don't come back don't remember don't tell me what fucking time it is don't you think I know? June 6, 2003 Catharsis in Grey why can't you be good to me why can't this be a good thing in between all the bad and the pain and the fuck you bruises I want to feel anything but myself anything but you anything but me the sickness will not leave its place inside where it orders its army against my brain against my skin against my blood I cannot help but lie to you in my empty broken way my I cannot love you way I cannot help but love you way I wish I could hate but it's beyond my capabilities I wish I could love but it's beyond my inadequacies I cannot remember the last time I felt you loved me I felt I loved you you felt there was love and as we stood in your front yard kissing I wondered about your guitar pick I wondered about june bugs I wondered if I could ever do right by you and please don't forgive me don't let me hurt you anymore don't let me be this burden this beast this ugly don't let me infect you don't let me be what brings you down and as you follow me to the truck expecting a kiss wanting my lips my laughter my hands I cannot help but love you and hate you and need you and love everyone else infinitely more than the past second it's not right for us to live this way so far apart the distance we can't shake even when we're together and the marks I leave on you fade just skin just marks let me scar you and we'll see how long we last I will make you hurt I will make you sorry I will hurt you in my self destruction hurt me so I feel something kick me scream at me make some part of my insanity real and palpable and believable make me hurt make me bleed make me scar May 12, 2003 Love After Latte The message came about a week ago. It was tucked neatly between a message from my mother and a call from the doctor's office to confirm an appointment. She identified herself as if she didn't know that her voice entered my head often enough for me to recognize it. "Meet me for coffee next Saturday, if you want. 10-ish? I'll be there regardless." I blinked. I played the message back twice more, just to make sure. She didn't have to say which coffee shop, she knew that I'd know where to be. It was funny that she said she'd be there regardless--she knew I'd show. She could probably imagine me canceling whatever other plans I had, making weak excuses and laying awake feeling guilty, but trembling slightly at the prospect of seeing her. That Saturday I woke up early, but I rushed anyway. I brushed my teeth twice--I couldn't remember if I had done it initially, but I figured I'd do it again for good measure. I caught myself in the mirror on the way out, keys in my hand and sunglasses on my head, and I realized I looked just as disheveled as usual, despite my early awakening. Oh well. At least my breath was fresh. The door jingled quaintly as I pushed through it and stepped onto the rustic looking wood floor. I was late. People didn't come here much; it was just sort of out of the way. Maybe that's why I knew this was the place she meant. There was an elderly gentleman seated near the window reading the comics in the paper and sipping the same coffee he ordered every morning. He always had a hat that he set on the table until he got up to leave, then he would adorn it, and tip it on the way out, in unison with the jingle of the door. I never knew his name, but I'd know his smile anywhere. There were various other fairly unmemorable inhabitants: a man in a business suit, a pair of middle-aged women, and the kid behind the counter with a pimply face and a dumb expression. She was there, too, of course, seated in the corner leaning against the wall and gazing idly out the front window at the people on the street. She looked up at me as she heard my footsteps on the floor approaching. She smiled, and I reciprocated sheepishly. "Late?" she said, posing it as a question but meaning it like a statement. I shrugged. "Some things never change," I replied, taking a seat across from her at the small round table. She shook her head and chuckled, "I know." I ordered my coffee, which was much lighter in color than hers--I could never drink it as black as she could. We talked; she asked me how I'd been with genuine interest in an honest answer. She laughed at all the right times, her slightly imperfect teeth flashing in the sun that tumbled through the window, making her look healthy, youthful. She raked her fingers habitually through her lustrous blonde hair that fell softly around her shoulders. I leaned back in my seat and pretended to be fascinated with stirring my coffee. Eventually, our laughter tapered to a somehow unawkward silence. She rested her hand on my forearm and waited for me to look at her. I found her eyes greyer than I remembered, intent. "You miss me," she said in a low tone. It was not even remotely a question, but it was supposed to look like one. Yet it was not quite a statement either. It was more of a plea. I nodded. "You didn't have to ask," I said, deadpan. "I know," she mumbled, so softly and humbly I almost didn't hear her. I studied the fingernails on my left hand. I was afraid to pose the question in return. I was afraid of the humoring tinge in her voice that I knew so well. I was afraid that I would make her lie to me. She finished her coffee and stood, the chair sliding roughly across the wood floor. I stood as well, mirroring her in a way that was most deeply habitual. I walked next to her towards the door, it jingled as I opened it and held it as she walked through. We stood facing eachother on the sidewalk, near the same height but opposite in every other way--her light hair and mine that seems to darken every year, her greyish-blue eyes and my deep brown puppy-ish ones. She looked at me, wordlessly. Then, suddenly, she threw her arms around my neck in a hug that was more of a pounce than anything. "You were always my favorite," she said conspiratorially into my ear. "I know," I said. I watched her walk away, I watched her press the crosswalk button and tap her foot impatiently, I watched her until I couldn't see her anymore. I got into my car and drove homeward. The streets were busy that Saturday. Too busy. I thought of her. And as the metal closed around me, I thought I heard her scream my name. --- I woke to find myself cleaner than I expected. There was a slight aftertaste of blood. I was laying face down, and as I opened my eyes I realized that the floor was... wood? I ran my hands across it as I pushed myself up. I heard a familiar jingling that was almost otherworldly. I turned towards the sound and there she was. We sat in the corner, she leaned against the wall, and we watched the angels through the window. There weren't many people there. I guess it's just sort of out of the way. My mother cried when she saw the paper, our pictures side by side, the same size but opposite in every other way. "This is heaven?" I said, more of a question that a statement. "I know," she said. April 23, 2003 Meet Me at the Station It's been a while since I've seen you. This thought loiters lazily in my mind as I sit in a large wooden chair, long legs stretched out infront of me, watching the people drift back and forth. Mothers with their children in tow, holding their arms high to defy the gravity that often topples their young bodies to the ground. Men loaded with luggage, dragging their loafers along the smooth tile floor. An over-alled, middle-aged man sits two seats down from me, respecting the tacit human law of personal space. He is making a futile attempt to remove the earth from beneath his fingernails. I almost pity him. I watch the hypnotic pattern of the light from the train passing over my shoes and wonder idly what I've come here for. I spent most of my cash on the one-way ticket that pokes proudly from the back pocket of my jeans, and the rest of it on coffee. The empty styrofoam cup and various sugar and creamer wrappers sit dejectedly in the chair next to me. I wonder if you'd object to the fact that my cup isn't biodegradable. I must look homeless, sitting in the station alone with no luggage, dozing at intervals. People must wonder if I'm lost, a runaway, a no-good lyin' teenager--one of those "bad seeds." I sit, arms crossed over my stomach, silent, patient, waiting. The station clears out. I have watched countless people board, embark, reunite, arrive, depart, live. The lights go down. There is a faint howling of a late-night train, echoing across the desert. I wonder where you are. I play a game with myself, and watch for you in the stillness of the station. I wonder if you are, perhaps, in the ticket box masterfully disguised as the 30-ish overweight woman with bleached blonde hair that I can see watching a soap on the small black and white tv. I think that maybe you're hiding in the phone booth, watching me. Perhaps you're lurking in the high rafters, waiting for the perfect moment to dive to the floor like a fallen angel. I lean my head back against the hard, unfriendly wood of my chair and close my eyes. My back hurts. My train never came. Maybe... it's late? It's been a while since I've seen you. April 7, 2003 Intensive Care in Three Perspectives My boots are dirty. The floor is white, tile, sterile, patterned logically under my tangled laces. I'm sitting hunched, elbows against thighs, going through the motions of popping my trembling fingers. The chair is uncomfortable, sickeningly clean like everything else, numbingly uniform, just one of a league of identical chairs. I realize I haven't inhaled in longer than usual and do so, raggedly. I check my watch, discovering with a subtle sense of futility that it's one minute later than the last time I looked. I lean back in the seat and pass my fingers through my hair. When was the last time I got my hair cut? My right wrist bounces meditatively against the metal arm of my chair. Where the hell is that nurse? ...Transition... Been a long day--all of them are long. Days lined with sad stories and white squeaky shoes and white shuffly uniforms. Waiting room furniture inhabited by haggard worried faces, cell-shaped enclosures with bedsheet-colored people, slowly wasting away. I check the charts; I pass out the pudding. I travel unnoticed through these halls, nameless, faceless, a mere witness to so much life and so much death. I am unseen, unremembered, clad in all white like some sort of ghost. This is where I work--purgatory. ...Transition... The nurse emerges from the too-long hallway and I lift my head, half expecting her to continue squeaking by. She looks at me and nods her tidy head, her starched hair neatly tucked under her starched hat. I follow her past innumerable open doorways, each withholding life in some form, some intensity. Her immaculate uniform does not move in unison with the rest of her. She points me to a door, beside which 3 numbers are shockingly black in contrast with the nauseating white wall. I pass through the threshold meekly; making sure the soft sound of my boots against the floor makes no disturbance in the room. Machines, subtle beepings, tiny lights blinking red, green, metallic looming beasts, rumbling in their cold electricity. She barely contrasts with the bed. Her hair is limp, framing her motionless face on the too-clean pillow. Her eyes are closed. She wears only a flimsy hospital robe--there's no way she's comfortable. Her arms are exposed, pale against the sheets, a plastic IV in her left hand, its tube trailing upward and winding 'round its metal stand like a snake around a branch. I wonder what venom they're putting in her now. I sit gingerly on the chair (one of the league) next to her bed. I take her right hand in both of mine and rest my forehead against them. "Your hands are cold," she says in a dream. ...Transition... I hear voices, slow, deep, oozing past my ears like syrup, or a broken cassette tape. There are fingers wrapped around my hand, my wrist, intertwined with my own fingers. My veins ache. It's cold--I feel naked, but I know I'm not. I struggle to open my eyes. Everything is fuzzy, wispy, like multicolored smoke is emitting from the walls. I can barely move, my body feels ravaged, violated, surrounded by something soft and foamy and constricting. Beepings cut through the static droning inside my head, making my eyes throb. She comes into focus. Both her hands encase one of mine; her arms are visibly tense. I follow her form up to her face, taut; lines of worry and lack of sleep contouring her cheekbones. The source of the voice becomes apparent. A ghostly white figure, the subject of my friend's metallic gaze, stands in the corner, wielding a clip board and a small cup I've come to associate with being disoriented. The figure is speaking authoritatively about something, though she sounds a little worried--intimidated? My friend eyes the nurse steadily, willing her to leave. I feel her grip on me tighten. ...Transition... I startle awake to find myself in an incomplete darkness, interrupted by various tiny lights and a vague shadow created by the moon through the typical hospital blinds behind my head. I am upright in the same chair I've been in for hours (all my life?) It's 3:25 a.m. She's sleeping. I rub my eyes and rake my fingers through my tangles. I realize I must look a little insane. Maybe I am. I push my shoulders back and my spine emits a dry cracking noise, sending a dull ache down into my hips. I hear a late-night nurse squeak by in the hall, the sound of her footfalls swelling and receding as she makes her way someplace or another. I slide down in my chair, stretching my legs tiredly out infront of me, and watch the near-motionless figure in the bed. She has lost all color, save the soft blue of her lips and fingernails. The steady rise and fall of her chest is my only comfort. I let out a weary sigh and finger the lump in my pocket that is the assortment of purloined pills I acquired throughout the day. An unsuspecting intern, in a desperate effort to appear knowledgeable, explained to me the name and purpose of several kinds of medication on a cart. At the right time, I stealthily chose the ones that struck my fancy and tried my best to look casual walking around with three fistfuls of pills in my pocket. "If you die here, love, so will I," I say into the darkness. She doesn't answer, but she knows. ...Transition... Night shift. My footfalls are the only sign of life, echoing eerily down the sterile halls. I pass the only closed door and try to construct the image I know is behind it: two young girls, one in the bed, naturally, and the other poised expectantly in a chair at bedside. I imagine the latter as a mother vulture, her face pale and craggy with worry. Visiting hours came and went ages ago, but she refused to leave, and I didn't have the heart to call security on her. For some reason, I feel better having made the exception for her, like it would have been wrong of me not to. I can't decide who is sicker--the one with the disease, or the one who sits and waits. ...Transition... I awaken again, stirring gently. I wonder how long I've been out. I turn my head as best I can to look at her--I knew she would be there. She's awake as well, slumped in her chair, illuminated by the vertical lines of light cast across her back from the blinds. Her hands are folded between her knees and she seems fascinated with her fingers, but I know she doesn't really see them. I listen, and between the mechanical beepings and the electric whir of everything around us, I hear her crying. Hardly a sound emits from her tight throat, forcing the energy inward to swirl inside her chest. It begins to rain outside, appropriately, as if she had willed the sky to open and weep with her. The drops moving across the window distort the shadows on her back, making them dance to some slow-motion symphony of her life, my life, our life. I wish I could touch her. Strangely, I fear nothing. Wherever I'm going, she'll follow. ...Transition... I check my clipboard mechanically. It tells me nothing terribly truthful about what's behind the closed door. Somehow I know that the parting of those two girls goes against the cosmic order of everything. I sense things about them that one does not write in the reports. I move past their door as quietly as I can, tacitly fearing what will be discovered behind it come morning. ...Transition... Is she ready? ...Transition... I'm ready. ...Transition... They're not ready. March 25, 2003 A Plea of Guilty a laugh that slowly mutates to a sob as I hang up the phone were we ever really talking anyway? and maybe you don't see the things I find obvious but I'm fine can't you tell? everything's a little too loud and I'm a little too late but it's all just fine fine fine that's all I can bring myself to say. just tired. just fine. tired. I almost choke on it sometimes. dry heaves in the shower and blood on my fingers what does this get me? and it feels like there's a hole in my torso a hold on my torso a space unfilled an incompletion in my spine. don't they wonder about the missing bandaids? about the scars that dance up my arm like ants to a hill? don't they wonder when I don't eat don't sleep can't speak? don't they think it curious that I do things just because they -hurt-? don't forgive me anymore. please do not forgive me for this. you're not here for long you never are so maybe you should leave me to this maybe you shouldn't grieve for this stop forgiving me. March 22, 2003 Letter from a Stranger I'm sorry I can't love you because sometimes I wish I was capable of things but I'm just not and I don't think it's my fault but it could be because I'm already sold and no one can touch me not really because she's the only one who ever has but I wish you could say my name without meaning it the way you do without seeing it the way you do because it doesn't mean anything to me and it never has but I wish I could look at you without you reading so much more into every word and could you please just stop loving me because I can't handle hurting you March 8, 2003 The Woman in the Bushes It was sometime in early January and Michael was driving me home. In retrospect, it strikes me as odd that on that particular night, my ride was Michael. Michael whose parents named him after an angel. It's awkward to think of him as angelic as he lacks grace in any form. But then again, it's awkward to think of the place he was taking me as anything but a house. So much for the thought of an angel guiding me home. It was nighttime, which means my neighborhood was deadly dark. They didn't invest much in street lights out here. People leave their outside lights on as some sort of neighborhood ordinance. I think that says something about where I live. It gets awful dark if people don't leave the light on for you. Michael was silent then, as he tends to get sometimes. Talking to him often proves to be cathartic, but for now the absence of his voice was almost delicious. I was gazing blankly out the window and thinking idly about my sleeves. Then something caught me eye, bringing every thought, every movement in my brain to a screeching halt. There in the bushes of a house about a block from mine was a woman. She was crouched, as if hiding from something or someone, her small frame illuminated by the lights of the house. She had dark hair that seemed a little unkempt. Her slender arms were exposed and ghastly pale protruding from her short sleeved black shirt. It was cold that night, and in retrospect, she needed to be wearing a coat. In the several seconds that oozed past, I wondered who was after her. I opened my mouth to speak and she was gone. I blinked several times and came up with nothing but bushes infront of that house. "I could have sworn there was a woman in those bushes," I said finally. I don't think I meant to say it out loud. I can't recall Michael's response. I couldn't escape the awe of that momentary reality and still can't. I saw a woman. If you see something, what's to say it's not real? And maybe she was real, at least to me. What caused her? A glitch in the system? A subtle momentary disagreement of perceptions? Why did the part of my brain that saw only bushes win out against the part that saw the woman? And why a woman? Why not a man? a dog? a mastodon? Questions outnumber answers. Perhaps she wouldn't have stuck with me if I hadn't seen her again. It was the same situation though perhaps not Michael in the driver's seat. She didn't last as long, as though the rational part of my brain had a little better hold on the renegade part. But she was there. I saw her. The more I think about her, the more possibilities she has. It was like she was running from something. Like she'd left so quickly she'd forgotten that it was cold and she needed something with long sleeves. She seemed oddly familiar as if I'd met her somewhere or perhaps known her all my life. And perhaps I had seen her before--the produce section of Albertson's, the English hall at school, the children's section of the library, or the mirror in my bathroom. And maybe she is as much a part of what I am as she is a part of my reality. Maybe she is some manifestation of what I have become--scared, running, pale, and ill prepared for the weather. I wonder where she was going, where she was coming from. The fact that she was so close to my house is a little disconcerting. Was she fleeing from me? Or was she coming for me? Sometimes she'll come to mind while I'm busy with something else, like taking a shower. I'm afraid to close my eyes to keep the shampoo from stinging them, afraid to open the shower curtain, the bathroom door--like she could be anywhere, crouched with her slender arms and wild eyes. I wonder if she saw me either of the times I saw her. I can't distinctly remember her looking at me, though some part of me believes she did, or at least was aware of me. Why is it, exactly, that I fear her? Why don't I want to see her again? Perhaps it would mean I truly am crazy. Perhaps it was that she was too pale to be alive. Perhaps because she was so close to where I live, both physically and mentally. Maybe I'm afraid of what she means, what she has to show me. Maybe I'm just afraid. There is a woman who hides in the bushes a block from my house. No one will convince me otherwise. She doesn't live there; she merely hides there momentarily on her way to or from somewhere. Perhaps I'll give her my jacket, if I see her again. It's too cold around here to go around without sleeves. February 3, 2003 From Whence the Beauty Came It's a warm February. This bothers me. I'm sitting in my friend's car in front of her house. I am alone. Always. Her house seems to be the essence of letting go. The yard is unkempt: random plants grow or die in what must be a flower bed, the trees are bare and exposed, something that looks like a massive tumbleweed clings to a wall. The lawn itself seems to have two or three different species of grass and there are beaten trails where people have walked. I wonder who formed them and where exactly they were going. I realize there is a whole side to her house I've never been in. It's visible from the outside, but I don't think I've ever seen the door that leads to it from the inside. This is strange. A dirty, weathered flag hangs from a seemingly randomly placed flagpole. Her mother's last attempt at giving a damn, I suppose. And somehow, sitting there surrounded by her dysfunctional car and the barren ghostliness of her house, she doesn't seem to fit here. Perhaps there is a hidden door to another side of her, but I haven't seen it from the outside yet. She has such a strong sense of hanging on, of getting through, that the aura of this place doesn't quite vibrate on her frequency. Sometimes the most profound things come out of her pretty mouth. And sometimes I wonder if she knows what the hell she's doing. And I wonder how she came from this house, in all her roguish splendor. Perhaps this place stood taller once upon a time. Perhaps everything was alive at once, and all of it was strategically placed. And maybe I'll find that door to the other side. Or maybe it was always defeated. And as she returns and fills the small car with the loudness of her soul, I cannot be alone. She gives me no choice in the matter. January 25, 2003 Warm December Sitting on cold bricks with my legs stretched out across the porch. The smell of Friday afternoon in a warm December. I watch a squirrel twitch its tail indecisively while choosing which branch to leap to. I have to smile looking at her, seated across from me laughing like she always is. It seems she eliminates all options except smiling for me quite often. And as much as I try to maintain a composed demeanor, I think she knows better. Perhaps she senses my inner loudness, the noise from within that must escape my skin through subtle vibration, transforming my aura into a hybrid of peace and war. She helps to calm me. She allows me to shed focus and purpose. I like the quiet. She surprises me sometimes. She'll absent mindedly sweep my hair away from my eyes as gently and as easily as she would if it were her own hair in her own eyes. She hugs me like she means it. These gestures of undue affection might go unnoticed by someone else, but as individual and fleeting moments, they are our essence. I'll smile my bemused little smile at my bemused little friend sitting across from me on her front porch. She'll laugh and say "What?" in a halfway expectant tone. "Just you," I'll say, "just you." January 11, 2003 Well. Hello, kiddies. I've decided to actually resurrect this section for my prose. I'll put up a bunch that are already written and try to remember to post new ones as they come. Absent Winter Standing in my friend's driveway in the 12:30ness of this December Friday, it's almost autumn-like, squinting in the sun that scoffs at the should-be winter. The grass is dead. I remember sitting in that grass in its summergreen splendor, watching day fall and night rise. It strikes me as odd that winter should be absent, leaving me suspended between theoretical dying and theoretical death of nature. Although, autumn has never quite been the dying of things for me, nor winter the death. It seems my life takes on its own pattern of seasons, with short invigorating summers punctuated by long autumns that occasionally dip in and out of blurred winters. Somehow I skip spring, the birth or rebirth of nature, but this is oddly inconsequential. I was born for summer, but conceived for autumn. I took shape in the prolonged strangled autumn of this nowhere town. My boots are dirty, an idication of where I've been (or perhaps where I'm going?), their dusty blackness contrasting with the sunbathed grey of the concrete. It's 12:32. I watch the wind move the hearty leaves of the near-naked tree that stands stark in the yard and I pull my long black sweater closer around me. It's a Friday in December, and winter is nowhere to be found. 16 Splendor I walked into my bathroom at probably almost 1 a.m. after getting off the computer. As I pushed the door closed, a dizziness surged behind my eyes like a waterfall, the pressure inside my head rising. "I'm going to fall..." I thought as everything went black. It was a slow descent, really. Liquid. I had enough time to catch myself against my blue bathmat, which was lucky, as my upper body landed on tile, about half a foot from the tub. As I lay there, I thought, "Well, isn't this interesting..." I stared at the base of my toilet for a moment and wondered fleetingly about ants. I then pushed myself up, using my head as well as my arms to lift my 127 pounds from the bathroom floor. I pottied and undressed. I stood there a long time staring at myself in the mirror. My blue and white striped wall paper became blurry. I just stood, taking myself in for once. My dark eyes, the gentle slope of my shoulders, followed by my slender and richly tanned arms. My hands looked large and boney at the ends of my thin wrists. I flexed my pale stomach and ran my fingers over my various tan lines. My skin is smooth. My bust is very slight, but I seem proportional nonetheless. I looked down and observed the curve of my muscular thighs and the slender boniness of my ankles. I noticed how unscarred I am... How even the new cuts aren't visible any more. I decided I'd like to stay this way. Drying off after my shower I ran my hands over my calves and shins, noting the scars and bruises I can be proud of... the ones that are easily explained. I am beautiful. My hair is thick and sunbleached in places. My skin is tan and healthy. My eyes are clear and dark. Muscles ripple here and there with my movements. I am healthy, young, and alive. No more than anyone else. I am a poet. I am scorned, but I think it's funny. I don't know everything, but I'm aware of that and that's all it takes. There will always be mysteries, like why the shower is so conductive to thought and just how many people actually view the base of their toilet up-close-and-personal... I love being 16. I accept me. Bathroom Revelation Sitting in the empty bathroom, inside a stall whose door doesn't lock, although it must have at some point. "Beth Ellis is a slut," says the greyblue wall that matches the greyblue tile floor. "NO WASTE," says the toilet paper roll holder in its metal protruding letters, oddly commanding in its sobriety. I have no reason to be here. I just wanted to get out. My body wanted to remind me of its ten red burdens -- the small army against my skin. I had to be reminded of my personal reality, as if the rubbing of my jeans was not enough. Perhaps it's become too much to ask to be okay. Perhaps it is beyond what I am deserving of. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to cry and it hurts not to. In the girls' room of a high school, and I am broken. Scenes From the Passenger Seat (Beautiful People) It's dark, time for me to be home and the white 80-something Honda is making its awkward way down the all-too-long street to my secluded neighborhood. She didn't have to take me home. I wonder what her motive in this is as she rambles. The lights from the car behind us reflect off her rearview mirror and make a mask of brightness across her too-dark eyes. It occurs to me that she's strikingly gorgeous, even in the dark. I always get the idea that she's telling me almost everything... but leaving that little bit to my imagination. I won't press her for details. Talking to her is an art I have not mastered. I can't help but stare at her... She's so enticing yet so broken. I want to press my lips to her neck to see if her skin is as soft as it looks... But on this point, my body and mind do not agree. My body knows better. I am mesmerized by the movement of her perfect lips. I wonder why she's confiding in me... I listen with my entire body, longing for her trust. She was a bad girl, once upon a time. A streak of this still shines clear through the makeup and the perfect smile. I want to know her... I want to see what she sees, because I sense that perhaps she sees more than she lets on. She's beautiful. ---- I'm the firestarter... Twisted firestarter... The music is so loud it vibrates through my body. She makes lewd gestures across the armrest at me and we both laugh... loudly to match the music with our joy. She sings and I groove. I don't know where we're going, and I have serious doubts as to whether she knows either. It doesn't matter. She honks the horn of the truck at some guys. Neither of us hear it, but she assures me people outside the truck did. The music drowns out everything beyond the confines of the metal. It's me and her. She fills the cab with that presence of hers -- the sweet smell, the contagious laughter -- and makes me whole. The street lights shine against her thin hair and she mocks naughtiness with her ice cream cone. She had asked me earlier that day if she had a good personality... Not fishing for compliments, though. She was truly concerned. I wondered how she could miss her own tremendous personality... But thinking back on it, she doesn't realize alot about herself. I know things about this girl that no one else's ears have ever heard. Not only does she love me, she has made me believe it. It takes alot to make a believer out of me. Every time she laughs for me, I love her that much more. She's beautiful when she cries, which is an extremely rare occasion. She's beautiful when she laughs, which is an extremely frequent occasion. She's beautiful when she speaks, and she's beautiful when she's silent. Her strength is discreetly obvious. She has a truly gentle and patient soul. I love her with no depth perception. ---- She sings to herself when there is a silence on the phone. She laughs at weird things. She's easily amused. She's singing now, drumming her hands on the steering wheel of her new Jeep Liberty. I can smell her intoxicating sweetness from where I sit. I laugh because I realize I've just witnessed the essence of her in this one compact moment. The very spirit of her passed through my own hollowed body. She gives me a confused pout, irrestistable on her adorable face, and asks what's so funny. I tell her to sing to her heart's content. She does. We both get ice cream; mine serves as dessert, hers serves as dinner. She has a weakness for chocolate, but her small stature does not indicate this. Her smile is priceless. I feel accomplished when I make her laugh, as though I have fulfilled my purpose. I love her expressions and her voice. She emphasizes in odd places. She's childlike and endearing. She inspires faith in me. I'd give her my soul if she needed a spare. She has a face that was made to smile. Her sadness is wrenching, though she doesn't intend for it to be. She hugs me when she leaves and tells me not to be a stranger. I was never a stranger to this girl. I have told her almost everything, as her presence spurs honesty. She understands and accepts, in her placidly knowing manner. Sometimes I'll leave a message on her answering machine simply because her voice on it amuses me. I usually don't leave messages for anybody. The intensity of her beauty is hard to grasp, as it grasps you first. ---- Scenes From the Passenger Seat Continued (Beautiful Boy) We passed the city limit sign about 5 minutes ago. I figure I'll wait to tell him this. For some reason being with him in the no-where land between Midland and wherever else is liberating. We're talking about a girl who is dead, but we don't know that yet. The irony of that will find us later. For now, we are uninformed... for now, we are not sorry. And to me, this is how it should be. If we weren't sorry then, we shouldn't be sorry now. He thanks me for the only time I ever made anyone cry intentionally... I can't look at him when I say "You're welcome." He's come a long way to see me... He's impossible. I wonder how I managed something like him. I keep asking myself what he came all that distance for. What am I to make an effort for? The sound of his voice is pleasing. For some reason it is especially recognizable. I'd know it anywhere. I've lost count of how many times we've seen the city limit signs going both directions in his new blue truck. I listen, but he listens better. We have a habit of starting to speak at exactly the same time. Sometimes he says what I was going to say... just in a different way. He'll leave within a matter of hours. Not enough hours. The phone calls and the crying will start, but neither of us are aware. Somewhere beyond what I'd like to admit, I wish we could have stayed in any moment between his arrival and his departure forever... Then he wouldn't have changed. He wouldn't have had to hurt. He's beautiful in his simplicity and his impossibility. I love his eyes, though he protests that they're "boring." He has the best mock-offense reactions of anyone I know. He's the calmest person I've ever seen about getting pooped on by a bird... on the head, even. I think it irritates him a little that I hate it when people spend money on me. I love him for loving me, and for letting me love him. His distance is a curse and a blessing. Our moments are few but intense. I'm not sure which is better: many and normal or few and extraordinary. He's still impossible, after all this time. He's the last boy I've kissed. The last lips my lips have tasted. He loves my cackles and he laughs at all the right times. I miss his laugh. We'll have hugs and kisses (not enough) and late-night-wee-hour phone calls (until one of us can't keep our eyes open). But for now it's me, him, and the street lights. His voice and mine together in a music that is all our own. He's come a long way to remind me he's beautiful. ---- Scene From the Driver's Seat It's been a bad few days for her. I'm taking her home. We're late. I'm not used to my car yet, and somehow she's calmer about this than I am. We start to stall crossing a street and I almost fall apart... she somehow pulls me back together, reaching from the depths of what I know she's feeling just for me. I can sense what she feels exuding from her incredibly small frame. I don't know what to say, or how to articulate what I feel. I want to pull over, get her out of the car and hold her, shield her from her demons. She's in a bad way, and I would give anything to protect her. Anything. She's just... talking and talking... Her voice soaring above the stillness of the night and the purring of my engine. There's no music. I need to hear her. She needs to be heard. It hurts me to think of her in this way, but I have to. I have no choice. I pull up infront of her house and I click on my light between the seats, halfway expecting not to turn on. She shows me what she's done and I'm relieved to see it's not so bad. She points out that it's not so bad to me, because of what I am. She's right. I slip into the Logen that existed before somehow and realize that what she's done is bad... Not as bad as it could be, but bad. In retrospect, it's amazing that I was able to resurrect that long-buried version of myself for that split second. She hasn't made a cameo since, and probably won't. She's so incredibly beautiful in her sadness. Her scars will be hard to explain, but to me it's simply a battle she didn't really lose. I wish I could hug her so close she'd disappear into my ribs. My body would protect her, I could breathe for her. She'd have no skin to burn. I love her with my entire being. She takes my breath away and returns me to myself all in the same dumbfounding moment. She amazes and confuses, surprises and makes things clear. She is beyond the realm of articulation. Green Eyes I think I've always liked her, even in junior high when I didn't like many people. She's changed alot -- grown into something I almost expected. She's still slender, slight of frame, striking in a gentle sort of way. She moves in a way that's almost gossamer. It feels like I've been watching her forever. Maybe I have been. Her green eyes peer at me over the thick rims of her glasses and she laughs. She has the kind of laugh that makes you feel like you're worth something, at least for that moment. The air tastes different around her. In my car scrambling for one more penny, I am intoxicated with her laughter and her voice and the scent of her. She leaves her gloves in the floor of my car. Finding them makes me happy -- a piece of her, a sort of afterglow. Her empathy is moving, almost contagious. She's fascinating and simple all at once. I could never exist the way she does, with her unbridled love and soft vulnerability. She lives without hesitation. She's beautiful with her short dirty blonde hair and winning smile. The desire to know her is silently firm, a wall of warm air, willing me to walk beside her to the parking lot, instead of going the direction that's shorter for me. It's difficult to digest the aura of her, tangible yet illusive, sensed but not finite. The memory of her laughter seems to echo through my torso, down to my fingertips, and up my neck, engulfing me in the sensation of her presence. She is like nothing I have ever encountered. Marvelous We can both ramble on for hours, venturing far from our initial subjects but dutifully digressing, enthralled in eachother's journey of thought and sounds and gestures. Our voices will echo long after the others have silenced or dispersed -- disappeared into the depths of wherever they will go. Time means nothing to my small companion and me. And thus it should be. I believe as creatures, we possess no other instinct. She smiles when she looks at me: a delightful mixture composed of calm bemusedness and general goodwill. She hugs me at all the right times; her instincts for affection never fail her. She misses me when I'm absent. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss her too. She is sort of like the personification of laughter, its variations included. Laughter and deception do not go together, unless forced, and even then their dischord is haunting. She is everything from a rye chuckle to a deep-down-hearty-honest-to-goodness laugh. Her emotions are accordingly readable, obvious, and touching in their fearless openness. She is hard to articulate as she makes me feel big and small; ridiculous and naturally sane; wise and naive all at once. She smiles as if her face had been created for no other expression, though her repertoire of expressions is extensive. She is forever playing with her touchable light brown hair, forever skipping down hallways, forever laughing. She has a sweet brand of endlessness intertwined with the invigorating energy that lingers around her. She makes me want to be better, more alive, more myself. She inspires something in me that I am not quite able to explain, but can only marvel at. Marvelous. November It's cold. It's smoky and home-like, yet pure and welcome when the wind blows just so. The smell of winter. Oddly, it makes me think of her. And in this moment, I am exempt from the biting chill of the weather against fingertips and nosetips. I am warmed by the simple thought, the simple love of her. My skin on my thighs is cool to the touch. I wonder what makes them vulnerable. I am oddly aware of my movements, the rippling of every muscle, the operation of every nerve. I am alive and vibrating against the thin breath of heaven. I am surrounded by bundled beauties, their existance clouding neatly infront of their slightly open lips. Their laughter will make it easier to sleep tonight. A beautiful friend will cry in the parking lot. Her aching will wrap itself weakly around my torso, embracing me in a way I cannot embrace her, with its cool, wispy fingers. Her brown eyes will avoid mine. I will drive away thinking of her. Small-town Broken Goddess Her eyes are too dark for her flaxen hair and fair complexion. Her features are delicate. She is always striking no matter how often you meet her. She's a model and that's no surprise. Her frame is slight and her limbs are slender. She moves with some brand of raw grace. She's beautiful in a broken sort of way. She's intriguing because she's impossible. She's small-town but she hides it well. You can never tell what goes on behind those dark, placid eyes. She likes it that way. There's something more behind her soft voice and short laugh... something haunting about her presence. Her silence is deliberate and piercing. Any expression on her smooth face speaks loudly. There is something tempting yet forbidden about her... Like you could lose yourself somewhere between her reasons and her tears. It saddens me to sense that her perfect smile is hollow; practiced for so many poses and cameras. Her trust in me is careful. She senses my desire for her confidence and my own vulnerability. She'll say those lines she's rehearsed so well that the words no longer have meaning but have become dull and tasteless in her pretty mouth. She'll praise Jesus in her suicide note. She's the small-town broken goddess -- perfect with all her flaws. Rainwindow Curled in a ball in the back of my mother's Suburban. Mother Nature drums her fingers against the windows, the roof, the cement, creating one deafening rumble. It's hailing out there. Rain pours down the glass. I prop myself up on two ugly pillows and watch through the window. Everything outside is shifting and sad. The rain makes everything uncertain. The ground is alive with ripples and splashes; it moves and deceives. And such is my life. Boundaries are shifting, things are grey and twisted. Everything is real and unreal at the same time. Reality and unreality move in slow motion, as the rain down the glass. They dance together to a demented symphony that's in and out of sync at the same time. They contradict and overwhelm one another. They intertwine in their smoky existance. They are one, they are me. I want to get out of the car, but I know my parents will pitch a fit. I want to spread my arms (wings) and bare my wrists to the sky. Tilt my head back and let the rain wash away my sins. I want to feel the sting of hail on my skin, the weight of my hair when it's wet. I want to smell the rain, feel the rain, be the rain. I want to live. I suddenly hate the Suburban -- the beige seats and the ugly pillows... I am safe within its confines, yet unsafe within myself. So which am I, really? I finally give up and close my eyes. We've been waiting out the storm for a long time in a gas station parking lot. What seems like decades later, the Suburban (beast) begins to move. I open my eyes. My view out the window is of the sky, as it always is. I can see the part where the dangerous grey slowly submits itself to blueness, and I realize that I'm going to be okay. I always say I'll be okay, and eventually I end up unokay again. This cycle of booms and busts is making me weary. But I think saying that I will be okay is a safe bet.... I probably will achieve okayness someday... Maybe not soon, or maybe sooner than I think... Who knows? Not me. Unintrusion Only our shoulders touch as we lie side by side in her single bed. It's 6 a.m. and we can't stop talking long enough to sleep. We've covered alot of ground in the coziness of her dim room... Alot of untread forbidden ground. I can smell her bedsheets. I can hear the gentle rattling of her door because of the air conditioner, like some child trying to get in without intruding. She's one of the strongest people I've ever met. She's been silently breaking down for months, controlling herself in a stoic manner I only dream of. As she lays there next to me, her voice shaking almost imperceptibly, I am dumbfounded by her beauty. She's losing faith. I don't remember the words that passed between us, just the raw emotion that seemed to startle us both. I don't know if she's crying. This is something she is capable of doing silently, like many other things that demand volume from me. I want to hold her. My voice is too low, too unreal to love her. I want to love her with my skin, my body as well. I imagine myself turning towards her. I feel the poke of her bellybutton ring against my forearm through her t-shirt. I can conjure the warmth of her flesh beneath cloth against my skin. I want to push my face to her cheek, feel the heat of her neck, the softness of her hair, smell her sorrow and her tears -- her strength and her sadness condensed into salt and water. I want to feel her shoulder under my chin as I tell her I love her. Why can't I do this? What unwritten code prevents me from touching her with this intensity? What demon has restricted my love? I press my shoulders against the mattress my beautiful friend inhabits nightly and speak instead of touch. In this moment there is no more me, with my bruises and sad stories. I have left my tainted body to curl around my breath-takingly hurting friend in spirit. I have forsaken my delicious agony. She is so nakedly vulnerable in the delicate softness of this wee hour. Even then, I am reassured, as I can physically feel our love in the mingled heat of our bodies. She loves me even though I am damaged, like a bruised apple, shameful in its partial sweetness. This baffles me but it makes me love her more. I drift away to the sound of her breathing, my hands still sleepily protesting that they have not done their job. My sleeping body will be bathed in her aura, coated in her strength -- sweet in its stark beauty. The sunlight will bring laughter and donuts. Our deepened love will linger between her blue eyes and my brown ones like some secret belonging to a child who waits outside the door, not wanting to intrude. Streamage there is always wonder as to whether it's supposed to be this way or not. cars on a road fast fast and anxiety attacks because her neck is broken and it seems that there could never be an irregular or improper was it fraction again. mini vans amnd pumpkin pi she never should have left. I hate 18wheelers for the truckers and their cigarettes and their sweat and grime. I need to shave over the scars that give my shins character and it's something i can be proud of and i don't know where these bruises came from but i'm glad it wasn't me. I'm tired of having something to hide from everyone. worry is making me grow old and I'm really just so young...so young... children selling lemonade and willow tree branches across my forehead. cat hair and nuzzleface he never should have left. i want to run because there's no one for me here. i hate the way I feel because guilt has become too much a part of me. it has made me tainted bike rides and merry go rounds. sun bleached fuchsia and blonde. the streets of my life are broken. cracking cement and overgrassy yards. someone to take my hand and pull me from the gutter. i miss the air and the way it felt to fall from waytoohigh. it hurt my back but I was happy anyway. two faces with hands that were small and dirty under the nails. four battered shoes that did the running down the concrete of our lives. tadpoles and crawdaddies and frogs. the meaning of life. young with mood swings and no desire. no one bothers to chase because I'm just that illusive because I'm scared but I have a right to be. I'm tired of hiding because I don't want to die this way. death is so near yet so far. I wake up and there it is, sleeping next to me almost peacefully but desiring me nonetheless. i want to live and breathe like I used to because then the pressure in my chest wasn't so deep and suffocating. run with me and make me a child. green grass. rain of leaves on autumn mornings when no one was there but me and i ruled like night when everyone sleeps but the insomniac with the razorblade. i'm tired of hiding from myself and from others and from death. take me, any and all. i never bought the lemonade and i never said i was sorry swish and a near miss but there was laugher somewhere for the roller blades and hockey sticks and brown hair with embarassment. so many dances lost and wasted to return to crush my gentle naive soul. i miss the way his hands felt and the way he laughed but hatred is such a vile being. crash. July 15, 2002 Well, blogger has really taken the place of my little rambling section... If you're interested, visit the blog. May 3, 2002 I have braces. For the first time in my life, I started carrying a mirror to prevent embarrassing mishaps with all that metal. It broke today, the mirror that is. Maybe that's some omen that carrying a mirror isn't me and therefore I shouldn't do it. I managed to cut my finger the tiniest bit. I threw away the pieces because I needed to push away the thoughts that the sharp edges of glass and my mind conceive. I surfaced from near-sleep last night terrified and almost in tears over Kelli. I need to be the one that makes things alright for her. I need to be able to take care of my friend. Our three-year anniversary is coming up. The 14th of May. We picked that one from about a week's worth of possible days we met. God, 3 years of loving her more than I thought anyone could love anyone else. I hate to think that she's hurting. If I could, I'd take everything for her. She awakened an infinite capacity of love in me. I didn't know it was there, honestly. She is everything to me. Nothing else comes close. Without her, what am I? That's like Dusty without Cele or Tweedle Dee without Tweedle Dum. It's hollow, wrong, and broken. I wonder if she realizes how desperately important she is to me. She'll graduate soon. Maybe being on her own will remedy things. I know she'll keep in touch. She'd better anyway, or I'll go 'round the bend. I feel useless sitting here not with her. I feel like I should be somewhere else, anywhere else, wherever Kelli needs me. I love her from Texas to Virginia and back one thousand times. That's the longest distance I can think of... the longest distance imaginable. Maybe I should stop making excuses and just get on a bus and go. I'm too young... I don't know if I'd make it. I wouldn't want to put everyone here through the worry of me running halfway across the country... excuses. Maybe that's all I'm good for. Love, nevertheless. April 23, 2002 Well, I haven't posted a ramble here in ages, so I guess I'm about due for one. I think I'll quote something a friend of mine wrote. I've cleaned it up for spelling so it will make sense, but nevertheless. I hope he doesn't mind. "Some people say beauty is on the inside but then at the sight of blood some people faint. Does that mean that they cant handle true beauty?" --Steven Tippett Life is good. February 19, 2002 Things have been less than okay lately, but I suppose I can try to remain optimistic. Things will get better, or that's what I tell myself anyway. I need to learn to let things go. I've never been very talented in that area. I keep thinking I should talk to Josh, but I could see that totally backfiring and making things desperately less than okay. So I remain where I am, in this fragile existence between okay and whatever that is below it. Nothing changes, really. Perhaps it gets a bit worse every now and then, but I hope better is somewhere waiting for me. I'm disappointed in myself, really. Somehow my carefully built happiness was lost in the shuffle. I'll recover. I've done it before. I think it scares me that I plunged so quickly this time, and recovery it taking so long. Maybe I'm just 15 and I can't be expected to bounce. Bouncing on Jupiter, right? Of course. Where else would one bounce? Damn gravity to the deepest depths of hell, I say. But I suppose I can't be expected to drop such a big part of my life as quickly as he dropped me. That sentence hurt to write. I know my life will be okay. I'm just stuck now. I don't know what I'm waiting for or why I'm waiting, even. I'm impatient usually. Maybe I shouldn't be waiting at all, but I don't know what else to do, really. February 5, 2002 I count the minutes until class is done, the hours until school is out, the days until the weekend, the months until summer, the years before I'm "free." What am I really waiting for? Freedom? I don't think I know what that really means. Death? No. Death waits for me, not the other way around. Happiness? That's a possibility, I think. But one doesn't wait for happiness. It's created or found or unearthed... however you want to put it. Easily obtained with a certain effort and a lot of desire. Maybe that's the key. You have to want to be happy. You have to want it badly enough to come to terms with what scares you, defy what holds you down, and love what loves you in return. They say love hurts, but they're wrong. The ubiquitous "they" is often wrong. Love doesn't hurt. Love takes the risk and relishes in the danger. Suspicion, hatred, cruelty, indifference, among others hurt. It's easy to blame love and side with "them." But anyone who has really loved knows they're tricking themselves. There is more to life than this desk, this room, these walls. More to life than this paper, this pencil, these hands. There is enough to life to fulfill this insatiable teenager. I hope it's still raining. People spend too many rainy days being alone. I want to be alive. February 1, 2002 What is truth? I mean, really... does anyone know? It's just a word... like normal or toilet or even scissors. "The truth will set you free" right? What's freedom? I think that's completely based on perception. One person considers themself free, while an outsider thinks them insane. Maybe they're both crazy. Freedom and truth. Two concepts that humans cling to... do they even exist? Are they simply words that are used as crutches? The word "normal" for instance. What is normal? Perhaps it's a word people use to comfort themselves. Conformity is comfortable, I suppose. But normal is perceptual as well. Maybe it's just a word, a word just as fake as shnerple. Something that people keep around so they don't have to be crazy. truth n.
January 25, 2002-Conformity to fact or actuality. -A statement proven to be or accepted as true. -Sincerity; integrity. -Fidelity to an original or standard. -Reality; actuality. -often Truth That which is considered to be the supreme reality and to have the ultimate meaning and value of existence. freeˇdom n. -The condition of being free of restraints. -Liberty of the person from slavery, detention, or oppression. -Exemption from the arbitrary exercise of authority in the performance of a specific action; civil liberty: freedom of assembly. -Exemption from an unpleasant or onerous condition: freedom from want. -The capacity to exercise choice; free will: We have the freedom to do as we please all afternoon. -Ease or facility of movement: loose sports clothing, giving the wearer freedom. -Frankness or boldness; lack of modesty or reserve: the new freedom in movies and novels. -The right to unrestricted use; full access: was given the freedom of their research facilities. -The right of enjoying all of the privileges of membership or citizenship: the freedom of the city. norˇmal adj. -Conforming with, adhering to, or constituting a norm, standard, pattern, level, or type; typical: normal room temperature; one's normal weight; normal diplomatic relations. -Biology. Functioning or occurring in a natural way; lacking observable abnormalities or deficiencies. -Relating to or characterized by average intelligence or development. -Free from mental illness; sane. I am single. By god. January 20, 2002 I do so love books. I went to a used bookstore the other day. The shelves are horribly managed, so there's a crapload of dead ends. I found a section with a faded sign above it that read "Poetry." I perused the section thoroughly. Much to my pleasant surprise, I found a book of e.e. cummings, which I CLUNG to so I wouldn't set it down and not end up buying it. I've started to thumb through it. It's amazing. I've already marked some poems that I absolutely adore. The man is genius. I also found a collection of Robert Frost, which I got. A while ago I was furniture shopping with my mom and sister. In the store they had old books out on the coffee tables for decoration... Well, being the odd little person I am, I picked one up and started to read. "Listen to the Warm" was one I happened upon that day. It's by Rod McKuen, whom I've never heard of. But some of the poetry in there was... amazing. I found it in that used bookstore and clung, in an e.e. cummings-like fashion. My last purchase was "Reflections at Walden" by the much-loved Henry David Thoreau. My dad calls him "Ralph Emerson's hippie friend." I almost didn't get this book, until I looked in the front. To Bob -- Because I love you -- even when we march to the sound of two different drums! Merry Christmas!! 1973 Madelyn For some reason, this struck me as so fascinating. Somewhere in 1973, Madelyn loved Bob, by god, and Bob loved Emerson's hippie friend. This woman's handwriting is cursive, slanted slightly to the right, and written in purple felt tip, I believe. This has an infinite amount of meaning for me, even though it really shouldn't. I am odd, we know this. But I am a lover, a dreamer, and an oddball. Madelyn loves Bob, still, if hope prevails. January 8, 2002 I don't sleep much. I don't guess I ever have. It's hard for me to get to sleep. Mother gave me some sleeping pills, but I don't think they work. Even when I'm exhausted, my mind will not rest. I plot irrational things when I should be sleeping. I used to nightwrite, but I don't much anymore. It used to be pretty creepy. My mind would fixate on things like eyes and the phrase "Just like a miracle." One night, the lines on the paper apparently offended me. I defied them and declared it proudly. I did some nightwriting recently. I don't know if that's a sign of anything. I also drew a self-portrait that looks nothing like me. In the night, that is. The face is too long, the eyes too large, the lips too sad, the lines on the forehead too pronounced. I think it was a perception of myself then. I used the mirror, so the lamp in the background is in the picture, as well as some of the ivy that belongs to a fake plant on my dresser. The night I drew it, my eyes seemed to be the only part of me. Vision became a breathtaking endeavor. It's odd to think that I looked so distorted. My mom said that the person in the picture looked like a freak. That's also an interesting twist. One of the most well known girls in school is in my Spanish class. When she smiles her nose juts sharply downward, as her upper lip protrudes and hides it when her face is relaxed. It's hard to put into words. Her eyes seem too large. Her expression reads as one or more of the following: shrewd confidence, distaste, or confusion. I find myself studying people lately. Fascinated with things like the shape of their lips or the way the muscles move as they chew their gum. I'm weird. But eh, I've allus been weird. January 7, 2002 I tried to remember today what I was doing on September 11. I was in first period chemistry, the news was on. I sat on top of my desk in sort of a daze. We watched the news all day, I think. I remember going to lunch with a couple of friends, not including Josh. I don't remember... oh yes, I do... one of them was moving. We went to Chick-fil-a or something. I had an opportunity to cheat on Josh that day, and I didn't take it. Thirty minutes alone in a pickup with a guy I've always had a thing for... the choice was hard, but not really. I went with the moral reflexes on that one. It seems so petty in comparison to everything else that happened that day. January 2, 2002 I was lookin' at me old middleschoo yearbook...and I saw this guy... Chris Duggan. Let me describe ol' Chris. He seemed older than us... like he'd been kept back or something, but he was smart... he was in one of my classes until my schedule got changed. He... was... like you know how some people with mental problems are insanely intelligent? This guy... seemed dangerous, too... like he'd attack you if you said the wrong thing. He was... strong... muscled. Which was odd, as I was in 8th grade. He had long red hair... not like... freakin' long, but longish. It looked sort of odd on him... part of his hair was short... the top was long. He was pretty good-looking... in my opinion. But... once during class... he started laughing.. cackling really... started low... gruff... then it just got...really loud. And... all of a sudden... he was in tears... just crying so hard.... and he excused himself and went out into the hall... came back some time later... and was perfectly fine. He used to look at me sometimes... during class... I'd just look right back at him... it was my reflex... for some reason... I don't know why. Staring him down seemed like it could have cost me my life. I was lookin' at him one day... and he asked me if I was looking at his hair... and I said I wasn't... but then he asked if he should cut it... and I told him he might look good with short hair. Next day... it was short... big improvement. Someone mentioned it to me... once... that the redhead with long hair finally cut it... and I told them that he did that cause I told him to. He asked me if I liked it... an' I told him I did. He would say hello to me in the halls... I remember once he came up behind me and kinda... stroked my hair... and he said, "you have...really soft hair..." To me, he seemed so gentle... One day, though... I wasn't there, but my friend was... he kind of treated her like he treated me... but she didn't handle it well. One day... during his algebra class... Creech made him mad... or something... and he... according to Melanie... started to twitch. Then he just went nuts and kicked the pencil sharpener off the wall... and started cussing out Creech... threatening her. Melanie got scared, she said, and started to cry... Creech allowed her to leave. I never quite believed that story. I knew it was true, but... I never grasped it. He walked behind me once in a near-empty hall singing a song about his penis... which was apparently the size of a cashew... and he said his family made fun of him...He lived in a trailer, I think... we drew maps of our houses and made a fire route... for a project or something. I remember he asked the teacher how he'd do it for his trailer... mobile home thingy. Sometimes he made me uneasy, but... there was something that appealed to me in him.He left my school after a while... maybe after that thing with Creech... they sent him someplace. I was disappointed when he left... I remember he was always respectful to most teachers... He was getting someone to sign something... "And... I need my John Hancock right here..." as he pointed to the paper he had...And, for some reason... even though people thought I was nuts... I was always nice to him. For some reason, I knew he'd never really hurt me...he wouldn't have hurt Creech either... or Mel, I don't think. But.... why he picked me... I'll never know. December 31, 2001 A conversation between Kelli and me, classic rambling. Logen: I've decided I'm rather obsessive-compulsive about some things. Kelli: ha! so am I. Kelli: about the stupidest stuff. Logen: We made cookies the other day.... the kind with the lil Hershey's kiss in the middle.... you know? Kelli: like, when I finish in the bathroom.. I flush, put the lid down, wash me hands with straight hot water, turn it off, turn around and dry my hands, turn the lights out, and close the door. I swear, EVERY time. Logen: Mom always gives me the worst jobs when I help cook.... cause I'm so obsessed with doing it right that I ask alot of questions... Logen: so I had to unwrap the kisses....those little fiddly foil wrappers.... Kelli: ha.. *nodnods* Logen: We did two different kinds... one with kisses and one with hugs... Logen: I had to unwrap 60 of each... roughly Logen: so... 120 little things to unwrap Kelli: b.. hhhhhhhheh. Logen: I got out a paper towel, cause I didn't wanna set 'em on the table... no tellin' how clean it was Logen: and set them in rows of ten Kelli: ...ha. Logen: respaced them as I saw fit Kelli: *cackle* Logen: then.... they finished cooking a batch and they needed the kisses to put in the cookies, right? Logen: so brother comes over to get 'em... and he takes random ones... out of random rows... Logen: I was... astonished... Logen: I almost had a conniption Logen: so, as I'm unwrappin' I fill in the holes and everything.... get it looking right again... Logen: I leave to go potty... Logen: and he's done it again... Kelli: *cackles* Logen: 2 out of this row... one out of the next... one right out of the middle... Logen: and there was one just laying on the table Logen: off of the paper towel... Kelli: hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhheh. Logen: I yelled then... "Why can't you people take these in an orderly fashion?!" Logen: as they started to be taken and put on cookies, sometimes the number I had wasn't divisible by ten Logen: so I rearranged them to be in manageable rows. Logen: I had 20 at one point... and 2 rows of ten didn't look good... so I did 4 rows of 5... Logen: I'm so weird Logen: and I put the lid down before I flush... Kelli: oh really? Kelli: I do it afterwards Kelli: just in case there's an overflow. Kelli: I watch as it flushes, come to think of it. Logen: I do it before cause I heard that this mist comes out and covers everything inna bathroom Kelli: ha! Logen: and it irks me to find my lid up Logen: it REALLY makes me mad to find my seat up Logen: Cade does that sometimes... when he's onna puter, my potty room is closest... Kelli: heh, the people in my house learned LONG ago not to mess with the toilet seat. December 22, 2001 My boyfriend is a killer. One of many with a gentle face. He is a hunter. He kills animals. Sometimes for food, sometimes just for the heck of it. He owns dozens of knives and guns. He is a killer. And he loves it. He loves it more than he will ever love me. I make fun of him about it to mask how deeply it upsets me. I tried to convey to him my reasons and how much it truly bothers me. He laughed at me. He said he was raised to be a killer. He obviously was not raised to be understanding. Until last week, he had never heard of Charles Dickens. That's a shame, isn't it? My boyfriend has the ability to kill other living, breathing things. I cried once, when I flushed a cricket down the toilet. I cannot kill. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with remorse over squishing an ant. I capture spiders and set them free. I am not a killer. I told him he was a killer. He said he was a survivor. I survive. I do not -- cannot -- kill. Ask my closest friend... she will tell you that I am a survivor... my theme song is "I Will Survive." I am not a killer. He had the nerve to say to me, "They're just animals." I noted then that he, too, is an animal. "No, I'm a person," he said. No, he is a savage. He loves death. The feel of it, causing it, relishing in it. I love life. The passion in which it can be carried out, the electricity that it can create in beings. He is a killer. I am a lover. Nothing I could ever say or do will make him cease to be a killer. He will always be cold in that respect. He will always love to kill, love the savage inside him. Always more than he loves me. It is inevitable and ubiquitous. The fact that he has the mental ability to steal breath, to stop the beating of hearts... tears at something in me. Sometimes tears well up in my eyes and my face gets hot just thinking about it. I hate guns for what they have taught him. Real courage is not in men with guns in their hands. He will never understand. He will never try. This is something I cannot accept... something even a lover cannot love. November 28, 2001 It snowed today! Quite a bit, in fact. I woke up at about 15 'til ten, thinking "Oh no! I should be at school!" But I got to stay home... muha! It's pretty deep... so deep my dog can't run through it. I built a snowman. I had never built a snowman before today. It's as tall as I am. I built it alone, even the dog went inside after a while. I couldn't help but think that the building of my first snowman shouldn't have been done alone. It's the type of thing that should be shared with siblings... heck, even my childhood neighbors would have been better. But oh well. I'm glad for the snow, which tastes very good, by the way. November 28, 2001 One of my friends moved over Thanksgiving break. It's sort of depressing, and of course, I've thought about it too much, so I've found all the odd little quirks in the concept of moving. Our relationship began in the first week or so of freshman year. He stood atop a table to read a poem we had been assigned. One of those "self portrait" poems. I thought the assignment was completely and utterly pointless, but oh well. Later, we met somehow in the lunchroom. I don't quite remember how that went, but I think it involved "You're the guy that stood on the table, eh?" Now, almost a year and a half later, he's gone. He left me here in this town, his entrance was notable, his exit was unforgettable. It seems like we went through so much together, and yet so little. Our times together ranged anywhere from me having the uncontrollable urge to strangle him to me having the uncontrollable urge to have him never leave me. I suppose, deep down, I never thought either would occur. He lives in some other town now. I can just imagine people in that town saying, "Hey, you know Justin Martinez?" to each other. Now, here in my town... it's odd referring to it as mine... people will say, "Hey, you remember Justin Martinez?" And I'll say, "Yeah, I do." And I will. There will never be a time when I won't. That's just the way I'm made. And I'll miss him. I'll miss him because the moments when I could have stayed with him forever greatly outnumber the moments when I could have strangled him. It seems so odd that in my mind, he has progressed from "the guy on the table" to "my Justin." Moving, in a way, is sort of like death. I remember thinking that when I moved. My life in Plano died. It was like everything in Plano stopped, simply because I was not there. Like it didn't exist until my car reached the city limits. Sort of like rooms aren't really there until I open the door, and classrooms don't have people in them except during my class period. It's just some unconscious thing. It's odd for me, not seeing him in the morning. I still expect to see him in the hall where I would usually find him. It's like he's sick that day, and he'll be back the next day. Day after day. It's a sad thing. Odd. November 20, 2001 I have decided that the best things in life make no sense at all... or very little anyway. For instance, why do I always find it necessary to want things I know I can't have? Or better yet, things I could perceivably have if a miracle occurred. But wanting these things makes me happy, somehow. I don't know. Also, why do I find it so enjoyable to run between two people that are walking together in Walmart and scream "RED ROVER"? I will never know the answer to this, but I bet I'll be 40 years old disturbing Walmart shoppers. Another thing... why is it so funny when people fall? It seems cruel, but sometimes I just can't help myself from laughing. Certain things in my life make me just so happy. I will never know why, and maybe that's why they make me happy. Reasons muddle me sometimes. Certain people make me happy as well. Just having some people in the same room with me can make me happy. I suppose it's the little things, eh? It's quite inexplicable, I think. Making an attempt to explain it would only further confuse an already quite scattered mind. My stomach makes a hollow noise if I beat on it right. This makes me laugh. Maybe I'm just easily amused, I really don't know. Sparrows in the courtyard at school all flutter and chirp when I walk near them. For some reason, this makes me happy as well. I like standing in dirt devils, watching leaves and brush swirl around me, as if I was the one conjuring it. A couple times last summer when I walked across the lawn to get the mail, white butterflies flew up from the grass in my wake. Maybe things are better left mysteries, sometimes. November 6, 2001 I don't like sitting in warm chairs. You know, like when someone has just gotten out of it. Especially school chairs. But I don't like sitting in them cold either. I suppose only my personal butt temperature is acceptable. Do some people have warmer butts than others? That would be a bit odd, wouldn't it? Cold chairs bother me a bit, but warm ones are even worse. There's just this uncomfortable feeling that someone is near me or something. It's very weird. Maybe cold chairs bother me because of the feeling that someone is not near me... odd. November 5, 2001 My lamp burned out. There was this flash of electric blue and I couldn't see for one dizzying moment. Oddity. I think too much. I've the sudden urge to regain touch with people... to say things I've wanted to say for ages now. Maybe I should. I think I don't appreciate things. Well, maybe I do in a certain light. I keep thinking about a bird that was trapped in my wall at one point. Wonder if it died or got free. My scar on my face itches sometimes. It feels like summer. I'm missing autumn now cause I'm an autumn person. 90 degrees in November is just not right. I miss random people lately. Curiosity. I should really sleep, but something keeps me awake, something that forces me to write. My sheets are messy. One or more restless nights, I suppose. Too lazy to fix them. I should sleep, sometimes I think my body will just give up. I'm surprised sometimes when it manages to fumble, stumble, crumble out of bed in the mornings. I feel rickety. I see why they call it electric blue. November 1, 2001 I've decided that my language is very odd. Listening to people who speak English as their native language in other countries reveals a striking contrast from American English. They actually pronounce all their words separately. There's no "wanna" or "woulda." Admittedly, I do the best with what I've got, as most others do. My vocabulary is formidable enough. There are, perhaps, soft traces of my southern-ness in my voice. I seem to do better than most. Some people are just downright inarticulate, their mumblings only showing vague signs that they're speaking any language at all. But it seems that any English except American possesses some melodic undertone, some beauty that's intangible to us Americans. I read Shakespeare and then read my poetry and realize I sound like a third grader, but I suppose it's not really my fault. Like I said, I do the best with what I've got. I've been toying with the idea of adopting an accent. British is the most comfortable, but Irish has a certain appeal. I have quite a few I'm capable of, including red neck, which is mostly used for humour. This seems to be a talent not everyone possesses. I slip in and out of voices and accents as my natural style of conversation. People get used to it after a while, I guess. The tyranny of American English doesn't impede me too much. I'm still a dreamer, whether I sound like a Texan or not. October 19, 2001 I'm watching TV and it's some odd spoof Halloween episode... they showed this girl getting hypnotized and her hands shook. I almost vomited. Why, I don't know. It's odd. October 18, 2001 Sometimes at school they have no paper towels in the bathroom. If the hall is empty I always want to run down the hall with my hands up to get them dry. I wipe them on my pants usually, but one day I should fulfill that dream of running up and down the hall to dry my hands. They should just put some damn paper towels in the potty rooms, by god. October 10, 2001 Sometimes during school I hear phones ringing. They just ring. It makes me wonder why no one answers and why the caller doesn't just hang up after about 50 rings or so. They ring for...so long. This is oddly symbolic for some reason... I'm weird. I find weird things symbolic. I used to see a girl waiting in the edge of the courtyard after first period. I don't see her anymore. What was she waiting for anyway? I formulated a story around it... I'd like to think she waited on a guy who walked out of the same building I do after first period. When he emerged, her solemn face would light up and she'd hug him. They'd walk away into the courtyard hand in hand, her rambling and gesturing with her free hand, and him laughing at all the right times. I never witnessed this, of course, except for in my zoned-out mid-class daydreams. I often wonder now if she gave up waiting for him, or if she just waits somewhere else now. I don't think I'd recognize her if I saw her somewhere other than her faithful post at the edge of the courtyard. Class is boring. I often become fascinated with my hands or the back of someone's head. Yesterday in Spanish I drew my hand: ring, watch, nails, wrinkles around my knuckles and all. Hands are actually quite interesting. The way the muscles move, the way I can see how my knuckles connect. I'm way too idle during school. Voices are just droning hums. They make me sleepy. They expect me to learn like this, too... I hear music sometimes... it sounds like a choir, but I'm nowhere near the choir room... where is that coming from? Four people, including myself, are shaking their legs. Make that five. Why do people do that? If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm sitting in English at the moment. This will reach computer land later. Whoa, my teacher just described the odd choir music as "celestial" and he said he keeps "expecting little clouds to come floating under the door." Kinky. Well, I think this ramble is quite long enough. September 29, 2001 I am a big fat stupid head. September 11, 2001 Today is a day that will lounge in all our minds probably for the rest of our lives. There is some sort of dazed fear that seems to have taken over... at least for me, anyway. And yeah, I sit here, listening to the Sweater Song and doing homework on lined paper...the lines driving me more insane with every breath... and I wonder if I have the right to feel safe. Maybe I do, maybe I don't. Maybe it's something I shouldn't question. So yeah... I'm just a teenager from a hick town... crouching tremulously in my little shack of unfathomable peace... but there are just some things... a person cannot deny. August 22, 2001 School started, soccer is of course ubiquitous. So I haven't had a lot of time to ramble. Anyway, the basic tyranny of school has regained control on my life. I'm starting to question my sanity. I've taken over my sister's built-on desk in her deserted room. It seems oddly sacred. I'm probably just weird, though. She had dried flowers on the desk and I felt kinda guilty about moving them somehow. Anyway, something odd happened with Bevin last night that prevented me from getting any sleep and I was exhausted anyway... so I think I'm going to pass out any minute now. I've decided that the best super power to have would be the power to make people fall over at will. Think about that a minute. I'm at school at the moment, scribbling all this down on a piece of paper. There's this really musky/nasty smell that I can't quite place. I wish it would go away. It's making me dizzy. Yes, this is definitely an offensive smell here... I think my nose is weird 'cause I smell things no one else smells some times. It's not a comfortable sensation, to say the least. I get confused and start sniffing random objects... my mom bought me some crappy clicky pens and I've shot two people on accident, so far. The end part shoots off while I'm writing... I hit one guy in the eye and I hit a cheerleader. Backtracking to people falling over, I've been trying to make this one girl fall over without looking too obvious/guilty. Ooh, I wore a shirt today that says "Brickhouse"... heh I love it! So if anyone asks...I am a brick...hoooouse. August 2, 2001 At what age does the five second rule stop applying? I mean... if you're thirty and you drop a cookie and pick it up before five seconds is over... is it still good? Or does this only count if you're younger than a certain age, because once one is thirty they'd know better, right? There needs to be some old geezer living in a cave that knows the answers to these questions. Then again, if I didn't wonder about such obscure things, I'd be awfully bored, wouldn't I? August 2, 2001 Random question: what would possess a 21 year old to watch Cartoon Network? August 2, 2001 "Mrs. Robinson" is an insanely good song. Koo koo kachoob. August 2, 2001 I've been sifting through a bunch of old conversations lately. Preparation for the quotesfile. There's so much I had forgotten about. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard at anything. Well, I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea. And then there were other times I just wanted to KICK someone for something they said a long time ago. It was like reliving the whole thing. Oddity. August 2, 2001 I always wince when doors slam. Why is that? Even when it's me slamming the door I wince. Oddity. August 2, 2001 Green Skittles don't taste good with the orange ones. I learned this the hard way. But all the Skittles at once taste good, oddly enough. I think there should be a brown Skittle that tastes like all the Skittles at once. Then you wouldn't have to waste Skittles by cramming them all in your mouth. July 17, 2001 Things fall apart. *sigh* July 17, 2001 "So denied So I lied Are you the now or never kind? In a day And a day, love I'm gonna be gone for good again Are you willing To be had? Are you cool with just tonight? Here's a toast To all those who hear me all too well Here's to the nights we felt alive Here's to the tears you knew you'd cry Here's to goodbye Tomorrow's gonna come too soon" -Eve 6 - Here's to the Nights July 14, 2001 It's 6:13 p.m. on Sunday. In this instant, right now, I am happy. Yes, happy. For once, I can honestly say that. I got a call from an old friend today. It was insanely good to talk to her. Seems like forever now, I've been blocking a lot from my memory, and talking to her unearthed some things that make me feel good about what I've been running from for so long. I've come to terms with the things that used to cause me so much pain, and just hearing that old voice on the other end made me smile. I feel this odd sense of completion and more importantly, I have my happiness again. Don't get me wrong, things are not perfect; they never are. But you know what? I'm close, by god. I'm close. July 7, 2001 Haven't written anything in a while...let's see...I had my first driver's ed class today, which was boring cause it was all paper work. Oh well. I get my permit in 3 days, which seems ludicrous to me...but eh. I've been feeling pretty blah lately...kinda empty or something. There are fleeting moments when I feel like I'm lost...like I can't remember where I am. That's usually when I just wake up or if I drift out of sleep in the middle of the night. It's kind of a scary sensation. Let's see...Logeylife lately has included A&M soccer camp, which was a blast...the beach, which was even more fun than camp cause I met some guys there...muhaha. Sadly, I'm missing my beach buds a lot and that kinda puts a damper on things. Oh well. Life goes on, I guess. Soccer try-outs have been going on. They're more tiring than I remembered them being. Eh. No worries. Anyway, that's really all that's been going on lately. June 21, 2001 Well, I just completed the pictures section. My last thing to set up... it feels good to have completed something. I mean... that's rare for me to set out to do something and actually fulfill it. I personally, am proud. And now... I begin the corrections. And I guess while I'm at it, I should start looking through my stuff for quotesfile material. Kelli and I will be working together on that. Ugh. That should prove to be...a large task. But worth it. Very worth it. June 20, 2001 My knees hurt today. My mother blames the computer. She blames everything on the computer. Hunger, bad moods, tiredness, my messy room... she always looks for an excuse to get me off the computer. She hates whatever she doesn't understand. And of course my dad agrees. Both of them are so narrow minded and shallow. They don't understand that the computer is the way I communicate and create and learn. Oh well. When I get old, I won't be like that. My mission in life seems to be to not end up like my parents. June 20, 2001 It's half past midnight. I'm sitting here writing poems. Thoughts are basically running amok in my head. I keep getting incomplete thoughts and things that don't link together. Not only that, I keep wandering. Just now my mind ran off thinking about graphics instead of writing this ramble. Maybe I need sleep. June 19, 2001 I opened my shutters today. From the hinges so the window was fully visible. Then I cracked it open so I could hear the birds through the screen. The bird feeder outside was empty. Greedy birds. Seems I'd forgotten about the little yellow flowers that live outside my window. Funny how one forgets. The other day I couldn't remember if out back yard fence had brick pillars or not. It does. Little things like that escape me sometimes. I often forget how many stairs were in my old house. 16. Summer is lazy. June 19, 2001 I noticed that the ends of a couple of the ribbons on my mum from homecoming a couple years ago are bleached by the sun. I put the ends of those ribbons between the slats on my shutters so they wouldn't flap around during the night due to my fan. I guess I kept 'em in there too long. Looks odd, but all that mum does is hang above my window. I just found it weird. June 19, 2001 I saw Shrek today. Funny, but not fit for little kids. The little characters cuss occasionally. Of course there was this annoying (not to mention LOUD) little kid a few rows back asking what was going on the entire time cause he didn't understand it. My kids won't be annoying like that. June 18, 2001 Random thought: I enjoy clocks. June 18, 2001 I just rediscovered an old CD I have... and now I'm wondering why I haven't been listening to it constantly since I got it about 2 years ago. It makes me laugh, dance, and almost cry all at once. Impressive, to say the least. June 18, 2001 Random: what if people had wings? Like... big bat wings... I think that would be insanely cool. With all the weird genetic experiments they do, I'd think they'd give it a shot. If they can make tobacco plants glow like a firefly, I'd think they could make humans have wings... at least retractable claws or something. Humans are quite puny in comparison to other animals. No claws, we can't smell worth anything, our eyesight could be infinitely better... did you know that colors exist that we can't see? Birds can see them, but we can't, I think. We're also quite weak. Insects are amazingly strong. I'm thinkin' why clone such a puny animal as a human... why not make it a little more interesting if you're going to screw around with nature? June 18, 2001 Funny song quote: "Forget the cafe latte screw the raspberry ice tea a Malibu and coke for you a G&T for me" -Alcohol by the Barenaked Ladies I literally laughed out loud at that. I have the weirdest sense of humor. June 15, 2001 Fleeting realization: Not everyone has something to go home to. June 11, 2001 Odd thought: I never hated Timothy McVeigh. I never liked him either. It's one of the few things I don't really have a strong opinion about. Sure, he blew up a building... but I always admired his self-control. Even when he was about to die, he was deliberate and careful. He seemed fully aware of just about everything. He might have been crazy for setting off that bomb, but he knew what he was doing. I think people take self-control for granted, but it's something not everyone has. |
      
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