21 feet under
4 am blue
all over coffee
Amnesty International
Amnesty International USA
bay folk sketchbook
beautiful shadows
brian andreas
cat power
cynthia connolly
cynthia connolly -- banned in dc
dissociated voices (sound samples on the bottom)
donald miller
dover beach
dresden dolls
drinking sky and sweet black
God's Debris
green night on a dusty red moon
he scanned it, staggered
how now brown sock?
i found this magazine in santa cruz . . .
jacaranda (greysight)
jonathan hartsaw
jones soda
koyaanisqatsi
letters from home. (Rnk.)
listen to the rain (turn your speakers on)
mindwalk
mogwai
paul madonna
pedro the lion
pleiades
richard stine
Rivers and Tides
SAP
staring out the window at the rain (my old blog)
the deep end. seven feet.
the deep end. seven feet. part 2.
the near and the far
thirteen
throatshot
undefined
what happened to lani garver
white oleander
visited *loading* times
This is my blogchalk:
United States, California, sometimes Steiermark, Austria, something bored teenagers say when they speak useless words into brick walls of cotton candy, English, German, Noreia,creative writing, fiction, reading, college student, strange, cat power, mogwai, arap strap, dresden dolls, white oleander, the earth, my butt, and other big, round things, welcome to the dollhouse, fuckers.
strobe lights and blown speakers
fireworks and hurricanes
may i have a comment please?
she can't see me
november 22, 2002; 10:32 pm
the tape into the cassette player, the indian rythmic flute.
she stares, impatiently, expectantly, sardonic.
i grasp a notion to satisfy her, cards shuffling, we'll play.
"what are we playing?"
"well . . . i've got the cards here, in two piles, what do you think?"
slap. slap. slap. her cards, with ease. the music, she comments on it, i can't listen and play.
i sink lower into my surrounding hood, the comforting blackness, i focus. she's winning. i win only twice.
awkward with the cards, awkward in all things. she's amused.
a perpetual holding of breath. at least i have speed to entertain me. at least i have the music.
they come in, there is noise. i play; i'm supposed to? her voice rebuking him, what must he feel like? surge of compassion for a seven-year-old in dirty socks.
sleepy: i leave.
the couch offers me a novel. warm light, heater. hot water -- tea, anyone? they're distracted, barely respond. hot chocolate for me, whipped cream: i ate only a burrito today.
later, they emerge. she -- fascinated by a children's book. she -- old photos. he eats a sparse dinner of scrambled eggs and crackers (it's friday, she said; we never have food on fridays; i wish daddy would go shopping on thursdays), sits on the table. slurp, his hot chocolate like a screaming drill -- i fight off annoyance, watch her, bemused, will she notice? no, old photos. but she notices, and we quietly chuckle.
i return to the world of eighties L.A., oblivious to the words they aren't saying.
i almost sleep.
"i'm ready when you are." okay.
and we drive her home.
on a rainy day
from november 8, 2002; 5:56 pm
did you know yesterday there was the big storm the tree was out there it was all woosh woosh
did you know at my house there was a tree that got split right in half
how big was it
it was probably . . .
how tall
i don't know maybe about . . . sixty-seven times as tall as you?
the big tree that we have out there you know that one umm yeah the leaves were blowing like pretend this is the tree they were like
yeah
see this is these are the leaves
the trees like that outside my house
dad had to take the basketball pole down otherwise it would have fallen down probably uh heh heh! the butterfly's so happy smiling
yeah
lost a tooth! oh.
uh hmm!
ah! oh! i almost fell down. heh.
(rain dripping, bean bag chair noise)
i went out in the garage to visit our cats lots of times last night
(rain dripping. he climbs bean bag chair, on bed; slides down. i share a smile with her. she laughs.)
(he continues.)
(their shirts glow in the black light.)
ah! something hit me, heh. oh, wow, here --
-- thank you --
-- you dropped it.
stop moving around so much, i say -- just listen to the rain and the clown.
okay.
he can't stop -- he's a child, he's bound to the movement of children. memories . . .
She rearranges her hair for the second time.
he laughs, my keys clack.
hi, i'm back, dominic, if you want to come out
movement, cough
okay, no?
he leaves.
it moves, in slow, even circles -- memories -- unfinished, but back in its upright position.
she lies on the bed, watching me clack.
it would be really weird to hear voices in your head. i smile, can't help myself, laugh silently.
thoughts he never saw
from june 3, 2002; 10:52 pm
I'm so scared.
That everything is going to be taken away from me
and i have no control over it,
no grasp on it.
I am scared to lose you.
you say you want to go live in alaska,
away from this crazy world, everyone.
and you jokingly asked me to join you.
and once you said, "just me, the wolves, . . . and one other
person."
but you have no idea how much I want you to mean that
about me.
my dad, tonight, sat with me on the front steps
as I fought the tears in his presence and blinked hard up at the
starry sky.
he talked to me, apologized
for an insignificant incident we'd had
over the printer
and so he sat with me and talked
about life and told me not to worry
and told a million stories from his youth and his decisions
and said it's nearly impossible to waste a year when you're
eighteen
and said I shouldn't think I'm being pressured and I should just
step back from the rat race and I don't have to live up and be
perfect
my dad is "way laid back."
I laughed, thinking that he is more laid back than any other adult
I know
yet he's the responsible,
the always caretaker of us.
and he said I should just have fun
like this summer, hang out with friends
(or my "friend," as he said, and I now he meant you)
he said I just need a driver's license, and then
I won't feel so -- what was the word he used? -- but it meant
"trapped."
"you can just go driving, and find a nice spot, and stop and eat a
sandwich," he said
"or go to the library or a coffee shop or anywhere, and sometimes
it makes you feel a lot better, just to go somewhere and read a
book . . . you could pick up your friend and go to the movies
or whatever . . ."
and I thought, yes, that's true; it would be convenient to drive
but that's not the real issue
for me
now
.
my real issue is God I'm so afraid to lose you
you say we'll hang out during the summer
and I only hope that's true
I dare to hope
I love you so much
but still don't understand you
I'm afraid because
every time I start to feel at ease,
thinking I actually, finally "get" you
(and forgetting how troubled you made me before,
with my always-always-always thinking of you. always.)
then, suddenly, you surprise me again.
and I love you for it,
but it scares me
a lot.
and I'm afraid that next year,
I'll go away and leave
everything
because I have to
(what else can I do? but I don't want to leave. And if you asked me
to, I'd stay. with you. but I'm afraid that maybe you don't really
want me to; maybe you're not that serious.)
and you'll -- yes -- meet someone else
and love her
and forget me
and you know what I think maybe I'm most scared of?
of being alone.
of no one in the world loving me (besides my family, but it's
different with them,
because they didn't choose me -- I was just born to this family.
With you -- you chose me, you chose me to love, and that
was -- is -- everything).
I am not afraid to "waste" a year by not going to college
but I am terrified of wasting a year by being alone
utterly on my own
and I feel so connected to you
and I would miss you so much
and how can I tell you all this, when it will scare you?
I love
just lying on the bed at night,
telephone to my ear,
listening to your voice
or your silence
I love spending that time with you
although you're not "really" here
because you say you like to spend it with me, too
and that amazes me
and I don't know why you like me.
you're bruised by life and people
but I want it to be the two of us
against the world
we could be something
together.
I wonder if I'll ever show you this,
and if I do,
if it will be good or bad
if it will scare you,
or if you'll say, "I totally understand;
I know what you mean."
I'm sorry
I don't mean to be clingy
but actually I guess I want you to want me to be clingy
but more than anything,
I just want to say
that i love you
so
much
.
11:12 pm
grey drooling cats under stars.
my mother had me listen to the song of the tea kettle. she's playing guitar. a song she used to play when i was so young. she's making mistakes. i used to sit on the floor and watch her, it was a treat when she played. singing, in german. hansel und gretel verliefen sich im walt. i used to lie on the couch with her late at night (eleven, midnight), my head in her lap, pretending to sleep but watching her HBO or lifetime movies through slits in my eyes that i would have sworn she couldn't see. she'd stroke my hair, i'd breathe in deeply -- her smell of clothing, her clothing, and cigarettes and mom.
it isn't even the occasional arguments, or irritable words. it isn't really her childlike exhaustion in the late-night, from alcohol and weariness and living in the lives of the women in her movies.
it's mostly just that she's not perfect to me anymore. she's not the beautiful young traveler who could fix anything, love it away. all of her opinions are not the Best Way of Seeing Things. i don't find in her the . . . the everything -- the magic of the steierisch dialect, the paul simon on saturday evenings with schnitzel and my sister and i playing on the front lawn with shane. the eggs and onions, but her eating so little. it was everything, so many tiny traits that made her the best thing in my life, the comfort and safety and love that everyone longs for.
i'm nineteen, and i get along with my mother. but sometimes . . . i miss her.
the aspiring hick. (spider.)
last spring, when i was taking classes at a community college, i used to meet up with sam, my only friend there, every few days. we'd walk around campus, or sit at a table, laughing about some random story i'd tell about spike and denise, or about something new his friends had blown up over the weekend.
one day, sam was animatedly telling me a story about some huge gathering of his friends which probably involved lots of dirt and some kind of explosive, when, in the middle of a sentence, he said, "by the way, there's a bug on your head. so anyway . . ."
"wait!" i said. "you can't just say there's a bug on my head and keep talking! get it off!"
so grudgingly, sam gave up his story for a moment and came over to look for the bug on my head. but it was gone. "i think it was a spider," he said. "it probably fell down your shirt."
great, i thought.
and he went on with his story.
later that day, after i'd been at home for maybe half an hour, i remembered the bug and went in the bathroom and looked down my shirt. sure enough, there was bobby-joe spider -- a little tiny brown guy -- still alive, and waving at me.
okay, so he wasn't waving. i mean, he could have been. he was so small, and i was kind of trying to see around my chin.
and i saved bobby-joe spider's life. out of my shirt, into the garden.
kind of like that time when i was a kid and got a ladybug stuck in my ear . . .
but that's another story.
shoelaces and wind. (-- katie)
deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
psalm 42:7.
there is a spider somewhere around my computer. a big brown one. denise and i were trying to write poetry, and this brown blob with little running legs blurred across the keyboard while she was typing. did he want to get typed on? was he suicidal? i will never know.
and he's lost. somewhere. around the computer. i am sitting far from it, in a chair i checked thoroughly. perching, really. freaking out when the strands from my cut-off black Dickies brush against my legs.
"i wonder what your butt looks like." -- me, to ian, on the phone, tonight. and then i said, "that's something i've never said to you before.
__________________________________________________
we cried. together. we tried to do the right thing. my heart fell endlessly, my heart broke and broke. so we clung to safety in each other, we go on, we go on.
white oleander is the most ingeniously beautiful novel i have ever read. if you wanna know.
i fall down laughing. i cry, i fall down laughing.
inspired by this site and the links on it, i thought i'd record a tape of myself talking -- about everything, anything, whatever -- and leave it in a random place. i don't know if i should put an email address on it, or just leave it anonymous. i somehow want to make a chance for connection.
today i read on an info-brochure in a coffee shop that the plants used to make white tea are harvested on only two days a year. maybe that's why a box of it costs like ten dollars. white tea. sounds so pure, somehow. my mother wanted it. maybe i'll buy it for her someday.
i can't believe the conversation i'm having with my german buddy jules. i'm telling her everything. it feels good. hi jules.
i feel wired, strange. i just got home. i went out with ian, to dinner at the home of samantha, a girl we'd known in high school. her tanned skin, her loud, round chuckle. perfectly tweezed eyebrows, bright red lips. after dinner we went out for coffee. ian, samantha, samantha's fiance -- a skinny blond in a white undershirt whose face looked too childlike for his confident stride, his muscular arms -- and me. then we aimlessly drove around on hilly streets and empty freeways. we ended up at the fiance's house. his parents weren't home.
such a weird night. "nutshell" played as we drove, then "how to disappear completely," layne and thom's low, desperate wails filling the car, flowing out my open passenger window into the night. clear sky, stars so far away. i felt too loud, too unreal, too unlike myself to enjoy the melancholy guitars and the quiet chill of the darkness. i laughed loudly and often, we talked. the fiance was quiet. i envied him his calm.
before going out for coffee, we'd gone back to the elementary school. samantha, ian and i talked about people we'd known when we went to the school, what they were doing now. her fiance was quiet all night, hugging her, watching us, laughing occasionally. i kept thinking how strange life was, how unpredictable and crazy. last night i never thought i'd end up at the elementary school, writing a letter to a child i didn't know. tonight i never thought i'd be there again, then in the home of a guy i barely knew, looking at the "paintings" in his mother's bedroom -- crayon on paper; she'd bought them for hundreds of dollars.
i felt so strange sitting on the potched-plastic bench in the field of the school, leaning against ian to keep warm, asking samantha about chris or corey or leah -- what had happened to them? we talked about so many people, and i thought, this is what normal young people do -- get together and gossip. ian commented, "isn't it crazy that these people have no idea that we're talking about them? i wonder if people talk about us like this."
and crazy thing. samantha found it hard to get used to how much ian and i have changed, how we're less uptight and straight-laced, how we're not as Bible-thumping as we used to be. i told her i left church in high school for a guy. she was surprised, almost saddened. later, on the bench in the field, we were talking and figured out that my "guy" from back then is now her fiance's best friend. and he's engaged. good for him, i thought. i've wondered, sometimes, what he's doing with himself. ian hates the "guy" and the girl he's engaged to. i don't know. it was just nice to know what happened to him.
how can i express it here? how can i capture the night, the sponataneity of it, the lying on the sidewalk, blocking the orange streetlight with my hand, letting my eyes take in the multitude of stars? how can i explain how it felt to jump out of ian's car as he was stopped at a stop sign on the way home, talking on his cell phone? i ran to the sidewalk, danced in the street, waved at him in front of his car. "i've just never jumped out of a car at a stop sign," i explained as i sank into the seat again and the door clicked shut to my right.
the fiance's house. the birch in the front yard. my head among its whispering leaves, my finger on the white bark, watching tiny ants in a frantic line above it. wanting to run down the still, sloping street, my arms flailing. the salt-and-pepper carpet. ian curled up in a green stuffed chair, twirling his white socked foot, laughing. the orange popsickle with the cream filling, chewing on the stick. the fully stocked wine rack by the door -- "my parents are tasteful alcoholics." the chai latte caffeine jolt. the lack of sleep. the singing.
i love the elementary school at night. i think i'll go there alone sometime. i think i'll sit and talk to God, breathe in the watercolor blackness and the stars.
keep on walking through each other
all of the courseness has lost all of its flavor
it used to make me strong, but now i'm breaking
under the pressure
and the weight of it
please let me
be near you
i want to feel alive
there's nothing i can do
to make you come back inside
Feeling low to look through the keyhole
In through a doorway and up through the stairway
Open window, feel the breeze blow
Take that thought and burn it up
Watch the sparks fly upward
Watch the sparks fly upward
-- plankeye
"there's nothing here but outer space and music." -- me to jules in an email.
"that's because you're looking at something other than what you're actually looking at." -- me.
"chemistry: you just learn about things you can't even see, doing things that no one cares about." -- spike.
spike's and my writing from the bus, saturday, oct. 18, on the way to santa cruz for her band review:
Dear Smith,
Sorry about that there chicken, yuh. He's kinduh hooptie, yuh. He's darn if I's knowin' whattuh, that there piece . . . yuh . . . of . . . yuh . . . poultry. Yuh. Gimme chicken! I's know'd why yuh's hidin' it. You's jealous ah took the cock, ain't yeh? Yeah, yer stoopid, Stoopid.
Sincerely,
Reginald.
__________________________________________________
"Moof!"
"No."
"Moof!"
"Never, stupid."
"If you dun't moof, I will yell, and push your soft, luscious rear."
"So."
"Oh. Well, okay. I'll just moof right at YOU!"
"No . . . Jesus says amusing stuff."
"What stuff?"
"Well, moof."
----------------------------------------------------------------
Shipwreck! Sailboat. on. light-switch. Turn here, Captain. What's your incentive, here? your motivation? shyeah. Livorna says moof at any old random goose who is in heat. On Sundays, Denise does uncanny freaken impressions of that goose in heat. Good riddens.
after Bible study tonight, ian and i drove to our old elementary school. we'd met there, in kindergarten, but never were friends in that school.
tonight we stood in line in front of our old kindergarten class. the world looked different -- smaller, less scary -- than the first time we both stood there.
we wandered over to the "big kid" side of the playground. we stood in the dirt-and-grassy field in the dark, looking up at the stars, in a wet sky, so far away. we talked about them -- "isn't it amazing that some of them might not even be there anymore?" "what is life?" he said, "what are stars?"
i got this idea. we sat on a bench, wrote letters in soft, beige pages torn out of my diary. letters to kids at the school. we'd leave them there for the kids to find tomorrow.
"i am nineteen years old," i wrote, "and i used to go to this school."
"you are beautiful," i wrote. "don't change yourself for other people, it's not worth it. love everyone. love life." i told them to read books, to be kind to animals, to love even the mean kids. i told them God loves them, and never to let ingorant, judgmental humanity tell them otherwise.
i hope some kid finds my letter, a kid who needs it. i would have loved to find something like that as a kid, i would have felt so special. i hope the kid holds on to it, reads it years later and thinks about me, sitting there on the bench, and why i was writing the letter.
i was happy, sitting there with ian. it was a crazy, spontaneous thing to do. like, we're young, we're free, let's do whatever we want. let's go to the school, walk in the dark. i told him it's too bad we're not in love -- it would be a perfect makeout place. we laughed.
it was, though. it was beautiful. the stars, the field. even the fences and orange lights and portables. crazy how different it was from when we went there, everything they'd changed. they'd taken the swings out -- did someone get hurt, did they get sued? i felt no nostalgia for the school. too long ago, and apparently not such an important part of my childhood.
beautiful, and i loved writing that letter. as we got into his car to leave, i said to him, "it's weird that we'll probably never know what happened to our letters, if anyone found them. it's crazy to do something good and never know the result." it's crazy. it's wonderful.
a girl i'd known since kindergarten. on my porch. best friends? right. do you know what that means? "i miss you. i love you." i say the same. it isn't true. i have to say it. "you're my only constant." that's because i'm the only one who never gets mad at you -- at least not so that you can see it. you talk for twenty minutes about your sex life, your depression, then ask me, "oh, how are you? oh that's good." and you never know. you never know.
i don't need you to. i don't need you. isn't that sad? i didn't miss you.
i dreamt i told you everything. how i feel. how i don't need you. i was angry at you, now i'm just nothing at you. your life so different from mine. i love you but it's a charity love, a love that's giving in because you need it. a love that doesn't expect anything from you, doesn't think you'll ever ever ever see me.
your view so twisted. you don't know real love.
your life a circle like your mother's. i pity you. we were young, we were children, we grew up and it's like this. i'm still in-between, you're set in cement, etched in stone, stuck in this city of broken dreams. i wish i could make you feel, know, see. how can we both be human? what is the wall in your mind?
i miss you. i love you. -- you said.
i hope you get better, i think. i hope you experience something more real than the darkness you cling to. i used to think that i could help save you. now i hope that i'll see you saved.
she's so intense, i feel guilty just knowing her. i feel. i feel slighted.
tonight ian came to our all-girls' Bible study. kema (the leader) said this was okay.
he and i stepped out back to talk, looking out, down the hill, over the city -- twinkling yellow and orange lights on black hills -- below. but then all the younger girls came out and sang and danced on the deck, chattering loudly, so we moved out front.
we sat on the sidewalk, behind my volvo, while ian smoked a marlboro. i stroked a neighbor's albino cat. we talked about where each of us is now, what we believe, how we've changed. i said it's amazing we're still so close, after all the phases we went through at different times. he said that he is the most comfortable with himself that he's ever been, and probably the furthest from God. he said he feels complete. i said i feel torn, i feel longing for God, for love beyond humanity, for truth higher than this earth. not in so many words. we are different yet we are the same. we both know this and accept each other. our relationship is a comforting thing, a blanket on a rainy day, a dew-covered field.
there was a new girl in Bible study -- stephanie, nicknamed phoebe. katie calls her "my girl," because she invited her. phoebe is young, sixteen, plays guitar a little bit. (so she fits in perfectly with the rest of us, who are between sixteen and nineteen and play guitar.) she has dark hair, soft, silky. tied back into two tiny pigtails in front, the rest left down. plastic bracelets; black t-shirt; smooth, pale skin; wide, sparkling eyes. she spoke slowly. she seems young, innocent. she reminds me of my friend jen from high school, looks like her. everyone liked phoebe. before she left, spike told her, "i like you, and that's something, because i don't like anyone."
she is a girl that i would have liked to have befriended. if i were younger, i guess, her age. why do i feel so old now, so set apart? i'm only nineteen. but when i'm with them, the younger ones, and they start talking about high school, teachers and friends and homework, i try to tell them how it was when i was there, and it seems so long ago. i feel like a grandma telling stories no one cares about. so i shut up and withdraw, go into another room and read a book.
i need to get out of this city.
my dad and i were driving back from his mechanic today, and he mentioned how it might be smart for us to move up north, to oregon or washington, where the housing is cheaper and you get land. it's prettier there, i said, it rains more. but it's just a thought swimming around in his head.
next year i've got to go somewhere. i'm not going to stay here another year. i'm not.
i told ian, i always thought i'd go off and do something for God, help people. go out into the world with love, make a difference. what am i doing? nothing. i don't want this. i want to surrender fully to God, i want to live in love. to go and be somewhere where he sends me. to change things in this ugly world.
do you understand? i have to live. i want to feel alive.
finding it's like the grasping of water.
writings by denise and me, three (or so) years ago (word by word, passing the paper back and forth):
83-year-old grannies marched through streets yesterday, because it was "83-Years-Day." Cookies were burned in celebrations as onlookers started sacrificing baking-powder. Explosions of screams announced the event, but still grannies couldn't hear it! Ducks appeared, (granny ducks), who couldn't fly because they weren't calm enough, after this week's disaster involving fat naked grannies, and flying geese, we noticed, went flying! Why did this happen?!? What could this mean?!? Who started this, anyway? What we wanted to figure out was: how dare those animals cause this disruption! Let's eat dinner! That is certainly TA TA with ducks flying over us! Hospitals can't seem to restrain all ducks and eat mental ducks' food. What ever shall we do!?! Suggestions should be kept in duck-safe boxes! (Ducks would not be allowing themselves to read these.) Does anyone have a clue to what Scooby-doo is going to do tonight?
..............................................................................................
Giant dancing children with noodles stuck palm leaves through police guns on campus Saturday, while their playful parents ran away to Mexico. The only onlooker ended a peaceful book before charging up a bronco and taking candy from babies. Perhaps this means the end of the world and the beginning friendships that we expected would follow after World War 5. Who thought men had children? But men did! Why is my pounding man following me? However babies are like, I don't want men to give birth because it mustn't happen!! Although police guns shouldn't be stuffed with palm leaves, the children were determined, happy that they finally finished their plan to stop the violence of police guns in campus-related situations having to do with noodles. As the parents of those rebels ran for Mexico, my chicken started clucking at me!! Why would he do such a crazy thing? Does this have nything to do with the fiasco of the world? Maybe I should run away naked. Do I look normal to you?
........................................................................................
Twenty-five ducks amused naked onlookers on Saturday night, as if they were not noticing their audience, according to one onlooker who fainted at the sight. He recovered, scarecely breathing, some time meaning to kill the quackers with his slingshot, but ducks quacked and broke it and ate his binoculars. The man stepped on the smallest duck's tail, while the camera man ran for his life toward his naked friends. Then thousands of ducks sped to water, trembling with fear because naked people mooned each other, and twelve died, according to one ugly woman. This happened instead of the crash museum, and was said to be so terrible that hospitals were shut up and tied together with droppings of ducks as they flew from the disaster. What a catastrophe!
.........................................................................................
Interestingly enough, some children claimed 500 pieces of silver while they rode down on "Duck-Slope Mountain," where ducks have freedom to do backpacking. Go ducks! Yeah! (But don't fall while trying on new shoes, like someone said another duck did.) Anyway, yellow children mooned the camera man before he yelled, "Help!" The camera man saw everything as it waved to him. Poor children. Parents claimed to have mooned silver while watching children moon the poor duck-man. The duck-man is supposedly presumed to be deadly to ducks, because odors hang from his bottom tail. (His top tail is fine, though it falls off occasionally.) Watch out ducks, he's coming for you! Hide your snowy tails under beaks belonging to your mothers! If he catches you, he will not like you to quack. So shut -- "Quack!" -- up! "God loves Quacking!" But beware -- the man-duck is not a happy Christian. Ahhhh! He's here!
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A penguin-eating-mammoth-duck ate seven bites off of poor little penguins' houses. Ducks really swarmed toward the scene as only one duck survived the mean monster's face lift. Makeup flew to the monster's big toe because ducks named him "Nanny-goat!" "Ducks," Dustin said, "should love Jesus! Who told me about Him? A duck, did you tell me? A duck, I'm a duck! I am! I am! Stop here! Right, left! Up, duck! Get it, (a bone) duck! Geeeese loooove meeeee! And me! God, I'm special! Save the populations! Hey, God!!! Popcorn! Yummy! Mommy! In a tummy! Oak tree [musical notes]!"
Welcome to Heaven, Dustin Duck. "Quaaaack! God is quacking at me, too! Who? God! God? Yes!terday, God! Today, God! Forever, God! Stop the quacking, please, ooooh! I never knew new! Who knew? Like, ya. Al fal. Fy die-hey! Home, I'm home! God! On a range, where ducks quack all day!!" The ducks ^rear^ end.
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Inasmuch time as it takes to clean duck-baths, we can scrub them too! Only you have the money to pay the fee to make preventing floods of dirty droppings easier! We realize that not only do you need money, but time and ducks as much as they can handle! Why, we haven't lost one duck (except maybe that one backpacking duckling who fell, while trying new shoes on, but shoes are NOT reliable . . . anymore!) As I was saying . . . Our "duck-dropping-Cleanerupper" is the finest one (unless you count the clorox-bleach kind of product) But otherwise, we really, really are not bad. Ducks enjoy naked employees so we need willing people who don't require clothes in a box. We remember ducks like tall friends! So call us at 1-800-Ducks-NAKED, now!
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i think that's enough silliness for tonight. (hi denise. i love you.)
Two dumb days ago,
Happy lost his soul on the E-train
on his way to Brooklyn
Trains whirl by all the time,
so it was easy
forgetting Happy and all he stood for
Sorrow made love to Reason
on a west-bound wind
three miles away from safety.
Bitterness took his place
Joy hid in her corner
and i was everywhere, nowhere --
Happy without a soul.
-- ian and me.
1. Yesterday I fell
through a hole in the grey wall,
It told me to die.
2. That's when I found out
I died two dumb days ago.
I was left alone
3. Realizing this,
I did all I wanted to
Threw the other boot
4. Difference remains
within the very thought of
you, alive, sans me.
-- me, spike, denise and james.
"is the paper . . . you're sitting on . . . under your butt?" -- spike.
"i'm trying to give myself a bigger head." -- spike. (drawing a cartoon of herself.)
"i used to shave my fingers -- maybe that's why they're so short." -- spike.
"calculator in my ear. that's normal." -- me.
"i'm really sorry about that. i apologize about that -- that calculator that was in your ea-err." -- spike.
on october seventh, ian and i went out for coffee at a coffee shop we'd never been to together. at a table near us sat the mother of one of ian's childhood friends, with a man who wasn't her husband. this "boyfriend," as we called him, kept up quite an interesting conversation. some quotes:
"give 'em a damn buffalo, you know?"
"how's the leg?"
"did the lion grab him by the head?"
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"gay claudia's kinda cute." -- ian (i misunderstood him and heard that.)
"look at that guy's hat! that looks like someone threw up on it! that is a gross, dirty hat!" -- kema, our Bible study leader, about a baseball player's hat on TV.
"we'll do it verbally in the car, and you can write down what i say." -- ian.
"buddy, every time i laugh, my stomache's gonna throw your head around." -- me, to spike.
bridal/bridle: it's like, a horse's thing, and a wedding lady. -- spike and me.
"i want to wrap my elephants." -- spike.
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i read in some other blog that when you get a fortune cookie, you're supposed to add "in bed" to the end of your fortune. in that case, the fortunes i got at my mom's birthday dinner would say,
"your emotional nature is strong and sensitive -- in bed."
"you are the master of every situation -- in bed."
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today i went to ian's house. his bedroom has a mattress on the floor, a cd player, and a lamp. a few memory boxes in the closet. that's it. some shelves, i guess, little things on them. it looks so neat. i like it. but i guess it would get boring, i don't know. i'm liking my room now.
ian gave me his toy monkey named george. he claims george is gay but i think that's just ian's desire for his monkey. i think george should be able to make his own decisions about sexuality. (and i hope he's not gay, because he'll be lonely in my room, with all my straight stuffed animals.) poor george.
the cat stuck my finger in her ear. and clawed my lap. and drooled on me. (or . . . her ear over my finger?)
scrabble insomniacs
i've rediscovered scrabble.
i was going to write about scrabble here but this is just too good. are you ready? here it is. i've got a grinning cat on my lap.
seriously. she's like, squinting and grinning at me all sleepily. and drooling! all over the place.
this cat is not, has never been, normal.
so scrabble. i sit in my room with spike, or ian, or denise and james and spike, and lay wooden tiles on a square piece of cardboard, while alanis wails and the sepia-toned videos of Bible studies at starbucks play on the TV against the wall, muted.
my relationship with spike was founded partly on scrabble. or, literati, which is the online version. the summer of 2002 -- we'd stay up until i could see the sun rising through the slanted windows below my living room ceiling, staring at the computer screen (each of us in our own home) until our eyes blurred. towards the end of every game, we'd be so desperate for words, and terribly sleepy, that we'd try all these insane words to see if the game would allow them (it automatically checks your words). and since, when you are playing an online opponent, you can see what they are laying down even before they finalize their word, we would see all these idiotic new additions to the english language appear on screen and then get rejected by the computer. words like, gayhackie, or bridalstool. you know. things that definitely should make sense, why don't they make sense, it's five o'clock in the morning, for goodness' sakes could you please make sense?
after the end of each game, spike and i would go to sleep, each in our own bed, exhausted and laughing, crazy, nonexistent words flashing across the insides of our eyelids.
ahh, the freedom of summer when you're young. the rebellion, the recklessness . . . the scrabble.
reality
quiet desperation
what about when you cry and cry and you don't feel better? what about when you want the world to be good and it isn't? what about when something terrible happens and you can't control it, can't change it, can't go back and don't want to go forward?
sleep has been a problem. i am empty and don't want to write. i went to Bible study again yesterday. where we didn't study the Bible but watched the A's game. they lost and elba cried. she is the most obsessed sports fan i have ever encountered, and when the A's lose, she gets really depressed for weeks, even. it's unbelievable to me. i try to understand it but i don't.
i went out with ian this morning. he had to do some errands for his father. we drove over freeways surrounded by hilly californian neighborhoods stuffed with apartments and palm trees and paint-chipped buildings and kids on bicycles in the hot sun. everything is yellow here. and dry and hot. it looked so unreal through my tired eyes. i felt so dead inside, like everything inside me that worries and hopes and loves and controls and dreams and breaks and weeps just tried to shut down. it was dangerously quiet inside of me, and i thought about austria and couldn't even gather up the anything to miss it.
i'm tired of trying to make myself choose between God and someone i love. and without God i'm just going forward, day after day. last night i lay awake while spike slept and prayed to Jesus, asked him to come into my heart again because i couldn't exist anymore, in that moment, without hope. but i don't know anything anymore. i don't know how to trust him because i can't give everything up.
Jesus Christ, are you the son of God?
i want to know; you ask that i believe . . .
not a day goes by when i don't know that i'm dying . . .
what do you do when you feel dead inside, when hope can't take hold? everyone just expects you to live, to live like they all do, but inside i can't help but want to scream, "i don't want to be here! i don't want to be who i am now, i don't want this life that i can't control! i want to go back."
but you can't go back.
maybe we'll all be okay. God still loves us. i have spike and denise. maybe it'll get better. i have to believe that.
i still try to be happy.
waving at babies
Saturday, nostalgic impulses dictated my feelings. That's normal! Only unfortunately, stupid miniature homosexual trolls chased Denise and drastically altered alienating alien-like characteristics. Well fair me! Working prostitutes suck, joe.
-- ian and me, october 3, at the saturn dealership.
a few days ago, ian took spike and me to his restaurant in san francisco. san francisco is a demon-city, huge blocks of stone, gargoyles, buildings ascending to the skies all around. dawn-light at eleven at night because of the city lights bouncing off of the fog. we ate like six desserts. i stopped after four. so much sugar.
spike and denise and i are addicted to sushi. the 7-eleven guy always grins at us now when we come in almost every evening for our faux-seafood dinner.
in high school i had a friend named stephanie. she was a constant witness to my weirdness, and she was always just laughing at me when i did crazy things like playing catch with ian with an imaginary ball, or singing veggietales songs at the top of my lungs. i talk to her online occasionally, and the conversations are pretty average, so sometimes, just for fun, i throw in some crazy stuff. she's used to it by now. here's the latest:
stephanie [10:07 PM]: hey
me [10:08 PM]: hey.
me [10:10 PM]: how's the cows?
stephanie [10:10 PM]: great
me [10:11 PM]: they still mooin'?
stephanie [10:11 PM]: you bet cha
me [10:11 PM]: righto.
stephanie [10:12 PM]: this thing is taking forever to download, and it's driving me crazy
me [10:13 PM]: what thing? the cow catcher?
stephanie [10:13 PM]: yeah, that's it
stephanie [10:13 PM]: no really, this video f
