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.
strange day, yesterday. we drove over a winding road that seemed to last forever. then a fishing shop at a lake on the mountain, and outside sat a big, white dove. "friedenstaube," they said. peace dove. and it looked at me, so intelligent. it looked at me like it knew me. "are you the holy spirit?" i asked it in my mind. we were frozen, staring at each other, and i wanted to lift my arm, because i thought that if i did, the dove would fly over and land on it. i thought this so strongly, but i was too afraid to do it, because if the dove didn't come to me, i would have looked dumb, i would have been disappointed. i trusted the bird, yet i was afraid.
later, in quiet park with a gazebo, i looked up from our table and saw him sitting at a bench. i liked the back of his head, the little "v" of hair at the nape of his neck. i couldn't guess his age -- he could have been eighteen or thirty. walking back from the bathroom, i looked up at him and he was grinning to himself, at some secret thought, and i thought he was smiling at me. i looked away quickly because for an instant he looked like my first boyfriend. and i felt that old, familiar quickening, aware of my heartbeat, my shaky hands. because he used to give me that goofy grin. (i know where he works now, i've heard he's engaged. i feel nothing for him. i'm glad it ended. but when the guy at the park grinned toward me and sped up my heartbeat, i realized that, somewhere inside of me, there will always be that girl. young, naive, innocent spirit abandoned, tasting human dependence -- and then sorrow and solitude -- for the first time.) i watched park-guy until i could no longer see him from the back seat of the taurus. i'd wanted to ask him his name, to ask why he was sitting alone in the park, watching the falling flowers. i wondered if he was sad, if he'd loved and lost. as we drove away, some young hispanic guys on bikes gathered a few feet in front of him, slouching around, laughing as they slapped each other's hands. and i didn't like it. it was like loud talk in a cathedral. the park was so big, and they stood in his space and trampled upon his silence.
walking along the sidewalk, i saw a dead squirrel. he was big and grey, so beautiful, frozen stiff and staring, as ants feasted on his flesh. they laughed and talked as we walked, looking at a garden across the street. i was the only one who noticed.
i started the conversation. i actually did the right thing.
I. we went out for coffee so i could tell you i'm going to austria and denmark. you took it well because you were expecting worse news. the chairs there are so dark and smooth. i wanted to ask you, do you ever just stare at the sky? does the world ever freeze in your eyes, in snapshots, in stillframes of beauty?
II. i don't remember which of us started calling you Beautiful Guy. you sit there at the table against the brick wall, under your headphones, reading. you always wear black. your hair is black. you are so pale, your features so thin. it always disappoints me, somehow, to see you actually talking to people. it doesn't fit our view of you as Deep Dark Beautiful Guy. i thought of going there last night, i thought of writing you a note. because if someone thought i was beautiful, i'd like it if they told me.
III. i saw you first holding a candle to your nose. a green one, i think. you were so tall and thin, probably more so than anyone else in the store. worn grey skater shoes with no socks. tight jeans, ripped and written on at the back pockets. short-sleeved plaid shirt. messy brown hair all around your thin face. i caught your eye and let my mouth turn up in the hint of a smile. there was an undefinable emptiness there, in your eyes. you looked so young. you looked back at me a few times as you made your way to the cash register. looked into my eyes. we ended up behind you in line, watching you. what were you buying? i don't remember. only two items -- one practical and one other. a candle? i don't remember.
IV. it was strange, sitting there with him. you played guitar a table away. i wonder if you still have my story. i gave it to you and regretted it. after you told me how you felt, you asked if it made me uncomfortable. i said no. what did you expect me to say? you've had probably three of my lifetimes. seeing you brings back insecurities. i wonder if you realized that i was sitting with the man in my story. maybe you thought we were dating. that would have been funny. that would have been nice.
V. dear God.
VI. dear God, we are annoyed. we think it is annoying. we are annoyed.
VII. dear God, we are annoyed with the way you regulate our lives. you don't let us get out of line. we want what we want and you hinder us. what is it to you? no one cares what you think. "if there is anyone present who gives a damn what God thinks, please raise your hand."
VIII. dear God. we are so happy. you gave us more than we could ever have dreamed for ourselves. you created us to love each other.
IX. dear God, we need you. as soon as we start to leave you, the world gets dark and small. we need you to open our eyes and our minds. to help us, we are stupid humans. to help us, we tend to destroy. i have hated you and i need you.
if the water should cut my mind, set me free.
"Man becomes really close and dear to one when he ceases to be known by his official tags -- profession, surname, age. When he ceases to be called 'man' and turns out to be simply the first person one meets." -- Andrey Sinyavsky.
My new favorite poem:
Instructions For The Magic Frog
This product is sticky like the soft rubber.
Tongue is extendible, capable of sucking object at long distance.
Even though it is sticky, it unlike bubble gums and can be pulled up easily.
Wash it by soap in the event of stickiness decreased.
The insect picture on the cover can be cut off along the coarse lining and play upon by sticking onto it.
It is composed of oil and stain, if stick onto clothes, wall or other important matters, it may stain your goods.
Pull it backward using both hands then release, subsequently wrist movement must be wide enough.
Stretch as if it is fishing rod capable of extending far.
It will maintain its original shape no matter how you are going to treat it.
ATTENTION: Don't throw it out onto people's face.
Don't go to places nearby fire.
Harmless, but do not eat.
Don't pull out its tongue otherwise it would fall off.
-- A.L. Nielsen
to climb
from my journal, march 23 04, late afternoon.
Golden light and shadows. Cool wind paint my skin, surround me. Water drips from a hanging spider plant in slow motion, sometimes straight to the ground, other times splattering against a leaf, broken in all directions.
If I could change anything about myself right now, maybe I'd give myself Chan's voice.
Today we let a gopher go in a field near a lake. There were some boys there, tall, thin, muscular teenagers in cut-off shirt sleeves and baseball hats. They talked as they walked away, carrying their fishing poles, and I said, It's crazy to see that here, so close to the city. I thought it existed only in my dad's stories of childhood summers -- fishing, sandlot baseball, kick the can.
Tomorrow my uncle arrives and I think I'm not letting myself feel anything about that. He -- browns and greys and jeans, aftershave and coffee, mischievous humor, laugh, laugh, music. Guitar. Quick and agile, fingers on strings. I watched him play when I was fifteen, and everything me cried out, That's what I want. That music, that music, my heart. That fall I picked up a guitar.
The wind bites colder, fading golden sun.
In a moment of compassion I reached to pet the dog and she was surprisingly soft and smooth. Her deep brown eyes searched mine with such longing; that's all she wanted, just to be touched. I know that, I know. Your touch is my lifeblood. Your touch is my warmth.
"It's cold out here, huh?" I say to the hybrid-shepherd, and Chan wails and sings like I wish I could. "I want to have sex with his voice," he said. Hmm.
I shake this wobbly chair to the beat, then I shake my head, fast, waving, hair slapping my cheeks. If I ever really danced, it would be nonsense. It would be for no one, just the music. I've done it at times, but never completely, for fear of hitting something. Give me a padded room of music, I will shake turn stomp, my limbs traveling long distances with each beat of the universe. It will be like my flying dreams. Let me dance in skies over fields of grain, under purple sunsets, in warm rain. I will be free.
Yeah, drink the music, let it be your flight.
"losing the star without a sky. losing the reasons why. you're losing the calling that you've been faking. and i'm not kidding."
I've felt it, the pressure. The drab empty everything. Wondering if you're there, wondering if I even want you. And I didn't want to go tonight, to see the girls, the laughter, the food, the light. I wanted to dig deeper into a forged identity, and I wanted her to stay with me. But I knew she wanted to go, and I didn't not want to go that much. I didn't really want anything. I didn't know what I wanted.
So we went, listening to nothing on the way there, our headlights floating over black paved streets. And we got to the house of young girls and chocolate cookies and soft brown walls. Sat around, started talking, and Dee looked upset and I thought it was because we weren't being "Christian" enough, "Bible-study" enough. But then she started crying, because we were talking about depression, and she knew that, she understood it. I said I'd hated God and she said, "Yeah!" and I was surprised. I said I'd decided not to believe and she'd done the same and I was surprised.
People surprise me all the time. I have them nicely categorized, without even realizing it, and then Katie does something crazy-teenager-sarcastic, or Dee Dee says something so real and desperate and not-perfect-Christian, and I just kind of stand there and blink, because, as Denise says, "I don't know what to do with that." I don't.
I find myself in tiny spurts of awe, sometimes, throughout the day, at people, or at the way the dining room light reflects off of Kema's silver fridge, making wavy glowing snake lines, and how they instantly become darker and more vibrant as she turns off the kitchen light. Or at the plants illuminated glowing green, looking at them from the bottom, sunlight through big round leaves, under a bridge. At babies' callous-free feet. At cats -- little people -- "little dwarfs" as Denise said.
So tonight. We all talked, flowing words of humanity and pain and questioning. And somehow, slowly, I started to feel okay again, that small fire of deep okayness in me was there again, and I was trying to explain it to Spike later as a rightness feeling -- about the future, everything -- a feeling that it's all going to be okay. And as I was saying this I realized, maybe that's hope. Funny how one word can re-reveal itself to you over and over.
I want to feel okay, I want to be okay. That's what everyone wants, right?
Later we were sitting on the couch together, watching them play guitar and sing, their voices blending together in color, in liquid, "Abba Father . . ." I was stroking her hair away from her face, feeling so . . . protective. So much love. I want her to be okay forever. I want everything good for her. If that has to do with me leaving, in a crazy God-way that I may never understand, then so be it. Beautiful soul, know your Creator, let me not get in the way of that, no matter how much I may want to sometimes. No matter how lost I may get. You're growing in a way that no longer depends on me, which was hard to deal with, but it's right. Like a plant that I rescued outgrowing its pot -- it has to have soil, the real earth, which, no matter how much I try, I can't create for it -- I can only put it there and let it be there.
We're going to be okay, right dude? We're going to be okay.
right now my counter says "3333 visits."
Dear David,
It's been two-and-a-half years now, just about, and still I think of you more than you'd probably guess. I don't know why, or even what I think, but often in my mind, you're there. I was seventeen, you were -- 19? 20? -- and you showed me a world that scared and enlivened me.
They rushed by me, floured aprons, floured hair, grinding pepper, checking the oven. I asked you a question, and suddenly time slowed down for me, while they continued their frenzied cooking. Your words came. We didn't know why. You opened a door for me into your mind, and I don't think I've ever quite come back out of it.
I sat across from you over the stained wooden table, trying to figure out where to look -- your eyes? around the room? -- as you talked. "How do you know you're right?" you said. "I talked to a Muslim and a Buddhist the other day," you said. "We're in a house where we think we have everything," you said, "but then we see a window, and the world outside of it frightens and fascinates us. And maybe, if we keep searching, we'll find a door."
At first I tried to think of clever responses, to show you that, yes, I understood what you were talking about, yes, I was deep. I soon gave up on that, because it was like you saw through me. Me, in my world of sunlight and pink petals, holy love and rightness. Me, young, a girl with all she ever needed, certain this was all anyone ever needed. Certain I was right. Certain I'd never be shaken.
But you did, even then. You managed to crack that certainty. Not that the certainty was a bad thing, or your cracking it a bad thing. It was as it was, but somehow, in ways I can't label or categorize, something about the words you spoke that night has been woven into my world since then, my time, my experience, this beauty, this sadness, this love. Your words have been there, under the surface, connecting with other words, and I don't know why, but they're always there.
I wonder about you now. Am I the age you were then? What had you gone through, to make you see things differently than all the other people who never seemed to question, never seemed to think that maybe their view of reality wasn't the objective and real one? I want to know if it was personal for you, if you'd fallen. Or was it just mental, a way of seeing things?
And then there was that other day, soon before I left them and their family world of ritual and "dynamic power" and "vision for your life." I knew I was going to leave, I knew it was no longer me, and I came to you without fully knowing why, but something made me think you might understand.
I said I could read nothing but the Psalms, and there was a light in your eyes as you said you understood. I remember fragments of what you said -- sin, questions, a certain U2 song I'd never heard of. We sat on the steps as people walked past, some glancing toward me, worried. Maybe I was trying to grab the last of the rope. I guess I've always thought I failed. Maybe I didn't.
I think of you, David. I imagine talking to you again, telling you how crazy it's been, how alive. I want you to know and understand; I think you would. I think you guarded yourself, even in those hours of talk, because I was younger and more naive, I was in high school, I was in hope without fully realizing the depth of what hope meant. Maybe you saw me like I see some of them now. I understand that. I understand not telling me everything.
But still I wonder. What you'd been through. Who you really were. Who you are now.
Thank you for giving me a glimpse of a bigger world.
homosexual flower, i love him.
"you could chase that bird up into the sky if you want . . ." -- spike.
willow tree branches hang
over the entrance to this tomb
I push them aside and try to look through the crack in the stone door
but there is only darkness and dust inside
living eyes that cannot see death
living breath that cannot be still
we walk between these rows of graves
she captures time in black and white
an angel statue with no head
dead leaves and eucalyptus trees
my inadequate camera
how did your photos turn out?
I never knew
how your photos turned out
dance over pigeons when they're not looking. you never know -- you might find a talking one. one that talks to you and tells you the future. the future of our nation that we don't have. sometimes it's hard to be a pigeon these days. teenagers laughing at the way you move your neck. i mean, what's the use? just because i can see right through you, doesn't mean you can't sleep. what's the use? number 4. this is worldy, this is ethereal. oh.
Spike: "Do you have a screen?"
Kema: "No, we had one, but we had a dog go through the screen hole on it."
"I paid seventeen dollars for the game and I gotta apply my own feet? ... Sheesh." -- spike
from journal, march 16, 2004, in darcy's coffee shop
It's cool and dark in here and I like the smooth darkness of the table and chairs. On the way here I walked over the greenest grass, and I could feel its softness even through my sneakers.
Random ramblings -- maybe will turn into something?
Drinking iced tea, sugar's on the bottom, grainy, I like crunching it.
A lot of old women in here. Funny, those labels -- old, and it's so much of who you are. Old, and it's not your fault. Young, and it's who I am, and it's not my fault.
When this frame fails me, will I trust ou to carry me through?
I know there's no such thing as safety, but I know what a promise can do.
It's over already; already I miss it, and I'm still here. I miss meeting her, getting to know her. Realizing she's so beautiful, smart, she can understand. Clinging to her as a lifeline. Alice in Chains. Stockton. Punk. No security. Those letters. Oh God, please let it never end, let the beauty last forever. Let us last forever.
How can I presume to know what you have in store? ...
I love these chairs.
I hope she's writing in our journal.
when did you last dance in the rain?
who else but you would see beauty in brown and small metal objects and gay people and strange music and guys singing with cracking voices? remember the night of the eclipse, on the hill -- wrapped in a blanket under the moon? remember me walking around corners of brick buildings, in that huge grey sweater? (who else would cling to that spelling of "grey"?) we hoped to cross paths by the k building but pretended we didn't try.
oh God, i remember alice in chains in an incense-filled room full of shelves and books and posters. the "rocker-ball" necklace you used to wear. your grin. your laugh.
who else would wear unmatching socks every day, but prefer to go barefoot anyway? and remember Captain Edelweiss Hook and Blackie Schmee and Hair Pegleg and Preston Court? you once said in a letter i saved your life. that summer day in benicia, you saved mine. as you have so many times. as you do now.
why do you look at the stars?
now all we want to do is go to red places . . .
broken skateboard spike found for me.
it's dark outside and where are my thoughts going? want to wander with no purpose, ten-dollar fake birkenstocks over cooling-off sidewalks, under streetlights and stars. my music would be the distant hum of traffic, my nourishment the electrifying night air. in my dreams, since i was a child, i would travel great distances, over houses and trees -- i could fly or jump or climb over anything. sometimes i was running from something bad, which always came from the same direction. i'd escape through my backyard, over the fence and tree, past the trailor park, along the street until it turned into wide open land, a plain. sometimes i'd be with hundreds of other travelers, all trying to escape whatever huge terrible thing was coming.
other times i could just fly. i know the feeling of flying from my dreams, the speed of it, air rushing over your face. once, ian drove 80 or 90 miles an hour on the freeway, and i realized the reason it felt so familiar was because i always flew that fast in my dreams, i always could.
that is such a deep part of me, the feeling of flight. you could say it isn't real, it's only a dream. i could say this life is only a dream, and this is real.
finally got the cat power cd today, moon pix, and it's wonderful.
you can see that at the end, we got creative. godarn moanqey.
due to my 8-year-old brother's obsession with pokemon and other japanese anime, i had this freaky nightmare about having to "duel" with this big yellow cartoon monster, and if i refused, he'd beat me up. this happened once a month, in my dream. so i was constantly dreading it.
weird, unnerving dreams.
yeah, i don't know, that's all.
do you realize how small we are?
how can i realize i am small? does an ant know it's small? is it even small, when, compared with the whole universe, an ant and i might as well be the same size?
tonight i sat on a sidewalk with a small old nylon-string guitar, while they, inside, debated over whether we should be strict or casual, governed or creatively-directed. i sat outside because even my own opinions on the matter, though strong and able to be explained just as fervently, seemed small and unimportant compared to the warmth riding in the night air, all around me, hugging my body, filling my lungs. and the sky that stretched from concrete to concrete, over treetops and rooftops and houses with closed doors. i sat and played "time of your life" and "wonderwall" to the stars, and i had the feeling that he was listening, he was all around me, and i kind of felt like he was smiling, because we're okay, he and i. and even though i started to think maybe i was better than all of them, with all of that debating and arguing and passion (for what?), and i knew that in thinking that, i was being exactly the same -- still there was this . . . everything, bigger than all of that, out there. i sang in a quiet falsetto and the stars twinkled in dance. it is so beautiful to be imperfect but accepted, to know that you're really okay, just as you are.
"kid's wearin' purple pants and there's nothing you can do about it. that's just the way things are . . ." -- spike.
hmm, i thought i had anger and confused feelings over tonight and other things to blog about. weird how you take all that and make it beautiful. out of all the dirt and mud, you take thoughts i don't even realize i have, and put them on this screen before me, and show me the real beauty that mattered.
let me be open. i realize that i very subtly try to be, be, be, for other people, for myself. what if i let it all go? what would that mean? but this time it feels like a melting, rather than a tearing and throwing away. it feels like water and air and music.
lights over this dark city. what does it look like, right now, twenty feet above this spot where i'm sitting? if i could fly up there and be suspended, and spin around to see in all directions, what would i see? "what would you do if you saw spaceships over glasgow?"
i like this phase. so much time spent longing for phases past, or half-longing, half fearing change. so much time dry, trying trying trying, forging this identy for myself out of rough stone, hitting and hammering it until my nails chipped and my knuckles bled. and now i just breathe, and listen to the everything music.
why do i then sometimes still think like that, that my identity can be stolen, that my self can be attacked? there is no need.
i like this time. "just relax and enjoy now," i hear you say. it won't always be like this. destiny . . .
"And I wonder . . . if everything could ever feel this real forever . . . if anything could ever be this good again."
change wavelength
swim the wave.
-- mogwai
Conversations with people who are half asleep are funny.
(She stirs from sleep and pats the bed next to her.) "Emily . . . Emily . . ."
Me: "Dude, what? Am I bothering you?"
Her: "No . . . Hey."
Me: "Dude, what?"
Her: "Hi. . . .Why was I calling you Emily?"
Me: "What?"
Her: "I was patting the bed and calling you Emily. Because I thought you were here with the covers over your head, and I wanted to tell you because there was a storm and I could fix your teeth. Because I can fix teeth."
Me: (laughing) "Okay, dude."
Her: (stirring for a few minutes, then . . .) "You can turn the TV off whenever you want."
(The TV wasn't on.)
Me: "What?"
Her: "You can turn the TV off whenever you want."
Me: "Okay, dude."
Her: "Okay . . ." (and back to sleep)
oh oh oh, is there anybody out there? (a comment or two would be appreciated.) :)
ironic that only God can understand the depth of the beauty of what i couldn't give him.
everything converging. down to this sleep-deprived, charged little moment, computer bright humming, dripping fish water, street lights and early-summer night air, her breathing. i feel so alive, in my hands, in my lips tingling with new "burt's beeswax" gloss, in this breath in and out, which i'd maybe forgotten to do for a while. this cramped sitting on this brown plastic chair, and i am in these typing fingers, i am behind these tired eyes.
this is how i find you, now. this everything is so certain reality permeates everything else, even sermons in big, wood-roofed churches with cars speeding by on the freeway outside. i sat-stood-sat in the pew, and kept looking to the side of the front where the pastors were standing in front of those windows, and cars sped by behind them, or people walked bicycles along the road. how strange, i thought, this reality and that one, and, i wonder how many of the people in those cars went to church this morning?
uh oh, she's stirring. am i typing too loudly?
oh God, everything is so real and i'm loving it now, i'm on this hazy high, but it's vivid. maybe it's just the absence of all those things, despair, desperation, longing, such deep longing, sapped dry -- all those months. maybe it's that everything does seem to be "okay" now, but i thought that before, and then i broke through my veil and broke and broke. so i am hesitant to label anything as anything. but in this moment, we are okay.
i want to keep typing and typing. today we sat in barnes & noble in stockton and played upwords and drank iced coffee and banana-something jones juice and water. i should have bought a book, astonish yourself . . ., but i didn't. it was twelve dollars.
earlier we'd sat at a small booth in a mexican restaurant with a name starting with an 'x' that nobody can pronounce (ha, the name, not the 'x'), and we passed around a napkin and wrote on it with a thin sharpie, with her parents, and i was delighted and surprised that they participated -- normally "adults" (technically i am one of those, but spike insists otherwise) think it's dumb or immature, the word games we play -- stories, passed around, one word at a time. (*bertha* -- spike grins)
this evening (okay so this was all yesterday because it's after midnight, but i haven't been to sleep yet so to me it's this evening), i sat in the front passenger seat of a big white SUV and watched the road go from wide to narrow in front of me like through a fish-eye lense, stretching through pastel, hazy green fields under cotton candy pink sunsets. her dad said, "look at the sunset God's given us," and i thought, yeah yeah. that's true. and i took lots of photos.
this world is a lot bigger than any of us can imagine. is that cheesy and cliched? rumble rumble thunder.
i love you.
12:24 am and we're back from stockton. she's sleeping, and sometimes i miss her already. i'm just starting to get glimpses of what it will really be like to leave for a year, but i can't comprehend it. can't imagine it. we're always together. i feel like i should be appreciating this so much more. every moment should be pure bliss.
oh God, the irony and beauty and sadness and change of life. i am ever on the brink, now. i can't see two steps ahead of me. but that's okay. i don't even want that to change. may it never change, because uncertainty, i think, is safer than safety.
in church this morning (hers, not mine), i learned that The Runaway Bunny is the story of my life.
oh this choking bleeding laughing crazy world. only you know what's in store. i feel so helpless, but that's okay. we're all right, we're all right.
she's sleeping and i love her.
nice to meet you.
five-finger kiss trout.
this is also normal.
we believe in this.
feathers and dusters.
we're going to stockton again tomorrow. this time i'll have my camera, but i'll still have to wait to get the photos develerpied. anyone want to buy me a digital camera? seriously.
serious. you're so serious. who's serious? has anyone ever said that to me, you're so serious? probably. they probably said, smile, girl, and i probably did flash an insincere smile, although it probably annoyed me. you know the french . . . something about them that i can't quite remember. like they don't smile at you if they don't feel like it. like americans end up thinking they're rood (like that spelling) but really they're just being honest. and maybe they'd think you were a freak if you went around smiling at everyone all the time. they'd be like, "what's up with you, you smiling american freak?" (en francais, of course.) and sometimes -- no, i think all the time, i agree with them. be real. you shouldn't smile at someone if you don't mean it -- they can probably tell, anyway. never mind, do whatever you want. smile as phony as you want. i guess if you're a politician, it's part of the job description.
"ello, govnah!"
who do you want to be? i can be anything. we are ten years old. we are holding our breath underwater. ear drums bursting from the pressure. we can touch the bottom. won't you come away with me? i like myself.
today in front of walgreens we found a really nice cell phone. the address book on it was full of ghetto-slang nicknames. "g-dawg," things of that sort. i called the safest-sounding one: "mom." then, while i waited for the owner to come get his phone back, i fielded what seemed like calls from all of his family members -- nephew, cousin, daughter. all wondering what the (a-hem) i was doing with his phone. they drove up in a tan car and i gave the phone back. i had never seen a phone that nice. (that's not saying much, i'm not quite tech-savvy.)
books on spike's bookshelf: white oleander, brave new world, war and peace, utopia. the bell jar. diary of a teenage girl. the bathroom book. backroads.
i'm hearing water plinking in the fish tank, the hum of the computer, my clack-typing.
i'm blogging because it's 12:42 in the morning and i don't feel tired at all and she's been sleeping for a while.
but let's learn something, shall we? off to search the web.
don't forget the porchlight glowing yellow-orange through the window above her. today she chipped her tooth and got it fixed. baby fish and bubbles in the water. the absence of poetry.
reading her blog makes me not want to blog anymore. i have nothing to say because there is no vacuum inside of me. and that's not interesting. but hey, i'm blogging.
aliens and black tea with milk. i feel empty in this early summer. she says radiohead -- yes, i have radiohead too. it's of two years ago, walking to the library because i couldn't yet drive, walking in black t-shirt, the heat, the heat. randomly choosing a cd i'd never heard of, and at home in my slightly cooler bedroom, throwing myself into the beauty of true love waits, like spinning plates.
"i'm not living . . . i'm just killing time . . ."
two days ago, spike and i lay on towels on the grass and listened to the tape i'd made two years ago, of that album from the library, through my scratchy, small tape recorder. she learned about "cells doing the nasty," as we uneducatedly enjoy saying instead of "cell division." i read a book. i lay on my back and stared at the blueness blueness blue sky everywhere above me, everywhere. "and true love waits . . . in haunted attics . . ."
she said, "this hecka reminds me of last summer. radiohead, and the weather . . ." i didn't want to think about last summer. i thought about the summer before. "just . . . don't leave . . . don't leave . . ."
i smell clean laundry. it smells nice. camellolly flollypops. (or something.)
dorian. mogwai. just don't leave.
from my journal yesterday, 3-10-04, 12:52 pm
Jesus is about being human, and help for that. I think I'm finally learning that, kind of in spite of myself. I'm learning it from this guy -- that you can be fully God's and fully human at once. I'm learning from Walter Wangerin that it's okay to say "damnable." I'm learning from Spike that it's okay to like Incubus and Nirvana, and that all I have to do is just breathe.
I remember when she first told me that. She'd realized it; God had shown it to her. She'd told me and I hadn't grasped the significance of it. I didn't understand how much she was right.
Yesterday a homeless man with spacey, smiling eyes asked my dad for money in the Costco parking lot, and my dad gave him ten dollars . . . The man was really grateful . . .
Gnat on my finger.
1 PM.
------------------------------------------------------
listening to Mogwai
2:02 PM
"Simon, everything the man does has a strange, calm power."
-- Andrew, about Jesus, The Book of God, by Walter Wangerin, Jr.
"i don't take mmms, i take toilets." -- spike
why is it so much easier to smile at the chicken boy than to get along with my own mother today?
Oh God inspire in me that calmness joy strange. open my eyes and show me how much more there is to this. show me who you are to me. laughing Jesus, we listen to mogwai. we hold hands and yours are bigger than mine. everything beautiful, everything beautiful. there is that fire in your eyes. show me who you've been all along. how real. everything's okay. everything's good.
2:10 PM
march 10, 04
passed the 3,000 mark, baby.
so this is a blogging day. yesterday spike and i went to costco with my dad, and he told us to go wait in line for a chicken. there was a counter where a young guy was taking baked chickens off the rack and packaging them, and there were all these people waiting to get one. so we went over there, and when the guy put the chickens down, i kind of stepped back and let everyone else get one, because they'd been there first. people looked surprised, that i did that.
and then when i did take the chicken, i looked the young guy who was packaging them in the eyes and said, "thank you." nobody else did that, that i could see.
as we were walking away, spike said, "i love you. you're such a nice person."
and i'm not saying hey, i'm great. but why don't we do things like that? why don't we look the people who serve us in the eyes? haven't you ever had a fast food job? don't you remember how stressful it was? or any job, for that matter. i used to work at a roundtable pizza, and one night i was so busy and tired, and i answered the phone and there were two girls on the line at the same time. they ordered from me, and they were just laughing and talking and were so friendly to me, and it was such a relief -- until then, i hadn't even realized how dealing with so many people so impersonally had affected me.
i don't understand how people can do things that are just mean, without thinking twice about what their actions or words do to people. daggers and glass that stick in souls, while you walk on, stone, ice. but you made them bleed.
smile at your pizza delivery man. wish the mailman a good day. and look in the eyes of the guy who hands you your chicken.
man, i forgot how good ritz crackers are! with brie cheese . . . mmm . . . (i actually just got up and went back to the kitchen so i could check what this cheese is called, so i could tell you about it. how lame is that?) (that, and the fact that i'm writing about ritz crackers. and that i keep posting because i just like making different colors and words show up on this here blog, yuh.) note to self: next time you sit at the computer with a plate full of cheesy crackers on your lap, make sure two of them don't slide off onto the floor. note to reader: that's what happened, and you know i ate them anyway, baby!
steep.
a
.....
mad lib by me:
fill in the blanks
1. body part
2. girl's name
3. verb (past tense)
4. noun
5. boy's name
6. emotion
7. adjective
8. same body part as number 1
9. verb (past tense)
10. noun
11. animal
12. same girl's name as number 2
