For the Right Price I Can Get Everything

High On Your Own Supply

2010-09-30T21:49:00.004-04:00

Lunchbox has followed me everywhere.

Last night, in a moment of need to step away from quantifying loss for the end goal of a very expensive four year receipt, I pulled my words off the shelf and settled in to fifteen year young thoughts.

It seems that since the inception of for the right price, I have been trying to run.

Times are different. I succeeded in escaping, and escaping, and yet again breaking away. My desk has shifted from the chilly warm room of high school to the worn free thinking grain of the north. I have tried the soil in what is becoming a memory box full of addresses. I have a plan, I have the man behind the camera, I have won a game of hide and seek with quite a few ghosts.

And I am still running.

I know now that I am not trying to get anywhere. Right before the north, I spent a breath in Richmond, and Mealticket took me out for a goodbye dinner.

It's not the first, and it will never be the last. I said goodbye, and driving back in what always seems to be the pink evening before I depart, I felt a comfort.

Preparing to leave is no longer a strange feeling. It's what pulls everything together.

I just hope that one day, arriving will stop feeling so strange as well.

This is Bat Country

2010-08-29T21:19:00.002-04:00

Summer is over, and the north is finally calling me back.

I am sitting at the window of an old church that has given over to the new loft of the one who loved rock and roll.

The city put me in a state of suspended motion, so I found a plane and came to the other side.

I got into a car with the one who loved rock and roll and we drove. I saw the desert for the first time, the mountains, the flatness until forever.

Through hours of this and appreciation for the warm strong coffee of truck stops with their sustainable community, I got somewhere.

The one who loved rock and roll represents everything I want to be able to walk away from, so he was naturally the perfect road partner.

That, and he and I have the beautiful addition to our friendship where we can be in the same place for hours and yet be light years in other directions.

It was difficult at times; there are moments I am not want to let go of.

We made it through the southwest and Roswell and pickup trucks and shooting guns in the country, and Vegas. We made it through Vegas.

We came back to this old loft and I was the first one awake from the afternoon great sleep. Sitting at the window I got that chest ache that seems to arrive at the end of everything great and the cusp of everything that is the next.

And the next is the north,

and bat country is the only way there this season.

La Ritournelle

2010-07-28T23:50:00.005-04:00

To be completely honest, I thought this was going to be a lot more fun.

Move to the city. Work at the incredible internship. Figure out the roots of division III. Get away from everything you are

wrapped around.

I think I got away from everything a little too much.

The first few weeks, I assumed it was simply inertia. But as the summer sweated by I found myself alone and wandering the city. I evolved from solitary curiosity to the tightness in my chest that there was not a soul to turn to while waiting to cross the streets. I have spent too many aimless afternoons this summer walking towards and away from nothing while knowing that I was somehow ironically missing out.

What is worst is this feeling that I just cannot for the life of me clear my head. Last year I ran home and came back to the north having had a few breaths to myself.

Here, I am nothing but trapped. There are decisions to be made, contracts to write, glances to steal, moments to enjoy.

I cannot do anything unless I make sure I am where I need to be to ride the consequences down the road.

I am planning a grand escape. I hope it works.

At this point, I wouldn't be able to tell you if I tried.

Little Black Train

2010-04-28T11:28:00.001-04:00

I am sitting in ethnography class listening to a division III radio documentary of a girl who is trying to understand the facets of her father’s death. Is it a mourning tradition for those who lose their father at Hampshire to eternally academically dwell? Are we simply trying to make sense of it?

My final project is forming around perceptions of miscarriage. I assumed it was about birth. I am realizing the opposite. Why am I focusing on the shock of death in the waiting expectation of life?

Experiencing awareness of mortality at Hampshire leads to a specific type of division III. All of us in the club, no matter what we say we are studying, no matter how random and scattered our projects may be from each other, are researching the exact same thing. We are all working on trying to learn how to understand. We cannot move on to the rest of our lives without this knowledge, and I suppose a year long educational thesis is a way to start.

We’re all at different stages. There’s Anna, who cannot get through two sentences on impending death without falling into pain and looking about desperately for somewhere to put the tears. John, who quietly keeps a photo of his father by his bed and doesn’t seem unsettled in these moments until you see his hands. There’s Josephine, whose temperament leaves her with a solemn generalized gaze to the floor and the exploration of pain through the running away from running away.

I look at them and I understand. You can’t know it till you know it. We are all viciously, resentfully, thankfully bonded together by our collective grasps in the dark to not let our pain obscure our lives. Our division III’s are part of that.

I suppose the time has come to discover where I stand.

Shift

2010-04-25T14:24:00.004-04:00

I distinctly remember one sunny afternoon when my home still consisted of Rosecroft.

I had wandered into my mothers room as one is want to do when taking a stroll around the house to look at the silence. I remember walking up next to my mother's dressing table where the sun hit the carpet and reaching up to measure the height of the ledge compared to myself. With my arm holding onto the wood that had my mother's touch etched into it, I twisted the rest of myself to look at the full length mirror I was also standing in front of.

I remember peering into my reflection.

I remember sighing in a way that no youth should have knowledge of.

I remember knowing that this is what it meant to be three years old.

I remember that I already missed it.

From the moment my growth chart jumped off the lines, I had been given a vantage pointed promise. Where my father lifted me up is where I would one day stare at eye level. Where my mother stood towering above me, I was promised the possibility of gazing down at the top of her head.

I am sitting here, sprawled five foot ten legged across a chair and a desk.

I am twenty-one and a half years old.

and I will never for the rest of my life forget that appreciation my reflection held in being nothing but young. I knew that I would never have this vantage point again, and I cherished having the stray wisps of hair on my as per usual unkempt head barely reaching the ledge of the desk that my mother sat at every morning in the dark.

It hits me more often than it should. Sitting in a coffee shop on a Thursday afternoon reading and once again positioned in the spot where the sun hits the floor, I already miss it.

Driving down an unknown country road with the sun on my face listening to rock and roll to clear my head of young worries, I already miss it.

Perhaps this is why I love the sun. It has been my constant companion in these silent moments of mourning what I have not yet lost.

I suppose it wouldn't have it any other way.

Olive Whiskers and the Sludge Bucket

2010-01-18T22:33:00.006-05:00

There is a moment that I seem to have experienced after the first good moments with the Mad Scientist, and the Lost Boy, and now Picasso.

It seeps in on the drive home, sits with me on the bed when I'm peeling off my shoes, and adds to the grit of a late night past.

Its the feeling of nothing at all. I have learned through my own stumbles to cherish detachment like a future distant memory. With apathy comes no pain, no sitting too long in the shower, no driving home with the same song on repeat.

What is most frustrating this time around is that there's not even enough time to get to that point.

I like him. He's shy and unusual and makes me blink before he does. Picasso is someone that could replace Lovely's namesake with his own and might even want to.

He's wonderful.

And I'm leaving.

I'll be back, but if Lovely taught me anything, its that it is never the same.

Living in two different worlds forever christens me as a visitor, and it kills me how in order to keep up in one universe, I get forgotten in the other.

They are not the ghosts.

I am.

Perhaps I am simply haunting myself.

A Ghost At the Back of Your Closet

2009-12-25T02:19:00.005-05:00

Christmas is back in its rightful place.

There's snow on the ground in Richmond, Rashka is sleeping next to me, and I am not too many thousands of miles away delivering the kin of strangers.

It is everything I would have given for last year as I sat and cried into my evangelical Christmas dinner.

And yet, something is missing.

I feel it deep down, almost as if my soul is patting its pockets to make sure it didn't leave anything at home. Perhaps its the lack of awkward phone calls from my father. Perhaps its the conscious decision to delete Lovely coming back to bite me.

If my dreams recently have been telling enough, perhaps it both.

Lovely crept into my sleep last night, showed up as my memory of him. I spent most of the day settled in my mind, until I realized that I had simply dreamed it. Even when I delete that old neighbor from everything I can touch, he is still tangled up somewhere in the frontal lobe.

Whatever the reason, the presents are wrapped, the tree is up, and I have six hours to figure out how to feel that genuine sigh I used to get when I was little and I would wake up and it was exactly the right day.

I can't miss two Christmas mornings in a row.

Perhaps waking up in a foreign bed amongst strangers was the wall between childhood and everything else.

At least I still have Rashka and the snow.

You Or Your Memory

2009-12-07T00:46:00.007-05:00

My subconscious and I are currently at odds, and it has won this round as I am afraid to fall back to dreams for fear existence will cease.

I had just come home, but instead of following normal streets, I drove to my grandparents.

I walked in alone and stood in the dining room, wondering why no one was here for the meal set out.

And I heard the car drive up, and walked to the window, and peered out of curtains older than two generations.

And there was my father.

Here's where my subconscious slighty shifts reality, as I calmly walked out and hugged him.

I felt myself remembering how long it has already been. And then I asked. "Why aren't you dead?"

He turns to me and says "I have been quietly driving around drunk for a very long time."

And suddenly others pull up and set out food outside. And suddenly its night. And suddenly my father is sitting on the grass as if it were just another dream.

I walked up to him, towered over his shell, informed him that he had faked his death.

He informed me that he had faked his death. He reached for me, to hug me again. But I felt my body and my anger walking away.

The thought that I could see him again after all of that mourning made me hate him. I had done my grieving, I deserved to never see him again. I opened the car door, let out sparks and yellow jackets. I started to drive, and woke up in my bed in Massachusetts, almost relieved that he was dead.

I have not dreamed about my father since he stopped leaving quiet voicemails for me on otherwise loud nights.

It scares me that my subconscious has been holding him from me. It worries me that I walked away and did not hug him goodbye for the final time. It kills me that I will always feel tricked by some existential slight at hand, never to know all of the truth.

To think I had assumed that tonight would only bring works cited, physiology reading, and just a pinch of loneliness.

I guess those are the nights you really have to worry about.

I forget December's uncanny ability to bring out the ghosts.

Send It Out To Sea

2009-12-05T15:39:00.003-05:00

I will never understand it, but I think it has something to do with Virginia and the grass filled cost that comes with investing in a snowman.

Once a year, I wake up to the usual last part of the exhale that is December.

and the snow has come for me.

All of these moments are connected. This year I am pulled back to dirt under my fingernails from holding on to what I knew.

Time on that day kept stepping on my toes, whispering in my ear to remember all of it, because it would never be the same again.

At the end of this year, I am going to throw away my map of roads that lead nowhere.

Roads to New Hampshire. Roads to that reincarnation of my father's attention staring across the room. Roads that sigh in the morning to make up for the lack of dual breath.

Here is where today brings me peace.

Here is where I have come full circle, and my phone is off, and my room is filled with the sound of snow and nothing else.

And here is where I am happy with this.

I worry sometimes that I have forgotten some of the moments in my life that brought me this feeling.

But then the sound of white comes along, and it's all still there.

No matter if the roads no longer are.

Your Name is Bob, You Smoke A Pipe

2009-11-19T00:02:00.008-05:00

Sometimes I wonder if I am addicted to addicts.

It's getting cold again. My room faces the field and some mornings I wake up to frosted kale and can't remember my own name.

All in all, I am doing okay.

My friends here gently suggest some couch time now and again, but they don't see the beauty of driving around when a song named after my bloodline comes on.

Grief to me comes in quiet waves. Some days Bob is simply a syllable, other days it's the voice on the other side of the phone that I will never hear again.

I have formed an unfortunate habit in my life that is just coming to light as the stones quietly multiply.

I have yet to go see my father's grave.

I could cover this simple fact up with my belief in there being nothing under that grass but earth.

However, the extra miles on my car that are mysteriously absent seem to think differently. It has manifested itself in a little girl homesickness that I seem to have developed. Three months is a fascinating period of time to change everything or absolutely nothing at all.

In between the waves, I get occasional feelings of solace. When I was 14 years old, I had a forgotten day where nothing fascinating happened other than it was winter, and there was snow, and Rashka and I went for a walk.

I will always remember that moment for the clarity the menial brought me. I tried so hard to remember every step so when I was old and my energy was about to leave me, I would still feel the cold air and my young veins and the beauty of not knowing things yet.

That memory keeps coming up for me, and I realise perhaps I didn't save it for the wrinkled face of my old self. I saved it for when things weren't so much ordinary as just shit.

It amazes me sometimes how I left little time capsules along the way.

My father was an orchid child, my mother from the dandelions, and I, in an orchid way, planted a some very dandelion seeds.

and I have both of them to thank for that.

Especially when it comes time to remember my name.

All That You Can Do

2009-10-07T21:19:00.005-04:00

Perhaps loneliness is simply going to be the way it will always be.

It has been exactly six months since Lovely kissed my shattered forehead on his front steps, and I walked away towards my side of the blue.

I am almost the age where they will let me buy my fathers poison.

I have known that which drove me to myself just shy of 8 years now.

And, though it will never be the last time I say it,

I don't know if I feel it anymore.

I think of Lovely and try to pull up every glance (s)he ever gave me, and I feel a stronger pull towards what exists in my life currently, as porous as that is. I think that with the events that moved the earth out from under me, I am tired of ghosts.

I'm tired of having too much to say to nothing at all.

And yet the loneliness stays. I wake up in the mornings sometimes and think I can hear someone else's chest rise and fall. Then I realize its just the cold fall air beating at the windowpane.

I suppose we do what we have to do.

I suppose that's all that you can do.

Now That I Know

2009-09-20T22:36:00.006-04:00

After everything was said and done, I closed the boxes, found my keys, and came home.

And healed as much as you can when you are missing an arm.

This summer filled up with patients, stethoscopes, and Rashka's greying beard.

I'm back in the north again.

Yesterday I followed the beaten path towards the driver's seat and drove north, to a little theater in the middle of beautifully nowhere.

On the drive, I started to realize the peace that has been growing from the scars.

Peace to me is being the first to wake up in a house full of New England age and standing in the kitchen listening to the floorboards rub their aching joints in a cold weather sound so quiet it's deafening.

Peace to me is hearing the female in Lovely's voice rust away one more link in our chain.

Peace is finally seeing the color wheel in the mountains.

And enjoying the road because it means not having to do anything in the space between surviving.

Peace is hearing a friend understand the same kind of unearthly realism.

Peace is watching a man blush with joy when he sees that the dough he set out has finally risen.

Peace is everything and all and moving forward and letting the dirt settle and give life from the grave between it.

I have taken a step forward from my ragged shuffle backwards.

All I need is one more.

And peace is waiting.

Souvenirs

2009-06-19T23:31:00.003-04:00

The death of a parent creates something that slowly creeps in just as you are beginning to sleep away the pain of freshly dug earth.

And that is fear.

Every time my mother leaves the house, I panic just quietly enough for Rashka to glance up at me, and no one else.

This morning she hit her head and told me goodnight before leaving. I drove to work with my hand clenched on my forehead.

There will be two phases in my life. One with my mother, and one without.

I am dealing with the silent phone of my father. I am too young to have both of my connections to the earth stop calling.

So I have come home for the summer. And for the first time in years, I relish the ability to not be completely on my own.

Sometimes at night though, my brain flutters like it did when I spent the night unexpectedly at my grandparents, and the dusty toys hanging up in the shower gently reminded me to enjoy my final evening.

Tracing patterns in the dust of childhood gives me a fleeting contentment I will never forget, and makes me wonder if this fear is simply my body trying to memorize.

Fly Away On a Hummingbird

2009-04-07T23:45:00.006-04:00

I guess it's time for me to tell it.

Friday was a snapshot of priorities. A friend's birthday, I make my way over to my phone through laughing bodies, and there are people who have been there.

Specifically, my mother.

I knew what she had to tell me before I put the phone to my ear.

What I did not know, however, was how human I could be.

I felt my knees on the ground, and what came out of my mouth was a wail that could have frozen half the heritage of anyone's blood.

My father laid down on his couch with the heat up high on Friday afternoon, turned on the tv, scratched Sally between the ears, and left this world.

The drink beat the reds.

When I was little and could not sleep, I would pull out a picture of my father in a teal kiss the cook apron and try to make myself feel what I would when he died.

I never knew why a child before the age of cursive knowledge would do such a thing, but I think I do now.

I worshiped him. However, something in my bones always gradually tucks religion away as a storybook.

I was learning to mourn him before I didn't remember how to love him how he was.

I hoped for my father, but I cannot forget that he was Samson between pillars.

Yesterday I lost my mind and became that little girl again, and ran to Lovely.

But today, there is a reverence for the pain I could imagine years and years ago, when I was convinced the man only drank Coca-Cola, and cigarettes were beautiful boxes I got to play against the side of the truck.

His blood stills runs through my veins regardless of what form his life exists.

And I do miss you, Dad.

Cat's Cradle

2009-03-19T00:52:00.008-04:00

My father is about to die from living too hard.

Saturday was his birthday, and seeing as how I had come full circle home, I went out for lunch with him and his president of the world sibling.

My father has become a child.

His eyes are full of water that has stood still too long. Sentences slip over his fingerprints, and as he put it after eyes from his sister, his liver is shot.

It was then calmly explained to me that my father had been living unbeknownst in filth and unemployment and bottles and they had only found out because his blood had decided to explore parts of his body it did not belong in.

Oh, and Hepatitis C.

My father has poison for blood.

We then went shopping for new flooring in an attempt to clean up what he had forgotten to do to his home. Except I was asked to make the decisions, because it is to be my house soon.

My father is about to go out into everything.

And I am ready to let him.

The Magi asked me during a first sleepless night of learning each other what my deepest secret was.

I told him that I would not be sad when my father dies. I know I ruined it with that boy, but I will appreciate that he let me give the tip of my tongue that came crashing back when I was asked, a few weeks later, for a tip of my liver.

It's not hate. It's not revenge, or apathy, or anger.

I am tired. And life will be so much better for that man when he no longer has it.

My father is going to lose big.

I never expected anything else.

Don't Be a Stranger to Yourself

2009-03-09T02:00:00.005-04:00

The lovers revolve, but the picture is always the same.

It's usually blurry from my love of hiding from lights.

I'm never actually looking at the photo. But whichever fascination has decided to capture me, they usually get it.

Genuinely happy. It's a smile that used to be reserved only for the moment in question.

But recently, they have been shedding some light on it.

I never know it's happening. I will be pressing buttons late at night, and come across that moment, now pixelated and glad I was the only one in the room.

And tonight, as I stumble over the most recent evening of a self inflicted silent phone, I have found another.

It could make me sad. It could remind me of how I have run.

Instead, it reminds me that sometimes, in the early dawn or late afternoon, when I have reclaimed an old plaid shirt and given up on everything else,

I have made these moments, and

I really am happy.

Kurt Vonnegut

2009-02-27T16:54:00.005-05:00

Sometimes in November, when I walk into empty rooms, I smell my old red haired mother's perfume.

Imagine my surprise when the scent came to me in an upstairs room of a birth center in central Manila.

Two nights before, I had scrubbed off the smell of Lovely, stayed up all night, and then walked onto a plane to the other side of the world.

For the life of me, I do not know how I did it.

I left everything. I left Rashka. I left Mom and school and normal thoughts and clothes and my sense of putting everything in its place.

And I jumped.

And I flourished.

I came home to cold days and reality and Lovely. I left those for colder days and Chemistry and Lovely's expected backwards flip off the ledge.

it was bad. I would lie down at night and let my mind spin itself into a knot so tight the only thing to do was cut it off.

Day by day, it got better. And I met the Magi. But sitting here now, I realise that Lovely has reincarnated.

And I hate him for it.

But I know who I really hate. I am the one who habitually goes into the forest at night looking for ghosts with nothing prepared to say.

I can feel the breaking point coming.

If it weren't for my recent break from tradition that proved to me that I am strong, I would probably run right back to the ghosts.

Come Back to Us Barbara Lewis

2008-11-28T00:49:00.003-05:00

I am absolutely and completely terrified.

Each night in Richmond, I have stayed up dream cycles past the rest in my house, grinding my teeth and fearing sleep, only to free fall in guilt when 4 am rolls by.

I do not have enough time.

I want to be able to talk to my mother, to tell her how completely frozen I am in life about the thought of disappearing from it for a month.

I want to tell her I'm terrified that I will never make it back.

I want to drive to Lovely next weekend, hug him, and push time back to set gender roles and before driving abilities.

I understood that I would be nervous. I understood that I would be scared.

I did not understand that I would feel every nerve in my body grind to a sit-in. That I would let books gather in the corner, only to jolt awake right before the sun appears, panic set in about gathering deadlines.

But when I sit at the computer, I cannot write. My body will physically not let my fingers touch the keyboard.

Trying to grow up is turning my thoughts younger and younger.

At least, I finally understand what it means to be trapped in my head.

Dammit.

Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps

2008-11-18T02:20:00.007-05:00

A ghost appeared out of nowhere tonight to ask if I still write. Perhaps it was surprising, except that several apparitions have asked the same thing recently.

And here I am, early morning, wrapped up in EMT gear, freezing and wearily awake.

Hampshire is sucking at my bones. I was not prepared to grow up this fast. It wouldn't be an issue if I wasn't the only one.

And yet I come home night after night, exhausted with a backpack full of mandatory papers, only to hear complacent voices from all rooms of the house.

I didn't think it could happen after such a long summer, but I miss Richmond.

Mealticket and the Gentleman and drives along familiar streets.

Perhaps its because I won't be there for Christmas. Perhaps its because I should be. The mother of my mother has a death threat running through the marrow of the bones, and no matter how much the rest of the relatives talk about gamma rays through their clenched smiles,

I'm well aware how this could end up.

I wasn't particularly upset until I realized the mother of my mother will probably never see the children I bear.

And that's how I know I'm growing up too fast. I sit in the shower and daydream about telling my mother to pick out a grandmother type name.

This cycle of birth and birth is wearing me to death.

Christmas to me is cold sleet, Rashka tearing paper apart, children born to save marriages running around a sea of credit card debt, and the smell of the stairs creaking as my grandfather slipper shuffles down them to his chair and glasses. Things I love.

Not hot tropical weather. Not an old Catholic woman I don't know. Not religious zealots.

I'm paying good money for this type of learning experience torture.

Birth has become my life. I just only hope it doesn't take it away.

20 should be drugs and sex and short term love and college.

I suppose I'm just living more ones than others.

On The Road To Find Out

2008-10-29T20:47:00.003-04:00

It's one of those moments where you meet someone, and your life flashes before your eyes.

I've had this once in my life with the often stated Lovely, and the thought of another conundrum has not scared me so much as placed me in my chair for a good portion of the evening,

thinking.

Lovely has followed such a winded timeline, that I forgot what it feels like to be at the beginning again.

I'm not sure if I am starting on another unearthly realism, or simply looking at my own reflection.

But the first time I felt the waves of Lovely's voice reach me, I saw myself old and content.

And I've felt that again with the Paradox. These types of roads always seem to follow a line of gender eradication and revaluation of where my life will lead.

But here again I sit, pensively biting the backs of my crossed hands with the elbows on the desk.

This is a different world.

The Paradox has no idea. But then again, you don't have those kinds of moments with just one side of the wall.

I suppose I will just sit here for the remainder of this thought, and wake up in the morning to find my daily life back again.

The road is there though, and I can always take time for a walk.

Monty Got A Raw Deal

2008-10-29T01:14:00.005-04:00

This patch thing is not going to be pretty.

I was born of the tobacco. A memory distinctly rests in my brain of a four year old Grace, standing outside the cab of the pickup truck my father had for a moment, learning how to rhythmically play a pack of cigarettes against my hand to push the tobacco together.

Marlboro Reds, no less.

My father was the cowboy killer, my mother was the Gold Marlboro box. She eventually quit and I grew up in a house of echoing warnings.

Until I went to college. I found myself in January standing outside with Quixote, stressed more than I knew with my EMT knowledge, asking for a cigarette.

And one the next day.

And then I was a smoker.

Sunday mornings I would wake up to an empty cardboard box and a little less air in my lungs.

Summer mornings included driving on 95 with a cigarette out the window and a bottle of Febreeze poised to mask the smell with flowers and exhaust fumes.

My mother was good about it. She disapproved, but what could she possibly say to the younger version of herself repeating a similar mistake?

My father didn't know. I didn't want to give him that pleasure.

And so back to the college that Marlboro pays for, smoking in between breaks from the car that tobacco supplied.

Note the irony yet?

I love smoking. It is in my blood. I grew up with ashtrays and Philip Morris stock quotes.

But my career is pressing in. How can I be an advocate for a healthy birth if I am constantly ducking out of the building for a few minutes only to return smelling like ash?

good effort or not, I am not pleased with this outcome.

The patch on my back feels like the rapture is about to occur.

And I'm going to be stuck here on earth with countless cigarettes and no more babies.

In My Place

2008-10-02T20:21:00.004-04:00

The smell of the beginning of October pulls things out of your head that you haven't felt in an earthly rotation.

The other morning, dragged out of a hungover bed to the sound of a number I didn't recognize, I found myself talking to a ghost.

Lovely had decided that he was alive again.

His other half had dropped out on him. He was everywhere and nowhere and talking to me.

It wasn't his number. He was unreachable except for that moment. I hung up and stared at that dusty box gold box in the corner.

It was the first morning of fall. I was fourteen, sitting on my porch steps again.

That fucking porch.

I dealt with it, stayed away from those pictures of him, and considered it a random witching hour that had simply momentarily raised the dead.

That is, until I found myself standing in a loud kind of quiet hallway, where the dust dances in the sunlight against the background sound of expensive learning. He had called again. Another number, another exorcism.

And this was one I could call back.

And so here I sit, feeling like I've been resurrected back into the month that is in my blood.

Here I sit, at the edge of a very large circle that has taken years to draw into the leaves.

And here I sit. Terrified. I thought I was done. I had put that photo back into its box.

But now that number is staring at me like that house down the street used to.

For the first time, I know that I'm not the only one who can't let go.

Perhaps we're both ghosts.

War All the Time, Indeed

2008-08-21T02:36:00.004-04:00

I may not be Bukowski, but I do have one similarity with that drunken old typer.

Sitting on my porch Monday evening, I glanced across the yard to see a thin cat with no tail in sight climb into view. Being the child of my father, I called to it and it came running.

Three days later, he hasn't left, and I'm falling in love with him.

The first night, he rubbed up against my back and I didn't think much when he disappeared.

No sooner had I flicked the lighter on Tuesday evening did he appear in the exact same spot as before. I realized how thin he was when I rubbed my hand across his side and felt like I'd scraped a washboard.

Mother looked out the window and disapproved. Rashka spent the entire night in a jealous rage.

This morning, he was waiting for me when I walked out. He laid belly up on my lap and pawed at the smoke rings.

I have no need for a cat. I have no place to put this tail free phenomenon. My animals are all furious at me, not to mention my mother, who tells me every chance she gets that rabies is on the way.

But when an animal that has probably never been held tries to bury itself in your arms and cries, its impossible to not understand how everything on earth needs touch.

There's a stray on my porch tonight, curled up in a bunch of old towels at the base of the top stair. He's sleeping where I sat after I heard about the nonexistence of that red haired mother, where every year until I ran away I sat and mourned the passing of childhood into a letter.

Tomorrow, if he's not gone, I'm giving him a name.

And names never leave.

Bicoastal Revisited

2008-07-24T23:27:00.007-04:00

Whenever I miss the old Lebanese wonder that is my grandfather,

I take the bus.

After a day full of wading through post doctoral accents and aiming not to kill myself with the sterilization death contraption, its nice to climb on the bus and have the old man driving talk to you about how he never got into acting class.

Recently I've been having flashbacks to younger bone years. I suppose its because I will never fully be back in Richmond. My marrow is trying to lock in things like the Johnson and Johnson high from smelling my first shampoo.

Last evening, right at the light where everything looks like a Harold and Maude scene, it started to Virginia rain.

Huge drops like someone taking off running. I slipped out of the house and sat on the porch.

I could have been fourteen again. Just one or two posts under my belt. If an old brown mustang had come roaring down the street and done that slow turnaround back to its home, I would not have been surprised at the beautiful boy grinning at me from between the window beads.

That's another breed of flashback that is sitting at my door, an apology card with a cow on the front held in its hands.

Where that infatuation, then that love, then that weariness, then that emptiness used to cling onto, is a strewn about mix of seconds from my youth.

Lovely laughing in that kind of Virginia rain with a top hat and a cigarette. Him, one hand on the steering wheel, another wiping the windshield while cursing the old ingenuity of a mustang without defrost. The muggy smell of the leather, an odd orange felt hat that fell from the sky and returned the way it came.

Being fourteen again. Terrified. Sure of everything I did with the kind of confidence that comes when you are stepping into youth and then disappears until you realize how wonderful that time was.

Of all the things I have kept through the clumsy stone jump that is growing up, I appreciate two most of all.

A gold box with two cow stickers on it that my mother has been forced to promise she will not open.

It holds the pictures I took when it first feverishly occurred to me that I could document time as it unraveled. journals filled with silly obsessions. Movie tickets and a black and white photo of Rashka and I looking out the window. I could place all of it side my side and trace my high school years. My relationship with Lovely.

The second is this lunchbox. Nights when I feel that my breathing has come to nothing, I read through my years. It's getting to be a four year old child now. It comforts me that I have stuck with something. Not exceptionally well. But if some young gentleman asks me carelessly if I write, I can casually point him to something with history.

Its the same kind of feeling as an old stranger explaining the ethics of stoplights as he drives me back to my car. Of Rashka having a permanent indentation around his neck where I have held onto him for 5 years. Of losing Lovely, a soul I never had, but finally,

finally

being able to relish the brief memories as a nostalgic exhale from the past.

What Would the Community Think?

2008-07-16T22:17:00.004-04:00

For all those wonderful months spent living independently for the first time, I have acquired a misstep in my personality.

I have stopped talking.

So many things have built up quietly while I was busy listening and not trusting a soul.

I haven't spoken to my stepfather in over a month. He got in my face and told me to shut the fuck up.

So I did. My mother is furious at me with the kind of anger that only I can understand since it runs through my veins.

When she questions me, I can just feel the tears well up like the piles of my things that I have simply stopped picking up.

Along with the job that my body refuses to wake up for, the cigarettes my mouth refuses to stop smoking, the sad lonely kind of drunk voice mails from my father that collect unreplied, the friend with whom I sit and listen but never explain my own swirls of discontent.

The only one I've ever felt okay to trust, Rashka, gets older every time I run away to the north. He will be collecting dust before my diploma even makes it to the shelf.

Where Lovely used to be is a large hole of turning my head so I don't see his old house when I drive by.

I'm scared to death of my career. I am so afraid to fail.

God am I afraid.

The other night, Jersey called me for the first time this summer, and she talked so fast about her own problems that I set the phone down and smoked a cigarette. She didn't notice.

I scream out for the Shire in my sleep, but I would be just as unhappy there.

I don't remember how to talk. The only thing I remember that serves as a hot enough shower for my mind is this lunchbox.

Hopefully my brain doesn't refuse that too. Because then,

There would be no more talking.

Everything is just so melted together that I'm not even sure where to pick things apart.

Hello in There

2008-07-06T23:06:00.007-04:00

Richmond and I are slowly making amends.

A gentleman yesterday asked me if he could write me letters when I am in the north. Technology has become so ingrained that the idea of words that breathe a moment or two before they are read fascinates me.

Loneliness has been quite a faithful companion. Mealticket has been there a lot for me. I really do care for the soul, but I cannot rely on one person to rest my mind on. Many times I worry that I put too much on him. Each draws me back a little more. It's been a long while since I have had a close friend, and this point is usually where they disappear into the backdrop of their own lives. Its understandable that I'm testing each brick before I gamble with weight on it.

I realized today how much I hide from every passenger that takes a seat in my car. Every friend that ends up drunk on my shoulder. Listening is a beautiful way to keep your thoughts hidden.

I've become so serious recently. Every time I close my eyes I see the Massachusetts roads and gentle hills that never stop growing upwards.

There's a secret orchard near my school that I have taken very few. If you blink, you will miss the opening in the hedge. I used it many a time when I needed to sit and let the fact that I was where I belonged sink in.

An immortal oak tree blooms at the top. It has lawn chair roots and you can just lean against the bark and see for miles of hills.

I miss that breath of air you take when you finally reach it after the climb. You breathe in what you see.

I ache to my marrow for that. To walk around the campus right before the sky begins to warn me that I have missed the night, when not a soul exists except for the painter in the barn who just couldn't sleep with that charcoal image burning in his brain.

I should be sleeping. I have to get this young body downtown tomorrow to work in a lab. I fucking hate it. There is no spirit in checking plates for bacteria colonies. This job is fantastic in that it confirms that I would kill myself if I wasn't around words.

However, I am there for an aunt, and there's no getting out. I tell them what I want to do and they stare back at me with disinterest before turning back to their pipettes.

Science is nothing without life to go along with it.

Spanish Pipedream

2008-06-30T23:27:00.003-04:00

And just like that, Lovely is a woman.

I understand. I accept. But I can't help but feel as if I have just watched a ship sink.

It scares me to think that my memory will never exist in the form I fell for. I was flipping through a box of childhood trinkets the other night, and I came across his senior picture.

Black and white, tuxedo a little too big on the shoulders.

One hand wrapped around the fist of the other with the thumbs on top, he's perched on the edge of the stool.

His hair is how I always loved it, right at his eyes and dark with youth.

He is gazing down at his feet with a sadness that I initially mistook for a pose but I finally understand.

This is the picture that burns in my mind as what I remember of Lovely. And he knew it was not him.

How selfish of a soul to want someone to stay in the wrong body just so a black and white photograph would remain true.

Nowadays, when he flashes through my mind as I'm driving home at dusk and I flash back to youth, I don't feel longing.

I feel empty.

Lovely will always have a part of me. But I fell for the boy down the street with dark locks that fell just enough into his eyes and then would be brushed away with those hands.

Not the woman.

The photograph is going back into the box. My children will be sifting through curling papers when I am old and will come across that picture.

I will tell them that it was an old friend that blew away with the wind.

and they will put it back and keep going.

I don't if that makes me content or broken, but with Lovely, that was always how it was.

I Found a Reason

2008-05-02T20:13:00.003-04:00

Perhaps its just the substance crush of final papers, but I feel odd.

Its as if I'm leaving Hampshire for good, which I hope is absurd, but I don't know.

I keep dreaming of myself as old, hair gray and outlived, lying in a large bed in an oak floored room, with large windows that overlook something much father than me.

And everything is golden with a dying day.

The air is calm and there's a harmonica kind of love vibrating in me.

Its a vision that makes the youth version of myself, lying in a claw foot bathtub in a watermelon seed kind of green bathroom, want to explode.

Part of me wants to yank the golden thread hard enough to end up at the silver end.

I didn't expect the school year to end this way. Everyone seems so ready to flee. The energy is different, or perhaps I've just never felt it like this before.

Everything seems different. Blank walls seem to grow faces for me. I feel like I am living in the middle of a highway.

cars keep flying by me, but I just want to sit on the asphalt and think. Forever. I never understood why I get nostalgia before I even leave places. Perhaps its because I know that I will never be this young again. Responsibility starts when I get in that car for the long drive home.

And yet there I am, an old woman. And it looks so wonderful. I am happier than I have ever been, and I'm not sure my body knows how to let the minutes age into the past.

I seem to want to live everything this wonderful all at once. Bathtubs and honey children, vibrating tattoos and dying cells in a golden room.

My body yearns for the Trafalmadorian state of existence that my mind seems to have taken up.

If only I could close my hand and take a break for a second.

The Morning Sun When It's In Your Face Really Shows Your Age

2008-04-24T02:41:00.002-04:00

Hello old friend.

You would think a lot would have happened, what with the daily task of getting up from day to day.

College hasn't changed me so much as reminded me who I was to begin with. Here I am, wide awake way past the second rem cycles of any other souls I know.

I miss Richmond. I feel as if I am cheating on my first love. Hampshire breathes so much life in me, its hard to exhale sometimes.

I'm lonely. But perhaps that's what is to be expected 500 miles away from Rashka.

Lovely came back from a ghost last week, only to evaporate again in Saturday hopes.

And yet here he is again for me, beckoning me to come to him this weekend.

It was in that pause of breath from him that I thought back to the lovers this past year. All of them have been attempts to forget what happened the morning before I left.

I don't think what made him lose his mind was my entirety so much as my eyes.

I can't seem to get past that gaze. Every other boy causes panic in the back of my chest. I end up alone in a crowded bed.

It's hard to be in love with something that doesn't exist anymore. Its a small child playing with the rope hung up in the tree from her step mother's latest attempt to vanish.

It's inhaling and praying that the molecules take the ache to write away from your fingers.

It's knowing that I will love him if he is a woman. If he is a ghost. If he is a gravestone stuck in weeds.

And perhaps that is wonderful to have something so strong so young. But I do mourn the years of fun and innocence in intimacy that I have leapt over.

I'm a puzzle piece in the wrong box. But how I would love to fit one more time.

Soul Scrabble

2007-12-15T18:54:00.000-05:00

You can never really go home.

Frustration reigns in this old house I waited so long to run away from. I forgot the grass is always greener a plane ticket away.

The mason-dixon pool wouldn't seem so chlorinated if it weren't for my mother.

Something is not quite right. I came home expecting my friends to have changed into unrecognizable shapes, but not the voice I had called every morning for the past three months.

Our intuition is gone. The smile that used to form when I was told I looked just like her has stayed up north. Every word rips out another page from the dictionary collecting dust in the corner. Syllables come out of my mouth and attack what was an amazing relationship.

And God help me, it kills.

Quixote keeps worrying through the numbers on his phone. But how do you dictate a silent cancer? In naps that start mere hours after rem has fled and last until a frustrated mother raps on the door to wake a lost child up for a dinner she doesn't approve of? In two doors and a hallway filled with guilt trips that slowdance with the dust particles in the fading virginia light?

I love her more than anyone. But affection and honesty have never been factors. Swevere was the sole name of the game.

She seems to be giving up on me. And I have never been so quietly defeated.

I'm sorry Mom. Synchrosity doesn't exist anymore. For the first time, I can't be you and me.

So I'm fine, please go. I know its not my home.

Murphy Street

2007-11-19T18:54:00.000-05:00

A lonely whore, leaning against the tired brick of an alleyway on a cigarette break, looks down just in time to see a rusty needled syringe held in the mouth of a scrawny alley cat cut through her nyloned shin.

Who knows what she thinks, reversing her nicotine lover into the air with a curse at the blood dripping on her work shift.

With a turn she flicks the rest of her cigarette at the black nightmare scampering back down the alleyway with a bullet in its haunting mouth and heads back to what she knows.

Years later, crumpled up in the sheets of a state sponsored antiseptic association, she’ll hear the whispers of the nurses just as clear as their menacingly silent footsteps down the polythane hallways.

Just another dirty whore. This disease is what she gets.

It swirls around what’s left of her, melting into the plastic tube that is taped against its will to her arm. And she sighs, knowing they would never believe

That a moment away from the street and a hungry feline were all it took instead.

Running Out of Socks

2007-11-09T16:37:00.000-05:00

My father was only ever faithful to red

He, the son of a tobacco prophet and a beautiful German who occasionally found children growing inside of her despite spending her marriage years sleeping in a separate twin bed, was born with blue eyes that forsook him for their own journeys

When he refused to live as a proper \ son growing up in a house of green, his mother would tie him to an oak tree in the back yard with a crimson nylon umbilical cord that birthed him backwards from the earth.

Marlboro reds, the love child of the prophet, found him behind sheds and claimed him as their follower as the days passed

Two wives and a daughter later he brought a woman with a headdress of fire home one night. She stayed for years, gaining debts and losing body until she succeeded in meeting her own crimson.

And then, like a spider gorging its web back into its abdomen, he packed himself with alcohol soaked silk and moved on to wives of lesser hues.

When the beautiful German expired on that twin bed, she could not tick back into the earth because her son had been adding poison to his coca cola just a little too much.

And the bottles sighed at him with a whisper of “I am not your god.”

So he looked for the red stains in the hands of a holy man and immersed himself in a baptismal plea

But though he had always been faithful to the pigment of prediction, the pink cousin envy of scars stayed silent.

And now he sits, the good book gathering dust alone in a brick house of dogs and shadows, picking through crayola boxes to remove the one who made him forsake himself.

Where the Sidewalk Ends

2007-10-24T21:06:00.001-04:00

Wrinkled and abused rubber slipped along the glass, leaving a stubborn glossy film clinging to the windshield. Its octave ranging tones played soccer with air molecules in the rusted car.

A young woman held on to the wobbling steering wheel, leaning slightly forward against her flannel armor in an effort to gauge the location of the blurry asphalt her life depended upon. A sigh slipped out of her lips like a family secret and rested in a foggy resentment against the windshield.

Chipped hands ripped from the wheel made contact with the fog in an effort to clear the path. Clammy chills ran up her arm as she spread her fingerprints across the liquidized sigh. She pulled her hand back, clenching and unclenching it in an effort to ward off the dew. Her front tooth skated against the round of her thumbnail as she stared out the window and checked the rearview mirror who did nothing but smile back at her own reflection.

Her mind drifted back to that evening in the orchard. She had lodged herself between the trunk of an apple tree and its moss covered bough in an effort to hide from the world. Her wrinkleless hands hurriedly inked letters onto the back of topographic map paper, hoping fervently to drain her brain before the sun set its itinerary for the other hemisphere.

Only a few ticks lay between the car ride and the witching hour. She wasn’t ready to leave eighteen.

Her windshield wipers gave out with a squeal of expiration and lay protesting in the middle of her windshield. She closed her eyes for a second to get away from the halo of headlights behind her and pulled over to the semicircle of gravel that miraculously appears on country roads at uneven intervals.

The slash of the other cars tires vibrated the car in tune to the rain which kept up a steady song. Her fingers groped for the keys and pulled them out, severing the main artery to the engine.

Suddenly, it was just the rain and a girl. She leaned her seat back until it bumped into the second half of the car. And for the first time in a long time, she just

Breathed. Youth ran through her veins, transmitting from atom to atom. The past year floated back to her. Ripping out the Mad Scientist’s heart, leaving her skin a permanent note, taking one last stab at high school with a Lost Boy. Drunken mistakes near the shore, hours spent with just enough pages in a book to make enjoying dusk by herself on a country porch surreal, deciding to run north, getting there and realizing just how essential her mother was to the core of her being, loving Lovely no matter what his determinate and for the first time, having him love her back, realizing how young she was and how beautiful such youth made her in virgin actions towards growing up.

The car seemed warmer. Muscles gently twitched themselves upwards and a smile counteracted the ocean leaking one drop at a time out of eyelash umbrellas.

She woke up to find herself caught in a world of fogged up glass. The pictures she had drawn in past days smiled at her, telling her secrets of which boy smelled like Vermont leather and which girl smiled just a little differently.

She pulled up her seat until her eyes stared back at her once again from the mirror. Her fingers found the iced over keys and she breathed life back into the engine. Halos of headlight were nowhere to be seen, and she pulled back onto road after finding that her wipers had a little more strength in them.

And she went back to her world. Young, but just a little less so.

Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

2007-10-14T22:17:00.000-04:00

Running to the north was the best thing I could have done.

Yes, I do find myself dying to run back home sometimes. I would kill for my dogs, and seeing my parents get back into that rental car to fly back to Rashka and the countless cousins and the humidity, I can't help but ache for Virginia.

Sometimes you never know how much you love a place until you can't wake up there anymore.

So many high school friends hate their schools. Godwin was their cocoon, and they were in their element there. I am just now realising how much of a blessing it was that I did not fit in to any degree.

Because here, I just click. The boy who comes up to print a paper is more than happy to sit and watch a rolling stones concert while rubbing that hippie back of mine. When I tell someone that the word coital reminds me of seashells, they smile and agree.

People wear what they want, think what they want, say what they feel.

No, it's not all sunshine and happiness. There are pretentious assholes here. cocaine and marijuana is around every corner, as is the idiot who only comes out of his drug den for cigarettes and occasional classes.

But for the first time, I feel pretty and worth something. People pay attention to me, my ideas and my body are not simply dismissed.

Stress and homesickness are a part of life. They add to the element of what I am giving up to truly learn who I am

because I have no idea what kind of person lies inside of me. In Virginia I would have followed the preassigned courses in math, science, friendship, marraige, and life.

There's no roadmap at this college. While all the other souls in their 18th year are freaking out because they haven't put all the pieces together,

I get giddy every time I think about how much I have ahead of me.

But tonight, I will fall asleep only knowing the yellowed pages of All the King's Men and the faint smell of Vermont leather resting on my skin.

And that makes everything just a little bit better.

Shooting Leviticus

2007-08-02T21:55:00.000-04:00

Simply put, it is time to go.

The miles to western Massachusetts look more and more appealing by the day. Summer has become a time of tedious workdays, stressed mothers, and looming piles of work that is moving 500 miles away.

I'm sick of having to explain my college at every turn. I shouldn't have to fight for its credibility simply because the masses have never heard of it. The jokes of living in trees have started to prick the skin.

The lit fuse traveling towards my home can be seen by the naked eye now. The affair placed one more china cup upon the swaying catastrophe of beer bottles and avoided family time. When not at work, I prefer myself not in this residence. No wonder I fall asleep at the job. Any time not home seems time well spent.

The lost boy and I have seemingly worked out an impossible scheme. Its refreshing to feel that summer shall throw its curtain down on us with a good note.

Casanova still seems to have one foot remaining in the frame, no matter how hard I try to not think of it. The same goes for Lovely. He left the other day, but not before I dropped by for one more moment.

Time stopped. I sat there on his couch, gazing out through the glass walls, and the realisation that this was the official end of childhood on my street took hold. He understood too, picked me up and just held me.

I left the past there that night.

I left walking down the street with just to say hello. Leaning my chin on the leather and metal mesh of the mustang's car door as we wound down River Road in the last breaths of dusk. Having my secure vision of the world shattered and thrown to the wind, leaving only my footsteps to carve the way.

I have been his past for years.

Finally, he became part of mine. And I will always think of him as the scratch of his beard against my forehead, the warmth of his arms around his childhood friend.

And that is truly Lovely.

No Barking Sparrows

2007-07-12T13:05:00.000-04:00

When you find yourself on your knees in the handicapped stall at the local movie theater, staring at the black curly hairs in front of you, life seems a little more clear.

Sometimes, the incessant rumblings of silverware and coffee mugs as the boss rewashes, replaces, and rewrites every syllable you had sweat out etches the tally marks of a prisoner onto the skin of your cell walls.

Or Casanova keeps throwing rocks at your window, only to be a ghost when you search to see who has shattered the panes.

Perhaps, though, Mr. All Around reincarnates into The Lost Boy, and the bitterness of a high school world hides and gathers dust with the diploma.

A friend loses his first girlfriend, and you have now played the part of the victim, the murderer, and the consoler. And each part seems okay now.

As the days wind down into humid evenings of Irish goodbyes and occasional collisions, the prospect of a new life with frigid evenings of Irish hellos steps up to wait it's place in line.

Most times you can keep pace with the sparrows.

But it's the times of absolute will and self preservation, when hair is pulled up, shirts are pulled off, and backs are bowed to whatever has gripped our physical abilities

That makes the spokes of the barking wheels of life shine a little brighter.
Here's to the handicapped stall, black curly hairs and all.

Reflections On Venom

2007-06-29T00:43:00.000-04:00

There is nothing forced in these pixels.

And yet, I can't help feeling let down by this written world.

Letters, words, and metaphors stream through my veins in a literary circadian thrum.

These are MY words. This is how I write.

And anyone who doesn't care for my laughable expressions can fuck off.

I have never seen the world as others do. Objects and lives have taken on new shapes, roles, and genders before my eyes.

I have never had to force words out of my brain. And I'm proud of that.I suppose the fact that these years have piled upon one another with nary a vicious bite towards me is something to be proud of as well.

So you, the anonymous messenger who feels the need to condemn the honest emotions that I have let leak onto this tile floor of a website, you have quite a bit to stand up against.

And until you can honestly say that you have created what is in your soul against the possibility of long periods of agonizing silence, moments of overload, and the possibility of venomous comments which break into your inbox late at night,

Until then, perhaps you are the one who needs to work on being real.

Because at this point, there's an atom for every breath coming from my soul.

And these words have something you will never attain.

Weight.

Insomniac Dreams

2007-06-04T18:13:00.001-04:00

Mr. Admirer,

Perhaps you aren't the only one who has admired. You can still get to know me better, as I do not run away to the north for quite some time.

Find me.

-Amazing

The Pina Colada Years

2007-05-22T21:13:00.000-04:00

Senior year has quietly gotten out of bed and softly picked up the strewn clothes of the past year from the floor. She has tiptoed down the halls of high school and is letting herself out the front door, making sure not to close it too hard.

High school is a breath away from over. None of us have realised that she has left. We all seem to be sleeping next to her indentation and the smell of perfume on the pillow.

I look back and think about that first day when a young catholic school girl got tossed into the blender of 2000 living, breathing, public school souls.

How things have happened. Even scrolling through the pages of lunchbox, the youth which peaks out from photos of volleyball and times with lovely and girls and Rashka astounds me.

I have had my heart broken twice. I have broken a heart once. I've laughed, cried, screamed, dropped myself off into the depths of anonymity and thrown myself upon the stage in front of curious eyes. I've passed, failed, gossiped, shredded friendships, forged new ones, learned the ugly side of numerous people, and found the beautiful side of more.

I know that in a few days I will reach my arm across for the senior year that isn't there. I will wake up clutching the pillow and memory of an amazing four years.

Lovely was right. It is the best time of your life so far. I remember one of the evenings when he walked me home and explained what was in store for the next four years.

Yes, part of me wants to rip apart her pictures and erase her number. The tests, the disappointments, the viciousness that high school can thrust upon the personality of a soul.

And yet, she leaves me wanting more. High school will never exist again.

It was phenomenal and challenging and it has pushed me to a place where I am almost comfortable with the craziness inside of me.

She's almost gone, but I will never forget her.

And sometimes, thats the best thing of all.

How Do You Afford Your Rock and Roll Lifestyle?

2007-04-25T15:50:00.000-04:00

It's pretty amazing what two days, a "fuck you and fuck off" mixed cd, some rent songs, a few hours of yoga, a bikeride, some vietnamese, some grapefruit, and a good night's sleep can do.

Sunday and Monday I was a wreck, with good reason considering the drunken actions of All Around's post break up. I went home that afternoon and passed out. Mother thought I had lost my mind.

But the next morning.

I woke up, and everything seemed a lot closer to okay. School work could find itself done. Dinner could find itself eaten. And yoga has become an addiction.

All Around and I have agreed to take a week off and start over. With the exception of occasional glimpses of the whore in the hallway, I'm looking forward to next Tuesday.

The others and the editor hate him. They don't want me to talk to him. They try to talk him out of taking me to prom.

It's pissing me off. This was my relationship, this is my breakup. I don't need mediators. Yes, I appreciate the support, but they need to relax.

He never knew it, but I named him Mr. All Around Kind of Guy for another reason. He always walking around with a gloss coating. None of these friends know the real Mr. All Around.

Yes, he broke up the way of things in an asshole abrubt way.

Yes, he got drunk and made a fool of himself and me, courtesy of the whore.

But if all of this is the only way to crack open that gloss, then I will gladly go to coffee Tuesday. And I will gladly go to prom with him.

I see him walking around the hallways, and he tries to make an effort to avoid me. The editor tells me he's upset, but as she says, "he messed up, and he should feel like that". I'm just glad that its not me this time around.

A week was just what I needed. Already the thoughts of dark nights and driving around the country have begun to swirl away. As they do, I realise just how unhealthy that relationship was for both of us. We tiptoed around each other, with exceptions for collisions.

starting over seems good.

Especially now, as occasional glimpses of happiness and giddiness at life gradually slide back from their two month absence.

Never underestimate La Vie Boheme.

A Collision of Faults

2007-04-22T15:56:00.000-04:00

I can't breathe.

I can't move.

I can't eat.

Mr. All Around cut out last night.

Perhaps it would not have been so bad if I hadn't been completely unaware what was going to happen.

When did it start going downhill? I'll tell you. A night with two friends in the spare room and a big decision.

That's when we stopped laughing at every second. That's when our conversation got turned down like the radio during an important telephone call.

That's when I started to get scared. All Around got quieter, so I got needier.

I would give anything to have those first two months back. When he read me as fervently as I could turn the pages.

I would kill to start over and return to laughing fits and belle isle afternoons and a cd for when I work too much. To never be anywhere near that last chapter.

He got to the end of the book.

I've been wondering around the house, every ounce of my being screaming to get out, to run, to go.

But there's no where.

The tears come and with it a rage like I have never felt. I hate myself for messing this up. I hate myself for smothering him.

and I hate myself for seeing this on the horizon, but continuing to make it worse.

This is nothing like last time. This is karma for the gaping wound I left in the Mad Scientist.

Last time I felt nothing. This time, I'm the fool.

I feel not good enough. I feel ugly and annoying and stupid and worthless.

The words flowing out of my fingers fall onto the keyboard with a limp. And it kills me to know that he is probably going about his day with a care in the world.

Why didn't he just fucking say something. Why couldn't he be honest with me until I lay barefoot in the grass screaming and hitting his chest.

He says he will take me to prom. He says he will take me to coffee every week. He says we'll be best friends.

I gave him everything and got dropped. I'm so afraid to trust him again. Because if he drops me again, I don't think I can piece myself back together.

And so here I sit.

Not breathing.

Not eating.

Not moving.

I should have been a pair of ragged claws.

Goodbye Blue Monday

2007-04-16T11:51:00.000-04:00

Here I sit, in the computer lab of the College of the Atlantic. It is everything I should have in a college.

and yet, here I sit, lonely at the moment. Anxiety always fills me when I leave friends for a vacation. It's stupid, but I always feel that they will have adapted without me while I am gone, especially Mr. All Around. I am always so worried that he doesn't care for me like I care about him. It's horrible, but I'm not used to a soul who doesn't want to talk about everything.

I'm still bothered by a directions slip up in a recent car trip, where a question on how to reach our destination turned into a question of where we would end up before college.

He didn't want to talk about it until it was necessary. The rapid way in which he responded scared me to death.

I've been afraid to bring it up to him, but part of me can't help wondering how he feels, not just about the dog days of August, but of now. these last exhalations of high school.

I feel like a ragged ballerina balancing a single worn satin shoe on the rocky hips that are Maine's coast.

Here my life stands ahead of me, amazing opportunities and people, and I am worried about home and an all around kind of guy who is amazing and has never muttered a malicious or worrying word.

Another aspect of this trip rests as a small spider in the corner of this web. I remember a COA student reading this blog. Part of me wishes I could meet them, to find a face in the crowd who has heard my voice other than the usual dance I have been preforming for strangers as to my whereabouts and interests.

The blur of AP tests and classes and exams has frozen as a permanent ink blot in the future of this term paper of an existence.

I care about all around, and time with him has made such clouds more bearable. I just hope I haven't become a burden or an annoyance to him. I don't know why I am so afraid to just sit down and talk to him. Perhaps I'm afraid of what I might hear.

But the storm must break before the dance can go on.

Downward Dog

2007-04-04T21:30:00.000-04:00

I suppose the time has come for me to write.

The universities did not want me. Rejection letters fought for their place at the top of the mail pile.

And so, presently, all signs point to Maine.

Enter Family.

Mother does not can not will not accept the friendly hand of the North. Every evening has been filled with pleas to settle with a smaller Virginian university and to chide The Atlantic as a simplistic child's dream of running away.

I know this is the hardest emotion in the world for my mother. I am the only one she has.

But I can't go to Mary Washington. I would float around in a state of Virginia prepaid misery.

I have also learned to keep my distance from the telephone of late as well, since the hate calls from my aunt filled with figures based on how I am going to squander my inheritance with college tuition seem to be the only greetings I receive from the handset.

I went to a yoga class tonight for the first time in an effort to hide from everything. Turns out I have a knack for bending into a human pretzel. The teacher walked up to me after class and stated that I was more flexible than some teachers, and that I should look more into the art.

Nothing beats something you are naturally good at to take away all other worries.

Well, most worries.

So many sentences have flown through the cerebral highway of late that potholes have started lining the route.

So much of my life seems about to completely reconfigure every possible facet.

The only thing I seem to be able to do is breathe.

In through the nose, out through the mouth.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

2007-04-02T22:29:00.001-04:00

And the play which kept me from sleep turned out. Here's a clip which was taken during the fight scene. The girl in green is my best friend, the pole vaulter.

Coyote Reveries

2007-03-27T22:55:00.000-04:00

As usual, exhaustion has set in.

But this time, it brings a nostalgic blur of happy fatigue.

Most free hours have chosen to remain at school these days. I should be nervous about the play. I've put my all into it. This is my last chance here to place my neck on the stained boards.

I can't wait. Even practices have become an element to look forward to.

I have no idea if I can act. But tonight, I stopped worrying about it for the first time, and the lines consumed me.

And so here I sit, enjoying the pathway the shuffle has chosen to take. The old curiosity and I have struck up a conversation. You can't see the tape holding our friendship back together if you don't scour the days. It took a while, but I'm glad the past has been erased.

Mr. All Around still serves as the daily exhale between 3 and 4 o clock. He seems pointed towards the hills, but I hate how he feels he is settling. He will make wherever he goes his own play list. There's a reason he is the all around kind of guy. He's got it, even if he hasn't realised it yet.

The old Fourth president has no idea what its missing.

The Envy of Icarus

2007-03-21T21:14:00.000-04:00

I can't breathe.

Asthma would not exist as such a wall if panic for breath did not serve as it's foundation.

I feel as if I leave small fragments of my mind wherever I go. New medicine has gotten into my veins, and I am a crazy woman.

Crazy. Angry. Crazy.

I can feel it taking control of me and the surges of emotion towards everyone. I'm afraid no friends will be standing by the time the levels reach an acceptable level.

My biggest fear, however, is that I am scaring Mr. All Around. He's noticed a difference. I've noticed the worry in me that carries.

This is a chemical iron elephant following me around.

It's not even a major medicine. But my grades have covered their eyes and jumped off a cliff. Minor infractions against me resign themselves to vicious grudges and repeating nightmares.

The new found laughter that I have been taking for granted has asked for it's due.

I want it back. I don't want to scare Mr. All Around.That wrecks me. I want my grades back. I want to be able to enjoy myself. I don't want to hate everyone for being teenagers and gossiping and picking the better group to eat lunch with.

I crave the thrum of cicadas. I want to lie in a hammock and not have a single vibration of worry or anxiety upon the cerebral web. I want to be there and know where I am going, instead of remaining here and anxiously staring at the mailbox day to day.

I need the numbing rush of summer.

Heaven help me.

The things we do for insurance.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

2007-03-11T21:34:00.000-04:00

Normally, the comment bar does not catch my attention.

But curiosity reigns over who keeps brightening my day.

Verno brought up this place one day last week, and I asked him what he thought about it. He replied, "well, its really negative."

This keyboard has and continues to serve its purpose in my life. However, in my lack of vigilance, I seem to only let my fingers stray over its letters when a knot has formed inside of me.

Mr. All Around and I laid down on the floor tonight and listened to music. Several times I found myself gasping for air in between laughs.

I sit back and realise that although there always seems to be some form of conflict swirling around the cerebral roller coaster, the overall feeling is

well, appreciation for the small things.

I laugh so often these days. Yes, stress takes me for a ride from the moment it seeps out of the alarm clock to the second it sits and waits for the next day to appear. Yet, this time around in life, I still can jump around in bliss to an Of Montreal song while the thought of Calculus steeps.

Colleges make their final decree in a few weeks. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever concerning where I will end up next year.

But I'm in College of the Atlantic, and I know that worst comes to worse, I will spend the next four years happy.

Heaven forbid. It's a continual loop every time anyone asks where I applied. I rattle off the list, pause, and then quickly throw in the COA name. Therein starts the questioning.

But in the end, I suppose life seems to be working out. Don't be too fazed by the weary posts, they are the only way to get the knots untied. I'm close to where I need to be in school, I'm with who I want to be, friends exist everywhere, and a few good ones show up too.

And, to whoever has been so kind lately, thank you. I suppose I love you too.

Animosity on a School Night

2007-03-08T20:39:00.000-05:00

Nothing, nothing beats what happened tonight at dinner as Mother set down her fork, looked me in the eye and said:

"I think I want to get a tattoo like where yours is."

Keith and I both choked.

That's where my more and more evident resentment slipped in. Right where Keith talked about how horrible an idea a tattoo is.

Look asshole. You fell off a cliff, got into a motorcycle accident, pierced your ears, did drugs, crashed your car drunkenly and sit every night listening to Steve miller or grateful dead or ccr or who knows what.

If my mother wants to take herself out of the box and mark herself like her daughter, something which would mean so much to me though I'll never tell her,

Then she can damn well do it.

It would be the closest thing my mother and I would have ever done. It would be our penance for the lack of physical appreciation towards each other.

It would be ours. Hers and mine. Don't ruin that Keith.

I have given you so much these past few years. I have opened up my home, and my heart, and my life to you. I didn't have to. I could have been exceedingly content remaining bitter at you for coming in one step parent too late.

I could have gladly stopped talking to you when you didn't come home that one night because you were stumbling around the city drunk.

Or when you wrecked your car stubbornly trying to come home.

Or maybe when you left the scene of the crime because you were too drunk to know better.

It took a lot of willpower to hear that you drink again now like it's no big deal. Or when you leave me notes when you go away with my mother for the weekend. No drugs, no sex, rock and roll is okay, Keith? Maybe you shouldn't brag to your work buddies about your crazy weekend. Maybe then I wouldn't feel so enraged.

Last week you and mom were talking about getting a small house in the country when I leave. I felt so suffocated knowing that all the aspirations that you two contain reside in a simple house in the country. That you two would be so content with such a thing.

I asked the same question to some at school the other day, in curiosity towards whether I was one of the few who wanted more than a cul de sac life. They looked at me like I was insane. Of course they wanted to live in a place just like this. Of course they wanted a quiet suburban lifestyle. Of course they wanted their children to follow this spiral.

It's just about time for me to leave all of this. Leave the hypocrites, leave the monotony, leave the assumptions towards opinions and the snares towards change.

Perhaps Keith's joke is right. Perhaps Mom should sum up her life on her neck.

"There it went."

There it went, indeed.

Paul Wolf Remembers

2007-03-04T21:16:00.000-05:00

It's the kind of virus that crawls down into the depths of your soul and remains there to stay.

The world develops an unusual hue under the guise of a fever. Your mind retreats into itself in confusion.

Sometimes, we all need to be delirious.

The burgeoning flood of papers and due dates threatens to envelop my senses. So my body, in self defiance, unlocks the door for a nasty form of illness to creep in. My government teacher will soon be receiving my opinion of the Patriot Act as thought up by a 100 degree brain.

Mr. All Around inquired as to the lack of written appeals recently. I think many ponder the way in which I write. Contrary to the assumption that I spend moments worrying over metaphors, This writing is how I think. I talk to myself in synedoche and simile, and the sole occasions in which I realise I am different in that approach occurs when others remark on it.

The end of a period of time came knocking today. My involvement in a self written play about the holocaust came to a peak when I stood on that stage this afternoon, sweating with the exertions of the virus. Inga, the dear soul for whom we worked so hard, stood at that microphone and cried. Afterwards, shells of women shuffled up to me in their Chanel No. 5 and orthopedic shoes. In thick accents, they told us how they lived through it. These were the people on the cattle cars. These were the souls bricked up in ghettos.

They told me that each word went straight to the heart. I've never had such an experience. These little old ladies walked through the depths of hell and survived.

The characters in the play were real. However, in those moments, we understood all that they cared for. We knew them as real life.

What happened so many years ago hit home today.

And that will remain when the virus has been conquered.

Lucky Pierre

2007-02-19T22:05:00.000-05:00

Absurdity, as it turns out, reigns.

There's nothing quite like hearing a rumor about you that smacks you in the face. Something so ridiculous, you initially laugh over the impossibility of it.

Then your friends don't stop laughing, and panic sets in. How on earth do they believe this? They nod their heads and tell you that they know its not true, but you know they look at you differently. You know they are wondering "what if?.."

It's been difficult enough for me these past four years. I'm different in thought and deed many times. Constantly having to stay on the defensive wears a soul down. So many possible friendships have not come about because extreme versions of my personality always seem to reach different ears through those that don't like something different.

This is an entirely different ballgame. Freak has been added to the list of grievances.

And no one will bother to get to know me and realize they could not have been farther from the truth.

I tried to confront them the first time a ridiculous rumor flew by my ears. Turns out that sticking up for yourself and trying to find out who is causing sharp eyes and quick words behind your back is unheard of. Is it really that crazy to force the malicious to fess up?

Four years of this should be enough. I don't think I can or want to take this for another set. More and more I think the university would be just that.

I am not being naive. Humankind is based on competition, and ruining the chances for friendship of your rivals seemed to be ingrained. Whispers will follow me wherever I go. They follow all of us.

But perhaps somewhere else, people might care to get to know me before they write me off as extreme, or a freak, or any jumble of vicious syllables that comes streaming out of wry grins.

I'm just so sick of it. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better if I believed what they did and didn't feel a need to live this life. Ignorance is bliss, they say.

But are they happy? Where will these mouths be in 10 years? sneaking around the office? Do they tear me apart because they aren't happy with what they have created for themselves?

These rumors might end in high school, but the unhappy souls who create them might drift have to live on them for the rest of their lives.

And that makes me feel a lot better about it all.

In Spite of Ourselves

2007-02-06T20:00:00.000-05:00

Something seems to be astir.

Canon has given me free reign once again to irritate those with my lens. Driving back with Mr. All Around today, I snapped a photo of him at the stoplight. Something happens when you absently take a photo and realise it has captured a moment.

Life in that car seemed so carefree. Life subsisted on paper pirate hats and high school play auditions. Tonight, on a break from the barrage of English essays forcefully being ripped from my fingertips, I switched on the silver machine to review the day. That picture stopped me with a grin.

I sometimes feel like I'm wondering through the halls of middle school. It's such a lighthearted and warm connection with All Around. Many days I find myself holding on to him as I laugh my head off.

I find myself much more carefree, although I'll admit that I'm always slightly paranoid that All Around will call it off.

However, when I look at moments like a paper hatted grin, Life seems to take care of itself.

Jacob's Ladder

2007-02-01T21:14:00.000-05:00

Economics can be christened as the psychology of money. It also holds a special spot as the trigger on the roulette wheel facing me. Assignments mixed in with countless garments and expectations seem to be rising with the sun each morning that drags me out of bed with the jingle of the coyote's collar.

My safety net arrived the other day in the form of a large envelope from a nearby university. I should be more pleased, but I know that it is the last place on earth I would care to exist in for the next four years. Whispers from the wiser and older thrum through eardrums with suggestions of its caliber, but no one is fooling the fool here.

The doctor asked if I cared to knock the little white pill up to two. I told her I could cope without the extra milligrams. To what extent does coping become inadequate, however? When functioning well hangs in midair?

As desolate and exiling and seemingly minuscule as college of the Atlantic portrays itself to be, more and more I find myself being drawn to it. Why? I shall tell you here, but never in person.

I want to get away from this existence. As much comfort as it lends me, the constant need to compete and conform to others academic standards strangles me and leaves me here.

Maine might just be the sole place at the moment where I can completely focus on myself, since nothing else exists there. I won't have any sills telling my friends to stay away from the liberal bitch. Any Cash's making me regret every footstep into the woods.

Not everything seems to be falling apart, however. I have been holding onto the cracks of the walls for years now. When I get a chance to relax and enjoy myself, life finds itself on a much cheerier track with friends and experiences.

Mr. All Around falls into that ipodic inhalation that life takes between melodic breaths outward.

I look forward to a seemingly endless ride down a seamless strip of asphalt with such an acquaintance.

Nothing beats a long car ride with no need to arrive.

These Are the Reasons

2007-01-04T17:20:00.000-05:00

Mom looked at me last night with the question

-Now that you're 18, can I read your journal?

-What does being 18 have to do with you reading my journal? No.

To that Keith piped up that everyone else could read it.

well..yeah.

That's the funny thing about blogs. You know everyone can type in that familiar lunchbox dilemma and read about everything from lovely to an alcoholic family.

However, when you hit the publish button and find yourself staring at that "blog updated page" the world doesn't really exist.

So much goes into writing to the audience for some. Others consume themselves with their own thoughts and emotions.

Dear turned to me yesterday and asked me if everything here was true. She said it was written like a story.

Honestly, seeing it evolve with characters and razor tipped metaphors helps me to detach from the fact that dad never calls or that I can't be affectionate to my mother. It staples down the swirling feelings for Mr. All Around Kind of Guy and brings me back to base.

Some evenings I lie in bed exhausted, but some amazing sentence creeping along the cerebral highway drags me away from those sheets and to this finger worn keyboard.

Sometimes people will make a reference to my blog, and suddenly the realization that my soul has an address punches the faithful wife right in the face. The reason I don't want my mother reading this is because I don't like to know who reads it.

Perhaps people assume none of this is true because they don't realize that these words are the reality. Not a soul can interact with me here. I'm protected from the outside world where I know I am not always true to myself.

So mom, I'm sorry. There are some posts I would love for you to read and to understand, but it just can't work that way.

Perfectly Aligned

2006-12-30T12:04:00.001-05:00

Happy New Years

Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore

2006-12-22T09:09:00.000-05:00

Dear Chad and Tony,

Shame on both of you. I have been reading the growing tension between the chicken and the busblog, and you are both yelling at each other for having your hands in the cookie jar.

First off, Tony Pierce, shame on you. I lost a lot of respect when I read that nasty rebuttal to Chad's need to express his opinion to you. Blogging should never stoop so low as to slam the door in your compatriot's face. I have watched Chad support you through thick and thin, and there are many ways you can disagree with a friend without setting fire to the string that holds you two together.

Secondly, Chad, shame on you. You and I both know that blogging is a selfish addiction. You stopped blogging because you were no longer writing for yourself. Remember that? So to demand that another fellow keyboard slave caters to your whims is well, the most hypocritical statement a blogger could make. Also, look at your archives. The words you bleed now are a different color from those earlier in your life. People change. Priorities shuffle around in our head like a dance marathon. To expect someone to write the same way even though their lives have shifted course is ridiculous.

Time magazine named us the people of the year for what we strive towards. We are changing the world, and even though we light up every part of that Christmas tree we call life, we all have something in common. Writing runs through our veins, whether it is 5 times a day in several places, a few times a week with cute girl, or sporadically with random emotions (hem, me).

Every single one of us has changed. We each have found ourselves wrapped up in some project at certain times in our lives. Mine was the mad scientist, Tony was the laist, chad, you were everything else. However long it takes, we all find ourselves back to why we each pound out these words.

We're writers, no matter what the hell we write about. And the last thing we should do is try to strip that away from each other.

Love, respect, and spell check,

Amazing

Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt

2006-12-21T19:01:00.000-05:00

Congratulations, you have faded into the drunken backdrop of college life.

I could not help stammering. A voice from behind the black glasses, red hair, 2 inch plugs and coloring booked body asked for my id. I went and melted down into the outdated furniture and watched the receptionist go up to make copies. Seven months of pregnancy did not seem to affect her.

I turned towards the friend and breathed out heavily. I got a grin in return. An hour passed. Thumbtacks from the entire map had all come here for a permanent decision. Curiosity lit up the waiting room as each hero walked out with their respective bandage.

Another hour passed. The prospective artwork lining the walls seemed repetitively inspected. A large multicolored man lumbered out to us.

-Now what do you want exactly?

Treaties were argued over. Locations designated themselves as fights over size and direction of the territories rang through the air.

-Alright, follow me.

The friend and I headed towards the "step up" sign into a square room. Two retro plastic chairs rested against a wave of mirrors. The needle and ink waved their greetings from the metal tray.

Cold alcohol jolted every molecule as the territory was being prepared. The friend pulled a plastic chair up to the padded bed. I lay down and heard the intimidating buzz of a life decision come to life behind me.

I grabbed the friends hand and felt that chill of impending pain.

-Oh, wow, that's not that bad at all.

So

Darkness behind eyelids calmed my senses. Vonnegut would be proud.

it

My eardrums throbbed with the buzz of the needle. nerves woke up and told my brain that this was not the original pleasant experience.

I clenched my teeth and attempted to cut the circulation from the friend's hand.

goes.

Suddenly, the buzzing stopped as a thousand bees retreated back into the power cord.

Shaking arms propped myself up, I grabbed the hand mirror and spun away from the wall mirror.

-It's the perfect amount of curly.

the weight of the past two hours collapsed. I scared the burly multicolored man with a grin.

On the way home I thought about what I had just added to my body. All of my life I have held every harsh word and worry inside. Only recently have I learned to let things be.

Billy Pilgrim would be proud. So it goes.

Linger On

2006-12-08T21:29:00.000-05:00

Upon pondering the string of dominoes between the present and the past, the teacher spoke of an assignment each year where she has her students write a letter to themselves which she will mail to them four seasons later.

While departing towards the rest of academia, she called my name. I turned and saw her holding up a letter.

"This guy killed himself before I got a chance to send it to him."

My jaw hit the floor. With an exhale of slight shock I backed up and accelerated to physics.

Suicide still grasps onto an ounce of me. The ghost of the wild red haired woman has long ago faded back into the old pictures. Yet the ghost of the floor falling out from under me remains.

Did that boy know he was never going to get that letter? Or did he honestly think the future did not curve to a dead end any time soon?

What would have happened if that letter was sent? My teacher still hasn't opened it. The stark simplicity of it's patience scares me. The stamp happily waits to meet its maker.

That letter held that boys hopes for the future. What if he had already planned on ending the seconds? If she had read it, where would they be?

In spite of the freshly citrused poker that rips through your heart valves when that three syllable vibration taps out upon your eardrums, reverence still takes it's seat.

We look at death as an unreachable chasm. Those passed knew something we didn't. Non existence deserves it's respect.

Call me petty, but that boy still has a letter waiting for him.

And I plan to make sure its delivered.

The Great Blink

2006-12-06T21:00:00.000-05:00

Dear God,

You and I need to have a little talk. Driving home from amongst the bubble of the west this evening, the subject of church came up.

I honestly don't think its the best idea to let myself be dragged to church when I don't believe in Jesus.

Mom, apparently, does.

The thought of no religion scares the hell out of her. The fact that I am comfortable with no present religion scares her even more. Any faith will work for her as long as I have something to believe in.

Maybe not believing is the best part, though. Without a book to guide me, a pew to pray in, a host to eat, I finally feel free to dwell on my own thoughts.

Another thing. I understand you like dedicated Christians, but the theocratic feeling that seems to be enclosing around me sends lines to my face. Everyone seems to be a whore on Friday, trashed on Saturday, and saddle shoes and prayer books on Sunday.

What scares me about what humans have done with religion is how they have incorporated humanism into it. i may not stand on a cement block of faith, but the beliefs about life that I do carry around with me stay with me. I would do anything for anyone.

Not to say I'm not a hypocrite. The soul typing this words seems to be a walking contradiction even to itself on occasion. However, I care about others, and that's whats important.

Organized religion scares me because humans are in charge of it, and therefore bind it to be flawed. Perhaps by not calling myself a name, I am avoiding holy wars, vengeful editorial columns, and the honest belief that another is inferior according to what they pray to.

I have to thank you for Lovely on that part. He didn't turn me away from Catholicism. Instead, he simply planted a seed of realization that my faith was not the end all.

Without all the humans in the way, I think you are great.

Quite funny how this life works out, isn't it?

blasphemently yours,
Amazing

Anneliese Schmidt

2006-12-05T20:39:00.000-05:00

After forcing out a mediocre post, I found myself at Chokey as I usually do these days. He has become more brilliant and more profound, in classic contradiction to the Conrad theory.

He reminded me how much I need to work at this. "anybody can write about something else. writing about yourself without being boring repetitive or pompous is one of the most difficult tasks as a writer."

Some mornings I wake up to the surge of letters running through my veins. Occasionally, calculus and physics books lie gathering dust in the corner as the words in my head commandeer the very essence of my being.

I wonder if I would appreciate the state that an entranced writer falls into if I stayed constantly under it's spell.

The university will not help those surges. The traits which make me a hypocrite will never fade away unless I force myself out of my surroundings.

I don't want to do it. However, I cannot keep on living like this. The useless scraps of life which I constantly worry over will break me down eventually.

Those power surged moments have become sparser over time. My greatest fear is that they will disappear altogether.

I fought with the mad scientist last night in my dreams. I woke up in a furious state of mind. I don't remember ever being so angry at him. I need to keep the space that we have settled on.

The last post with the scholar seems silly to me now. Maybe I am just over thinking it. I don't remember laughing so much as I have recently, however.

My inner Bukowski pines for Saturday with Chokey. I need the echo of a common soul who has also used up countless veins letting the sentences flow outward.

The secret really did unsettle me this afternoon. He made me feel cheap. Sarcasm and I don't always mesh, I am too tuned into emotion to sort out the decoys. Yet again, however, something that I can't quite pinpoint unsettled me. I am not sure if it was how he spoke, or why he spoke.

I guess secrets have a right to live up to their namesakes.

Anemic Letters

2006-12-05T17:04:00.000-05:00

The university did not bite.

I can't say part of me didn't crumple. As much as I denied it, some inch of my being thought volunteering and clubs and books would be enough.

Luckily, the looming applications of more northern aspirations moved me along. Boston visions have swirled around of late.

And then, Saturday night, the scholar appeared. Sitting on the dock amongst the orange warmth of the cigar, something worked itself through the brain. Suddenly it was 70 degrees and he knew it as well as I did. This wasn't supposed to be happening.

I stomped home to the wife's abode and told her the story through smokey breath and closed eyes. Lying there on her bed in the sleep deprived hours, I did not think much of it.

I woke up laughing. Monday morning I laughed. and Monday evening I sat down to calculus and realised I had started something that I couldn't control.

Electricity is not supposed to run through me when I see him. I'm paralyzed by the thought of scaring him away, and confused as to what this will all end up as.

The secret asked me about it. He's right, he is old news. But what else would he have expected himself to be? The inconsistent companion does not care for any situation of this type. She has shown solely distaste. Other friends are whispering in the corners.

I think people are surprised because I was with the mad scientist for so long.

Maybe the university wasn't my biggest problem after all.

Backwards Sidewalk

2006-11-23T21:09:00.000-05:00

Jack Burden spent valuable pages describing the great sleep. The moment where there doesn't seem to be much to do, but you know there are endless needs you must attend to. So before the sun has finished toasting the landscape, you draw the curtains, pull up the covers, and hide from the particles twirling in the failing light.

I can't seem to wake up.

Every day when I pull into my driveway, I turn my head ever so slightly while searching for my keys and stomping down the walk. I can't look at that rusty fortuneteller that stands guard at the edge of the street.

Part of me wants the university so badly. Part of me would kill for a big fat envelope in the mail.

But part of me secretly desires for that small modest paper of deferment.

I see my body falling apart in front of my eyes. The scale numbers keep climbing. I can't breathe anymore. The inhaler gives me Parkinson's for hours, but it still beats out the uncertainty of my latest breath reaching my lungs.

I study. I still don't compete at my level. At least when you don't bother to stay up late poring over problems and breathing in the metallic smell of graphite and measuring the time in clicks for more lead, you don't have to admit to yourself that you just didn't understand it.

I still pay homage to 20 milligrams every night. I know I am depressed only because my body is shutting down on me. I know I am sad solely because I don't want to be awake. I can feel an electric current running through me, pulling as hard as it can against the medicine.

I'm just barely at bay.

I don't know where this came from. It snuck up on me. Books can hardly pull me away from reality anymore. Awareness of worthlessness pulls me off Jack Burden's porch on the landing with Anne Stanton. Their summer heat and cicada thrum and blanket of mimosa smell cannot keep me like it used to.

So I turn off the light, and I go to sleep.

Teeth In the Grass

2006-11-03T21:36:00.000-05:00

It should really be the farthest thing from my mind.

However, I see his brown locks everywhere. I know I am grasping onto what is left of the past.

There's just never been anyone quite like Lovely.

Over lunch the other day, my mother pulled a side of her I have never seen. Randomly, a man's name fell upon her lips. She is so in love with Keith. However, she told me about the only other boy she was ever crazy about.

She said whenever they were together, there seemed to be such a strong magnetism. Something just clicked perfectly.

That was every second with Lovely.

I realize now why I forced myself to fall so quickly into the mad scientist. I was trying to prove to myself that Lovely did not command most of my thoughts. Now that I have come to my senses, all the other boys just don't match up with me.

Yes, they are very sweet and nice. But they don't keep me up at night. Every ounce of him seemed concentrated at me when we were together. These boys could care less.

I didn't mean to think about him. But shaggy browned haired boys keep appearing out of the corner of my eye. Die Artze keeps showing up on shuffle. Old pictures of old times keep digging themselves up to the top of the pile.

I forget that as I live here, as I grow and mature, so does he. I'm not the only one who changed. We were perfect for each other at different points of life. But I will always owe him.

He may have grown past what I loved, but he instilled a knowledge of what could possibly be perfect.

And for that, he is lovely.

Don't Do It

2006-10-23T19:27:00.000-04:00

Nestled in among the shelves of nonfiction 811's this afternoon, directions flew out at me. Writer's block has been squeezing the soul out of me and drinking it with breakfast of late. I can't even force myself to glance at my college application essays.

I had come to the library for a class, but I found myself with several beautiful minutes to explore the new jungle. My fingers traced countless bindings but did not rest until 811.54. Bukowski.

A specific book stared out at me from among his alcohol produced children. I leaned back against volumes of America's best poetry collections, felt secure in my isolated cage of a bookshelf, and opened it.

There it was. I read it gingerly at first, not able to take it all in. Then again quickly, not sure if Bukowski really was crying out the secret to every sleepless keyboard's woes.

Sitting there, the cold steel beds of poetry grating into my back, I connected with that page. That ink. Nothing else in this entire world mattered. Not my past words, not my friends, not my loves, not my life.

All there was stared back at me from the cracked typewriter of an alcoholic legend. It wasn't optimistic, it wasn't vicious. It cut through every sentence word and letter I have ever read about writing.

Call Bukowski what you will. Call poetry what you will. Life on the page has flown out of me since I could walk.

There is no other way.

And there never was.

All the Wild

2006-10-19T22:57:00.000-04:00

It has been so long since I have been completely alone.

No one to call. No one to listen.

I forgot how lonely staring out the window on sleepless nights can be.

I hope I did the right thing. I cared so much about the mad scientist. It just turned more into a friendship. I couldn't hurt him anymore.

But how many have I done this to? Katt. Amira. Kalene. Lauren. Chad. Chapin. It keeps going.

Nights like these I wonder if I am going to screw life up. I got upset tonight over a trivial issue, and I couldn't convey why. I think I scared away a friend as a result. Who would want to be companions with a crazy one like me?

I pray I am doing the right thing. Will I get into UVA? Will I enjoy my life if I do? Am I settling? Is this my dream, or my family's?

I called lovely last night, just to see if he would answer. I forget that as life goes on here, another life goes on for him as well. I don't know why I bother. I suppose I still think about him because some of the best times in my life occurred driving wherever in that old loud mustang. Lovely was the only one crazier than me. He made me feel like maybe I belonged somewhere in this world.

I really do miss the mad scientist. I miss laughing with him. We may have been at odds a lot by the end, but we totally understood each other sometimes. If I had danced in the car with anyone else, they would have just laughed uncomfortably and wished they were home sooner. The scientist was the only one who would dance along with me.

it is so hard to let go of a puzzle piece that you were sure fit.

The others, they have their own lives. I love them so much, but sometimes I'll find myself trying to melt into the backseat while their gossip floats with the music from the dash. I just don't quite fit.

I'm sick of being the minority in political views. I am sick of people laughing at my train of thought. I am sick of people ducking out of beautiful photographic memories. I can't take feeling ugly and invisible anymore. I don't want to always be the one to initiative hanging out. I miss resting my head on the car windowsill. I miss the smell of that old mustang, looking over and seeing one of the few people I understand smiling back at me. I want dancing in the car back. I would kill for one evening without a care in the world. Where did my coffee nights go? The black and white photos of my head back, mouth eternally frozen into a laugh? Where did my ability to write run off to?

Being alone wouldn't feel so worthless if I didn't think I was always going to be the odd one out.

I am going to be 18 in 6 days. I look back on the past four years. The past 17 years. And it kills me to say I don't see anything that I kept up. Any friends I kept along. Any ideals I dragged with me.

I have been a loner all my life.
And I might just be for the rest of it.

Back to Center

2006-10-18T22:04:00.001-04:00

Somedays, I get back to this wonderful finger worn palate and I try to remember how I used to blog. I try to remember what is important. And I think of Tony Pierce. Specifically, one now famous post which led to a book which led to me secretly reading his blog day after day after day.

Well, I used to. I missed a few days, and then I missed a few more. It turned into confession. I had missed so much, I felt guilty to look back. I was the disgruntled jazz player afraid to look under his bed for that dusty betrayed brass lover.

So today, I looked up how to blog, just to refresh myself. And oh did it. It called me out on about 4 or 5 different things.

So, yes, he's famous. And, yes, I have been scared to hit that once familiar bookmark because I felt I had missed too much. But that is what he is. A lot.

And that makes up for when we give out so little.

Down to this

2006-10-09T21:29:00.000-04:00

With the exception of the mad scientist, I haven't been close friends with a boy in about two years.

Therefore, I'm not surprised that I am having trouble understanding the ones I come in contact with nowadays.

I dropped so many people, but the one I regret the most is the Coffee man. He got me through my first year at school. Every Monday, we would go get coffee and talk for an hour. I don't think he realized how much that kept me going.

I called him the other night and walked in to his life. He just accepted me back. I've always found a big brother in him, and it thrills me that that part in him has not changed a bit.

Other friends, however, were not so forgiving.

A real test of my relationship came about two months ago, when I called up Chokey. He used to be that boy that would keep me up late nights talking about everything. The one who When I called this time, he hated me. So I went out to dinner with him. I glimpsed a second of how life could be if I was still friends with everyone.

The Mad Scientist flipped.

Chad left me for New York last weekend. I had to be okay with it. I owe him a lot more than that.

My secret puzzles me. We've become friends of late, which is enjoyable. However, I just never know if I am being too forward for him. I can't create drama, that is not part of the agreement. But the ground is dry, and I am starting to wonder if he will call.

My curiosity frustrates the hell out of me. I've never met anyone quite like him. He seems so uncomfortable around me. I feel like I could talk to him for hours, but I know he doesn't want to. You can just tell when someone would be an incredible friend. I just don't think the feeling is mutual. I am so used to just putting all my thoughts out there with the Mad scientist. I forget that not all boys are so ready to be my friend.

And shall we forget lovely? Every night, when I drive around the corner, I unconsciously look for his car. But its just for a second. He isn't a person anymore. He is a feeling. That steel fist wrenching at your heart when you go to dial that number.

That is lovely. We all have one. Mine just happened to live down the street.

John Reaves and I are friends this year again. There is a complete absence of whatever issues we had between us. We see each other in limited doses, and I enjoy it thoroughly.

throughout all of this, I still feel invisible in the hallways. Boys have forgotten that I am there. I don't remember how they think. It scares me.

It scares me more than I care to know.

Down in Marietta

2006-10-09T00:23:00.000-04:00

The walls of my life are crashing down around me.

I needed that so bad.

The mad scientist and I have closed shop. We had gone bankrupt months ago. It was just time to move on.

And tonight, I did something that I haven't done in years. I dragged an acquaintance out to the middle of nowhere to take pictures.

Standing there, at a tree lined crossroads with a beautiful curiosity of a friend, I remembered something

Something two years lost.

I remembered how I used to be.

The mad scientist was a blast. I learned more than I ever thought I could about a person. But I lost so much of myself. I conformed to fit the mold of the girlfriend. I gave up my coffee drinking soulmate, my lunchbox, my opinions, my innocence.

It just wasn't the right price.

I started conforming to other things in my life. Other's hated liberalism, so I stopped being open about my political views.

This evening, standing there with a curiosity, I felt so refreshed. Like I could find myself again.

But this time, I was more aware of the world around me. These past two years have taught me how to take and give. I'm so much more confident in my soul. I remember now that there is more to this life than the west end.

People are fighting, Love is gone, Secrets are flying, I'm failing AP government.

But somehow, I am so content right now.

Sometimes its more fun to be happy when things are shit than to enjoy when life is perfect. Because you know that everything will work out, and that is simply enough

to keep you smiling .

Spin the bottle

2006-08-11T17:41:00.000-04:00

My father is an alcoholic. The only thing is, I never really felt that drunken shadow until this year.

He has always been a phone call here, another wife there. I can't describe to you how many times I sat on my porch with my overnight bag as my only witness for hours. He just wasn't ever truly there.

And then my grandmother died this December, and we couldn't put her to rest because my father was in rehabilitation. They weren't going to even tell me. It had to take a death to see just how empty the bottle really was.

he sobered up. Got a house, got God, got a dog.

Did I worry? Yes. This is a man I could barely hold a conversation with. Mom was the one I always fought with, not dad. However, things seemed okay.
And then he quit his job. Barely a day went by in my younger years when my father came home from hard days work.

But it was okay. He got another one.

Which he quit.

He went to the beach last week, and I watched his dog. Yesterday I asked him how it was. Through the descriptions of fishing, eating, and relaxing were the few syllables of we got drunk..

It kills me. It kills me that he has screwed up his life for so long. It kills me that I can't believe him when he promises things. It kills me that he told me so nonchalantly. And it kills me that I can't say anything.

Like an empty spinning bottle, the torn label dancing with its glossy reflection on the bar, I can only hope I land pointed in the right direction.

Electric Fathom

2005-12-22T12:47:00.000-05:00

Do you know the feeling when you don't have to get up in the morning, but you sleep just the right amount and wake up happy and just stretch and stretch and stretch? That is what this feels like.

The fact that my forgotten blog had been turned into an advertisement forum angered me beyond belief.

So about those past few months. School has kept me so busy that I have barely had time to sleep. Junior year is a bitch. Sophomore and freshman years were like pie, they really should work on gradually increasing the pain, not just killing you the year that it actually matters.

This is the first year that I have ever had to study. My friends are all saying the same thing. The looming shadow of college, and not getting in to where I want to go, is growing by the day.

The mad scientist and I are celebrating our first anniversary this week. I secretly love that we don't have a day. Tomorrow, I am taking him on his Christmas present, which I will explain later because I am afraid his eyes might read this before the right moment.

I have lost contact with Katt. I am not quite sure what to do. I want to talk to her, but she lost contact with me just as quickly, which makes me think that maybe she doesn't want to find the memories. She went to Argentina and came back a thousand times more distant. 3000 miles is a dangerous roadblock to a friendship, as is evident in the amazing bond that we used to have.

Lovely is back home, but I have specifically cut off contact with him, and the very sight of his dusty blue bug in the driveway is enough to make me draw the blinds.

I ran into Chapin last night, and I was so excited to see him, mainly because I was so excited to see how his life has turned out. He is doing so well, and I don't think anyone deserves that more than him.

My grandmother died December 1st. That wasn't the shocking part. That news came with the fact that we could not have the funeral until December 17th because my dad was in detox for alcohol. It is hard to face that fact. They would not have told me if Nana had not died. I hate that. The funeral came, and it was awkward and hard beyond belief. I am so disconnected from that part of the family, It is hard to talk to them. I try to show them what I have done with my life, but they will always see me as my father's daughter, and nothing else. The one major plus was that of my cousin, Aaralyn, who lives in Paris, and who I get to visit when I am in France

Oh, yeah, I am going to France this summer. And Corsica. And I am so excited.

Overall, I am so much happier with my life. Yes, school is a constant state of anxiety over grades, and work is stressful, but in the end, I suppose it is all a state of learning.

I'll be back. Don't worry.

Hey smilin' strange

2005-08-24T21:32:00.000-04:00

I have always been an affectionate person. I love to hug, and kiss, and cuddle.

Just never my mother.

We are close, but for some reason, my entire life, I have never been fully comfortable with physical contact.

I wonder if she notices it. It never really bothered me until the last 6 months or so. Now that the idea of leaving home for good has a time limit, I find myself wishing she could braid my hair, or sit with me on the couch. Or maybe hug me goodnight.

But I just can't find myself to ask.

And sitting here, I feel kind of lonely. And I know that I will try to cover it up by hugging the mad scientist, which I love doing. But this is definitely a new kind of sadness that can only be ended by one her.

Perhaps people who grew up calling their parents mommy and daddy feel more of an affection? Mother and father always seemed like such cold terms, and mom and dad were in the middle. Does the name we know our parents by unconsciously define the type of relationship that we have with them?

It just might. Looking through pictures, I can't find a single one with my mom's arm around my shoulder, or either her or dad hugging me.

Is everyone like this?

She is definitely the most important person in my life. I just could never tell her that. When she says I love you on the phone, I kind of gawk until I hear the dial tone. Then I tell her that I love her too.

I hope that still counts.

All the Dirt

2005-08-16T13:08:00.000-04:00

Hi.

I admit it.

I missed this blog so much.

But I just couldn't go back to it. I thought that I had lost my edge, and every time I went to sit down here, I never quite got to where I needed to be.

So what has happened since I disappeared?

I'm sure most of you have dismissed this place as that girl you used to know so well, but who won't return your calls.

And now it's distant.

So let me try to pick up where I feel things got important.

Things like understanding in a car crash. In late June, the mad scientist and I got into a 3 car pile up and totaled his car. It was scary. It was something that I am glad I have been through, but I will never want to do again. For those of you who have felt the world slow down right before a crash, you understand what it's like. It leaves you with something, a memory that was so strong that it burned a permanent place in your dreams.

I am still with the Mad Scientist. No, he is not why I disappeared, as much as they would like to think so.

I disappeared because I wasn't myself, and when you are like that, everything you write looks more and more like a lie, and after a while you just can't

take it.

So I took some time off. I have been by myself most of this summer. And finally, for the first time in a long while, I feel like Grace.

It's nice to breathe easy again.

I would like to say that I will jump back on this blog and write away daily from now on. But it's more like losing a friend, and then trying to catch up. The sentences don't come so easily. The paragraphs look awkward. But I still remember what drew me to it in the first place, and that's why I'm back.

Seafoam Dreams

2005-05-22T19:04:00.000-04:00

There are moments in life where everything seems to just come together. Last night on the dance floor, life was

amazing.

I have been extremely busy. I have kept myself extremely busy. I apologize if you missed my words, but I doubt that few of you did.

I can feel the heat of lazy afternoons creeping up behind my worries over exams and prom chair and SODA and work and love.

Yes, love.

I was thinking the other night about how many times people have tried to explain love. How many words and sentences and metaphors and photographs tried to explain it. And I almost did it myself, but then I decided to just leave it as

Love is.

I hope that I don't have to explain that. When the Mad Scientist got out of his car yesterday, in his tux and blinding scream of blond hair, it made me take a step back. All of those times that I have stared at him, and yesterday he looked exactly like the reason why I smile most days.

And dinner was nice. Prom was nice. The party was nice. But William was amazing.

As much as I whine and complain and worry about things that don't matter, I know that I have an amazing life.

I will forget my proms. I will forget what dress I wore, what the gym looked like, how late we were out. I may forget what he was wearing that day, or what the weather was like.

But I seriously doubt thatI will ever let go of that feeling of awe when I felt my heart skip a beat, and I saw my Mad Scientist for what he really is.

Amazing.

Now who is my homeboy?

2005-04-24T18:27:00.000-04:00

It is the weirdest thing in the world for me to finally admit that I am not Catholic.

I finally let myself realize that you can't call yourself Catholic if you don't believe in well..

any of it.

It is in these moments that I see just how strongly tradition can scare you into never changing. The thought of not baptizing a child still freaks me out.

I feel like I have opened one eye in surprise that I'm not in hell yet. And I don't even believe in hell.

But the more and more that I learn and think about religion, and society, and history, the more I am assured that most of what I used to believe will end up in some text book one day, just like those crazy Greek gods that everyone knows don't exist.

I wouldn't quite say that I am agnostic. I would like to look for a religion, but that makes me look like a frantic housewife trying to find a parking spot in time to get to the big half-off sale. If I don't follow anyone's rules, am I going to miss out? And on what?

I think that I would have come to this decision later in life, but a few things have kind of fast forwarded it for me.

One is the conservative Christian affliction going on in politics. It makes me madder beyond belief to see beliefs governing a mass body. Especially when the majority doesn't believe in it. And I really feel like there is a major

ends justify the means crisis going on right now. It's okay to take over, God says it's the right thing to do.

Mr. President. Please explain how your God says it's okay to kill over 10,000 Iraqi civilians.

Did he day that it was okay to spend all that wonderful money on the war instead of on the old men and women who can't afford medicine? On the kids who have no future?

Did he say that we needed 300 million that you cut from the federal program that gave subsidies to families who could not heat their homes to make bombs instead?

Did Jesus say that it was okay to incarcerate over 700 people at Guantanamo Bay?

I know! Maybe you could pray for those 43.6 million people who didn't have health insurance in 2002.

Fucker.

And this new pope, he has already pushed me over the edge. The former protector of the orthodoxy, He has already condemned Spain, who has been trying to push out from under the Church's iron governmental influence since FRANCO.

When religion and politics mix, I tend to see the major flaw in politics, and the ridiculousness of religion.

And I look at my beliefs, and I realize that I can't believe in a religion that has elections. And committees. And a guard. No.

NO.

So here I sit. Looking at my old religion books from middle school. Remembering what it felt like to believe. I am already doing something that I shouldn't. I am making myself hate religion in order to not feel guilty about rejecting it.

Uncertainly certain might just be a better way.

Education on the fork in the road

2005-04-23T15:02:00.000-04:00

I am a long way from having kids, but that still does not keep me from thinking.

I walk through school and see so many girls in the short short skirts. And the girl with 18 piercings, not because she likes them. Because others don't.

And of course, I can't forget the boys that only want to get high and drunk and into those short short skirts.

And I see all of their parents at school. And I think

Oh my God.

I am a fairly good girl. Yes, I can be way too serious and uptight. Yes, I have done some things, am doing some things, and will continue to do things that would make my mother flip out if she knew. But in the end, I have a pretty good head on my shoulders. I love myself to some degree, I have respect for everything, and I mostly make the right choices.

The thing that freaks me out is that I am probably going to have a child exactly like me. Strong willed and crazy. That can go many different ways.

I do resent a lot of things about my mother. I don't want to end up exactly like her, but I do want the same things for my children.

I don't want them to distrust me. I don't want them to ruin their lives. And most of all, I want them to be happy and satisfied with a good head on their shoulders.

You may be thinking. Grace, you are nuts. That is 20 years down the road.

Yep. And the things that I do now are going to influence how I act when I know that my child is doing them.

I already see myself with some of the same dysfunctions that my mother has. The apple does not fall very fall from the tree at all.

That is, unless the apple has a mind of its own.

Rich, Mean, and Tall

2005-04-11T21:57:00.000-04:00

If there is one major thing that I will take with me from being with the Mad Scientist,

It's that stereotypes are shit.

Sitting on a cliff, shrouded by bamboo, I talked some things out with the boy. And I am still thinking about that talk. And he is entirely correct.

A lot of people never get anywhere in life because they let the stereotypes that they have been born into make predictions a reality.

Just because my dad doesn't seem to exist does not mean that I am going to be dysfunctional. Just because my mother yells does not mean that I will always be defensive.

I know that I have let stereotypes rule me. I know that they have ruled you too. I'm ugly, I'm fat, I'm mean, I'm worthless, I'm irresponsible.

Don't do that.

Vegetarians aren't all pale pot smoking hippies. Republicans aren't all rich snobby assholes.

Granted, it is a natural human instinct to categorize. But why spend our lives trying to break down walls, only to entrap ourselves in steel nets?

I really do think that I am crazy about this boy. And when he brings up ideas that are so simple, yet so profound, I cannot help but to sit and daydream in awe.

Not all mad scientists are crazy.

The day I dropped my lunch box

2005-04-08T23:28:00.000-04:00

I'll admit it, I have lost a lot of my fervor for blogging.

It used to be my razorblade lullaby every evening. The only way to release the monster inside of me. I would lure it out with metaphors and sharp sentence structures, and capture it with a title.

I have felt so lost so recently. I felt like an hourglass that was filled to the brim with sand. There was no space to tell the time.

The evening of my first major blogging mistake, I felt like I had tarnished the only pure thing in my existence.

So I ran away. The mad scientist woke me up before the sun did, and we left. I let go of life for a few days. I sent the mad scientist back to the house, and I spent a few minutes with the big teardrop of an ocean.

I'll admit it, for a few seconds, I almost tried to join it. Not in a depressed way. But in a moment of desperation to become united with the whole of something. Even if it wouldn't even notice.

But I sent my thoughts in instead. And sitting here now, so stressed about life that I feel the need to explode in a flurry of salt water snowflakes, I think that I forgot to remember.

I made a print yesterday. And I realized that even though this poor lost in a lunch box and I were on the rocks

the emotion was still bleeding out somewhere.

Some people are meant to express. You can take away everything in their lives, and you will find in scratched into their skin. Writing, art, love, pain.

You can take the expression of love, but you can't take the love out of expression.

And I am still stressed. And I still want to cry. And I still in some ways hate every pore of my being.

But at least I know that I didn't fully give up. I just cut a vein somewhere else.

And sometimes variety is the only thing to get us through our days.

Bloody Well Right

2005-03-30T23:06:00.000-05:00

I have had just about enough of this.

Those of you who know me know that I worry more than anyone else.

And most of the time, I am worrying about my friends.

I apologize if I hurt people's feelings. But you have to realize that this was not my intention.

I was and am not in any way trashing anyone. I am worried sick about my friend. If I did not love him, I would not care so damn much.

Sometimes people are the angriest when they take things the wrong way. This is my way of expressing things. If you get that pissed off, vent about me on your journal.

I am not trying to bash anyone. I just care too much to let things pass me by.

And the racist comments don't help the closeminded argument much. That just makes tempers flare, and spins things out of control.

So please, stop flipping out over how I said it. Look at what I am trying to say. In the end, that's where we are all going to end up.

Yes, I Guess They Outta Name A Drink After You

2005-03-30T12:04:00.001-05:00

I think that it's about time to start stepping on some toes. Chad is right, I have been way to inconsistent and nice and fake lately. I just felt like I had lost it.

But when he reminded me of the immortal words of the blogging god

Things have been bothering me, and I need to get them out.

I have never been a big fan of drugs. Granted, I have always lived in the liberal mindset that freedom to choose is what it's all about. But I now know the difference between having drugs in your life, and having life in your drugs.

We all knew about his past. He had done some pretty crazy stuff for an 8th grader. But that was years ago, and he didn't do anything anymore.

Then we just kind of noticed at lunch that his pupils were the size of the dime bags he had bought. And the fact that we were learning new vocabulary in the size of the different pills that he was popping.

Then one day, he fed us hash brownies for lunch. That was when I started asking my friends

Shouldn't we do something about this?

"No Grace." They said. "This is not your place." I suddenly found myself to be the only one worrying. I even told him my concern.

He said that he was fine.

Now please, tell me that you are fine again. Now that you have gotten back from the hospital, where you were in a coma from triple c and too much alcohol.

My friends, tell me that it is fine. Don't tell me that this is not my place. Obviously his parents don't care. They looked the other way of the hospital band.

Why don't any of you care that he is so nonchalant about this? What the fuck is wrong with you?

Wait, I know. Maybe you are too drunk and high in the tent in the backyard to notice.

perhaps the shrooms you guys ate yesterday made everything seem rosy and fresh.

I used to be the liberal one. I used to laugh about drugs. Now I am the one who is scared to death. Is this just going to hit us one day? Which one of us is going to not wake up? Why are all of you still laughing? We are fucking ourselves up. I work with the messups. I see what happened to the guy who smoked pot through highschool. He is a sad excuse of a man, waiting on the rich.

The mad scientist tells me to look the other way. Everyone tells me to mind my own business. That this is not my decision.

So should I just not worry about it, and take off next Thursday for a funeral?

Yes, that sounds peachy.

Seconds Tick the Time Out

2005-03-27T17:05:00.001-05:00

Happy Easter, my dear friends whom I have neglected for 12 days. I find myself delving deeper and deeper into the philosophy that the less you write, the more that you have to say. And I have a lot to say, to a lot of different people.

To my friend who is spiraling out of control:
You told me that you were fine. You said that you were in control. Everyone else said that it was not my place. But if you go into a coma like you did last week, and you don't come out, the weight of that hospital band is going to be very heavy to hold up. Because you have so much potential. And I love you, just like I love all of my friends. And I don't want you to die. Please, please. Think.

To my father:
I am sorry that I forgot your birthday. But I will be honest, I didn't want to remember. I think back with a pang of remorse to an old man in a ruined apartment with no one but his dog to love him. And I am such a horrible daughter for it. But I am not ready to face you right now. You have forgotten me so many times in my life. I don't want to put my feelings on the line, only to be disappointed once again. I am sorry that you are 48, and have nothing to show for it but a squandered inheritance, a ruined family, and a daughter who is a stranger to you. I am sorry.

To Annie:
You are strength. I have not been there enough for you. None of us have. But a lot of that stems from the fact that we don't know what we can do. If I could make things better for you, I would in a heartbeat. I'll bring you a flower ever day. But I don't know if it will help. So I can promise you that if you ever need anything, I am here. And please, don't forget.

To Lovely:
For a day or two after you left here without so much as a goodbye, or even a hello, I was angry. But then I realized that it's not your fault. It's not mine either. You are a good friend, but we probably won't be close for a long time, if we ever are again even. But you are amazing, and I appreciate the length at which you have opened my eyes. And I hope that your life is always as happy as it is now. Whether I am in it or not.

To Chad:
I am so glad that you have had the chance to witness the beauty of culture shock. Like I said, every writer should be at least bilingual, because for every language that you know, there is a completely different way to describe something. Don't just stop at Paris. Find all of it. Good Luck.

12 days brings a lot of growing up. Happy Easter.

2005-03-15T21:49:00.000-05:00

This society is run by old white men.

I'm dead serious.

Working at a high class restaurant like I do, you run into a lot of extremely rich people. Most of them look a lot alike

Suits, receding hairlines, wandering eyes, manicured wives.

The more and more I work there, the less and less that I envy the rich. Some of them are so quirky, and so unhappy, it makes me begin to appreciate not having everything that I want.

So tonight, Mr. Abercrombie and Mr. Fitch came to dine at my restaurant. They looked like my grandfather. Abercrombie is a man in his fifties with khakis and a knit sweater. Fitch is a large man with a blue shirt and a pocket protector. And as I sat there, watching these three seemingly ordinary gentleman decide what next years look was going to be. These men, who are half the reason that teenagers go home and empty their accounts on short skirts and the hottest thing,

are old, white men.

Kind of like the company owners at the next table. And the pharmaceutical company in the gold room.

From the clothes I wear to the paper I read, it's starting to seem like the same people control everything.

Old white men run this town.

2005-03-10T18:20:00.000-05:00

Dear Mom:
The most painful blow that a parent can hit a child with is to shut down something that they are proud of.

way to go.

Yes, granted, I don't let you read my writing too often, but when I do show you something that has gotten raving reviews from teachers, I don't expect the response I got.

Did you copy this?

No mom. I didn't. I write. It came from my own head. These are my thoughts, and it makes me so angry that I can barely even stand when you just toss it aside and say "that's nice". Because you still probably don't believe me.

It's people like you who make me think that I have no talent in this world. It's people like you who don't even believe that I can fucking write something well.

I could come home and tell you that I was the president, and you would think that I bought votes.

That really hurts. More than and yell or scream or punch could.

Way to fucking go.

Grace

2005-03-06T13:08:00.000-05:00

One of the worst flaws that people have has to be the compelling need to compare.

It is one of those things that seems harmless, but when you look at it long enough, it becomes an addiction. Every girl walking down that hallway is just another fix.

Someone told me the other day that he is upset that I am a writer, because he is supposed to be a writer for a living, and that I just came out of nowhere.

That cannot be further from the truth.

We each have our own path. We're made up of totally different combinations. I've had a suicide in my family, maybe you have tried to commit suicide. Those are two entirely different spheres of emotion resting under the same stereotypically broad spectrum.

Comparing leads to jealousy. And resentment. And the need to be better. And sooner or later you turn around and realize that your entire life has been focused on measuring yourself to other standards, even though you have totally different requirements.

It's hard, too. Take a walk in times square. Everywhere, pounding little messages into your head, is the need to be like them. To look like that. To have that hair. To look that good in jeans. Look how far you have to go until you are able to turn society's head.

Next time that you see that really pretty girl in the hallway, or run into that guy who will always take better pictures than you. Next time you tear yourself apart because that bitch got the solo again..

stop.

Live your own life. Don't spend it trying to outshadow others.
I'm not saying that competition is bad. Not at all. It keeps our drive going. But there is a major difference between being competitive and being bitter.

You choose.

2005-03-03T19:38:00.000-05:00

I don't really know what happened.

I got too busy.

But this break has given me so many topics to write about, maybe I just needed some time to let it all build up.

This way, it won't all be repetitive odes to the Mad Scientist.

While I was gone
I went to New York City. There is nothing quite like your first trip there. It is so unreal compared to everything here. It was scary and tiring and so refreshing to take a vacation out of the box.

I feel that I learned a lot while I was there. I'm not sure what knowledge I acquired, or how I acquired it, but it was one of those things that you kind of just know.

The college race is on. I am being flooded with letters every day. It scares me just how much money universities put into advertising. I am really stressed about finding the right college for me. I constantly tell myself that I want to be up north, but I know that I will be homesick. And I just found out that my tuition is only paid if I stay in state. I love this place, I do. But the last people I want to teach me are closed minded ones.

I find that I am the busiest when I don't have my priorities properly aligned. I have been working so much that I spend most of my other free time with William, and on schoolwork. That leaves out my friends, writing, sleeping, relaxing, and being happy. Even though I do enjoy every minute with Will.

Sometimes I wish that we had eight days a week. But it would just make us busier than ever.

Having had a taste of being whirled up by the workforce, and having the limit the people and things that you enjoy, I really do enjoy being young. In fact, I absolutely love it.

God it feels good to write again.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

2005-02-21T22:05:00.000-05:00

I was never that upset when Lovely went away to college.

Today, the mad scientist asked me what was going to happen when college came.

And it hit me when I heard him say that, because I realized that he had been thinking about that too.

And it really hit me when I heard myself say "You'll go to college, and I'll stay behind."

What the fuck. This conversation is a year too early to be happening.You know, I may have a lot in this life. I may be talented in some areas, and have a good head on my shoulders.

But if one more person that I care for has to pick up and leave me with nothing but my own thoughts in this hellhole of conservative misunderstanding

strangers

Then I don't know what I'll do. This is the first person that I could talk to since my other half moved away. Suddenly, two years seems like the blink of an eye.

What happened to second grade? Where did recess and kickball and coloring for homework go?Why can I no longer find myself lost for hours, imagining boundless situations in my backyard.

Why do I cram my self esteem into high heels, get into my car, and curse under my breath all the way to work?

Why am I going to find myself at 40 years old one day. Paying bills. Worrying about the very foundation of this house of responsibilities that I have built around me.

I don't want to have to worry about drugs or sex or std's or car insurance or college or term papers or if my legs are too fat or if I am going to lose yet another wonderful thing one day.

It hurts because love has a time limit. It hurts because every birthday, every anniversary, every time that I see his face, I'm one moment closer to sitting behind my closed bedroom door, missing every aspect of him.

This is crazy. It hasn't even become a long term relationship. I am not sure if I am confusing all of this with new love that will fade, or if it's just a fact that our relationship is going to run longer than time will allow.

I need to take a step back and enjoy now. So when I do find myself old and gray, I won't look back and regret that I missed what I had because I was so worried about what was to come.

He kisses her at stoplights

2005-02-13T22:10:00.000-05:00

I think that the worst thing about this holiday is that a lot of people only have a few good ones in their lifetime.

This is finally one of my years.

He is fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. I sometimes wonder if God carved his arms out to perfectly fit around me. He makes me sit and just continually laugh in disbelief in my amazing fortune.

My friends say that if I was a boy, I would be him. How on earth did I possibly run into this person?

I love him because he makes me love myself more than I have in a long time. He likes curves. That is still a mystery to me.

But at what point does love become love? I think that we have been fighting that question, and will continue to fight that question for the rest of eternity, because it is different for everyone. I have decided that for me, obsession is an infatuation with unearthly realism.

And love is the realization that I have something real that is not from this world.

I hope that you are not anti-valentine's day. No, it did not originally start off as a hallmark holiday. It started off because there was love. It didn't mean to become such a taboo holiday. That is people's fault. We take such a pure thing as love, and we slam it with hammers to try to make it fit a certain shape. We get angry at it, and deny it's very existence when we search for it too hard.

Don't do that. I am sorry if it sucks for you this year. But I want you to know, though you may not believe me,

Everyone has a favorite Valentine's day.
And Katt, I want you to know, I finally changed my password. Yes, it may just be love.

Save it for a rainy day

2005-02-06T22:15:00.000-05:00

There are reasons the hippies never got the revolution off the ground.

In an affluent society, it's almost impossible to escape the products and services shoved into our consciousness.

Yesterday, I found out that my entire life has been mapped out for me. By the exact things, and with the exact means, that I struggle so hard to keep quiet.

I do not live in a well off home. My parents could not afford to buy me a car.

I have a 10,000 dollar car in the driveway right now. And where did it come from?

"We'll call it your birthday present."

My father came from a very rich family. So rich that even I have my own fortune that has been set aside for me until an undisclosed time. I wasn't even allowed to know how much I have. And yet, time and time again, I keep hearing about how this is such a good thing for me.

Yesterday, they told me the amount. And I feel like I know something that has ruined my sense of childhood, almost. It was a mini version of knowing the date of your death, in that it has set up camp in the foreground of my mind.

In some ways, I feel very guilty about having this opportunity. I don't deserve it at all, but I feel bad for not appreciating it enough.

And I am worried that I am going to change to fit the image that my family wants, in order to show how much I deserve all of this. Part of me is already itching to become some high class doctorlawyerpolitician.

I am so scared that once people find out that I have money, the green eyed monster comes out. The one that hides behind a fake smile. I hope to God that I do not fall into the hands of a false friend.

I have grown up being taught that you need to work for everything. My natural hippie liberal tendencies to help the underdog feels so contradicted by a number.

I do hope that I do the right thing. I know that I probably will.

But it is also so easy to suddenly need what you used to want.

Knowledge of self

2005-02-01T21:38:00.000-05:00

It scares me how much I like him.

It scares me how much I can't believe that he likes me.

Being around him is like listening to the opening notes of my favorite Dire Straits song.

My tall, big eyed friend tells me that she felt like this for the first 5 months.

That I will eventually relax..Or lose my sanity.
Today was a weird day. It really upset me. I don't know why. I never like to see him worried or sick.

But we were two people with stuffed up noses and bad coughs. We were sharing a cold. And all day, through my treacherous, tissue filled exams, I couldn't wait to crawl into his bed and nap.

I've never fallen asleep in someone's arms before. It is a small thing that I have always wanted to do in the back of my mind. I loved it. Even through the sniffles.

And I love the fact that he was worried when I got a tattoo.

I got a tattoo.

He spends so much time with me, I wonder why he isn't sick of me yet. I wonder why I care so much. I wish he wouldn't read this, because he's just going to be angry with me.

Sometimes I wish that the people that make such a stance in my life could meet each other. That my mad scientist could have met my other half. That they could have sat down and had coffee with lovely.

Sometimes I feel like I have a revolving wheel of who is in my life. I never seem to get more than one.

Nowadays, I look back on Lovely, and I realize how much of a mistake it was. Even now. Even saying hello to him makes me feel like shit.

And I miss Katt so much. But she has changed so much since that night we danced in the rain. She couldn't be any farther away right now.

And here I am with my mad scientist. What an excellent guy. And what an excellent Dire Straits song.

La maison de mes rêves

2005-02-01T21:12:00.000-05:00

I know that most of my posts have been about the same thing lately. And I know that I am very personal on this site. Very.

But after a long day of school and work, when I stumble through the doors in those high heels that have glued themselves to my feet

I find myself slunching into this old chair, holding onto the keyboard like I was lighting my last match. This is my form of letting go.

These are my self inflicted scars.

Maybe I scare you. Perhaps you are not used to stumbling on such a personal verification of life.
But that is where we should all take one big step out of that mother fucking box.

By being so personal, I become impersonal. I am one short story board to read in between Chokey Chicken and Tony Pierce

I have come to love this blog. In a few short months, it has helped me more than any medicine ever could. It's how I can get the things out that I can't quite say to my friends the right way. It is how I show the mad scientist that I am completely crazy about him, and about how scared I am that I am crazy about him.

For the right price, I can't get everything.

but that's okay, because most of the things I want, I can get for free.

Why mad scientists are worth more than pills

2005-01-28T23:06:00.000-05:00

On it's way uphill lately, my life has truly reached some new thoughts along the way.

Sitting in the hallway of school the other morning, I had a bit of a realization. My friend was commenting on how well life was going for me all of a sudden. After all,

I have a good job, good grades, I can almost drive, my friends are happy, and I have the guy of my dreams.

My reply even shocked me a little.

"Yeah."

That response did not come from being ungrateful. It was not born from misery or unhappiness or ignorance.

It came, once again, from two little white pills .

Anti depressants are truly something that you cannot understand unless you have been on them.

I started Lexapro because I could no longer function in my daily life. I wanted anything, even if it meant being numb and feeling nothing forever.

Yes, these pills have helped me feel my way through a very dark tunnel. But now, everything looks hazy through the numbing window of medicine.

The day that I really realized that I didn't need medicine anymore, I was mad. I sat on the floor of my room, willing my mind to feel upset. Because horrible things were going on. But all that I could feel was a

drugged up happy. An empty happy. Part of me wanted so hard to get out and feel true emotion, But I was locked in a plastic cage of miligrams.

I never really thought there would be a time when I would want to rebel against my drugs. The thought of going off of it always seemed like a death sentence. But, now, finally, I think that I might just be ready to face these monsters myself.

As a result, I must beg all of you to be patient with me. I have a long hard journey to becoming myself again.

As hard as emotions and pain and suffering can be, nothing is worse than forced numbness.

Never underestimate the power of little white pills.

This Year's Love Had Better Last

2005-01-23T22:42:00.000-05:00

More than anything, people strive to appear confident.

Not to be confident. To wear it's mask.

It's really not our fault. Confidence brings about all the things in this society that we secretly yearn for.

As a result, people try so hard to appear together and happy, that they gradually slide a larger and larger pile of pain and feeling under the bed until it fights against the mattress and suddenly they are an insomniac lexapro taking freak.

I think that for the most part, I seem fairly outwardly confident.

But even when relaxing with my friends, I frequently get burned by their glares and outrage at my personality.

The long legs in short skirts and high heels prancing around my school day after day slash my facade behind my knee length clothes.

Many nights, especially tonight, I have to sit back and wonder.

I am a strong crazy person. How can these superficial absurdities affect me so deeply?

Even your favorite song can drive you into madness if it is all you hear.

None of this ever seems to let up. This really is the first time in my life that I have someone with whom I can cry around.

This really is my first relationship. Lovely was bullshit. He wasn't real. I have truly never met someone who is so caring, so wonderful, so near perfect.

It is this mountain for me to stand on that sits right in front of the valley that I have dug myself into. I have a very long way to climb before I can appreciate all of it.

A lot of times, I have trouble believing that he likes me. But that is my pessimism trying to substitute for self esteem.

"With you, the more I see these issues that you have, the more I think that you are perfect"

Where did this mad scientist come from?

I am thinking hard about what words have been released into the atmosphere tonight, and he is so incredibly right.

So for the record, I am not all together. I don't know if anyone really is. But there is no sense in comparing one life to another. I have lost a lot of confidence, but that is because I have let others grab it from me like a handful of cotton candy.

once again, I am going to try to love my rollercoaster body. I am going to stray away from the people who make me feel like shit. I am going to acknowledge that the mad scientist really does like me almost as much as I like him. Because I know that he is the greatest thing that I have had pass me by in a while.

And this time around, I am not going to let it go.

Because in the end, I really do think that self esteem is being happy around others, and coming home and not being completely together, but being happy just the same.

Know your enemy

2005-01-17T18:02:00.000-05:00

for all of those wonderful people who call my fellow liberals and I unpatriotic for not supporting this president, I found a small way that you can show President Bush your gratitude for all the things he has done to this country.

I,______________, do solemnly swear to worship and adore my leader, George W. Bush. By this swearing I promise to forfeit all future rights to dissention. I promise to support without question, all policies adopted by my leader. I further assert that any statements made by said leader are true and accurate beyond reproach. It is no longer in my best interest or, in the best interest of my fellow devotees, to question why certain actions of the government are necessary. As a devotee, I should just accept that my leader knows what's best for me.

Finally, thank you leader. Thank you for allowing me the right to sign over all my civil rights. I know that with you, and only you, I am safe from all foes who seek to do harm to the country you so graciously and benevolently allow me to live in.

God Bless You Leader! My life is for you!

Signed, ___________________

Place blood offering here:

I am George W. Bush and I approve this loyalty oath!

Battle lines are being drawn

2005-01-16T22:06:00.000-05:00

Last night was bad in that unexpected phone call way.

A recurring nightmare kind of bad.

I was flying around my restaurant, bussing tables in high heels, when one of the other hostesses came up and said to call my father.

The same person that I hadn't seen or talked to in months.

How did he even find out where I worked?

I treaded unsteadily to the hostess stand, and picked up the phone. On the other line was a sickly sweet happy voice with a raspy woman's yells in the background.

"Hey sugar."
"Dad. What's wrong?"
"Nothing sweetie, I just wanted to say hey."
"Dad, I'm working. I need to go. Bye."

The other girls around me saw something come over my face. I could see their immediate reactions of concern. I quickly hung up and flew over the numbers to my house.

"Mom, I think Dad is drunk and he wants to visit me."

And then it all hit me.

Considering the opportunities that he once had, my father is a real deadbeat. He grew up immensely wealthy, traveled around Europe, came back home

and became an electrician.

He was such a brilliant man, too. Just like his father. But there was always one fatal flaw in my father's character. He could not take the pressure to succeed. His father expected him to do so well, he collapsed and became something that half of his character could have easily mastered. That was all fine and well when he married my mother.

But then they had me. Once again another towering mountain of responsibility. He hasn't been able to keep a stable job, a stable wife, or a stable daughter since.

I was at a friend's party on July 4th, when my newest psycho stepmom called ranting that my father was an alcoholic with a drug problem and hepatitis and he was drinking dry all every bar that he could get to.

I had not known any of that. None.

I have stayed far far away from him since. His new wife controls his every move. She hates me, because I am the one thing in his life that she has no power over.

I admit it. I jumped ship. I cut loose the rope and hoped that some good would come of it. I have so many issues with my father that I tried to smile and push them aside as they filed past.

But a closet can only hold so many skeletons.

I went back to bussing tables, and I felt that old demonic panic crawling up my veins. Through hyperventilated breaths I clocked out and hid in one of the dining rooms. And I listened to the guilt trip voicemails that Virginia had left me.

And it was the last straw. All of my life, I have never one raised my voice to my father. But I did this time.

Who knows what is going to happen with all of this. I finally opened the floodgate to the fact that I have had an imaginary father most of my life.

I wonder how far the apple really falls from the tree.

Acid Raindrops

2005-01-13T21:11:00.001-05:00

It was the kind of evening where my hands felt themselves playing the piano on my mug, furiously clenching the hot tea in an effort to drown myself in steam and contemplation.

It was supposed to be a cold January evening, but the soft summer rain that fell as silent paradoxes to the season changed all of that.

All of it.

That kind of shower pulls all of us back. At least in the warm months I could be prepared for such an onslaught of memories.

Lovely is leaving again in a few days. But he really never came home in the first place. I know that I shall once again find myself in an affair with the man in the stereo. The soft rustling of music sheets will blot me with the interstate lines that he is putting between us.

But tonight, the summer rain makes me glad.

Because if I can jump barefoot through puddles in the middle of winter, than anything is possible.
Especially moving on from this heathen of a first love.

This irony also pulls me back to when I was young, and I would dance everytime it rained if I was at my fathers. My father, who was a deadbeat. Who was such a brilliant man except for the responsibility flaw. Who made me feel the pit in my stomach wrenching of not being able to find a job.

And the summer rain makes me so damn scared to see unemployment again. My stepfather quit his job because it was slowly killing him. And my fear of uncertainty is there. And the drumming outside is pulling me back to that night in the kitchen. When it was raining. And all we had to eat was a half eaten box of Ritz crackers.

In all of these crazy raindrops, I can feel my heart crying to be dancing. Outside in the velvet water. With The Mad Scientist. And a new memory.

We don't give the weather enough credit.

Love and some verses

2005-01-09T21:25:00.000-05:00

I should have been ecstatic.
I finally had my mad scientist.
Someone whose kiss I could still feel the morning after

But as I tried to sleep the other night, I realized.

I could no longer have Lovely if I had William. And I got really upset.

Because even if I hated Lovely, I wouldn't want to let him go. He has been a part of me for so long. Every thought that I have had in the last 5 years has had his name woven in it somewhere. I don't know if I can even remember what it was like to be without him. And I know that it's something that I shouldn't say,

but he is my first love. And he will always be my first love. And I didn't want my first love to end just yet. And I didn't want to be the one who ended it.I still don't want to end it.

It's so immature and such a 16 year old thing to say, but in the back of my mind, I secretly hoped that we would one day be together. If he comes home from college one day, and I don't exist anymore to him, I am going to be heartbroken. If I see him in 20 years at the grocery store with kids and a handful of coupons, I am secretly going to wonder what would have happened if I had never let go.

But maybe, in wondering that, I never really will let go.

However, this is something that I need to do. I am too young to be so obsessed. I need to know what it's like to have relationships with people my age, in my life. Not 500 miles away. I need to get my heart broken in small waysa few times before it gets shattered in a big way. At least then, it will be a little tougher.

So for now, I will try to enjoy my mad scientist. And I will try to smile when I walk by his house every day.

Because in the end, it was all worth it.

What your mother doesn't know

2005-01-02T20:58:00.000-05:00

Good girls are a dying breed.

In declaring that, I am ready to delve into what being a good girl means.

I could be considered a good girl. At first glance, I look like a sweet innocent young lady with no qualms about society, and no idea of any corruption in this world.

But as I realized thanks to a very recent episode of mine, I cannot claim the innocent title.

Which is exactly why good girls are a rare breed.

I am not an extremist. And yet there have been several potholes along my journey that I have tripped over.

There is also a major difference between good girls, and girls that just have no clue what is going on. An ignorant girl doesn't know any different. A bad girl takes risks and has no regrets, or no time for regrets. A girl like me tries to be good, but sometimes wakes up in the morning with a serious wrenching feeling of something that I know was not in my nature.

A good girl may take risks, she may not. But either way she does not feel guilty for them, because she has not done something that has transgressed someone else's trust. And she is satisfied with her decisions.

Because in the end, trust is really what matters in almost every situation.

And what do people prefer? Either exactly what they are, or what they secretly wish to be.

Good girls are so rare because noone really knows what they want. Most of us make a few major mistakes that scar our memory. So to see someone that truly knows what they want, and never strays, is truly that one rare baseball card always seems to escape your gaze at the yard sale.

Are people like this happy? Or are they normal, in the sense that their lifestyle is all that they have ever known? I suppose that to judge one person according to another may be one of the biggest mistakes of the human race.
However, we need all sorts of people in this soup of a world.

In the circus of life, good girls are the tightrope walkers.

It's a shame I only learned the trapeze

Just in time

2005-01-02T13:38:00.000-05:00

My entire blog accidentally got deleted last night, and I have been trying to piece it all back together.

I do wholeheartedly apologize for random typos, unusual paragraph forms, titles that don't mean anything at all, the loss of all of my comments, and the fact that I had to post four months worth of writing into one day.

No big deal man

A reminder of where you have been

2005-01-02T11:37:00.000-05:00

Dear Grace,

This year is almost over. I thought that I should write you a letter to prove that you were young at one point, so when this frame of time seems nonexistent, you can have hard evidence that you were always crazy.

It took you 16 years, but I think that you are finally figuring out who you are. Although the secret is that you probably knew all along. But you tried to mold into this world until recently. I think that you fixed that. I don't know how you did, but I am glad. I realize that I am young. I can see my young hands typing this as a stare at my chipped raspberry toenail polish bobbing in tune with Cat Stevens.

I can always feel the constant craving to seem old and mature and not quite so 16. But I really do realize that if I try too hard, I shall find myself on the other side of the fence, reminiscing about days when I drove around with Lovely in his mustang, and we were unstoppable. When I spun around my room and still had no idea that there was a world beyond highschool. It is because of this that I need to tell you my New Year's Resolution, so that you can hold it to me, and to yourself.

I want to be the Grace that Bono wrote about. I don't want to give up on humans like Kurt Vonnegut did, at least not next year.

I want to love the fact that I don't fit in. I want to dance on top of the puzzle pieces they say that I should join together.

Most of all, I want to do things because I feel like it. I don't want to eat salads because they are good for me. I want to eat them because I like them. I want to work because it is fun. I want to drive because it's just as much fun as the place that I am trying to get to. I want to take classes because I love to learn, not so that I can get into a good college.

It's definitely looking up, my friend. Love Always, Grace

Why Berets and the Busblog will always be cool

2005-01-02T11:36:00.000-05:00

If there was one person that I would randomly like to meet and have a conversation with one day, it would have to be Tony Pierce

I think that he is the kind of person that Charles Bukowski was. You either hate him or you love him.

How he conquered this genre of the world I shall never know.

Ever since I started blogging, I have taken things like his invaluable "how to blog" as an example of how people know what they are talking about.

His political rantings make me glad to be one of the few liberals in this conservative vortex of a town. His philosophies make me smile, and his lies make you want to believe.

I admit it. I do secretly aspire to be the kind of unchecked writer that Tony Pierce is. But I can never get out more than a few posts a week.

no one can.

It is therefore my assumption that he cannot be totally human. Or he has an amazing talent. Or too much free time. Or not enough of it. It reminds me of the poem Making It. Read it. Don't read it to your mother.

Maybe it is not so much that he writes so much. Maybe it is that what he writes is really good.

Really.

He is one of those people that you don't know, and who probably gets creeped out that so many people talk like they just had a coffee with him during their lunchbreak. But sometimes you just can't help praising someone, and giggling if they link you. I

haven't read all of his stuff. I'm scared to. There is so much. And so many people and it's really insane. Especially since none of it may be true.

But for now, I will always keep my eyes open for helicopters

Two birds with one stone

2005-01-02T11:32:00.001-05:00

Something about Christmas always makes me think more clearly. Something about Christmas always makes me find new loves.

He sat in my fifth period all of this year. My liberal yells probably scared him. He had long blond hair, the kind that makes you know he's watching you, but you can't tell what color his eyes are. Fifth period did not fit in with William. He stood out, and it drew me towards him.

The last week before break, something happened. I'm not exactly sure when, I'm not exactly sure how. But walking to 6th period on Friday with his number screaming in my pocket, I was well aware of how funny life can be.

And he called.

And we went to a movie and it was so nice. Because it was funny. And popcorn got spilled all over me. And he was embarrassed. And I laughed. And we hung out again. And again. And I woke up this morning, pressed my nose to my shoulder, and smelled his house. It is so weird having Lovely home and William here. It spun the game wheel, and moved my priorities around. It allowed me to bond with Lovely in a soul deep friend way, and make a new amazing friend and more in William. And sometimes even, he starts to look like the mad scientist that I see in myself.

Old faces and worn Birkenstocks

2005-01-02T11:32:00.000-05:00

We were driving as fast as the Zeppelin tape could play.

We ended up in a graveyard. The Christians locked in their boxes felt us skip above them.

There is a certain kind of satisfaction that comes from sitting among the dead with a friend on a beautiful day. Because you are one of the few people there who can enjoy it. The past had nothing more to say, we found ourselves in the woods.

Running, looking, laughing. Alive. A sudden path stole our breathe away, and we floated to the ground like leaves that have had a good life. It was such a sunny day.

He took my hand. I melted into the leaves

There are not enough places and times like these in the cycle of life. We don't let them happen as much as they should.

I closed my eyes and let the woods watch me for a change.

..Grace

..Lovely

He was home.