January 2012
2 posts
CCLXXVIII.
I make so many big plans, and none of them involve another person. Not anyone real, at least, just future capital-t Them, they who have no defining characteristic as of yet, aside from making me laugh too loudly in public places.
I feel as if I’m missing out on the quiet things people do for one another; making two cups of tea instead of one, sharing the newspaper in your underwear on a Wednesday...
CCXXIV. The thing about everything
Romanticizing is easy when you’re young and hopeful and believe a little too hard that everything will still work out. That the cheap apartment with its bare, dirty walls and low-ceiling attic bedroom and absentee living room will be the birthplace of your work of genius. That the degree you are paying for and working for and fighting for and fighting over will lead to something other than...
December 2011
1 post
1 tag
CCXXVII.
Do you remember back when (everything had the white-gold glow of Christmas lights and potential and) we walked the campus and shouted about hating things with joy in our voices, and it was loud, and it was exciting? Not thrilling, but affirming, like we’d lured friendship in and were going to lock it into place through sheer willpower and the speed of our speech.
commutative: a + b = b + a...
November 2011
2 posts
CCXLV.
I’ve got so many fucking feelings that they pour out of me unasked; on buses I sit tucked between button-down briefcase businessmen and sniffle into my sleeve. If they notice, they say nothing. They just want to get to their cars, you know, get home to a family and a warm meal, or maybe just a dog and a beer. Either way, they’ll forget about the girl who cried on the bus easily enough. So...
CCXLIV.
A list of things for which I have no use:
A disregard for the politics involved in taking up space on this planet - on buses, in busy hallways, in crosswalks
Perfunctory humor
Pretending not to love someone
I’m angry that I can’t just tell you how much I love you all of the time, that the words would eventually lose their meaning. Am I angry? I used to be, quite often. Not so much anymore....
October 2011
3 posts
1 tag
CCXLII.
(from a 1995 Panasonic digital video)
The only people I love these days are family
I cheer whenever the faces of the bells turn back towards us. The teenagers have run off to find their red-faced counterparts in jerseys, the middle aged couples have tucked in for casual conversation and hot cocoa. I am loud enough for us all. My brother smirks behind brass beneath a brightly colored plume. I...
CCXXVIII.
We’re going to have so much time together.
At least, that is what I tell myself when I miss you. Loneliness springs out of nowhere like the claws on a cat. We’ll have time, time to fall in love with boys in cities and fight in cities and live the weirdest, craziest, fucking-unimaginable-to-our-young-and-impressionable-minds lives in cities. I’m so happy to be with you; when I...
2 tags
CCXXX. my grandmother, joan rivers
Bubbie Joan calls twice daily to tell me stories about doing Hollywood Squares drunk on wine and the 80s. She tells me about getting on Ed McMahon after he accidentally announced her name, about the stage lights and the applause and the hum of the cameras and “Ed wants to pay for your dress” when she calls twice a day, every day. Bubbie Joan pronounces it Yom Kip-per, the way the ladies do,...
September 2011
1 post
CCXXV.
The pressure of summer disappears and leaves autumn in its place. It’s just a tease, you know that. Tomorrow will return the waves of heat that leave rings of sweat on necklines and coffee tables. Tomorrow you will wake to the familiar combination of the hum of an air conditioner and the buzz of your alarm and the murmurs of people much smarter than you on the television, and you will eat...
August 2011
1 post
CCXX.
When I spend too much time by myself, I forget who I want to be. I forget which people I care about, which music I enjoy, the sound of my own voice. I make lists (grocery, to-do, things that will remind me of you when you’ve gone) and repeat them like mantras. I tell secrets too easily, spill them to raw-new acquaintances and to children, who swallow them up with the same earnestness as...
July 2011
1 post
CCVI.
Adult: when it still meant shoulders hunched against the falling snow, anyone with laugh lines, warm coats and broad chests, arms that carry, and nothing will hurt ever again. When the line was still clear, here-is-me and there-is-you, and I will know when I cross it.
“You can be anything you’d like to be, you know”. It’s a lie. Can I shrug off my sweater and unfurl a set...
June 2011
1 post
CCI.
How do I describe home?
It’s like LA is bright colors and the sun beating down and nothing ever hidden, not your flesh nor your sins. New York is brick and glass, a city full of big dreams and proud cynics, the kind of city you brave for a year or thirty and feel every day like you’re winning some sort of battle. Seattle is warm coffee on a rainy day, Philadelphia is history you can...
May 2011
4 posts
1 tag
CCII.
He says it without thinking, and for a moment, you’re sure he’ll take it back, qualify it somehow. But he doesn’t; his sweater is stupid and the song that’s playing is forgettable and he’s smiling at you like he’s right where he wants to be. You think maybe it’s where you want to be, too - not back in the city you’ll one day call home, but right...
1 tag
CXCIX.
Centuries from now, when a team of highly trained archaeologists haul out their shovels and pickaxes to dig their way through the internet, and come across the grey-dirt fossils of the self-image I’ve created out of html, the languages we crafted from acronyms and shorthand, the things we shoved out there into the universe, hoping desperately for some sort of permanence,
I hope they...
1 tag
CXCVI.
It should scare me, loving you after all this time. It should make me uncomfortable; I should be itching in my skin to lash out, push you away, loosen ever-slightly the hold you have on me. I should be unnerved when, at the end of a long and already perfectly wonderful (content-able, enjoyable, perfectly-fine-by-myself-thank-you-very-much) day, I talk to you, and things, somehow, unexpectedly, get...
CXCIII.
Sometimes, secretly, I think maybe god exists.
Not God, not the Almighty, no Lord or Saviour or Messiah. He has no white robe, no staff, no books. My god smites no sinners and saves no sick, asks for no penance and offers no paradise.
My god is quieter. My god stirs in the snowy silence of winter walks home and lives in the sunlight that blinds me momentarily on the long bus rides, that reminds...
April 2011
2 posts
2 tags
CLXXXVIII.
It will happen like this:
Everything will be quiet, for a while. We’ll work our way through college; I’ll find another cause to attach myself to, some injustice to be righted, and leave even more idealistic than I came in. You’ll submit to the rules, the routines, the inspections; quickly be given more responsibility than you know what to do with; and graduate to the sound of...
CLXXXIV
“I need you right now” “Why? Because I’m a port in a storm?” “No, because I feel like shit and you care about me”
I expect nothing, and everything is my fault- my mistake, my problem, my responsibility, my blunder, my slip, my sin. You sit, because you’ll be gone by the time I wake.
“How are you feeling?”
“Awful,” and...