drink up baby look at the stars

teregalomiplaya @ 2009-09-25T01:01:00

2009-09-25T06:08:12Z

i do not sleep anymore, it seems. and a lot of times, when i do, it's with all my clothes on and the light, too :/

my parents are having money problems so i'm giving them my checks from work as they come. it makes me kinda sad and angry that, out of nine kids, i'm the only one who thought to offer. i so don't make a lot of money in my crappy mailroom job, but it helps.

four grad classes and a job are so draining the hell out of me, but i think i'm doing pretty well. i hope.

on the plus side to all this, i think i wrote at least one decent poem in the last month - about when me and my dad went to teocuitatlan, my dad's hometown, and dug up his dad who'd been buried for 30 years to make sure he was in the right spot.

and now, back to homework.

teregalomiplaya @ 2009-08-20T21:00:00

2009-08-21T02:00:28Z

my cat is staring at me. i think he wants to cuddle. i think he wants to cuddle all day long and is hurt if i leave or don't cuddle with him when i'm here. i'll cuddle with him when i finish this post.

i'm listening to the trapeze swinger. i like this song.

i'm a little bleh right now. i don't really feel like reading or writing or watching anything or working out or eating or sleeping. . . . i don't mind staring at the ceiling sometimes. thinking. remembering. i like doing that.

open roads.

i love the word endlessly. endlessly endlessly endlessly. . . . a few days ago i started my thesis. i guess i'm not supposed to start it until the start of my second year, but it's in my head already. it's been in my head for years now. namibia. plus i've already written two books. practice. i understand better now. me. writing. editing even before the words hit the paper. and order. patience. . . . endlessly endlessly endlessly. that's the end to two chapters/sections, but i'm not ready to write them yet. it will be beautiful to me. perfect.

i am so happy i left columbia's grad school in 2005. i'm so thankful for the depression so awful that my only way out was africa.

yesterday i was told i got two scholarships. now my loan won't be $12,000. it will be $8,000. this makes a big difference for me. i started crying when i found out.

i got a work study job today. in the mail room. i am happy about this.

teregalomiplaya @ 2009-08-09T05:57:00

2009-08-09T08:57:17Z

the other day paul texted me some random thing - about his motorcycle or something. and i texted back that i was reading and making lentils. he said it sounded like peace corps and then added, "why would you do that to yourself?" i responded that i was pretty content at the moment and it was making me want to join peace corps again. which i meant. aside from the job, the racist teachers, the heart-breaking boyfriend, the WAY too long rainy season and some random annoyances, i liked it. i do want to do it again - but as a health volunteer and living in a town - alone. . . . i got to read a lot. i liked that. i liked not having a t.v. i liked hitch hiking. i liked the peace corps office that had SO many books: all the books all the peace corps volunteers' families sent over the years. . . . grad school starts in about three weeks. i'm more excited about finishing than starting - getting the degree and then visiting sarah in kyrgyzstan and traveling with her to who knows where, but i hope it includes india. . . . i'm going to apply for a work study job on monday - in the library. i hope i get it. but i'm sure i'll get another work study job if it's not that one.

anyways. i'd kept track of the books i read while away from home and felt like posting it. it's possible i forgot to add one or two and it's possible one or two may be a bit outta place, but it's mostly right. . . . the count of monte cristo took me a while to read - that's one big ass book. a few other ones were pretty big ass, too. umberto eco must sure like to hear himself write.

i miss kandina - my host sister. here's the list:

------------YEAR ONE-----------
1. The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno
2. The Diary of Anne Frank (young reader version)
3. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
4. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
5. The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green by Joshua Braff
6. The Catcher In The Rye by J. D. Salinger
7. The Diary of Anne Frank
8. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
9. Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War by Deborah Copaken Kogan
10. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
11. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Album
12. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco
13. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
14. Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
15. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
16. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
17. Sugar Among the Freaks by Lewis Nordan
18. Flight by Sherman Alexie
19. My Name is Asher Lev by Chiam Potok
20. The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers
21. About A Boy by Nick Hornby
22. Waiting by Ha Jin
23. Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
24. Ways of Dying by Zakes Mda
25. Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man by Fannie Flagg
26. Dream Brother: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley by David Browne
------------YEAR TWO---------------
27. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea 33 1/3 by Kim Cooper
28. The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason
29. The Lover by Marguerite Duras
30. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
31. Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany by Hans J. Massaquoi
32. MF by Anthony Burgess
33. Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie
34. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
35. Frida: A Novel Based on the Life of Frida Kahlo by Barbara Mujica
36. Solitude: A Return to the Self by Anthony Storr
37. The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie – Art by Ellen Forney
38. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
39. Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
40. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
41. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery
42. The Best American Essays 2006 Series Editor Robert Atwan Guest Editor Lauren Slater
43. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa
44. Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
45. The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty
46. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera
47. Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
48. The Laws of Evening by Mary Yukari Waters
49. The Water-Method Man by John Irving
50. The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers
51. No one belongs here more than you by Miranda July
52. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
53. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
54. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
55. The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer
56. Graceland by Chris Abani
-----------IRELAND--------------
57. Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl Illustrated by Quentin Blake
58. Letters to Sartre by Simone de Beauvoir
59. Humbolt's Gift by Saul Bellow

teregalomiplaya @ 2009-08-04T19:05:00

2009-08-05T00:05:35Z

the last few days kinda sucked a lot. like A LOT. i got news that attie's brother, nico, got paralyzed and other news that the plaque that was supposed to go up naming the classrooms i raised money to renovate hasn't gone up - after like NINE months. wtf? i got really depressed about this and other stuff. i made a post about it yesterday, but kept it "private" because it was just so sad. . . .

i'm feeling better now. and i got this email from the MFA director of creative writing today saying that the two classes i took in 2005 when i was in grad school at columbia will transfer! that made me pretty happy because it equals less money (like $4,800 less) AND less time. FUCK YEAH!

also, i asked him if i could take four classes instead of three and he said it was cool. SO if i do that this and next semester then i can save another like $3,000 - $4,000 since 9 - 12 credit hours costs the same.

i still need a job, though.

teregalomiplaya @ 2009-07-24T19:29:00

2009-07-25T00:37:32Z

this made me SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HAPPY!!!

i posted it on facebook and sent it to like a dozen people today. not surprisingly, anthony is in it - in the chicago one, on the left in the black pants and yellow shirt - i so woulda gone with him if i'd been here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

i'm supposed to go dancing at neo around midnight with anthony and worlynn. i'm kinda lazy to go, but i promised and i'm sure i'll have fun.

on saturday we went to a taping of chic-a-go-go and the host, mia, came up to me and said, "you're awesome!" then sked where i dance. it's funny because most of my dancing is just jumping. it made me feel good, though, because - i know it's just a cable access show - but mia is really pretty and teaches yoga, apparently, and nice and a fun dancer and her saying that made me feel good about myself :)

i'm gonna workout for like a hour then shower then get ready to go.

teregalomiplaya @ 2009-07-13T14:48:00

2009-07-13T20:00:45Z

hiiiiiiiiiii!!!

i went to THE BEST concert EVER on friday! vnv nation! whenever i see them i always say it's the best. man i love them. they're like electronic and the kind of stuff that would be played like at an industrial-ish/goth-y type club maybe and everyone there had tattoos or fishnets and black leather-y clothes and stuff and that gives an impression maybe, but their lyrics are sooooooooooooooo sweet and all about how people should be nice to each other and love each other and it tries so hard to remind people that they're not alone. . . . man, i love them. i danced SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HARD! it was GREAT! and AND it was free because ant's friend won tickets, but couldn't go so he gave them to us. yay!!! while i was living in the village in namibia i totally played vnv nation the most - and worked out to them and played that one song "illusion" when i was sad.

anyways.

on the bus back home me and ant were talking and he saw that new johnny depp movie about john dillinger and i haven't, but i saw the commercial for it and i totally love 1920-1940 accents so i said a part in from the movie like seven times in a row and we laughed each time and ant said my accent was so right on :) later i did this because i thought it was funny (i made up the number two and number three stuff):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF9DICTGT1E

here was take one (i couldn't keep it together :/):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdIV1F-x0DM

i just worked out now and my butt is sweaty and that makes me feel gross when i sit on this chair i'm sitting on.

later.

keep my love as light as a feather

2009-06-30T07:27:10Z

superbad was not a funny movie. why do people think it was funny? it wasn't. it was pointlessly crass and mean-spirited. the zaniness/wackiness was . . . it was like an episode of family guy - and family guy is fine, but it's a cartoon - and that makes a difference. saul said superbad was a huge movie here and that people were laughing their asses off in the theater. and i can imagine that. the kind of laughing - laughing that's more like: i'm laughing because i'm down/i can relate and me going "hahaha" shows that i'm down and that i get it. LAME. i wacthed it alone and i think there was only one time when i giggled. most of the "jokes" are just mean. how is that funny? how is that funny? it's not.

popular american humor bothers me now. it's either like loud, mean and cynical or wacky and zaney. and so much of it is shit that makes no sense. like there's always someone who says something that doesn't make any sense AT ALL and then the person who reacts to that person. THAT'S NOT FUNNY! or the loud, fat guy. i'm sick of that guy. the whole deal of the cops who hang out with mclovin (that name was probably the funniest thing in that movie - that DID make me laugh) and all the stuff that happens - it's just stupid. . . .

i saw pineapple express last night and that was FUCKING AWESOME. i laughed SO MUCH. it was actually a thought-out story. and while it's mad silly, it's silliness that comes about organically from the characters. and it's not mean like superbad was. it's really sweet, really.

. . . there's so many things i don't dig about the states. twitter. fancy cellphones. kids with cell phones. kids sending sex texts and/or naked picture texts. tmz. reality t.v. all the lies from the 9/11 report. the commercials i've seen lately where kids mad disrespect their parents and it's supposed to be . . . funny? movies. at the store, you can check yourself out with a machine: because of those, people lose jobs and it's less human interaction. cars. car crashes because of people on their phones. people who are famous because of how rich they are. giant TVs. how a couple with 8 kids can become mad famous and rich because they have 8 kids. hitch hiking is illegal. every other commercial is some prescription drug that has like 8 million crazy side effects. how much people care abut famous people. how many kids are getting killed by guns.

i don't wanna live here anymore. i said that to my mom and dad earlier today. and my mom said, "yeah, i know." the thing that has made me think this the most is learning more about 9/11 and how . . . it just doesn't add up. and other possibilities make me shake from . . . it's just . . . too big? and too awful.

i have this sort of dream now. and i know it's dumb, maybe. stupid and childish. but i wanna stay here for a while and save up money and then move back to namibia and build something wonderful. like a ferris wheel or a carousel or a water park. . . . it's not that there's no more magic here. but maybe it's all buried in prescription drugs, fast food, sex texts, wall street hot shots who steal people's money, humans replaced by machines and shitty television. in namibia, there's only one university, one road . . . not a lot of opportunity and . . . i think i wanna help with that, too, but i also noticed that there wasn't a lot of magic, either. or creativity. colorful imagination. there's not a lot of art. building some beautiful fun thing - like a ferris wheel - floating in the air like that, it might make someone dream pretty enough and hard enough to make something special happen. . . . not like getting on the real world or becoming the next top model. but drawing some wonderful picture. or trying to make another university to give people more opportunities. write a kids book. or just be nicer.

it's sounds dumb of me, i'm sure. naive. and maybe like some old, bitter man longing for the good old days. but i'm not an old man and i don't think i'm dumb . . . i may be naive. . . . who knows if this will ever happen. most of me feels like: probably not. but still.

bat for lashes - sad eyes is SUCH a pretty song.

teregalomiplaya @ 2009-06-16T01:51:00

2009-06-16T06:50:48Z

yesterday i had the photoshoot for chicago magazine with esther and two other girls she's tattooed. it was longer than i thought it was gonna be and in a photography studio which made me nervous at first. they had esther in the center face forward and us three girls surrounding her so that only our tattoos showed; i was thankful for that because of my body and face issues. it's gonna be part of "the best" section. it's nice to know that i was tattooed by "the best" tattooist in chicago, which is funny because she works out of her house.

. . . i wish i was beautiful. it's so silly, but sometimes i think if i was beautiful life would be easier. i know it's not true, but it feels true sometimes (maybe because pretty girls get boyfriends more easily and having a boyfriend is comforting and THAT makes life easier?). i think i felt prettier in namibia. people there said i was. the kids said i was the prettiest teacher in omuhama. and netesia said i was "so attractive" when i danced. attie and his friends and family thought i was sexy. . . . whatever. i'll keep working out.

i've seriously been thinking about writing to attie. he wasn't a good boyfriend. he wasn't even a good friend really. but i think about him. i worry about him. his past, his alcoholic parents, the culture there, i wonder if he'll ever be able to feel like . . . real joy. there's music i want to show him. and movies i think are magical. . . . he was pretty awful with me, emotionally. and he let me go. but he's the only boyfriend i've ever had and he knows things about me NOBODY else does and i guess it's hard to forget that. it's hard to not speak with him after that. even if he lives an ocean away. i think most people would say i was stupid to wanna write to him and share things i think are beautiful with him. eh. maybe i'm just lonely.

. . . when i told my mom i was sexually assaulted in mexico she didn't really say anything about it and went on and on about stuff that happened to her when she was young (like some guy slapping her butt or flashing her) that wasn't nearly as bad at what had just happened to me and i felt stupid and small. it's nice when people listen to you and care about what you say . . . how you feel. it's nice when boys tell you you're pretty and hold you.

watch this . . .

2009-04-22T04:33:07Z

i didn't get the teach for america job. it's funny how after spending two years doing something i believe was good, i have no certifications, no money and no prospect for getting a job. i'd have to go to a lot more school to become a certified teacher, which i have no money to pay for. i don't even have enough money to hike the AT. . . . i think i'll try to work at jewel or some place for a year or so, save up, then go back to grad school. . . . eh, who knows? i'm a little bummed. only a little though because how can you be mad about something that wasn't meant to be?

anyways.

this is from my friend sarah's peace corps blog - she recently left for service in kyrgyzstan:

"Now here's a piece of something beautiful and true that I love. It's from a poem called "Why We Tell Stories":

we will begin our story
with the word and

Lisel Mueller, the lady that wrote that, she's right. I always start with and, when I meet new people I always start by telling stories about the people I've met, the people I love, by trying to find some connection, some "and", between their stories and mine. Everyone does. Man, she's smart.

So start with and. You're part of my and. And I'm going to start Kyrgyzstan with you."

fuck i love her.

ten minutes ago i was thinking about something that hurt. i hated that i was thinking about it, but . . . but. . . . hmm, i don't think i wanna write about it. anyways, i'm not sad, i'm . . . lucky maybe. i love all my past ands and i'll love all my future ands and that made the hurt - and made me - beautiful. . . . i don't think i'm explaining myself well . . . here's the :

Why We Tell Stories
By Lisel Mueller
For Linda Foster

I
Because we used to have leaves
and on damp days
our muscles feel a tug
painful now, from when roots
pulled us into the ground

and because our children believe
they can fly, an instinct retained
from when the bones in our arms
were shaped like zithers and broke
neatly under their feathers

and because before we had lungs
we knew how far it was to the bottom
as we floated open-eyed
like painted scarves through the scenery
of dreams, and because we awakened

and learned to speak

II
We sat by the fire in our caves,
and because we were poor, we made up a tale
about a treasure mountain
that would only open for us

and because we were always defeated,
we invented impossible riddles
only we could solve,
monsters only we could kill,
women who could love no one else
and because we had survived
sisters and brothers, daughters and sons,
we discovered bones that rose
from the dark earth and sang
as white birds in the trees

III
Because the story of our life
becomes our life

Because each of us tells the same story
but tells it differently

and none of us tells it
the same way twice

Because grandmothers looking like spiders
want to enchant the children
and grandfathers need to convince us
what happened happened because of them

and though we listen only
haphazardly, with one ear,
we will begin our story
with the word and

teregalomiplaya @ 2009-04-19T00:27:00

2009-04-19T05:27:12Z

there's a movie on right now with james franco and it's kinda fucking killing me because attie looks SO much like him. and his character is a bit like him too - this hard-headed arrogant idiot, but . . . but with a shit ton of potential. and a good heart. he even walks like him. i miss him right now.

it's sunday. that means i find out TOMORROW about teach for america. . . . i just saw boniface's facebook update - they have a job opening at the orphanage in naivasha, kenya. if i don't get the TFA job, maybe i'll go back to africa.

i like this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-J5LepnXs4&NR=1

attie once carried me off the back of a truck and i screamed because it was scary and - like i feel like i'm way too fat for anyone to carry and not drop, but he didn't drop me. for a second it made me feel like a princess :)

i'm not supposed to be with him now though. and i'm okay with that. i'm also okay with watching this james franco movie and thinking of him. i'm not sad at all and i'm not gonna cry. it's nice in a way, missing him.

oh my god yes

2008-09-20T11:57:20Z

Birthmark
by Miranda July

On a scale of one to ten, with ten being childbirth, this will be a three.
A three? Really?
Yes. That’s what they say.
What other things are a three?
Well, five is supposed to be having your jaw reset.
So it’s not as bad as that.
No.
What’s two?
Having your foot run over by a car.
Wow, so it’s worse than that?
But it’s over quickly.
Okay, well, I’m ready. No—wait; let me adjust my sweater. Okay, I’m ready.
All right, then.
Here goes a three.

The laser, which had been described as pure white light, was more like a fist slammed against a countertop, jumping with each slam. It turned out three was just a number. It didn’t describe the pain any more than money describes the thing it buys. Two thousand dollars for a port-wine stain removed. A kind of birthmark that seems messy and accidental, as if this red area covering one whole cheek were the careless result of too much fun. She spoke to her body like an animal at the vet, Shhh, it’s okay, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry we have to do this to you. This is not unusual; most people feel that their bodies are innocent of their crimes, like animals or plants. Not that this was a crime. She had waited patiently from the time she was fourteen for aesthetic surgery to get cheap, like computers. Nineteen ninety-eight was the year lasers came to the people as good bread, eat and be full, be finally perfect. Oh yes, perfect. She didn’t think she would have bothered if she hadn’t been what people call “very beautiful except for.” This is a special group of citizens living under special laws. Nobody knows what to do with them. We mostly want to share them like the optical illusion of a vase made out of the silhouette of two people kissing. Now it is a vase . . . now it could only be two people kissing . . . oh, but it is so completely a vase. It is both! Can the world sustain such a contradiction? And this was even better because as the illusion of prettiness and horribleness flipped back and forth, we flipped with it. We were uglier than her, then suddenly we were lucky not to be her, but then again, at this angle she was too lovely to bear. She was both, we were both, and the world continued to spin.

Now began the part of her life where she was just very beautiful, except for nothing. Only winners will know what this feels like. Have you ever gotten something very badly and then gotten it? The you know that winning is many things, but it is never the thing you thought it would be. Poor people who win the lottery do not become rich people. They become poor people who won the lottery. She was a very beautiful person who was missing something very ugly. Her winnings were the absence of something, and this quality hung around her. The was so much potential in the imagined removal of the birthmark; any fool on the bus could play the game of guessing how perfect she would look without it. Now there was not this game to play, there was just a spent feeling. And she was no idiot, she could sense it. In the first few months after the surgery, she received many compliments, but they were always coupled with a kind of disorientation.

Now you can wear your hair up and show of your face more.
Yeah I’m going to try it that way.
Wait, say that again.
“I’m going to try it that way.” What?
Your little accent is gone.
What accent?
You know, the little Norwegian thing.
Norwegian?
Isn’t you mom Norwegian?
She’s from Denver.
But you have that little bit of an accent, that little . . . way of saying things.
I do?
Well, not anymore, it’s gone now.

And she felt a real sense of loss. Even though she knew she had never had an accent. It was the birthmark, which, in its density had lent color even to her voice. She didn’t miss the birthmark, but she missed her Norwegian heritage, like learning of new relatives, only to discover they have just died.

All in all though, this was minor, less disruptive than insomnia (but more severe than déjà vu). Over time she knew more and more people who had never seen her with the birthmark. These people didn’t feel any haunting absence, why should they? Her husband was one of these people. Not that he wouldn’t have married a woman with a port-wine stain. But he probably wouldn’t have. Most people don’t and are none the worse for it. Of course, sometimes it would happen that she would see a couple and one of them would have a port-wine stain and the other would clearly be in love with this stained person and she would hate her husband a little. And he could feel it.

Are you being weird?
No.
You are.
Actually, I’m not. I’m just eating my salad.
I can see them, too, you know. I saw them come in.
Hers is worse than mine was. Mine didn’t go down on my neck like that.
Do you want to try this soup?
I bet he’s an environmentalist. Doesn’t he look like one?
Maybe you should go sit with them.
Maybe I will.
I don’t see you moving.
Did you just finish the soup? I thought we were splitting.
I offered it to you.
Well, you can have any of this salad, then.

It was a small thing, but it was a thing, and things have a way of either dying or growing, and it wasn’t dying. Years went by. This thing grew, like a child, microscopically, every day. And since they were a team, and all teams want to win, they continuously adjusted their vision to keep its growth invisible. They wordlessly excused each other for not loving each other as much as they had planned to. There were empty rooms in the house where they had meant to put their love, and they worked together to fill these rooms with midcentury modern furniture. Herman Miller, George Nelson, Charles and Ray Eames. They were never alone; it became crowded. The next sudden move would have to be through the wall. What happened was this. She was trying to get the lid off a new jar of jam, and she was banging it on the counter. This is a well-known tip, a kitchen trick, a bang to loosen the lid. It’s not witchery or black magic, it’s simply a way to release the pressure under the lid. She banged it too hard, and the jar broke. She screamed. Her husband came running when he heard the sound. There was red everywhere, and in that instant he saw blood. Hallucinatory clarity: you are certain of what you see. But in the next moment, your fear relinquishes control: it was jam. Everywhere. She was laughing, picking shards of glass out of the strawberry mash. She was laughing at the mess, and her face down, looking at the floor, and her hair was around her face like a curtain, and then she looked up at him and said, Can you bring the trash can over here?

And it happened again. For a moment he thought he saw a port-wine stain on her cheek. It was fiercely red and bigger than he had ever imagined. It was bloodier than even blood, like sick blood, animal blood, the blood racist people think beats inside people of other races: blood that shouldn’t touch my own. But the next moment it was just jam, and he laughed and rubbed the kitchen towel on her cheek. Her cheek clean. Her port-wine stain.

Honey.
Can you get the trash can?
Honey.
What?
Go look in the mirror.
What?
Go look in the mirror.
Stop talking like that. Why are you talking like that? What?

He was looking at her cheek. She instinctively put her hand on the mark and ran to the bathroom.

She was in there for a long time. Maybe thirty minutes. You’ve never had thirty minutes like these. She stared at the port-wine stain and she breathed in and she breathed out. It was like being twenty-three again, but she was thirty-eight now. Fifteen years without it, and now here it was. In the same exact place. She rubbed her finger around its edges. It came as high as her right eye, over the edge of her right nostril, across her whole cheek to her ear, ending at her jawbone. In purplish-red. She wasn’t thinking anything, she wasn’t afraid or disappointed or worried. She was looking at the stain the way one would look at oneself fifteen years after one’s one death, Oh, you again. Now it was obvious it had always been there; she had startled it back into sight. She looked into its redness and breathed in and breathed out and found herself in a kind of trance. She thought: I am in a kind of trance. She was just blowing around. It lasted about twenty-five minutes, a very, very long time to just be blowing around. Mostly, you waft for a second or two, half a second, maybe. And then you spend the rest of your life trying to describe it, to regain the perspective. You say, It was like I was just blowing around, and you wave your arms in the air. But there were no arms like that, and you know it. She came out of the trance like a plane taking off. Instead of being inside the stain, she was now looking down on it from above. Like a lake, it grew smaller and smaller until it was only a tiny region in a larger mass. One that this pilot favored, hovered over, but would not touch down on again. She pulled some toilet paper off the roll and blew her nose.

He found himself kneeling. He was waiting for her on his knees. He was worried she would not let him love her with the stain. He had already decided long ago, that the stain was fine. He had only seen it for a moment, but he was already used to it. It was good. It somehow allowed them to have more. They could have a child now, he thought. There was a loose feeling in the air. The jam was still on the floor, and that was okay. He would just kneel here and wait for her to come out and hope he would be able to tell her about the looseness in a loose way. He wanted to keep the feeling. He hoped she wasn’t removing it somehow, the stain. She should keep it, and they should have a kid. He could hear her blowing her nose; now she was opening the door. He would stay on his knees, just like this. She would see him this way and understand.

before i sleep

2006-07-15T04:29:11Z

on my walk home tonight - just a little while ago - i saw a bunch of lightning bugs flickering so pretty - and remembered how me and saul would run around when we were little and try to catch them in our hands - only to hold that kind of magic in our tiny palms for a second before letting it go . . . i don't remember the last time i tried to catch lightning bugs - i don't remember how old i was or where i was or who i was with - if i would have known it was going to be the last time i was going to catch lightning bugs i would have paid more attention. but then again - there's always tomorrow.

it's late. i'm going to take a shower and put on my pajamas and find some very warm socks because my feet are cold - and then i'm going to pour myself a glass of juice and go in the basement and watch a black and white movie.

i feel like slow dancing. there is nobody here but me.