Writing, Running, Being.

The finish line is a shifty Thing and what is life, but reckoning?
Ani DiFranco

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

leaving your bicycle in the front yard

if you leave your bicycle in the front yard overnight because you went inside to play video games and forgot all about it, it will probably be gone in the morning. you are lucky if it's still there.
i watched a man with a mustache and a mullet ogle my breasts as i pumped my car full of gas this morning. i cringed as a slow smirk spread across his face. "this is hate" i thought. or maybe "hate" is what i did to myself last night and i'm just taking it out on that slimy perv who is now looking me up and down, licking his lips and nodding his approval. was that a wink? now he is putting out his cigarette. "dirty" i thought. or maybe "dirty" is what i made myself last night and i'm just taking it out on the slimy perv who is now hawking a loogie in my path as i walk toward the door to pay. "vile" i thought. or maybe "vile" is how i acted last night when i dissected two healthy brains on clean sheets and then proceeded to mash them up like avacados, mixing in citric acid and sodium, ignobly attempting to make something old into something new or maybe something new into something familiar.
and now i remember my abandoned bicycle, rusty with morning dew, laying in the cold grass, drive-side down waiting to be stolen
again

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

some questions about cosmopolitan with a random leap into the"pickle jar theory"

Why is "Love & Lust", one of the regular sections of Cosmo it's own category? Why are love and lust lumped together as though they are one concept or even remotely related concepts? They don't categorize all unrelated ideas in magazines. Just Cosmo. You don't pick up Fisherman's Monthly and see the heading: "Bass &Cold Whether Gear". You don't pick up Woman's Day and flip open to "Coping With Menopause & Heplful Baking Tips". You don't find "John Mayer & Who Shot Biggie" jammed together in one article of Rolling Stone.
Love and Lust. Lust and Love. One is always disguised as the other. They are always working together to send people further into the hazy depths of confusion. Can't we separate them? Can you have one without the other? Can you have the other with out the one? (Sarah, I expect you to respond to this).
I am always putting things where they don't belong. I leave my keys in the sink or between the couch cushions. I sometimes put my YMCA card in the silverware drawer. I have a painting hanging over the light switch so I have to lift it up carefully everytime I come home at night and make sure it still hangs straight after turning the light on. I put the wrong things in the right places and the right things in the wrong places.
I let the wrong people in, learn "valuble lessons" from them, and then apply those lessons erroneously to the right people, who are veritably the wrong people to inflict my "valuble lessons" upon. Someday I will get it right. The pickle jar theory will take affect and I, already loosened by so many greasy hands will open easily for someone with clean ones.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

some happier thoughts

i can understand why everyone thinks i'm depressed. after reading some of the shit that i write, i can't blame people for thinking that. but don't be fooled! i love every dismal, bleak, joyless, self-depricating thought that seeps from my morbid head. and truly, i am happy. i guess i just express my happiness in other ways. i ride my bike, hang out with friends, who wants to be alone writing or painting when you're in a good mood? not me. anyway, here is an attempt at some happier thoughts:
i was just thinking about my mom when we lived in minnesota, how she stuffed her jeans inside her knee high snow boots, even when the snow wasn't particularly deep. this parental humiliation did a number on my already arduous adolescence.
and i was just thinking about my mom again, when she took in Nacho for me because i got caught with him in college (no dogs allowed in my apartment complex). i was home for xmas break and everytime she came home from a walk with him she would jubilantly announce the literal outcome of the walk "Nacho peed and pooped!"
i was just thinking about my dad, how i came home one night all late and stoned and found him in the living room watching planet of the apes. he was sitting on the floor indian style inches from the television rocking back and forth like a mentally retarded kid who could barely contain his excitement. the sight of him, so child-like in all his thick-spectacled, open-mouthed fascination with the apes made me want to laugh and cry all at the same time. instead i joined him for the remainder of the movie, in an effort to bond with my unassuming father. i don't think he ever noticed me come in.
i was just thinking about teresa and erin, my sisters, and getting drunk with them in all their underaged glory. making fun of my poems and my quote book that i've kept since 6th grade. it's full of lame cliches such as "where there's a will there's a way" and "love is a many splendored red red rose that won't make you cry or puke" blah blah blah. things that must have been inspiring at one point in my life. "no guts no glory" and erin's famous "these aren't even donuts, they're donettes, they're like donuts with vaginas!" was the most recently added quote.
i was just thinking about brian and his obsession with cats. he could talk about his cats for hours. he could write a book on their nature and personalities. he could write an electronic journal article about their unique characteristics. and you could find it on an online library archive if you were writing a report about cats and use it as a source. it would tell you what makes them purr, what makes them vomit, what gives them diahrreah and why they knead your rolls of fat when you're sitting down (reminds them of the mama cat's nipples). it's okay that brian's obsessed with cats. i used to be obsessed with paris hilton, who posesses a few feline qualities herself.
i was jsut thinking about the man who sometimes rings me out at safeway. with his long wild grey hair, complete, or incomplete with a bald spot in the middle. he always has something interesting to say about witches. he told me how to tell if a woman is really a witch. it's quite simple, all you have to do is drown her and if her body floats she is a witch. or maybe it's if her body sinks. hell, i can't remember. he always tells me to smile, even if i'm already smiling, so then i have to smile harder, sometimes to the point that i feel as though the corners of my lips will push my eyeballs right off my face.
i know i said i was empty the other day, but really, how can i be empty in a world where frank rides his tawdry wal-mart "Next" bike down the wrong side of Academy, stopping to light a cigarette, unpahsed as cars, trucks, semis and pt cruisers speed by honking violently with formidable impacience? how can i be empty when i belong to a family that discusses homosexuality, old lady smell and farting when we are out to dinner at fancy resturant? how can i really be empty when i have friends who will give me a ride home even when i have pee in my Croc because i missed. how can i be empty when i have friends who forgive me for wearing the very shoe i sold out to?
i know i said i was empty, but regardless of what i claimed in a fit of frustration, i fell asleep that night with the sloppy leftovers of a smile sliding off my face...

Monday, September 11, 2006

to drink, pray or run myself into oblivion

it's sunny and cloudy at the same time and i have many things i could do but nothing that i really need to do. my mail box is empty today. i was expecting a letter or a bill or both. my fridge is empty. the canvas stares back at me from my easel, empty. my bottle of contact solution, empty. my stomach, empty. the box that used to hold my grandmother's jewelery before i pawned it all away, empty. my soul might as well be empty. empty empty empty. if you say a word over and over that's what it becomes. empty. empty. empty. even empty's own name. what is that? onomonopia or something like that. nothing can fill me today. i had a swim. i had a shower. i had chamomile tea and scrambled egg whites. i had a ride. i had a pounding headache. i finished a book. i started a painting. i had a dream. i woke up. nothing can fill me today. nothing can fill me today. i want someone to tell me that it's jesus. it's jesus that i'm missing. because then i could just close my brain and open up wide to let him in. i could throw myself so easily one way or the other to cure this. i could convince myself of heaven and truth and salvation and a divine perpetual friendship. i don't know whether to drink, pray, or run myself into oblivion. which is where i feel i should be. i choose to run because it's the only thing i can feel right now. i want someone to tell me that it's jesus that i'm missing. that he was here all along and i just couldn't see. then we could all laugh because you always laugh when what you were looking for was right before you all along. can't it just be jesus? it'd be so easy. i could talk to him without feeling silly because believing means it's real. even if only to you. i could go crazy or i could go christian or perhaps i could conform and sink sink sink like the rest. it's cloudy and sunny at the same time today. the sky is dark but everything else is bright and now rambling on and on to tired keys is no different than plucking tired strings and draining tired pens and tired tubes of water- soluble oil paint. i told you nothing can fill me today.