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...