12.30

Surely, in a slew of fitful starts, he has come to the precipice. We all knew he would arrive eventually. We all knew he would come to this point. But he has taken his own way about it, cropped his pocketwatch to a silver sliver, and slain the beast Impatience. I have grown old waiting for him. But when he comes to me, his Edge, his precarious drop, he knows me as the most beautiful girl in the world. And that is what I am.

12.29

I can hear him running through the warranty on his diaphragm. It says it's good to 10,000 coughs, but in the last hour I swear he's filled up half that number. By morning I fear he'll have to run to the store for a new one.

12.28

The wind tore her jacket's hood back and I could see her face for a snapping second. Her cheeks were bright with a flush of vitae and her eyes were dull with tears. The changeable wind slammed back and the hood guillotined my gaze.
I moved as if to follow her, but I couldn't bring myself to fall forward into the first awkward step. She crunched through the snow ever farther away from me until all I could see was a cherry point of coat in the woods. I brought her back to my imagination because I couldn't stand to be apart, and followed my ghostly companion down our double path from where her single led off to better careers and richer soils.

1.25

I can't see any further into your eyes than anybody else. Your last man said he could see galaxies in them. They're pretty, but I can't see no stars. Maybe that's why I'm right for you: I won't lie to you just to see what's in your soul.

12.24

Somewhere, my wife's other shoe drops, but I'm too busy with your tongue in my mouth to hear.

(He tried to hang the chalkboard, but, being a bit dim, forgot brackets. For the rest of my life, the saddest sight I've ever seen will be nails on a blackboard.)

The wind blew her socks off the bed when the door flew open.

12.19b

Today, I said "But you're not," and the words sounded suspiciously like "It seems like you're doing a very poor job of that." I'm not sure how they sprang, fully formed, past my intent, but they did.
I wonder if other phrases put themselves on autopilot quite like that. When I mean to say "My, you're looking lovely today," do I say "I'd hit that," instead? It would explain a lot.

12.19

She breathes oddly: like she needs to get the breath in but it doesn't matter that it's there once it's there. Get the air in, but whether it stays or goes is no business of hers.
Sometimes I'm afraid she'll treat me the same way. Draw me, reel me, lure me, bait me, catch me. But who cares what happens once she has me? Then the feeling of panic subsides and I feel safe again.
The best part of being me is that I'll be afraid again within a week.

12.18

Hey Cory,
Heey, how You doin'? How was your week so far? what's your schedule like? You're cool, from what I can tell!
-Shelby-

12.17

Sure thing, Sasquatch. I can't say I agree with you, but I'll take your word for it. Maybe outside IS as good as you say.

12.14

Ope wide the maw, scrape in the heart. Chew. Savor. Swallow.
You've spit my mortal flesh and turned it by thy machinations, so vigorous thy art that the straps that once did heave my breast lie sepulchral. I wish to die--yet I lie.

How sweet is it on thy tongue--does it sweeten the more it tastes? Or does it turn to bile, ash, crust, earth? Does it sustain thy hate, or does its savor erase your memory?

Please you; say neither. I would not be hated and I would not be killed. The memory of me being self, I cannot conscience murder or wroth.

12.13b

His days of weal run round the sun; his nights of woe are less so. I think you'll find that he, in kind, runs in the circle he can find.
And when his weal is run round again and I am left alone with him, we spin, revolve, return replies, until we're all fed up with lies, for truth, you see, returns us where we need to be: the center.

12.13

Just as the sun wrapped tenuous coiling tendrils around the tips of the trees, I saw a young man in the half light. He approached a fence with easy gait, slung his bag over and then himself. He climbed with easy apprehension of his task; I believed he had climbed the same fence a hundred times.
I watched his decent into the leaves through the open gate thirty feet away.

[true story, y'all]

12.10

People say that migraines are prefigured. Your body can't process the pain and creates phantoms until it figures out the right response. It claws at you: some people thow up. Some people lose hearing. Some people can't see. And then, only after you're afraid that your body has begun shutdown for the final time, the pain breaks on you, the wash of it pulling you back towards the sea of throe and wetting your conscious with pain.

Can you imagine feeling the first time? Can you picture a person for whom there is nothing to which they may liken the experience? Can you write the thoughts of a child who can't see or hear and then, of a sudden, with a crashing, sickening [descriptive noun--like a swirl, but a beautiful word like an umbra] it tears out the middle of your brain?

I have the desire to write it but I can't think of the words. Maybe when the pain goes away, I'll be able to find them.

12.8

You know that feeling when your intestines roil in you and your hope for humanity dies? That's the feeling of despair that settles on all of us late at night. No one knows the cause, but many have posited moonbeams as the ultimate cause.
I personally believe that it's all the spiders "they" say I've been eating.

12.7

Slap a label on my back and market me to the younger generation. I'll sell like hotcakes; they love seeing an old man make a fool of himself.

I'm too old for this.

12.5b

I can't remember the last time we've had some time like this. Just the two of us, free to say what's on our minds, to share and grow together, to search each other's souls. That all being true, let me begin by saying that I hate you and wish you the worst kinds of pain.

12.5

His jovial manner covered an intensity and a peculiar belief in the origin of thoughts that would have startled those he knew. In fact, it did startle Miss Starling when she chanced to find out. It happened at lunch one day in the small café just down the street--you know the one--where they both took their midday repast and riposte. He turned to her and asked, quite pointedly, whether or not it was her constant wearing of high-heeled shoes which led to her rampant sexuality, or in fact the other way around. She, having never considered the causal link, took pause. He covered the silence with a long slurp of coffee. When there was no reply forthcoming, he began to explicate her thoughts, beliefs, and actions all based on and rounded up with her simple clothing choices. Just when he was beginning to sway her with his eloquence and passion, she remembered a vital snagging point. With some triumph and flourish of words, like a magician producing the spoon you thought long ago embedded skull-wise, she proffered her point: what of her leisure hours? Why, when wearing different clothes, would she act still as herself? For this he had a quick and easy laugh, and he cracked his knuckles, leaned in conspiratorially, and described with some explicit detail her leisurewear, never having seen it himself. He leaned back, satisfied at the look of horror on her face. Of course he extrapolated backwards from what he knew of her, but the deadly accuracy with which he managed to describe the flippant mistreatment of her shoes, the secret life of her lacy slips, and the reckless disregard for nudity that she had so long kept secret from even her closest friends, all so easily flensed and cured before her on the fire and spit of his intelligence, managed to make her tremble and clutch at her throat. She felt the cool reassurance of her jewelry against her skin. Still, she, of course, could only repeat the interrogative "How?" often and vehemently. He turned back to his coffee, confident that she would remember this moment for years.
"You never take off your mother's ring. Take it off, and you'll find your leisure time will be a sight less liberated. In fact, take it off now and you'll not have the courage to talk to me."
She glanced at the banded metal and felt the strength of her memory wash over her. She knew he had to have extrapolated from what he knew of her. To have known so much from a single bauble, no matter its importance, was unthinkable. Yet she had to know. She found herself doubting. With cold sweat, she worked the ring from its perpetual perch and dropped it in her sudden fear of being changed, somehow, from when she had it on. It rolled toward the door, and she chased it to where it lay. When she stood up, she reevaluated. She didn't feel any different, certainly. Still the same old Miss Starling. Still willing to be herself at home. Perhaps she would draw the curtains, but that's only natural if a man knows, and he knew. She palmed the ring and turned to the cashier. No, she wouldn't talk to him anymore; not with his bogus theories and odd opinions. She paid and walked out to find a new café in which to lunch.

He watched her go and waited for her to enter the new Italian bistro just down the block, her red scarf whipping in the wind. He found himself regretting having told her, so he put on a hat to forget and pulled out his wristwatch to smile and cheerily headed back to work.

12.2

I'm going to go on Facebook and unfriend all of the people I vaguely dislike so that when they look at my profile again after twelve years and a mountain of therapy, they will be struck anew by the fear and guilt of not having truly befriended me in life: their current antipathy will then look to them like the decision of a madman, and the "friend" button will appear to be their only solace. Yet: should they friend me, or would the action be too much? Surely the shame of sending a second, more sedate and sorrowful friending will make up in my heart for the years we spent in shadowed and roiling dislike and yet the truth is that knowing I, Robby, hold the power of redemption over them, that they will needs be shamed into reaching out so visibly, that I will then KNOW that they know that I know that the "friend" bond has been broken will be too much to bear and they will embark on a quest to expunge my memory from their life and expurgate the searing regret from their heart.
In due time, all my enemies will realize that I play for keeps.

11.30

Since when have you thrown away bottles?
Oh, you know. A while now.
You never used to!
Chane is how we know we're alive.
That's bull.
Maybe, but maybe not. Perhaps there's so much truth--
It's bull. What happened?
I haven't reason to recycle, now.
Not since she left?
Not since she left. Everything is new, now. Give me some time and I'll replace everything in the house.
Ok. I'll miss her.
I plan on taking all our plastic bags and burning them on her lawn. That would get her attention.
It certainly would. Please don't. The environment can't handle too many more of your breakups.

11.27

The thing
crawled
gently across the carpet
and up my leg.
I tried to shake it off, but it clung to me like a chemical reaction set off by some unstoppable catalyst, fizzing and popping and melting all my essential minerals into so much slag.
The thing
scary though it may be
can't
harm
me.
I lied. There's the harm. I feel it deep in my rapidly decaying soul. It caught the barest edge of a crevice and buried itself in the undying ether of my conscious mind. Done with my body, it eats my self, mindless of the rarity of the immortal ghost.
The thing
ached
its way into
my actions today.
You see, I haven't found a way to fight the thing. It always comes to me on rainy days when the weather is wrong and the world is acrimonious. I feel it first as a damp fear in my chest, and then it climbs into my awareness with claws of carrion and clarity. It crushes my will and acts in my place, and all my so-self-named and poorly defined friends look at me with wondering eyes and ask if I really feel okay.
The thing
isn't unique to me
but I forget that
when it loves me with its pain.

11.25

I can see why the Greeks likened her hair to snakes. It's certainly wild enough, but you can tell they didn't look closely. I can understand why they might give her fangs. She's certainly mean enough, but her incisors don't strike fear. I can comprehend why they might say a man's heart would stop beating, but stone? No. Just love.

11.20

She hiked her skirt so I could see the pale blue of her public secret. I tried to look away, but she moved in front of me, laughing like a freight train. You know, I envy her freedom. I would never hike my skirt for a stranger. I take a second look at her. It's clear that she's fresh from whatever farm grew her; she still has that rosy glow around the eyes from doing something verboten and new. I tried in my heart to reason with her, to stop her from the terrible path she chose, to convince her of some higher universal good, but I ended up sleeping with her instead.

11.17

I don't curse.
I don't speed.
I don't lie.
I don't take music.
I don't park in handicapped spaces.
I don't "forget" to tip.
I don't hate anybody.
I don't do wrong.
In every way, I do the right. I try my best. I struggle and fight. I scrape and muster. But if loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Let's stay up all night and laugh at the flow of the moon. Let's go swimming in our neighbor's pool when he's gone to work. Let's drive to the edge of the map and stop where we want to. Let's get tattoos of each other's middle names. Let's stare death in the face, talk so long we forget to eat, live so much there's no room for fear. Let's be superlative. Let's expand the known edges of experience. Let's be more than everybody who ever came before. Let's be brave, and forget why we're here. Let's love, and love, and love.

11.15

He was gay, and he knew it. He had known it for years, but knowing something and telling his disapproving parents about something are totally different things. Some days, he tried to bring it up, sideways, so they would have to talk to him about it.
"Hey, mom. Do you know John at school?"
"The dark kid with the glasses? He's . . . fashionable."
"Yeah, that one. He invited me to a party for his birthday, and I wanted to go . . ."
His mother seemed to always know when he was trying to out think her. He could always first smell the faint acrid scent of her anger before he noticed anything else. Then she would speak. "Who all is at this party?"
"Just some guys."
"Just guys? Why?"
Aggressive.
He eventually stopped trying to sidle up to the problem and ran for it full-bore.
"Dad, how did you know you liked mom?"
"Oh, I'm sure you'll find a girl, son. You're a good kid."
"Dad . . . "
"Alright. Well, I had dated a few girls in my time, and I took a shine to quite a few of them. Got into some scrapes over one in particular. Valerie. What a woman. The problem was, once I 'got' her, I didn't know what to 'do' with her, so I ended up 'doing' her, and we had quite a scare when she missed, well, you know. Anyway, turned out that she had no ability to think about it, just did what her parents told her to, and I decided then and there that I wanted a woman who knew what she was. And when I met your mom, well. That was it."
"No, but how did you know? What changed?"
"Everything changed, champ. Why, you got a girl you've got an eye on?"
Of course not.
"Yes."
"Well, don't worry. When you find the right one, she'll come to you."
Worthless.

When he finally got around to telling them, they acted all shocked like it was something they didn't expect. Ticked him off. So he brought a man home just to spite them. Fitz didn't like being used like that, and he left.
Terrible.

He didn't understand how his parents must have felt that night until his adopted son Phillip brought home a Republican friend from school.
Past.

11.12

I've got toothpaste in my mouth, but she kisses me anyway. She said I always kiss like it's the last time I'll ever see her, and since she said that I always try to live up to the hype. My parents walk in because they heard the noise and all dad can think to say is "Why don't you spit so we can talk about what just happened?" Well anyway, what does dad know about being me? Not like he was ever young.

11.9

Somewhere in the long line of parked cars at the drive-in, my love is with another man in the dark of a car with the subtly moving production of the movie screen light on their sun-drenched skin. I cockroach my way through shade and shadow to the still-warm tailpipe of his Oldsmobile and observe the lachrymal condensation weakly clinging to its cylinder, shivering with the movement in the car. I just know they're inside. I just know it.

I lift a peccant and dolorous eye to see the monster with two backs inside the lightly fogged two-ton can of treachery. Schadenfreude demands I stay. Prudence demands I leave.

I compromise.

11.8

His big, glassy eyes looked up at her through the dimness. She rubbed his ear and he barked, loud. The sound of it filled the woods.
She hauled her shotgun back up to her shoulder and kept walking, hoping that the dog would stay silent and stop scaring away all the game. Her stomach rumbled and churned. She knew that today was the breaking point that decided whether she went insane or starved to death. If she couldn't feed herself and the dog on what she shot today, one of them would have to go. It wouldn't be her; but if he went, her mind would.

11.6b

He made friends with a young undertooker;
His last girlfriend had forsook her.
But he started to curse
When she turned up in a hearse.
He said "From here on I'll only date hookers!"

[Edited from a thing I found]

11.6

Somewhere in the past, a man took a shine to a woman. She fancied him. Fireworks.
Nine months later, humanity got its first friend and greatest enemy: me.

I'm only human. Watch me tear through this cardboard box like it's only paper. Watch me stop this car by force of brakes alone. Watch me build a city out of Lego and step on it in the night. I am dangerous. I am to be feared. I am death.
I'm only human.

11.5

Trees are not that great.
Even I can make a tree.
Poof! A red maple.

11.4

I cried out; no one listened. Maybe I would get better luck if I were more like you, reciting piteous streams of self-indulgent tear-streaked poems at a concert hall crammed to the curtains with chumps. Instead, I rake my breast and tear my shirt in the deep woods where only God and no one can hear.

11.3

His face was illuminated in an awkward rectangle by the rear-view mirror. In the low light, all his features, manly, aquiline, imperial or otherwise, were lost to sight. All she could see was the glassy cornea of his eye, which darted back and forth madly. He didn't know she was awake. The last thing they had said to each other was a comment on how many billboards there were, to which she inevitably replied with her tired story about potential legislative restrictions drowned in physical reminders of the inadequacies of the federal system. He let the story fade from the car and sink into the highway behind them.
He thought she was asleep, she supposed. By all accounts, she should have been, but she was enthralled by the mystery revealed to her by her failing sight. As the night faded around the tiny Acura (chipped and fading), she could see more and more of a man she had never met, but with whom she had always been in love. He was driving her in her car to her home through her territory, and he knew exactly what to do. Every movement he made was precise and quiet.
She couldn't see the scruffy beard or the oversize ears or the gangly arms or the overbite or the receding hairline. He was perfection in her mind, hearing even her fears about becoming her mother or losing the respect of her future and entirely speculative child. He had power and kindness. He had warmth and shelter. Her awareness of him grew to include the car that kept her safe and the future she was living with him and everything she wanted from him until, at two thirty in the morning, he carried her to the door and kissed her awake and whispered something just for her which we aren't allowed to hear.

11.2

He saw exiguous women like her with terrific teeth lounging their way through stores, always seeming to be standing in a doorway or elevator. Their clothes clung to them for fear of being left behind, somehow, out of the glow of her existence. Once, he saw seemed he saw her at a restaurant and thought to stay; he took a corner booth and bought an Irish coffee. The waiter looked at him hard. It was three in the afternoon and the glancing sun motes of sobriety illuminated his two-day stubble. She, in her loose mink, sat at a table in the seeming center of the room. Her bright red lipstick spoke volumes to the color of her soul, he thought. She drank nothing. She ate nothing. Her reason for being in the restaurant seemed only only to be drawing his attention. She didn't do anything for a half of a meagre afternoon hour, his impatience slowly deepening into wrath. This one wasn't his Caroline.
Two weeks later, he still hadn't shaved the hair that crept out of his skin like it was ashamed of being there. He coaxed himself into a coat and went to the library. There, in the regimented stacks about napoleanic and civil and world wars, he seemed to see her struggling with a book that was clearly too large for her. Her arms pulsed as she tried to pull the tome from between fourteen others compiled from scholars prone to overexaggerating just how much information was available about Little Big Horn. He slipped down an adjacent aisle and watched from between two books about Amazons. She took the book down and used her whole self to lug it over to a table, where she used it to prop up her Vogue so she could read without needing her hands for the task, leaving them free to manicure her perfect nails. He stood until a bookish man in brown twill passed him with three small children in tow. The smallest, a small brown blob of boy, looked askance at his voyeurism and he felt so much shame he took The Myth of the Amazon. He felt--so strongly--the opprobrious glare that even after the child was long gone, he checked the book out and read it within the week. That was the affect of her on his consciousness, that, looking at a woman who was not her and judged by a child, he read an entirely dry book about women who had this same affect on men.
It was three months after the last time he saw her that he finally cleaned his mane into a pleasant shape confined mainly to his face, set his jaw into a look of grim determination by means of a vise, and set out to meet destiny. He knew where he could find her. He had always known, of course, since the first time, but he wanted to be on his turf, among street vendors and blocky tenements overhung with windows like a face from myth. He wanted to be out where he felt the most of his power, the closest to Odysseus or Heracles, his minute heroism manifesting itself in Irish coffee and The Myth of the Amazon. He wanted to be in his place of power, but he slunk into hers. The tapestry of sound met him in the street outside. Had he missed showtime? Only by minutes. He could sneak in. Time. He was wrapped in it and sound and a woolen overcoat that was too worn at the edges. He pasted himself to the edges of the room and
in
through the door.
There she was, center stage, larger than life and smaller than he remembered. The door swung shut with a terrific hush, accented in his ears by the subito piano and the crecendo of his heart and the oppressive choking sound of a woman who sees the man she did not expect suddenly entering her performance hall. There she was: Caroline. Take her or leave her, there she was. He left her and the perilous strength she represented and walked to the nearest bar and ordered a stiff pint of Irish brown to drown his new mustache in.

11.1

There is a certain power in lying down and never intending to stand up again. Intending one's own death merely by willing one's self from reality betrays a mental stability and vigor not possible in the mentally ill. Thereby, succeeding, one proves that one need not succeed.

10.30b

[I now have two ideas for novels I will never finish because I am not a novelist. The first is, of course, Catherine. The powerful need I had to write what happens AFTER has now faded, but I feel some measure of responsibility for having brought her into the world, and I can say that I do still plan on finishing her. Maybe.]
[The second plan I recently realized in the form of a very short story which Janelle assumed to be about the perennial "she-demon" who haunts my blog, but which really is about the woman/idea of the waning harvest moon, which can be read here, on this blog. Now I've muddied the search terms, and all. The good news is that I want to write a book titled Medusa, but in which the story is actually something else which is only lent power and an "aha" moment by the title. I want to write a story about a woman on the edge of youth who fights to keep it and the people in her life who watch her denigrate herself and slowly calcify into one of those really terrible women you see in the supermarket who look like they want to be their daughters.]

These ideas, though grand and spectacular, will never garner me any acclaim. I play my cards too close to my chest. I never bet. I'm incomprehensible. My books will never be made.
I suppose that means that they'll never be burned.

10.30

[Seen on a post-it note of two layers, the second of which was obscured]

You're late. I love you. I have no idea.
(second note. second note. second note.)

10.29a

My future plans for this abominable fluid is to pray over it for the fluid itself to be transmuted from
At this moment I woke up and looked (really looked) at what I had just typed in a document about management techniques. My subconscious, battling with my mind, attempted a coup and I survived the attempt. Barely.

10.29b

This artery, which carried so much life and promise, is now dead. The ebb and flow of life has waned until no trace of the violent lifejoy remains to cake the edges of your heart.
When did your promise fade, you teratoid temptress? When did you lose your power to fascinate? When did you lose me, your most devoted fan?
I can tell you, you know. I can trace this all back to a single moment that made me lose my love for you.

The first time you looked at yourself, oh, vanity, that was when I hated you. The first time you knew just how captivating you were was when I noticed the first overtures of change. When you were self-centered, in love with yourself, afraid of losing your youth, that is when your heart turned to stone and I knew you couldn't love me as much as you love yourself.

When you looked in my mirror-bright shield, I learned to hate you.

10.27

Well, that's a poor argument. You have single-handedly argued your way from a federal republic to supporting a dictatorship led by a man with a twirly mustache. Good job.
-- is what I would have said, five minutes ago, before I stormed out.
Espirit d'escalier.

10.25

Mary Kingsley.
I am not afraid to name the evil who haunts my steps with the dogged determination of the devil. Instead, I name my evil mistress and she haunts me still.
Who said that admitting you have a problem was half the battle? I feel like they never met a problem like Mary Kingsley or the Mongol horde. Admitting you have a problem doesn't make it any more dead, which is what's killing me and Constantinople.
Mary Kingsley.
He must have been thinking of her when he wrote "I love her and I hate her. Don't ask why--it's how I feel, and it hurts." Catullus and I, we share more than we care to admit.
In vengeance, the next time I see her I will ignore her, break out in tears, curse her name, and beg her to take me back, though not necessarily in that order.

10.24

I am sick, tired, and exhausted but I can't go to sleep because I am so stressed.
Freaked out, I am. What why where guttural moans of agony pass my quivering lips.
Stop, God. Make everything go according to your plans. Make your plans in my favor, for I have no power of my own. I throw myself on you.
I know I run away or forget you more than I should, but you never forget me. Be with me now and give my soul peace. Don't let this demon torment me tonight.

Rest in him is promised. Give it me now.

10.22b

There's only enough love in me to drown in. Soft and melted by fear of the sun, it layers itself over your skin in golden, corpulent sheets. My hands sink in and I dig through for your skin. We sway to the rhythm of our heartbeats and the love of us rises up above our throats and falls down our throats.
I wish for the little death, but love reaches my eyeballs and seeps into my furthest memories. My hands are glued to yours. My eyes are locked on you. I ache, but love has hardened between us and locked us forever in a perfect embrace, neither sexual nor alone.
If the sun comes back, we can survive.

10.22

He grabbed the back of Angela's neck and pulled her in. The hot breath of the standing bus blew across the lover's ankles as Anglela was worked over like a well-written manuscript. He knew what he was doing, or so her friends said. He was a really good kisser. He knew what to do with his lips. Angela had no basis for comparison.

Shea walked by. Dan and Ted hooted. Marguerite pressed her nose against the glass. He looked really intent and then Angela remembered to close her eyes.
In the annals of history, it wasn't the worst first, but it was hers.

10.17

The most beautiful sight he's ever seen is his new wife walking back from the bathroom wearing his shirt, and he can vaguely make out the umbra of her waist eclipsing the lamp in the hall. Her celestial body moves slowly into a syzygous alignment between his eyes and the only light in the room, and as her shadow falls across his trembling stillness, he takes a shuddering breath.

10.15

I'm tired of always doing things that make sense. I think it's time to do something nonsensical just because it's the right thing to do.
--speaking of--
Have you ever kissed a man with a beard?

10.13

He put on a burst of speed and caught up to his quarry. Trip? Tackle? Shove? Grab? Drag?

Ask?

In that split second, he reached out his hands and tossed her fragile form to the ground. He took three steps to slow and turn: large, heavy steps crushing into the ground as his mass decelerates. He looks again at the girl he has just humiliated--for that is what she is, a girl-- and he sees her choke back her vehemence or humiliation. He slowly picks her up from the ground and she hangs in his large hands like a broken stalk, the beautiful petals scattering on the ground. She doesn't fight. She knows this moment has been coming ever since she started running.

(the slow crushing step of inevitability)

10.11

This morning at 8:09, 10/11/12, I felt no particular chill. Nothing special happened. No fanfare rang out.

10.10

Tintinnabula hang in a curtain across your doorway. It's impossible to get through silently, so every time someone enters your home, you know it. Visitors are announced with a tinkling chime. Friends are greeted with a cacophonous crush. Lovers are pulled through by their tie, bells muted and lovely by the blood rushing through your ears. But the sweetest sound of all is there for me alone to hear: the wind brushing the conical perfection of a hundred tiny bells together as I wait for you to come back and choose me.

10.9

I catch myself moving in her eyes. She blinks. The man who stared back out at me shocked me. I look deeper and deeper into the distorted reflection to see myself as she does. I'm hateful. I'm hateful because I don't value what she thinks.

It's not worth it.

10.8

Men constantly cry out about the terrible problem in gender relations: all women just like bad boys. When you look at things with a keen eye, there is some element of truth to the tale, though I'm sure I don't know why. And again, I'm just saying what I've seen. My ex-wife left me for a guy who had been in prison twice for possession, so maybe I've got a twisted view of it or maybe I'm dead on.
-
Oh, bologna. Simmons, what you have is not perspective. It's sado-masochism. Don't give me that eye. You know what I'm talking about.
-
What, her?
-
Yes. You're denying yourself happiness because you don't think you're worth the effort. You hide--let me finish--you hide behind this façade of "good guy/bad guy" impossibility in order to explain why you're denying yourself the pleasure of a good, hard
-
Don't be vulgar, Dan. Even you don't have to stoop to vulgarity. All I'm trying to do, and you know it, so shut up, is prove that men complain needlessly about women liking "bad boys." I merely used my own situation as a sort of postulate ergo quorum of some kind, though if it annoys you, I can dismiss the compelling evidence to deter your tenebrous accusations.
-
Oh, I didn't mean it like that. I just. . . forget it.
-
Can I get on with my point? I had something profound to say. I'll just be short about it. No poofery. Here's the thing: men complain that women like jerks, but women still haven't picked up on the secret male desire.
-
A great rack?
-
I said secret.
-
Oh. You mean--
-
I do mean. And either women don't care, which I find unlikely, or they don't know. And the worst of it is that even the men haven't figured it out. At least not why we look for it so explicitly.
-
Maybe it's seductive? Part of the appeal?
-
Preposterous, Simmons. Simply preposterous.
-
In any case, you can't use that as an excuse. She practically defines it. If they had a mould to cast, they would synthesize her an pour her into it to make sirens or succubi or Victoria's Secret models. You can't have any complaints there. She's just exactly as intoxicating as you like. Despite the hangover afterwards.
-
Yes, well. There's still the fact that I'm not a--
-
Vulgarity.

10.7b

I dont doodle, really. When I do, I must decide to do so ahead of time. What I do more often is compose things that never make it to print. Things like "His pendulous life was swinging surely towards something, but be it up or down, he knew not. His only sensation was of speed: massive and unmeasurable, barely tolerable, yet uncontrollably consistent."

10.7

Oh my gosh! It's Sunday!? Oh my gosh, it's Sunday. Thank you, week, for this unexpected reprieve.

10.6b

His fingers advance over the edge of the rock face and his eyes follow like obedient slaves. Just that--nothing else is visible. He blinks twice and disappears.

Gollum.

10.6

The creature in front of you was monstrous: limbs that were too long for its body, skin the color of a puss-filled boil, smooth like a worn stone, and naked from head to toe. The thing glistened faintly in the light, as if it were wet with some one else's sweat. It stood in a grotesque position, crammed into the corner of your room.
But.
The thing you noticed most and first and last about it were the eyes: too large for a human but intelligent and angry. The twitches in the corners tell you just how real it is. The eyes are black but for a single reflective hole in the center that glows iridescent red with the pulse of the thing's heartbeat in its retinal depths. The heartbeat increases one beat twobeats three until a single moment has passed and the thing--for it is not any man you've ever seen--scrabbles and screams and crushes the heels of its too-long hands into its too-large eyes and shrieks so loudly you dropped the match
which,
tumbling,
winks


out.

And in the instantaneous silence of the match hitting the floor, you thought you saw the last shadows swirling like creatures under command to the corner to clothe the thing in a concealing grimace of victory.

10.3

[If challenged to write a "how to" make a sandwich that is unassailable from any angle or loophole, I suggest the following as a final caveat:]
If all else fails, combine all ingredients in a bag, box, or other large, solid, impermeable container. Close. Shake. If evolutionists are to be believed, a proto-sandwichoid will appear within several billion years. Consume at your own risk. Enjoy!

10.2

She writes vertically, like a chinaman, to make her letters slant the right way. Every line returns her to the pinnacle. Every sentence slumps toward oblivion.

Left handed.

9.30

[The day doesn't turn over until I'm asleep. I wake up in two hours.]

Lonely, the monk trudges up snow-slammed ridges to come to his mountain home. Ascetic. Neophyte. Solitary. Dedicated. The poor monk, always a man. Never a woman. What woman chooses solitude for her spiritual and emotional healing, unless she's hiding in a crowd?

9.29

[I have made several changes to the blog. Things have gotten slightly snarkier in the sidebar (sorry for calling you sheeple; it was the thing to do) and I've added an annoying scrollthrough gif which has blown my mind for the last few months and I've been dying to do something with it. Tell me if you hate scrolling through it each time. I'll probably get tired of it after a month and shift it down or something.]

Can't I taste my own blood on my tongue? Or do I have to bite my tongue first?

I wish incorporeal mediums would stop giving me bad advice. I welcome you with apprehension, apparition, for apparently I'm apathetic.

Appropriate.

9.27b

The writer slips, rough-shod, on his sounds. He gives no care to the staves of the barrel of his words, looking only to whether or not the metaphorical wine stays put when it pours. And it never rains but it pours, does it? The sound of his tired cliché escaping him, he reels in, mock terror. "Oh no! What will Chuck Palahniuk or David Foster Wallace or Steig Laarson think of me now?" These masters of the public opinion, so far below me in their art, the art which we share at a breakfast table over toast after I slept in their beds and drooled on their pillows and found their secret stash of pornography (Meyers' trilogy) under their mattress, these I use to level my table when I have need.

9.27

I feel like a paper man.
I have a passion for cigarettes and origami, but the problem is I keep burning all of my square chunks. Those are the rolled-up pieces of me that I drag on and the smoke of my burning self fills my god-forsaken flat-as-ash lungs. Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly manic, I fold and fold until the edges of me are indistinguishable from the sides, and the sides from the front, and the front from a crane. These are the sweetest drug I know: filled with a toxic blend of self-loathing and as-it-were-egotistical-masochism disguised as megalomania of the richest kind, a Cuban cigar of constructed lies and me-angles protruding from a two-dimensional mouth.
And I am no one-note-or-trick-pony. I am two-dimensions, as wide as I am tall and as flat as I am thick. From the front, you almost can't tell I'm not real.

9.24

It has been exactly one month between writing things I like. Before that, a month. I have to be honest: I'm only inspired when a woman walks into the room.
Hard return.
Tab.
New paragraph.

9.22

[Disclaimer: the voice is not affected.]

She, walking so smooth
up
to the pulpit.
She, sliding so smooth
in
to awareness.
She, the target
(of every eye)
(of fluttering hearts)
(of surely crushing thoughts).
Her conscious choices augment (bloodflush lipstick black black eyes) her sexual attributes (thewaist thebreasts theheight thehair thepout theneck covered to see) and she sways her way to the front.
She, filling our hearts
with
envy or lust.
She, loving us all
for
loving her.
But--and the silence beckons us--her voice parts her lips and welcomes itself into the room. Breath. The only description for the crowd: holding it. Breath. The only description for her voice.
Her voice is all breath and moan, silvery smooth, sex and ice. It, slippery, slides to me and whets me.
The women all want
to be her.
The men all want
to have her.
If we deny it, we're lying. Her voice has us under her spell
filth in a holy place, sex in a sanctuary, flesh incorporeal.

9.20

I have never been afraid of you, but I am afraid of your tears, your heartache, your heartbreak, your doubt, and your sadness. I am afraid not of you but of hurting you.

Do I walk on eggshells, dainty like a thief?
Hell no.

9.18

[talk like a pirate day tomorrow, the 19th]

I drove away and a stranger met my eye. I turned a corner and he watched me go. I stepped on the gas and he decided I couldn't see him anymore. He ran at breakneck speed, like he was going to be locked out or left behind, into a building which wouldn't be locked for hours.
I felt voyeuristic, not for the first time today.

9.17b

[On Thursday, a young man died in his apartment. He wasn't found for twenty four hours. His parents want him cremated because he's a hassle. His friends worry that his parents are jerks.]

When I die, Katy gets all of my cameras, film, and picture frames on the stipulation that she hang enough pictures to warp the drywall.
When I die, Philip gets my passwords, accounts, and video games.
When I die, Brooke gets all my cooking equipment, even though she probably doesn't need it.
When I die, Mom and Dad get my car and any money in my bank, because all the expensive stuff I own is theirs anyway.
When I die, Josue Feliciano gets the rights to my plays for all time.
When I die, God gets my soul.

When I die, you get the blog. Print off your favorite and take it off the web. A daily endeavor is no place for the dead.

9.17

[No fiction today.]

I don't know if you knew me when I was younger, but I didn't understand anything about women. I thought they valued the same things as me, or that they wanted different things entirely. It depended on the day or on who was asking.
The first woman I ever complimented, I actually said she was sexually attractive. To her face, of course, because I'm not afraid. Not just like that, but almost as bad. Anyway, I thought it was a compliment. I wanted more than anything else for her to think I was attractive. So I told her that. Probably a mistake. I could ask her; I still have her number.
Or worse than that, the first girl I ever dated actually kissed me because I swung too far in the opposite direction. I was positive she didn't want to make out. One of my friends looked me straight in the eye and said "Robby I bet she wants to go out in the woods and make out." I scoffed then, because that was before I realized that women do, in fact, have a libido. Some are worse off than me, I hear. I only hear, because what woman would attack me I don't know. I'm a big guy and I'm singularly scritchy.

So we've established that I'm clueless. A girl I like hangs out with me for months, probably waiting for me to have the chutzpah to ask her on a date, and I keep postponing. Finally, I ask her and she has a date with a guy that weekend or whatever. Great, ok. It's over. It's high school. Not like I'm going on a ski trip and her parents are volunteering to chaperone so she comes along too and the two other people on the trip back out last minute. We stop by her cousins' house and I'm such a non-entity at this point that I'm actually allowed into the building. I don't know how much her dad knew, but I assume he knew I liked his daughter. She and I are talking, unsupervised, in the room where she's going to sleep, because it's assumed that she could cut my throat with my own fingernails if worse came to worse. It's only now, a full year after my disastrous attachment to her, that I learn that she has had a string of boyfriends as long as my arm and not all of them nice. The first was a total dirt-sucking goat humper, and he did a number on her. She's been looking for a man to distract her from her memories ever since, and I was not that guy. I now know more about her when she doesn't care about me than I ever did when we were a thing.
We go to the mountain. I feel more and more like I'm in the way, and I'm incredibly apologetic. Get this: she tells me I say "I'm sorry" too much, so I apologize. She teaches me to snowboard. I get pretty good, but it wears me out. She and her parents go up the mountain one last time, and I head down.
Two hours later, I get a call from her parents saying that she flipped off the track into the woods and possibly broke her spine. They're all in the hospital and want to know if I'M ok. I apologize. My life turns into a short story with a tragic twist and I'm alone in an apartment with all of her things on her family's vacation and I'm so apologetic that it sickens her and so I apologize for who and what I am and for that I cannot change to suit her because I would and I just want her to know that.

She's with a man who is perfect for her now, and nobody but I remembers the trip to the snow and how terrible I was at reading women.
It's simple, really. Women want the same things as men want, just totally different (depending, of course, on the day or on who is asking.).

9.16

In my dream, I'm just a delivery man, bringing bodies to be interred. I flip my truck off the road and have to proceed through the graveyard itself. Mary and the Reaper are fighting in a sepulcher, but he abandons the fight to chase me.

I'm not metaphorically anything. I just needed the money.

9.15

[Hadley tweeted an article that does me no good. It was about male impulses to want a perfect woman: a woman intelligent, funny, independent, dependent, and strikingly beautiful. It chastised men for high standards and attempted to redirect their penchant for beauty. I don't need this article because mentally, I realized that fact years ago. It's just that my water witching has yet to catch up with my brain.]
[Another thing: the article said men think that the woman should be smart, like, really smart, but not so smart as to make the man feel stupid. I want to admit that I have felt stupid before for mistakes and overconfidence, but no one has been able to MAKE me feel stupid for years. Either I shrug it off (that's just not something I've learned yet), or I remember that I exceed them in areas (they don't know as much about survival as I do), or I can comprehend the science, math, programming, psychological phenomenon, or whatever they're explaining, so it doesn't matter that they knew it first: I know it now. The only way I can think of to make me feel really stupid is thefind a kid who exceeds me in intelligence (given his/her limited experience, a greater scope of knowledge would humble me).]

In short, I am not smart. I'm just wise in this one thing, and I hope I can communicate it to you. Don't base your self-worth on how much you know, because there will always be someone out there who knows more than you.

9.14b

I turn Face away from terror and join Arms with destiny, Legs running.
Can't I vent my Spleen somewhere without fear and doubt, let my Voice stretch up towards fate? Or am I condemned to crush Fists and Ribs in a never-ending dance?
Fly away, metaphor. You've gone too far.

9.14

I can't help but think that he's not up there for God; he's up there to impress us, prove that he's better than us, sway our minds and hearts in his favor. We love him, and he moves us. We respond like a shudder, the crowd shaking with desire, whether sexual or spiritual or pathological--a disease we can't shake--I don't know. It's my ignorance that fuels my belief that he wants us to love him. He's actually a star and we worship him. He's actually a cultist and we follow him to death. He's actually Eve, and we, as Adam, follow his fragrant, enticing, valuable form through the jungle of the crowd, pushing closer just to hear his words.

He extends to us damnation and we see only heaven. Is it he or we who bear the shame?

9.12

My friend Steinburg once famously said that mankind is not happy getting what it wants. Any attempt to pry into his meaning was thwarted by his inability to communicate with beautiful women. Alas, I think that may have been his point.
Yesterday, Michelle came over to my house with her girls. Her girls played with my girls while we girls played. Soon, irresponsibility could be heard ringing through the house.
You see, Steinburg is a pediatric dermatologist. All Day, all he sees is terrible skin conditions and cancer and rashes and reconsctructive facial scarring in the shape of half a crescent moon dripping down a nine-year old's cheek like a silvery tear. You would think that he would come home to his completely normal, healthy-looking girls who have no melanonchia, adiposis dolarosa, dermatitis, genodermatoses, chronic infantile neurologic cutaneous and articulate syndrome, or racquet nails, you would think, and you would think that he would burst with joy to see them rosy pink and happy, but Steinburg didn't even want children, I think. He just went along with it because it makes his wife happy.
Get this: Michelle is just crushed by the state of their marriage. If she could escape, she says she would. I think she's in love with my husband, But I can't prove it. Everytime her husband comes up in conversation, she turns to me and spouts off some garbage about how lucky I am and how she would trade places with me in a heartbeat. It's all hogwash anyway. She's just tired of him coming home and vegetating I front of the television every night.
Steinburg has a hard life, of course. I know he does. His work is overwhelming. His wife is oppressive. His children are a disappointment. You know, I'm frankly surprised that he's doing as well as he is, all things considered. I mean, his daughter--
That poor girl. She's got such distracted parents. Her father didn't want her, her mother wanted her to be wanted by her father so her father would want her mother. But that's not how babies work in a splitting marriage. The baby is used by spouse against lover and nothing gets resolved or closer. That poor girl. This summer, she started having trouble adjusting to school. That's how her mother put it. Two years in and now she can't adjust. I don't question it because it's not my place. But now the poor girl chooses--chooses, mind you--to starve herself. You don't understand. She won't eat anything. She was always a picky eater, but her mother made sure to enforce a solid dietary regimen. It's just now that she's old enough to make decisions, she has decided to not eat. The parents have made a choice to feed their darling daughter through a tube. Maybe now that the girl is in school again after the summer, she'll eat because she wants the feeding tube out.
Anyway, Steinburg is a nice guy. Wife, kids, home in the suburbs, well-paid job with people who rely on him. What I wouldn't give to be him.

Ah, well. We can't always get what we want.

9.10

The bug ate through my stomach, you see. That's why I leaked acid on your floor; I really didn't mean to. I would lean down to wipe it up but I think we both know it's for the best if I don't. Sorry.

Oh, that's alright. I don't usually hug. Or wear suits. You know, minor inconveniences.

Oh, I haven't been allowed on public transportation for years. I'm classified as a biological weapon in sixteen states. It's been hard because my mum lives so far away now, but what are you gonna do, you know?

Anyhow, I'll let you finish mopping that up in peace. I can feel a burp coming on so I think I'll make my way on down to the bathroom. Thanks for the lovely party.

9.9

[Consider this found poetry.]

We were guilty - w4m - 48 (Red Bank)

Date: 2012-08-22, 1:23PM EDT

I know you won't see this but that's ok at least I can get it off my chest. I miss you terribly and yes I guess we are both guilty of the same thing. I would be lieing if I said I regretted it because I don't. I'm trying really hard to get my life in order. When I do, and everything has straightened out, can I call you then? 
If you know who you are all you have to do is respond with where we were. I'll understand. 

The Pretenders - m4w (Where you left me)

Date: 2012-08-28, 11:14AM EDT

We didn't really love each other. We both know that. We pretended to just so we wouldn't feel so guilty. It was a game and we both played it well. We knew there would be no winners, and we both knew it would end bitterly. It was fun while it lasted though. There's no denying that.

We made each other feel good. We made each other happy. We each provided the other with a temporary escape from our little self made prisons. We knew it wouldn't and couldn't last. We each wanted so much more than the other could ever give. We knew the hurt was coming, but we also knew it was worth it.

You can't appreciate pleasure without knowing pain.

I know we didn't want to hurt each other, but we were reckless. We let ourselves get in too deep. We started resenting the fact that what we had was only a fantasy. The times we had together were always so rushed. When we would part company, the real world was waiting for us. I would look forward to seeing you again, but it was with mixed emotions. I wanted you and I needed you, but I hated myself for letting my feelings get all twisted up like that.

There was no way we could have done the things we did and not get emotionally involved. We were both starving for affection and intimacy. We both needed to be needed and to feel wanted. I just wish we hadn't hurt each other as much as we did. The damage is irreparable. I miss you and still think of you quite often. I hope your life is going well and that you are truly happy. I'm sorry that I hurt you. I know that we really didn't love each other, that we were just pretending, but it was close enough.

both guilty - w4w

Date: 2012-08-23, 12:36AM EDT

Might want to rethink saying yes when you have a wife and she knows that it's you posting on here. Or you better hope she keeps you. 

Re: Both Guilty - m4w

Date: 2012-08-22, 2:44PM EDT

Its a Yes and A Thank You with tears Running down my face, I won't bother you anymore 

[It's found poetry because I've taken the liberty of rearranging the timeline. If you want it unarranged, it goes one, four, three, two. Source. You're welcome, I think..]

9.9

Another dream.
Trapped by a neigh unkillable man whose reckless behavior is sure to doom us all, my wife and I crawl through his plans to nibble at the wiring. Luckily, our enemy is vainglorious and megalomaniacal, so he keeps us around. I'm running to the Egyptian room to look for the knife that can kill him; they're commonly put in crypts. My wife found the last one. Our enemy identified it. I realized its importance because, you see, this knife can kill ghosts. I look for a burial knife but I only have thirty seconds. I run back out to the hallway, wife trailing. He can't catch us in the egyptian room. He's oblivious, but he's not stupid. He can put two and two together. My wife looks puzzled, though. Wait! I never told her what I know--that the knife can kill ghosts and cut dreams to ribbons, can sever a metaphor and carve apart a memory. I've got to tell her; she can look while I occupy his attention. He sees only me as a threat because he's a man, but I married a clever woman who can save us all. I turn to tell her

Fresh morning air. Perhaps the dream will come back. But I doubt it.

9.8b

Slip out of the brief confines of your life, my dear. Join me in sweet eternal bliss. Meet me in rapture and we can have heaven together to explore. All you need is love you haven't got. So get.

9.8

I awoke this morning with a head full of dreams. I was a woman in therapy. I was with dad, trying to resolve a woman's problems. I was with Philip and Katy, trying to explain why he wanted to live off campus next semester with his wife. I was an old man giving a young man as good as he got. I was the young man, driving through the South African countryside. I was in a commercial for the vehicle I drove. I was the young woman, trying to overcome the deep psychological trauma of her past.
I think she was the woman from the first part of my dream. Then, she was in a self-help group with two others. The moderator was omnipresent. The other woman was young and irresponsible. The young man was attractive and funny. We both wanted him. The other girl dressed more provocatively to get him. I didn't, but I thought about it. Seriously, I did, and as soon as the thought crossed my mind that I could own him--so completely--just by being a sexual object, I was revulsed. I was so disgusted by myself that the dream itself took another shape and I became me to run through six other dream shapes and finally come back to her, standing in the South African heat in a sun dress, following her spirit guide through a stream. Why is she third person? She/I walked down a twisting path past a singing capuchin And to the stream. The path became a metaphor for my psyche and underwent tortuous convolutions until it corkscrewed under the water itself. My feet stuck to the path and my spirit guide yelled that I needed to hear the water in my own life. I yelled back--

"I don't mind hearing the water, but do I have to see it as well?"

I dissipated as I awoke, but I could still remember how dirty I felt at having my body be a weapon and how it felt to have that body turned against me by society and my subconscious. The worst part of it was that I was a subtle weapon: the young man would have believed himself to be making the decisions rationally. Anyone who looked at me would think the thoughts I gave them, even me. I didn't realize my image had done this to myself until three sentences ago.

9.7

"Good morning," I grumble, flinging my coat into the deep recesses of her office.
"Yes, what do you need?"
"You, I suppose. But you won't give yourself to me because I won't to you."
I watched her stand up, all ice and business. "It sounds like you have my half of this relationship all figured out."
"Yep."
"So tell me, do we work out in the end?"
"It depends."
"Does it? I was under the impression that you were leaving my office."
That was when I forgot my coat. Don't worry. She'll mail it to me or something.

9.5

I can't say I enjoyed it, but I watched it. Well, you know. I was on a date. Yes, all the stuff that goes with the territory: she was draped all over me, we gasped in the scary bits, laughed in the funny bits, and left feeling bigger and older than when we went in. What was it about? Quite frankly, if I admit that I paid attention, I will look like I've failed. Thanks, though.

Oh?
Yeah, we're out again tomorrow night. Perhaps then, I'll remember what the film was about.

9.3

Augenbite of inwit. Conscience. The pangs of remorse. Guilt.

Well, I didn't really start out with the intent of killing a man, but he disrespects me in front of my boys. What am I supposed to do, stand aside? Not happening. So they beat him up. I get the last shot but there's nothing left; a bag of wheezing bones. So I kicked him, hard, in the side. I figure I can't do any more damage than they. So he had broken ribs and I punctured his lung. He spent the last few minutes of his life drowning on air.

Do I regret it? No. But I regret being caught.

9.2

[I started writing a serious blog post about my serious thoughts. I started writing a sketch for 4109. I started a new show. I can't seem to finish anything. Here's my problem: I have nothing I feel particularly burdened with. How about you? Have you ever woken up one morning and found yourself blasé? Did you, as I, find yourself to be trivial? Am I talking into the void, or am I talking to Janelle, Ashley, intermittently Paige, Ali, Kyle, Katy, Alyssa, and mum? Is Amanda still around? Why is Kyle the only male who reads my blog with anything approaching interest? Do men read anymore? Can I not write for a typical male viewpoint? How many more questions can I write before you get fed up with reading them in the same uptic tone at the end? Two? Am I irrelevant?]
[I read Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth recently. I would italicize that but I'm on my phone. Count this as apology for the other twenty tons I've done the same thing within recent memory. Back to Jimmy. It's an incredibly dense graphic novel with visual themes and consistent metaphors the likes of which the comic medium has not before (nor since) seen. Peaches? I still haven't figured it out. It left me as lost as Akira, and made me feel more inadequate because at least I could rationalize getting lost in Akira's scope, or its foreign mindset, or hope that the key to its release was lost in the translation. Back to Jimmy, and hopefully my point. Jimmy Corrigan was about making you feel, inch by inch, the same gripping weightlessness that grips Jimmy every day. But see I didn't need any help. Apparently the thing they don't tell you is that when your life goes too high, too fast, you stall out and fall. Weightlessness follows when you're falling faster than the earth can drag you past your surroundings.]
[Today, and I suppose for a while now, I have felt weightless. I'm going to ask for it tomorrow. I will ask God for it, and the people I hope can deliver it. If they can't, then I guess I'll ask God again. If he won't, I'll be satisfied and write about falling again on the blog. Hope to see you then.]

I know what terminal velocity feels like. You don't have to prejudge me like I'm some sorority girl out for her first walk of shame. I've been around the block. I know where the kinks are in the system. I've fallen four miles on ten separate occasions and I've never had the chute misfire at the bottom.
Find your trust. Find your center. If you don't, I'll pull your chute myself.

[I guess.]

9.1

"Margaret, what brought us to this point? Was it the grilled cheese I had for lunch, or was it the metaphysical decisions forced upon me in my formative years? Do the decisions that we make have any effect on our lives, or do the contents of our stomachs rule our days?"
"What's your point, John?"
"I feel trivial. Oddly so. I want to figure out if it's reasonable."
"You've kissed me, John. On the mouth. Now you tell me you feel trivial?"
"I suppose so. I hadn't drawn a connection between the two."
"Well?"
"I suppose that was a mistake. I apologize."
"The kiss, or the disregard?"
He took a long, thin whiff of her perfume, because he knew it would be the last time he smelled it.
"Both."
He was right.

8.31

I'm slipping on my tired but I'm not sleepy. There's so much tired it's actually oozing from my skin, but I can't drift off. I'm writing a blog post about myself, but I'm not egotistical.

But alas, I inverted two truths and a lie.

8.30

"Kiss me and poison my dreams. Shy away and poison my life. I don't even drink coffee, so stop inviting me to."

He sent that text to me last night at three am. Either he was drunk, or he really loves me. Now, I have two options, neither good. I respond, like a good person, who has nothing to prove, or I ignore the text with so much force that it ceases to exist on this plane of existence.

I threw my phone into the lake because I love him too.

8.29

The blade was only difficult on the way in; it moved gratingly and with much effort. He had to throw his arm behind it, and the reverberations shook his teeth. But the pull--oh, the pull. It was like the flourish on a well-practiced signature. The blood hung lazily in the air when it roiled from the point. His arm swung wide at full extension. The pull was his favorite part of a knife.

Of course, his victim felt the opposite feelings. Suddenly, a hollow ache and a thumping pressure as the blade penetrated, but a sharp sting and a heartbeat's pause when it left.

If he had taken the time to think, he could have written poetry about the pull that would seduce even the hardest of women, before they knew it was his love song to a knife.

8.28b

I'm still young and vital. Blood fires from the piston of my heart. Muscles rise, taut like bowstrings.
But she walks in, a whisper of a shadow of my former future life, the possible woman I might have seen. She's like an empty hourglass when the last time I saw her the first grains began to flow. She's like seeing the fully-laden apple tree though when I turned around, she had just blossomed. She's like a woman I used to love, but I look up and here she is, twenty years and two children later, acting like a mother in the firy autumn of her life, made more beautiful by the knowledge of birth, fear, and love.
I'm still in the power and crush of my youth, the spring and the fertility of a young bull who snorts at death and charges. I can have and want anything that I see, but I can't want her. Her eyes bore into me and bleach my bones in the half-light of her waning harvest moon.

Yet--I can't help thinking that I'd have her if I could.

8.28

The longer I wait, the more my legs itch to be up and about. I long to be vital. I yearn to pick up a spear and run through the woods, shadows playing on my ragged hair, wind bringing the scent of certainty to my prey. And then, I can drive my blade between ribs and through organs, out the skin and dripping blood. Lines leave me feeling cramped and oppressed. Collected with the press of humanity, I stand, trembling in the gates with a race to run.

8.26

[Mary Sues fill a vital spot in the wish fulfillment fantasies of the person who writes them. I know this because I have intimate knowledge of this process. I have done it myself, on occasion.]
Robby was tall and crushingly present everywhere he went. Nobody was afforded the opportunity of missing him in a crowd.
[When I was younger, I wandered the field at home, telling myself stories and acting them out. I was trying to figure out who I would be and what I would act like when I got older. Believe it or not, I can draw a few incredibly strong parallels between my core character traits and the stories I made up about myself.]
When he was twenty or so, he noticed his latent powers. He kept his prowess hidden until his birthday, when his whole family was gathered in celebration of him. That day, Robby stood up and stretched his gorgeous fiery wings to soak up the sun and his family's shock. The thin skin stretched over rattling bones and filtered out all but the blood orange light of a deep sunset.
[But wish fulfillment is that, and no more. No one can claim that their personal fantasies have worth to humanity. If they do, the value is purely accidental. No, the activity of a Mary Sue is not literature. It is creativity for an audience of one. Sadly, when one bores of one's own story, there really is nowhere left to go.]
When Robby left town, he left a him-shaped hole in the heart of all the women and children. Grizzled men shed tears for his future.

8.25

Bill flicks his boogers at girls. He's not slow, exactly, but he just doesn't click, exactly. They hate him, but he's my friend. What am I supposed to do?

8.22b

[I find myself increasingly turning to impressionistic word pictures that paint something unimaginably microscopic and invite the reader to explore on their own time or discard the work as worthless. But that word--"work"--is used wrongly. These take no work for me. I put no effort into writing them. I say nothing with their creation. I provide no answers. I fill no gaps. I'm not adding to humanity's sum total, I'm merely commenting on it.

That, I believe, is stagnation. America is filthy with it. Our incessant self-parody has come to a point where sometimes even "original" works are still parody. Mockumentaries and referential humor are so pervasive that they are sometimes used as the only crutch of an intellectual property.

Perhaps it's my energy levels since camp started--I have been feeling sluggish. Perhaps it's my attention span--I can't play one video game all the way through. Perhaps it's the drive for the work--I have no questions for the universe, so I have no reason to write. Perhaps I just had a lapse. I do that, sometimes. I think I'm allowed.

All this aside, the one thing I must not allow myself is the luxury of ease. Socrates is widely respected for his rhetorical method of asking questions to advance a conversation. But take careful note: Jesus is respected for his astute answers to real-life questions. When I stop adding to the conversation, I am only (I must repeat stringently--ONLY) obfuscating someone else who is doing actual good.]

I pick up the typewriter from the desk and trudge the twelve miles to the sea in the pouring rain. The Atlantic blows back in my face as I set the machine down on a log. Salt water tears whip past my face and I spool a new sheet into the slot prepared for it. Crack your knuckles, sir, and begin to type. Can I claim to know what I'm typing any longer? The ribbon is so old that it slips into a wet goo as it is stripped from itself in the pulley. My slapping at the keys produces nothing but small, irregular holes in the paper. I take pleasure in the roar of the surf, the stinging slap of fat water drops, the mechanical absolutism of the typewriter keys, and the next round bell of every return. I take so much joy in the small things, but the writing has become unimportant to me now.

8.22

Dear mother, forgive me. The therapist says I have a fixation, which perhaps explains why I haven't talked to you since that wholly unremarkable Tuesday on the twentieth of April, 2003. I barely remember.

8.18

Marshmallows. I've built my kingdom of them, and now the fire threatens to destroy all my work. Soon, a thick slime will spread over the heaths and heathers, moors and mountains, woods and wilds, glades and glens (though they're the same thing), vales and . . . valleys (the same thing again? I'm running out). . . and all topographical structures in between.
The land will be whitewashed by sugarslides. Animals both great and small will be caught in stasis, struggling futilely to escape my hubris. Moose will bray wildly to their partners, ten feet and an impossibility away. Rabbits will be moored to a spot, and the hawk who tries to fly away with an easy prey will find his pinions slowly and furtively ripped away by the bubbling goop. The wolf will waste away within sight of nutriment. Porcupines will fill their quills with the sugary concrete. Platypus will lay their eggs to die in the crush. Pandas will never find a bamboo shoot again. Capybara--but you get my point.
Many a youngster will gorge themselves on the feast, first with hands, then with shovels. Soon, they, too, will be trapped (by obesity, the greedy pigs). Diabetics will die of shock. Everybody else will become diabetic.

Marshmallow will be everywhere.

Soon, the world will suffer a second ice age because the white of the marshmallow will reflect all sunlight directed at it. The sea levels will drop as all the water freezes to the mallow shell, trapping everything underneath. The goo will freeze and form an immobile second crust, preventing all movement of the earthy crust below. The friction and force exerted by the tectonic shift will be forced through volcanic rifts, and a quaternary crust over the earth, mallow, and ice. A googol of years shall pass, and yet life will not bloom anew. Aliens will drill for core samples and find their drills gummed up. The earth will simmer and die.

I will be the cause of the apocalypse.
I'm sorry.

8.16

Someday, mom, I'll climb the bony mountain peak and meet with God. Soon, dad, I'll prepare my mind and body for the hike. Tomorrow, pastor--maybe, or the next day. I'll just postpone until the weather looks right. I'll just put it off until I've got a break in my schedule. And then I'm off like you haven't seen. Nothing can stop me.

8.15

Within the tight concentric rings of her tattoo lies just one more truth: nothing is ever what you want. I turn her over, looking for the center, the bull's eye, the widening vortex, the tantalizing inscription, and all I find is more skin. Sometimes, I forget to look without an end in mind.
[I started this and all I could think was how much I wanted to use the phrase "Within the tight concentric rings"]

8.14

Her breath tickles my ear. I mean, it's nice to be reminded that she's alive every few seconds, don't get me wrong. But I can't laugh about it because the baby is on my chest and she's by my side. I suppose we did save a lot of money by taking a single bed, but it means I'll never sleep again.
"Illyena," I whisper.
The brief breaths belie her awareness of my words, so I whisper more.
"When we arrive--when we find somewhere to live, I mean--you know, and I've got a job and things are looking up, I want . . . "
A brief snore teaches me the truth. She's been asleep all along. Well, I still want a bed like this in America, no matter how rich we become. I want to remember where we came from and how much love we have right now.
Her arm snakes up over me and lands on my hair. I close my eyes and picture better times ahead.
Her breath tickles my ear.

8.13

The Totally Delicious took a bite from the Completely Absurd. The Totally Delicious wasn't always as mean as it is today, but there were always inklings of it around the edges of its personality. Hearken back to the first time you saw it in the royal menagerie and you'll remember the chilling sensation that ran down your spine. At the time, of course, you were young and naïve, and you suspected that your chill was from meeting something so violently alien. Though "alien" betokens something otherworldly, which this certainly isn't. If you'd thought about it, it was your familiarity which bred contempt. But I digress.

Agree with me now; we should have put the Totally Delicious away when we had the chance. We should have taken it into the smallest holding pen we have and merely barred the gate, closed the door, and taped shut the air holes. Let it waste away with no chance of escape. But we didn't. We never do.
Think back to the Personally Unfriendly. Do you remember what you said to me then? "It deserves to live," you said. "We shouldn't be the arbiters of eternity," you said. "Let fate decide," you said. Can you dredge up a memory of Harmful? What about Destructive? Loathsome? These and many more all look like Unspeakably Happy and Tittilated and Noticeably Pleased, but they aren't. Underneath each one lurks a dark heart. Once you realized that, you were quick enough to cloister them, but you visit them often enough that they might as well be free.
No, Totally Delicious is your fault. You need to realize that not all evils are so obvious as to be visible at first pass.
Next time, you should be able to toss out a Delicious, no matter how Total.

8.11b

Trembling, fluttering, ragged--a single word flies from her lips with the tearing sound of a thousand women's hearts. "Animal!" she screams. The sound rips through my paper ego.

There's more to the story, but it's then that I died.

8.11

The woman walking past me in the cross walk is the only thing I see for five seconds. Her hair is perfect. Her dress is perfect. Her posture is perfect. Her makeup is perfect. She's beautiful and she's looking at the ground.
I can't blame her; this whole city stinks of the breath of a million dying people, each as ready to stab you and take your things as they are to shake your hand. She won't make eye contact from whatever self-preservation instinct is left after the requisite desensitization of every city dweller. She's no different from her neighbor.
But that's what makes me wonder. She passes me and I'm finally free to look somewhere else. The German couple staring at their map, the Asian businessman checking his watch, the Mediterranian transvestite checking the Knicks scores all have this in common: they won't meet my eyes. The postman. The off-duty cop. The street vendor. They won't look at me. They won't look at anyone.

So why, for God's sake, did this women get so dressed up to go out on the town and be ignored?

8.5

I'm broken; my main motivator snapped off sometime in the night. I've been drifting, cold, in the black. Hours later, you find me and call me yours, take me home, patch me up, soothe my wounds.

8.4

Soft, like the inside of a banana peel. Hard, like the weight of a bear.
Loose, like the hug of an alzheimer's patient.
Cold, like the floor in the morning.

Metaphor, like you don't usually see.

7.31

The wet fabric sticks to our skin and eliminates the benefit it brings at hiding our nudity. When wet, it acts like a nothingness that only changes our color.
Ashley hangs her head and turns away from me, but I can't understand why. She's so open with her body during the day, but now that we're standing in the rain late at night yelling at each other, her power is gone and the thin shirt that splits to her bosom is no longer sufficient armor against my eyes.
As we stand in the downpour and break up, I systematically crush her self worth as we stand, essentially naked, and kill each other in our minds.

[I dislike this post but I wrote it and I'm done]

7.29

If I were more like that lost puppy, could I get some attention from you, dad? I know we only kept it for a week but you fed it and washed it and taught it to fetch. In a week, you gave more to that dog than you gave to me.

If you need me to, I'll put on a fur coat. Would that work, dad? Would it?

7.27

[This one scares me but it begs to be written somewhere]

Her dress screams at me. It's bright red, to match her lips. It accentuates the way she stands, to emphasize her sexual attitude (every head tilt, eye flick, hand wave, leg spread, breath heave has an edge of lust to it). Everything about her begs me to seduce her and pull her into a dark room and sound out her farthest reaches like a cartographer seeing new land for the first time, and it's begging to be mapped out with skillful fingers that yearn to memorize every bay and promontory, every soaring height and gaping crevasse. Her dress screams at me and the sound of the room is deafening.
I can't approach her because I'm rooted in place by this ghastly premonition of our frenzied coupling. She looks at me and all I can see in her smile is a post-coital drowsiness that she can't seem to shake while I wish I knew how to smoke because perhaps that's what you should do after you have the only sex worth having. The only sex worth having walks towards me and asks me a question but really all we're speaking is words. She's like a wolf on the prowl, not only dangerous for what she is but for what she represents: a slew of sexual partners she tracked and cornered and crushed. She can see in my frantic expression that she caught me, and I can see in her smoky stare that it's not me she wants, but everyone.
Hold on to that thought, and it will save you. She doesn't want me, she wants everyone, and even if everyone in the whole world gratified themselves somehow instantaneously through her person, she still wouldn't be happy because it can't fix her brokenness. She wants to not be lonely, and she sets the only snare she can. Hark yourself and you can hear the whistling of a hundred thousand catcalls from a multitude of men. Here stands Venus, waiting to be filled, not with anxious cartographers or trembling wolves, their tables turned, but to be filled with a love from she knows not where.

She needs the love of a deity and the love of herself, but she does not need to be here anymore. Sadly, I'm not going to be the one to tell her because I'm too busy imagining what her legs would feel like inside my thighs.

Please don't judge me. She was asking for it.

[that feels SO BAD]

7.15

Someday I want to be famous, but I want all the upsides: constant adoration from screaming millions, unquestioning acceptance of my ideas, actions, and values, and gifts from important people. The only problem is that I'm not willing to take the downsides: screaming hate, blind rejection, cold shoulders.
I think, to be famous, I would have to sell my personal life, inhibitions, and integrity, all for a temporary sort of happiness.

7.14b

I turn most of the way around in my seat to face her, but she's already talking to someone else. I show up where she's at but she won't pay attention to me. I call her name and all she says is hello.
I thought she was the one who liked me. Now she wants me to chase her? I'm not playing that game. I'll tell her the truth, that I like her, that I expect her, that I want her. If she walks away again, you know I'm done.
[I wish this were me. So I'm writing it so it will be me. Sadly, I'm the sort of schmuck who will chase anyway, eventually wrapping my entire self worth in whether or not she finally chooses me, and inevitably getting crushed when she thinks I'm too clingy. And I know I'm this type because when I had a relationship in which I didn't have to chase, I was lost. Thanks, life.]

7.14

I'm walking backwards, hoping to end up a mile ahead. It's an odd sensation, retreading old ground. It's like visiting an enemy or dating an ex. It's a product born of forgetfulness and eagerness, lost items and lost hearts, a willingness to go forward but an inability to go.
So I've turned my back on the path and now I let my feet wander back down the familiar country lane in the hopes that I can pick up what I'm missing and fly again.

7.11

Triple flip with a half rotation, land and break your bottleneck. All the joy and peace flow freely now congestion's gone.
Single flip on a stable surface, land and keep on walking. You'll never see the dark side until you've lived once in the sun.
No flips, you're normal normal. I would tell you all my stories but you wouldn't find them fun.

7.9

He suggested a fling, but is that really the best choice? He'll leave me alone and cold at exactly that moment in my life when I need warmth and strength by my side. I could kiss him to make him happy, but I can only suppose it would be at the expense of myself.

[an exposé on selfishness]

7.8

I'm waiting for a him to text me back. It's not thrilling because he's a he, necessarily (I would never admit it, anyway), but because he is him and I love that about him.

Buzz, you stupid mechanical torture device. Tell me someone cares.

7.7

I can't open my heart any wider or the bugs would flock in, drawn to the smell of searing flesh. It's the end of a life, you say, but it doesn't mean anything to me. Mine is just beginning. What you see in me (hurt, pain, trouble) is just the birthing pains of a new man. What you call problems are what I call complications: I'm a breach birth and I'm far too large. The caesarean must be performed from the inside, with fingernails. So no, I can't let you in to my heart. The crack is all you get. Put your eye against it and peer in like a voyeur, I'd you dare. All you'll see is a me, trying to escape.

7.4

The Internet is an easy place to get a feel for a person. Some people don't have any pictures of themselves online. Some people post compromising photographs of other people. Some people post so rarely that you worry they're dead. Sometimes, those people have the most comment activity of all--and never a conversation, mind you. Just hordes of admiring followers and one attention-craving child.

7.3

When a great man dies, only one thought can go like electricity through the minds of those who hear.
I wish I had known him better.

Such I thought with Ray Minner.
I can but hope some will think the same for me.

7.2b

Today, she walked by, and I smelled a memory, bittersweet and choking. I smelled another woman, traveling with me to Colorado two months after I asked for her love and was rebuffed. I smell a woman sleeping in the sun with her hair draped over my chest, not listening to me talk to her. I smell another woman, running to me because I'm in between her and her future, and at least I'm not her past.

I smell the few women I've found attractive, but I smell it when someone totally new walks by. Is it that they all shop at the same store? Do they use the same soaps? Perfumes? Shampoos? Do all women just smell the same?
I refuse to believe it. I refuse, because I still want to forget.

7.2

She doesn't like walking in graveyards. Does that ruin it?
She's afraid of making mistakes. Does that ruin it?
She's young and stupid. Does that ruin it?

She doesn't want a relationship. That ruins it.

6.30

Roger lifted his eyes, just for that brief second when he knew she would be walking by. Then, he lowered them again. Why waste the energy?
She wasn't just beautiful (although for him, she was a libido explosion, a self-control catastrophe, a lovely miracle), she was mysterious. That very quality of unknown is what drew him to her like a moth to flame. That impenetrable question is why he stared every time she was around.
Roger was, therefore, unprepared for what came next. Possibly because his eyes were down (what's the point) and possibly because he could never figure her out (could anybody?) but she sat down to talk with him. Him, of all people.
They had a lovely conversation about their present and avoided talking about their past. It was like everything was fixed. Solid ground. He decided to risk it, to ask a question, ever so subtle, about something she talked about THEN.
"Roger, it's not time for that."
Shut down, cold. That's fine. He never expected more, but with her, he couldn't know. But he wanted to go back, to relive, to try. If he had a time machine, single use, go and come back (try and change one thing about your past) he would go to himself that cold day in February and convince himself that the feeling would pass, he would be fine, don't make that mistake, but of course time machines aren't real, and he knew that.
But then, she said something he didn't expect.
"Rog, do you ever want to go back? If things were different . . ."
They sat for a long while in silence. His personal beauty ideal, mysterious and lovely, sat across the table from him wishing to have him back. Couldn't they? What unspoken rule held them back? What keeps you from retreading old ground?

Oh, the solid ground breaks up and lava pours out. That lava solidifies into new rock that the creator meant for you to walk on instead.
Roger picks up his proverbial pickaxe and begins to work his way backwards through the wreckage. For her, he would see the plain again, break loose all the lava flow and patch the ground.
Penelope.

6.29

I wish I could read her. I really do. But she laughs at everybody's jokes. She smiles genuine at everyone. She's free with praise for every person. She asked me out on a date, but she's hanging out with him.
Maybe someday I'll understand, but today she's in love with everyone.

6.25

The ocean is rolling away, not inches at a time, but a foot. I'm walking at a leisurely pace, and I can keep up, if only just. I'm in the harbor with the most extreme tides in the world and for the first time in my life, I really have an idea of just how incredibly heavy the moon is. A foot at a time, the waves roll away.
[This is how I feel about keeping up with the Internet during camp.]

6.20

Heat and power and glory.
Sweat and pain and death.
Fire and syrup and love.
Red and black and evil.
Soft and small and hope.

6.18

Funny, how it works out. She's already dating someone, but she acts like an open-faced sandwich. Maybe he should leave her alone. She's clearly (not) not interested in him. Maybe he should respect her boundaries. She's clearly (not) repulsed by him. Maybe he should stop flirting with her. It's clearly (not) not working. Still, he'll stop flirting with her when she stops with him.

6.17b

[about the sister of my friend]

All I know is that she's a pretty girl, and those are the sorts of people who get hurt so often. They're targets. We all worship them; just hold them up on a pedestal and stick them full of knives.

6.17

I have to send a letter by tomorrow at the absolute extreme latest date. if I don't, I die. Dead. Expired.

Please don't let me forget.

6.11

The city built for them a home, a place to call their own. Lovingly crafted of wood and cement, it stands as a shining example of modern engineering. Slopes and curves and spins and gyres lie tumultuous over the landscape. "No graffiti!" a sign warns. "Wear a helmet," chides another. Nothing doing.
The city made for them a home, and it suits them, alright. They flock here. They've lowered property values in the immediate vicinity and broken everything not taped down. The city's gift horse has been looked squarely in the mouth, then crowbarred and spray painted.

Miscreants.

6.10

Less is more?
That's ludicrous. More is more. You've never been more beautiful than in the red dress that hangs off your curves. You've never been more seductive than when you put on my shirt you've never made me flutter more than when you gave me the up-and-down, what with both of us fully clothed and in public.

6.8

Take a bite out of my heart, please. You'll find it's quite good. In fact, it's been pre-cooked, seared in the fires of a previous encounter. Of course, that's been years since, so someone else kindly packed it in salt for you, to keep it fresh and enhance the flavor. Burned like the dickens, you know, but every moment worth it. No, please. I beg of you, take a bite. Chew it well. Savor the fullness of the body, the perfection of the preparation, the exquisite lengths to which the chefs have gone.

Oh, but do save some for God. I invited him to dinner but he hasn't come round yet.

Delectable.

6.7

It feels like you're walking up to the best person in the world. You love them, just for who they are and what they represent. Everything you are and value is riding on this one person and you want them to want you back you need them to hold you in the same light. And you're walking up, slow. Tense. Your heartbeat crushes your eardrums with noise. Your stomach churns. Your vision narrows. You're anxious and worried and hopeful and excited all at once. You feel simultaneously like screaming and laughing. It's all mixed up. They turn and look at you and you're poised, heart in your throat, ready to explode, anticipating the best feeling in the world, and you see that smile crack their face, they reach to embrace you, and that's when the cold hits your limbs and your knees give way and the next ten seconds feel like they're in a different color and you know they'll love you too, and they'll feel the same way about you as you do about them.

That's what it feels like and if they tell you anything different, they're lying or selling something.

6.5b

Someday, ma'am, I would like your side of our story. (But not today, and not when it will make me regret having asked.)

All things considered, it would have been nice to have just been given it, you know, as a parting gift.

6.5

He gripped the baseball bat with sweaty fingers as he edged his way down the staircase. He had seen this in the movies before, hadn't he? Easy.

Sounds from downstairs in the middle of the night. He's supposed to protect the house from all who wish it harm. It's his place in the family. It's his responsibility. So he shouts. "Who's there?" Sounds stop. Nobody who belongs here would be that quiet.

His only advantage is that they don't know he's armed. His only weakness is that he doesn't know how to use his armament.

Swing and crunch. Sickening contact with the arm of a would-be assailant. The burglar assassin falls backwards, moaning on the ground. The man vomits. Why can't he just be a man? Why can't he delight in the brawling, groaning, searing pain of combat? Dry retch. Hopefully his wife won't know.

He crawls to the phone and calls 911. He collapses on the floor to wait for real men to deal with his problem.

6.4

[Normally, I post with the number of the previous day if I haven't gone to sleep yet. Today, it is five AM and I am ready for tomorrow.]

She divorced him twenty years ago and he still hadn't forgotten the way she looked at five AM (just slightly frazzled and inconceivably sleepy). Twenty years and he hadn't forgotten the taste of her smile. Twenty years and he hadn't forgotten the cold of her toes pressed to his legs.
The new wife, the new life, the new house all made him think of the old. Maybe he wasn't ready yet.

Twenty years.

6.3b

Do you remember this? I do. And it haunts me every day that I couldn't do something better. Well, this helps. Orson Scott Card, Joss Whedon, Brian Herbert, Gregory Maguire, Stan Lee, Alan Miller, Neil Gaiman . . . I didn't read one that was better than Hemingway.

And here I thought I was a failure.

6.3

Meredith shoved her laptop off the bed, and it fell with a solid clunk onto the hardwood floor. She didn't care. She was fed up with watching the goings-on. Facebook seemed to always (always) show his face, and she didn't like seeing it. Well, that's not strictly true. She loved seeing it, but she hated knowing what it was up to. She always saw his face with that girl (skinny, pretty, smiling, happy) and couldn't believe her bad luck. That could have been her. Really, it could have been. There was a brief window in which she could have--
But women are passive. They sit back and shouldn't act, and the ones that do are too forward/aggressive. So she rolled over and said good morning to her husband, eschewed her slippers and walked down the stairs to fix breakfast for her three kids.

What she forgot to mention is that the face--the face on the Internet that intrigued her--was a man who  couldn't seem to keep his act together. He threw himself at pretty women (sure, he got a few now and again) and lived life like the world was ending. He had no career, savings, or future. He had only his face, and that was going, too.

In fifteen years more, he wouldn't have anything but the memories of a past full of terribly awful mistakes.

In fifteen years more, she would have successful children and a home to return to and a future with a husband who forgot entirely the man on the Internet whose only asset was his face.

5.31

My name is Cantor Ovric, follower of the light, healer of wounds, and dabbler in fine tapestries. On this day, apparently the twelfth of a month I've never heard (Olagth--perhaps made up), I am recording a story dictated to me by a good friend.
Calcicor, self-styled as "the magnificent," set out from us at least a week ago. His mission was simple: to find a puppy. After a series of scrapes and bumps, he has returned, though his success is debatable. This is his story.

I tell this story to Mister Cantor because he is nice enough to sit down for as long as I can talk. Also, he knows of my like for all small creatures that are cute and won't stick knives in me. Puppies are my favorite. When I was small, I had a puppy and his name was The Magnificent. When he died, I tooked his name for me. So you see, I do love puppies a lot. Good.
We have done a lot of killing and running, but we finally slowed down. Things are good. The Gob [Here the speaker stopped and coughed as of choking] Dirty Ygath is good and everyone is readying for the next bug bad thing to do. So I said Hey Guys I Want To Go Become A Man and they looked at me funny but I did not. I left the Ygath and went to the armorer. I got him to fix up my axe good and make it sharp sharp. It is a good axe and it is my favorite weapon I have. I went to the market and I asked the meat man for some meat. He brought a chunk as big as my fist. I did not want a fist meat. I put it in his pants. He brought me a chunk as big as me. I took it and put money in his pants. I do not think he liked me.
I left town and walked for two days until I got to my momma's shack in the woods.
Mister Cantor, I do not think you know my mother. Have you met her? I will describe her. She is big and beautiful and she is my mother. [At this juncture, I ask some questions about Cal's mother.] What? What color is momma's hair? You don't understand. Momma has no hair. Huh? No. I forgive you, because you are not orc, but momma loved my pa and so shaved off all her hair to look more beautiful to him. What? [At this point, I am ashamed to admit I was laughing rather heartily. Calcicor looked confused at first, but then joined my laughter. He undoubtedly was completely lost, but Cal always loves a good laugh.]
Ok, where was we? Oh, right. So, momma looked at me funny that I was back, but I needed to become a man. You see, all Orc are man at births. They are given sword cribs and knife toys. This is natural. But I am not Orc. I am soft womanly half-Orc. I must prove manness before can be man. I must go into woods and survive the trials of the forest. This is the way it has been and the way it always will be.
So, I walk off into woods of darkness and trial. I take axe and meat. I take me. Me is all the tools I will need.
Have you ever seen a spinner bug? Not a spider. No. Everyone knows spider. Have you seen a spinnerbug? I will explain. Spinnerbug makes an elaborate trap, slowly funneling prey into nest, and then [here Cal yelled vigorously and pounded the table] snap! The bug eats man or horse or deer. Whatever is dumb enough to walk into nest. Well, I was like spinnerbug. I tooked meats and cut off a piece. Just a piece big enough for meal. I laid this in a clearing and tried to leave no scents. I come back next day and meats is gone! Good for step one. You raise eyebrow at me. [I ask Cal what took the meat.] Is surprise. I do again. I am less careful with my scents. I keep doing this. Five days and I am rolling in dusts near meats, and still, meats is gone in the morning. Good. So I take meats. All of it. All the rest of it. I put it in clearing and I hide in the bushes. I set aside my favorite knives. I bury my favorite axe in tree. I take off favorite armors. I strip until it is just me, soft womanly half-orc, and I wait. I wait. I wait. I will make it more realistic. You wait.

[Cal just walked out of the room. Am I supposed to follow him?]

* * * * *

This is the thirteenth of the probably fictitious month Olgath. My name is Cantor Ovric, and I am apparently here to finish the story of my friend Calcicor the Magnificent.

You did not wait. [I admit this to him.] You make terrible orc. I am good orc. I proved it. I wait. I can hear the sounds in the bushes, but I cannot see yet. It is dark, but my eyes can see. It is windy, but my scents are normal. It is cold, but I can't care. Slowly, it enters clearing. It looks cautious; this is good. No one wants idiot for company. [I do not point out the irony of his statement and our friendship.] It walks up and buries snout in meat. Yum it is good. I can see the joy on face. I wait. It eats. You see, I am light and fast, but not so fast as it. I wait for it to be so fat from meats. [He holds up his hands about two feet apart. I assume this is the size of the belly of whatever creature he is telling me about.] Then! I run. Right out at it and I tackle it down to the ground. I lay it flat on floor and I sit on head. It thrashes and tries to run, but I do not let go. I am good warrior. Momma told me how. [I interrupt here and ask what on earth he is wrestling. He doesn't notice.] I grab it good around the neck and thump it against the ground. It yells at me but I thump again. Then! Like lightning it is out and gone. I run, it runs. I jump right for it and grab it, but I can't grab good. It slips out and bites me on the leg. I grab with hand. It bites hand.
[I apologize for that scrawl on the parchment. I normally pride myself on my scribing, but Cal almost punched me in the head with his hand. The two last fingers on his hand are entirely missing with a great deal of the palm to the wrist. As a cleric, it pains me to see how poorly his hand is bandaged. If it weren't Cal, I would expect a wound like that to rot the entire arm, but Cal seems resistant to much of the infection of human kind. I offered to heal his hand, but he claims that a wound received in honor is no woud at all. In any case, he has ceased ranting about the room and sat down. I will resume taking notes.]
I wrestle down and pin it. You see these hands? They hold it down. You see this mouth? I bite! I bite in the flank and I draw blood. Now we share blood. It has tasted me. I have tasted it. We are kin. I pull off and she whimper at me and then we howl together, there in the woods of my homeland. I walk back to the meats, and she follows. I cook the meats and she waits. I give meats and she eats, you see? For everything she waits for me. For everything, I must care for her. We are now family, and I am now an Orc like my father and his before.
[I ask how this made him a man. He stands up and towers over me.]
An grown Orc is power, raw and overpowering. But Orc must know when the power should be used. If I smash this table, I am power, but I am not wise. If I kill you, I am power but I am not wise. I must be wise. I must have an creature to share blood with. I must be responsible. I must be strong. These things are wise. You know what I found in the woods that day?
[Cal looks sad. So sad, right down to his bones.]
I found myself in those woods. I found what I am: power with no responsibility. I wrestled it down and fought it and won, I did. I made a blood bond with myself and I know now that I can be wise with my power. All I did lost was my fingers. I see this as fair.
[I pause and ask Cal what he found in the woods, really. He looks at me like I'm stupid and walks to the door, but]

* * * * *

[He threw the door open and a beast the size of a pony waited beyond, slavering and chomping. You can't imagine something so astonishing. Apparently these creatures are native to the woods where Calcicor lives, which actually explains a lot about him. The immense size of it makes me question how large the adults--but no. If I allow myself to wonder that, I might have nightmares. No, better to get on good terms with Cal's puppy before it takes MY arm off. I don't think I would be able to wrestle it down. This has been Cantor Ovric, believer in light and wanderer on tortuous paths. If you know what dire wolves like to eat, be sure to let me know.]