4.30

[Haven't blogged in too long. I had an elaborate scenario I wanted to write, but I can't muster it today. Too many finals.]

Suffice it to say that I couldn't bring myself to it. I couldn't tell the poor sap my feelings, so I let him ramble. Eventually, I knew everything there was to know about him, but I had forgotten myself--a sad situation, I'm sure.
I only noticed when he asked my name, three hours after we met.

4.27

I didn't need my angry journal for weeks, but I need it today. It's in my other bag, abandoned in my other life, left in a world I thought I discarded.
But today, my friend is angry with me, and I am angry at that. I need to vent. I need to feel the physical release of scratching deep into a page with my pencil. I need to write words I hope no one will ever read. I need to put my words on paper so they will escape my head and not burst forth the next time I talk to--my friend! My friend doesn't need my words. These words are acid, ripping molecules from their moorings and disassembling them with surgical accuracy. I can pull out feelings and tear them into tiny bits. That's what. And those sorts of words go in my angry journal. I need my angry journal. I need it.
I hope my friend doesn't happen to call. I hope my friend doesn't try to confront me, call me out, hurt my feelings. I'm an ocean. I absorb the rocks you throw at me, swallow them up, and drown them. Drown. Eventually, the violence of my storms rolls those rocks to sand, to silica, to salt.
And that's why I need my angry journal.

4.26

Pour rip shred crush drag flash wrinkle strain growl fray throw.
Why can't they find active verbs?
Get be have do join.

4.25

Her shirt looks like old skin molting. I swear her shoulder blades must rasp underneath. They stretch and pivot every time she moves, searching to be free. The clothing clings to her in places and slides loose with the violence of tearing.
But then, all shirts do that, so I must be watching her shoulder blades for a reason. Quick, make one up and nobody will know that you love her.

4.24

[I'm eighteen pageviews shy of an all-time record for my blog. I wish I knew what that meant. Mostly I think it means I'm writing more this month. I'm nearly caught up. With this, twenty two posts of twenty four days.]

Tonight is almost over, but for me it has just begun. I have to wake up tomorrow and make decisions. I have to wake up tomorrow and work. But for now, the pillow looks too much like heaven for me to remember that it's not.

4.23

[Three posts in fewer than twenty four hours? How could I?]

I like the smell of books. I like holding them to my nose and fluttering the pages in front of me. I like buying used books from stores full of paper and smelling them before I read them.
I like the feel of words. I like paper so thin or print so heavy that the ink itself rises from the paper and leaves an indelible mark even a blind person could love.
I like the sight of books. I like watching them all lined up on a shelf. I like knowing that even though they don't move, they are filled with page after page of movement. I like knowing that despite their chaos of size and color, they all share the uniformity of being what they are: books.
I hate the thought of books. I hate that they can be tools for evil or harm. I hate that they can spread false ideas. I hate that people can read them and get the wrong idea.

4.22b

[author's note: I don't think I would feel right if anyone commented on this, thanks. It's here because otherwise I will forget where it is. And I guess so you will go call your mother.]

I cried with the broken crockery until my eyes were puffy and swollen. I had labored all week on it because when I saw it on the shelf, I had loved it immediately. A cowboy boot with western scenes? Sign me up. I painted. I painted. I pined. I poured and I pored and I made sure the work was painstakingly perfect. It was my masterpiece: a thing so me that I couldn't help but love it. And yet, as a child, I knew that I could never keep it for myself. It wasn't mine to keep.
It was so me that I had to give it away to the person I loved most.
Isn't that always the case? The things we love must go to the people we love? Perhaps it's only natural. We humans are a peculiarly selfless lot at times. And yet I felt that my gift was the utmost that a human could give--a pottery boot of unspeakable beauty for another person. I wouldn't part with it for the world, so I gave it freely to my mother.
Still your disbelief. I was eight.
And so, disaster. This pottery I have so carefully built up in my mind is crushed in the journey home. This, despite the careful wrapping my mother had given it. She had smiled wide enough to drown out the sun and sequestered the boot in the trunk of the car. At home, the boot was splinters of its former glory.
I cried with the broken crockery and I'm not afraid to admit it. It was the crowning achievement of a week spent without my mother. It was all I had to show for all my work. It was so much useless hash in a towel.

Of course, that's not the end of the story. Mom glued the boot back together, and although you might suspect otherwise, I hated it. It was broken. Useless. Unworthy. I had made it for her and it had the gall to break. How dare that boot assume I would love it the same? Of all the unworthy wastes of my time, it was the crowning achievement of worthlessness. Once meant as a symbol of myself, it now deserved no admiration. No place of honor. Nothing but shame and sorrow.

Less than a week ago, my mother sent me a picture of the boot that I had painted and loved and she had glued and saved. I didn't know what to think anymore. The boot was such a bittersweet memory for me that I stuffed it away so I wouldn't think about it. But I had made it so much myself that I had to give it to her. Why had she saved it when it was no more than a crappy little crumble in a towel?

I think the boot is no longer my creation, my magnum opus, my work of love. It is hers. It is my mother's. It is her message to me, that if something is so much myself that I must give it to her, she knows where the glue is at.

I love you mom.
This is the last time I cry over that boot.

4.22a

Bertrand Russell once said that the worst thing about the world was that fools and fanatics were so sure of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. I've never been wise, but I doubt myself constantly. It's a condition. I've tried to find a cream for it, but my pharmacist seems woefully underprepared for a rash or existential crisis. I think Russell was trying his very hardest to be pithy and missed the point.
I'm a fool, but I doubt what I do every minute of every day. Perhaps if what Russell says is true, therefore, it's more accurate to say that doubt seems wiser. Insecurity seems to be the best course of action.

So I'll continue to spin my doubts, calling it wisdom but feeling its foolishness. God? This one's on you.

4.21

I read my sickeningly true story about ships and feelings at the Legacy Lounge night for Writers' Club. I don't think anyone knew that it was about me. I don't think anyone could have known. For starters, I didn't ask them to. Secondly, I didn't want them to. It wasn't a cry for help. It was me sharing a feeling I think many people have had before.

How could they know that it was my explanation for why, after my internal storms ended, I almost sank another boat? It wasn't a squall that pulled hope into the water; it was me and my stubborn attitude. I didn't want to let go of an old relationship in favor of a new one, and I crushed both with a single blow.

Hopefully, someone got something out of it that I didn't intend.

Someday, I will find an opportunity to feel not like that story about gunnels and sinking, but like this one about gunnels and sinking.

And I wrote them within days of each other.

4.20

I can't reach the other side of the bed with my feet, but I get pretty close. I swish my legs around, searching. Where is he? I hope he's not gone. Maybe he slipped in the bathroom. Maybe there's a burglar in the house. Maybe he's been taken for witnessing a crime. Maybe the government is relocating him. Maybe he got a call from a science and technology company and they need his skills as a dentist to rewire a vital piece of equipment upon which many lives depend. Maybe he's with another woman.
He walks back in and slumps into bed. "Where you been?" I ask nonchalantly.
He laughs. "I peed. Come here," he growls, and with it he pulls me into an embrace from which there is no escape.

When did I get so lucky?

4.18b

When he had finished examining every angle of the building, he walked back around to the front porch and sat down on the step. Sunlight filtered down through the trees and speckled his lap. Catlike, he lay down and shut his eyes.
More than an hour later, a car crunched up the gravel drive and pulled to an unsteady stop. She got out, legs first. He sat up to watch her walk.
"Hey, silly. You forget your keys?" she called.
"No, just waiting for you."
She reached out a hand to pull him up, but he pulled her down. She landed with a slump.
He breathed in, long, through his nose. "This is a first for me, you know. I've waited for a long time to say this."
She smiled. "What, you've been here long?"
He goosed her good. "You know what I mean."
She giggled.
He stood up, dusting his pants like men do in movies. He reached down an pulled her up with him, so they could stare at the house together.
She turned to him confidentially. "So, what have you been waiting for for so long?"
"This," he said. "Welcome home."
With that, he opened the door of his house and took his wife inside and left his trees to shade his yard without him.

4.18

Her lips were so shiny. How much lipgloss did she just put on? Have they been this shiny all day? How often does she reapply? What brand does she use? Was she doing it just so I would look? Why did it work?

These questions get me nowhere, so I lean back and avoid whispering sweet nothings in her ear.

4.17

Nervous energy: it crackles. Buzz buzz buzz inside my skull. I wish my memories would shut up so I could sleep.

4.16a

Life had a way of getting me down. Then life killed that way, and I grew sadder. I suppose I have good friends, but so much else to complain about. My house is terrible. My food is terrible. The rain is terrible. The sun is terrible. My tail is terrible.
Plus, it's only buttoned on.

Pretty much the only thing that isn't terrible: complaining.
-- Eeyore

4.16b

So on and so forth.
I can't choke out my words; she's staring at me like something's wrong. Gross. Like the words are powder and my throat can't churn them out. Powder.
The pumice and silt settles again in my lungs and I give up on shoveling it out.
"Floyd?"
I just shake my head, and the thin dust wafts off and settles on my folded arms.
"Floyd, I'm still here. Please speak to me."
Alright, I'll shovel again, but just for you. Here we go--and yet, the true problem appears. All I can do is cough the dirt into my mouth. My teeth are grit-laden and they scream when I grind them. Again. Cough, and nothing. The dirt settles back down, and I stare at her with horror in my eyes. My mouth twists, unscrewing off my face.
"Ok," she says. "---- you, Floyd. ---- you. I'm going home, and you can find me there if you're willing to actually be my husband again."

Why did she find me right then? Why couldn't she have found me two minutes before, when the words were liquid and they poured out, overflowing and limp and thin, like watered-down soup? Like lemon water? Like gasoline spreading out across the top of a pond in a light sprinkling rain, reverberating and refracting the light like a million rainbows? And yet she didn't. I said all my words to the priest I don't believe in in a booth I don't appreciate in a church I've only seen and never appreciated.
No, I'm not that lucky, to have my slick, easy words drench her in truth. I have to shovel sand just to tell her what's happening in my life.

I guess it would be simpler if she wasn't so close with her own words. Talking with her is like dancing with razor blades. Not everything she says will cut. The backsides of the blades only press into your skin and remind you you're alive, oh no. The backsides are tame. But the blade--the edge. It's so sharp and thin that you think you've not been cut at all, until you see the blood seeping out and you say to yourself "that can't be my blood, where did that come from?" and you just go on with your day until the blood fills your shoes and slops out on the carpet she bought with her dowry and she yells at you again. Of course now she's shaving off huge hunks of flesh and you can see yourself ribboning in your mind's eye. It's a terrible feeling, dancing words with her.

So I walk home, trying to decide whether I rust her blades in water or I dull her blades in sand.

4.13

Kari looked up from her soup. "I think it's stupid! Everything I watch is filled with it!"
"Well, it's because most writers are male, so--" but I'm interrupted.
"And that's only because most studio execs are male."
"Ok, I guess I fail to see your problem."
"Women need to be main characters too. I want to see a woman who thinks and acts on something. I want a woman who doesn't act based solely on her maternal instincts or out of love to a man. I want to see a woman who's greedy, or noble, or tragic, or lost, or wise."
"What, like Sarah Connor?"
"Sure, but I want to see women like that everywhere. And no more effeminate women--it's too easy for them to fall to the dominant male characters."
I give up and lift my cup as if to drink.
"I see you, you know. You're actively avoiding the conversation."
I splutter in defense. She's unconvinced. I guess I'll try to ward her off some other way.
"Well, I write convincing female characters. Don't I?" My self-doubt is obvious.
She sighs. "Your female characters always kowtow to the needs and wants of men. I'm sick and tired of it."
I smile sickly at her.
She whispers to herself "I'm getting tired of you."
"Oh," is all I can say. I hope she knows I heard her. It will make my next sentence so much better, but I guess it has to be said. "Are you tired of living under my shadow?"
Kari sighs. "Why would you ask me that?" She plays with her fork for a bit, but I don't answer. She eventually clears her throat. "Well, you know." I really don't. "I'm a woman, not a wife."
"Are the two mutually exclusive?"
"You treat me like a wife, and I'm not ready for it. I'm not sure I'll ever be ready." She sinks a little deeper into the cushion of the seat. I tear my napkin into smaller and smaller chunks as the silence subdivides into periods of awkwardnesses. I look up at her again, but she's looking away.
"Kari, I . . ." don't know what to say. But I do. I don't want to ask that question. Anyhow, I guess here it is. "Does this mean we're done?"
"Done?"
"Finished. Over. Kaput. Finito. Ended. Done?"
"Sven," she choked. She choked, and she's the one who told me she can't anymore. She's the one who's tired. She's the one who complains. She choked like she was sad. Well, guess what, girlie, I'm done if you're not. I'm tired of bending to your demands and asking politely for your time and being happy when you grace me with your presence. I'm sick of your attitude and your quarrels. I'm fed up with your willful hurtfulness. I'm crushed by your anger, ripped by your words, and lanced by your attitude. I'm done.
The emotions well up in me and I slide myself out of the booth.
"Kari?"
She looks up at me with watery eyes.
I start again. "Kari, I know I'm not a woman, but I'm being a strong female character, starting now." I turn to leave. She doesn't even call out after me.

I wish so badly that she would.
And that, my friends, is why there are no strong female characters: even the men who try to write them aren't them.

4.12b

Harvey saw her again when he was walking down the hall. She smiled like she owned him and it sent the good shivers through him. He felt so good to be wanted that he stopped even though he was late to class because he needed to soak her up.
"Hey, Erica. What are you doing here?"
"I have class here, stupid."
Desire shot through him like a torch in a cave, bouncing around and lighting his insides. He felt it fill his chest and press on his backbone. He coughed and looked carefully at her eyes.

4.12

His bark is worse than his bite, but he wants his bite to be bad. He tells everyone that he's dangerous and they better watch themselves. He distances himself from people just so they won't get hurt. He once told a girl he loved her and that she better run. She did. He once made a friend and then deliberately hurt him. Whenever somebody leaves, he adds a notch to his sadness and sighs.
Underneath it all, he's a big old softy.

(Maybe some day, he'll admit it to himself.)

4.11

Sheryl sits in the back of the class and gives up on him. No, she does. Trust me. She gives up on him because he sits in the front of the class and doesn't give a crap what she thinks. Plus he talks to other women while she's around and never really respects her opinion, so what does she care about him? Nothing, that's what. Nothing. He makes inappropriate jokes and hurts other people and never apologizes for what he says and he's alive, damn him, and that makes him just so desirable to her, so Sheryl sits in the back of the class and tries ever so hard give up on him.

If she ever does, it will be a miracle.

4.10

I want, just once, to write something. Something really something, you know? I want not to change the world or change the arts but to change a mind. And not just any mind: someone I don't know. Someone I'll never know. And then, I want that mind to tell me about it somehow and just send me a postcard or something to tell me just how I changed their mind and I should never stop writing because all my pointless little words have had a use.

5013a Eastview Terrace, Apison, TN 37315

Just once I want to receive some mail. I have two letters I need to respond to right now anyway. I'm going to do that.
I hereby solemnly swear to respond to anything I receive. Perhaps I won't be timely, but I'll sure as heck be something.

4.8

The ending credits music was so perfect that I have to go back and listen to it a third time. I have never been so beyond my depth.

Is this what people feel like in literature classes?

To not have the right questions--to not know the answers, but to not know the questions--to be afraid of everything and yet engulfed just the same?

That's what I feel. I haven't felt so beyond my depth since 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Everything I know about myself is up in the air (not because of the movie, but because of me. I can't react to it. I have literally no ability to react at all).

As of this moment I realize I have based my entire identity on being able to think. What happens when I can't is truly a gruesome experiment.

I write posts like this.

Go watch Akira. I'll wait. Then tell me the questions I'm supposed to ask.

4.7

There was one moment today in which I said to myself "Thank you, God--"
I almost lost it.

If there hadn't been a crowd there, I would have (blubbering and snotty, covered in fake blood and shame, rolling on the ground in agonized praise of a man/God who died. For me? Yes, me) cried until I had no more.

4.5b

I wrote a beautiful post with a snarky moral and a description of desire. Then the Internet, engorged with wrath, ate the thing like so much pimento spread on cheap sandwiches.
But I wanted you to love the girl I saw, and love her as much as I did. She wasn't perfect, (no one ever is), but she was flawed in such an interesting way, and she was sexual enough to be irresistible and chaste enough to be respectable And she was all the right things to me. She was mine, but I was willing to share her with you, just in trade for a minute of your time, and then the Internet consumed her with righteous judgement. Now she's dead--I would never dare attempt to resurrect her for fear I would botch her in the attempt. So I will just want her in my mind and in so doing keep her alive.
I do know how the story would have ended:
"I can't tell you the name, because it will give away too much, (I want you to have too much): Regret, the Monster That Keeps my Dreams."

And now that my half-told attemtped moral is doubletrue, I leave you with this to ponder: if by beholding we become changed, how long must I stare at something beautiful before I want to make love to it?

4.5

I feel small, where I once felt large. I'm swimming, but my tiny limbs hardly make a difference. When I'm trying to plow through my life, my miniscule legs spin me deeper into my ruts.

[I think I figured out what happened to you all's blogs? But I'm still working on it. You disappear one at a a time and I can't find your posts on my rss feeds anymore.]

4.4

[I got into the accent. I sent in two pseudo poems that are super twenty first century (Scarmarella was one) and neither made it in. The others, about first kisses and about chalk, got in. I suppose I'm either ahead or behind the time? Anyway, the things I knew would be more popular were more popular.]

I can feel my body. My chest feels pain; my heart--. All of it seems at a standstill.

4.2

I can't breathe the air in here. Everything is unmistakably stale.
It stinks of her.
The past her, not the present. The present her is long gone from my life, but I come back to my room and I can smell the coat she left on the end of the bed. I haven't moved it because I'm afraid. I can smell her perfume in the bathroom, if I want. I can even go smell her cooking, if it hasn't gone bad yet. I left it in a tupperware, really, so anything is possible.

I'm afraid of touching anything, for fear that I'll remember.

I'm moving away next week. I'm leaving everything I own. Everything of her, and us. I'm letting it rot here.
And then? I'm ripping off my nose.