Songs for a Neophyte: 2015.38

Trap Queen.
Fetty Wap.

Thin
Mechanical
A sudden
A sudden
Then thin
Memories of a before
Self-fulfilling
Content
Who are you?
And where have you come from?
And why are you proud of either?

Lyrics.
I don't know, man. Money isn't everything. Sex isn't everything. Drugs aren't everything. Maybe if you have near-equal proportions of all three, you at least approach it? Maybe, Fetty?
I wouldn't know. I haven't ever done any mind-altering substances harder than Caffeine, and I don't like to use that. I've been single for years, now, and I haven't downloaded even one dating app. I took a job as a long-term substitute and I just . . . didn't spend the money I made. Either I'm the most satisfied person in the world, or there's something I keep missing about vice. From the outside, it seems transient. I want something else, I think, something I know I can control, and in infinite supply.

Recently, I've been chasing happiness. I was teaching, and I decided to leave happy every day. If I could accomplish that, I would have done a good job that day. It changed the way I approached a lot of things. Not superficially, though. Essentially everything about teaching was the same, for me, and I was hard on a few kids who disrespected me or others in the classroom (these are a big no thanks for me, and I tend to react [at least] proportionately). But in essentially everything, I was able to find the small moments of pure happiness. At the end of my work experience, I would say that overall, I was at an eight of ten for three straight months without a single really down day.
This is a dramatic departure. If I sleep badly and do nothing I like, I tend to feel roughly depressed about one in every two days.
I'm going to exercise more, eat without worrying too much about the contents, read more books, write more posts, call more friends, and generally avoid unhappiness. If I can end every day happy, I will have accomplished what I'm looking for.

This is not a resolution for the new year, though I am aware it is New Year's Eve. I just wanted to articulate what I liked so much about being so happy all the time.

Stephen Barry.
Is "ratchet" a bad term still, or have the kids robbed it of its piercing power? I had a lot of students proudly claim it as a label (these were mostly white kids, though) and a few who would toss it at their friends as a weapon (these were mostly black kids, though), so I'm not sure if, on the whole, the word is good or bad. Regardless, I can tell you that this song is bad. Not musically, I guess, since it's consistent and grabs me by the ears like a raging schoolteacher. And the lyrics aren't a microwave full of raccoon droppings. And the voice, Fetty Wap's illustrious yawn, well--though there's nothing to commend, I can't find anything to condemn, especially. It's a voice.
So why do I find this song so distasteful, I wonder?

No.

Songs for a Neophyte: 2015.39

Bad Blood
Taylor Swift feat. Kendrick Lamar

Thump
Can something be over-produced?
Foreign
Uncomfortable, like a
Badly-fitted shoe
Schizophrenic
A stranger to itself
Is this what Stephen calls a "banger?"
Big enough
Enough

Lyrics.
I had a coworker with whom I really could not get along. I swear I tried my hardest to be forthright and considerate and give this person as many chances as I could. But there's something perverse about a person who can absorb everything that is given to them, every favor, leniency, and word of praise, and still feel shortchanged. Once, this person went out of their way to help in an early-morning emergency situation (don't you pay no nevermind that seven other people also showed up), and their focus was not how do we fix this or what can I do to help. My illustrious coworker was only concerned that everyone know that they were helping instead of sleeping in or showering or farting into their pillow or whatever they did with their free time. "I work more hours than (insert the number of hours perceived as normal) and I don't take breaks. And you see me out here helping." Others in the group took the bait and lobbed praise out, as though to say "Oh, yes. You are better than us." I don't care if you take a thousand more breaks than me, or none whatsoever. This isn't about your work ethic. This is about how trashy you are sometimes.

That's what bad blood is about, for Taylor Swift. The original song was a petulant squabble between people who should really just be quiet and go to bed. But Kendrick's verses add just enough realism that (with Genius translating), I can see the necessity of venom in his life. He's been hurt, really hurt, by a relationship, and the only way he can conceive of solving his pain is to write the end as an antagonism, as bad blood.
I really don't think he and Taylor are a good match, but he makes the song worth hearing. Thanks, Kendrick.

Stephen Barry.
Things happen in the Bad Blood music video, certainly, but the way the story of the video is set up, it's as though Taylor is rallying all of her favorite actresses as ammunition against Katy Perry (or whoever this topical beef was about), which I think is . . . recklessly shallow? Who cares if faces I recognize stand on one side or the other in an argument about . . . talent? Money? Women's rights? Honestly, I do not care, but Taylor's video feels like she's trying to show how many people like her and are on her side.

Compare this with Swish Swish, Bish, which is is not a very good song and a worse music video. At least, Katy Perry doesn't have a bunch of famous, beautiful people "taking her side."

Worse.

12.31

The first three drafts I've deleted, closed the app, and tossed the phone across the room. I'm now writing here, on paper, and the results aren't much better, but at least they're tactile. At least now, when I can't find the safest words to both express the intensity of my emotion and the fear that my fervent language will drive you away, at least now, when I throw the mangled meaning across the room and pull out a new sheet of stationery to smooth onto the desk, at least now, there is some angry sound of small cuts a great distance away as heard through a poor speaker when my shaking hands take up the pen and tear ink into the paper again (and again --and again).

12.18

Do you ever,
For what could have been,
That cancerous root,
From which there is no reprieve,
A greater galaxy of possible future,
A place and time you'll never taste,
Grieve?

I grieve,
Perhaps uselessly and alone,
For both of us.

12.17

31st May 1956

Dear Mona,

I'm guessing you've never got such an unexpected letter before. I've since moved out to Lubbock, as you know, and the Lone Ranger is doing just rip-roaring out here. I got him some guinea to chase and he forgives me for moving so far away from all his favorite people. Why, just the other day the postman found us for the first time since we moved, and you should have heard the ruckus -- until he realized it wasn't Old Tom after all. Here's another good one: when I first opened up the car door, he took off like a shot, just like always, and he pretty near ran into the fence, thinking the house was that way. You know how he does. He sat there throwing his head back and forth and barking at that chicken wire for a full minute before he realized he could just go around. Now days, it's actually a struggle to keep him sitting still for long enough to scratch behind his ears. There's always some new thing to smell just out past the fence on my neighbor's property, and he's got a half dozen tunnels I can't seem to fill up fast enough.

A little bird told me it was your twenty fifth today. As you can tell from the letter, I'm sorry I couldn't make it. You know just how much the two of us used to like birthdays. I wouldn't have missed it if I could help myself, Mona. You know that.

Anyhow, just a short letter for you, dear. Tell your mother

I'm guessing she'll read this anyway.

Much love,

Frank

31st May 1957

Dear Mona,

It's hard to believe it's been a year and a half, isn't it? It feels like no time at all. Well, Lubbock is treating us just fine. Well, I'm happy, anyway. The Lone Ranger stands at the door and waits. Not sure what for. Other than that, he has free run of the place and treats all the barn cats so bad you wouldn't believe. One day he came back with blood all in his mouth, but he wouldn't let me get a good look at it. I was worried, but he nursed himself like a champ and now when he pants, you can see what happened: he's got four long white lines  running sort of down his tongue. Must have been that a cat caught him right in the mouth. I shouldn't guess he'll be more wary next time. Still feels the same when he licks your hand, though, so nothing busted up about him.

I guess this is your twenty sixth, isn't it? You're as old as I was when I married your mother. Do you remember that? You were very small. It's amazing how long it's been since then. I hope that once you finish nursing training and maybe move out of the old place you do send me your address. I'm pulling for you, Mona. Me and Ranger both.

I hope this letter gets to you. I've heard that time heals all wounds, but your mother was sure wounded deep. We didn't really talk about it with you, not me at least. It's hard to talk to your grown daughter about the trouble, you know? I'm sure you understand, but it's a bitterness that I never got to explain myself to you.

I'll always think of you as my daughter, anyway.

Thinking of you fondly,

Frank

31st May 1958

Dear Mona,

First, some news about me and mine: You've no doubt heard about the panic out in Levelland last November? Well, I've been sitting on this for long enough and I think it'll make for a great present, since of course I can't make it.

I live out west of Lubbock, as you know, and last November 2nd seemed like a pretty normal night, all things considered. I was just sitting down with a Burroughs that you gave me way back when all of a sudden the Lone Ranger goes absolutely nuts. He's scratching at the door and whining like the devil got in him, so I stand up to let him out and you wouldn't believe it, just as I get to the door, the lights go out in the house. Well, I opened the door to head to the junction box and the Ranger goes tearing off across the front lawn extra fast. He ran right out into the road and I forgot all about the junction and ran right after him, heart in my throat. If anything were to happen to him, I know you wouldn't forgive me, and I went right across the hedge without stopping to open the gate. I scooped him up and the brightest light I ever did see shot out across the road. I thought we'd both had it and you'd be reading about me in the newspaper when the light shot near straight up into the sky and hovered there. The heat was tremendous, and came all at once, in a flash. Ranger was clawing at me and straining and barking and tore me up pretty good with his claws. Just as fast, it shot away again down the road. Ranger stopped barking, and the night was still again. The lights were on in the house, just everything normal. I went straight to bed. When I woke up, I thought I had dreamed the whole thing because of the Burroughs novel, but I still had Ranger's clawmakrs all over my skin!

Come to find out, it was all over the news, and I wasn't the only one who saw it.

I hope you enjoy that, Mona. You always used to tell such good stories that it's nice to turn the tables on you once in a while. Someday, I hope you can make it down to Lubbock, and maybe we can catch up. It's been an awful long time. You're out of training now, I guess. I hope that new job is treating you well.

If you'd like, I can come up there. I don't know how your mother would feel about that. I hope you can snatch this one out of the box before she gets to it. I hope that she hasn't got you thinking badly of me, now.

You'll always be my Mona,

Frank

1st June 1962

Dear Mona,

I missed a few birthdays there. It gets discouraging to write when you know what will happen next. I'd just as soon throw the letter over a cliff, I guess. Just a short note to let you know I still think of you pretty near every day. You were always a bright spot, and I always loved you, Mona. I wait for letters from you, but I should know by now I'm waiting on nothing so far.

I guess me and the Lone Ranger won't give up on you all.

Love from Lubbock,

Frank

31st May 1963

Dear Mona,

Me and the Lone Ranger are thinking of you. He sits at the door and waits, and I figured it out the other day when I was home sick all day. He goes to the door around two and waits until about five every evening, whether or not I'm here. When I get home, of course, he's waiting, but he barely pays attention to me until after five or so, when he gives up and starts nosing around for some supper.

Anyway, he and I aren't so different. We're both waiting for you to get home from school. It's hard to remember sometimes, that you aren't around anymore.

The other day, a dust storm blew up, nothing like the old days, but I ran to get some wet towels just the same, and I caught myself calling for you to -- well.

I feel like these letters are becoming a confessional. If you find this in the box, I've sent you a letter e v e r y   y e a r I have missed a few. Anyway, I think your mother is finding them and sending them back. If I get a letter from you with a new address, I'll forward them all to you and you can read what your old man thinks of you.

You're still my daughter, Mona. Nothing can change that.

All the best,

Frank

20th September 1963

Dear Mona,

This letter won't be no good, I'm afraid. The Lone Ranger passed away last night. I even had the veterinarian around. He said that the situation was the end, and it would be best to make the old man comfortable and give him the best and wait it out. He had some hamburger, the old style, the way he always used to beg for on the fourth. I know you used to slip him some when I wasn't looking. That was all okay, Mona. Well, he couldn't keep anything much down, but he didn't make a whole lot of noise. I wish you could have been here. He went quiet and without much pain. He was just old, Mona. I'm just repeating myself now, I guess. Anyway, like I said. It was his time.

He loved you very much, Mona.

Your mother put all the pictures we took of him in the post to me after the divorce. I went back, just today, and I don't think you have any left. He was always more your dog than mine, but your mother was just resentful that we had something together that she couldn't seem to. Anyway, I've had him for all these years and you've had nothing left. That's not right, so I'm posting most of them to you. I'm sorry, Mona. I'm so sorry.

From the two old men,

Frank

31st May 1977

Dear Mona,

I'm just sure you don't live at this address anymore, but I don't know how to get hold of you otherwise. I turned seventy this year. I don't get around very good anymore, so I'm moving in with my younger brother and his wife in Tulsa. I figured if we were going to be in the same town, we should at least try to see each other.

I know you might hate me for what happened with your mother, and I got no place to ask for anything else. She just kicked me out one day, Mona. I never left. I would have never left you, I hope you know that. The judge gave custody to your mother, of course. You were better off with her, anyway, but it just stung that they wouldn't let me visit you. Your mother must have asked for it that way, Mona. She was your mother, after all, and I wasn't your father. I w a s n I'll always be your old man, though.

Your mother and I grew apart for a few years. You were very smart; you must have seen that. You probably never knew why, though, and I wish I could shed some light on it for you. She just got colder and colder, and seemed to close down and die a little more each day. She quit that job at the phone company, she quit the school board, she quit the 4H club sponsorship. I guess she was just searching for the thing that was making her msierable and event ually she figured she'd quit everything else and there was just one thing left, so she quit me. It weren't personal, I think. But the way she tore up our lives and threw out the leavings didn't give the two of us much time to adjust. She made the decision for all of us. I'd love to talk to you more about all this, but I don't know how to get a hold of you. I called all the hospitals in town because maybe you'd be working there, and they didn't know your name. Maybe you've decided to go by Marie.

I always like Mona more, but it's your name. You get to choose who you are.

I'll always love you.

Keep safe,

Frank

June 17 1977

Dad—

after I never got any letters, I assumed

but that doesn’t matter now. What’s your new address?

Love,
Mona

12.16

[Thank you to Jacob, the only poet in America brave enough to give me a good idea. Secret: there are three poems here.]

12.15

A student today let me read a poem in half-draft, a mind spilled out stasis-wise, piece-meal. It reflected itself and read differently the more you looked at it, and I wanted to climb inside and see how its elbows felt when they moved. I wanted to be its author, and I suppose that's a high praise for anything from anybody, but it felt pretty low coming from me.
Still, I'm going to try it someday when I'm not so envious, and I have more time to be proud.

12.14

I've seen happiness work its way through a population like a disease. I've spent enough time chasing tranquility that somehow I've achieved near-invulnerability to the disastrous things that happen outside my immediate bubble. But you, "Cat Person" poet, nearly got me. I will admit that for the duration of my time reading your ungorgeous description of two people using each other I was disgusted and pushed into profound disquiet. I will admit that you got me then, and unbidden pictures of your horrific work has sprung unbidden to my mind. I will admit that the writing was excellent and evocative and I could not have done as well. But I know that sadness is as powerful a contagion as happiness, and my incessant inoculation is all that saved me. What will you say to the millions who can't remember the last time they smiled? I doubt you'll have an answer for the multitudes who don't feel happiness as an inveterate habit. You're responsible for sadness, my dear, misguided fool. And when the time comes, what else will there be for you to plead but for the effect you had? Because there is truly nothing else to commend your work.

12.13

I'm going to buy a gross of donuts, six dozen at a time.
I'm going to grab life by the horns, five fingers at a time.
I'm going to hold someone, two arms at a time.
I'm going to climb to the highest point in California, one step at a time.
I'm going to laugh, and I'm not going to count. Sometimes, things are worth chasing for chasing's sake.

12.12

Still thinking about Gal Gadot so here are some better comic book villains for cheap but not free.

Grintlebix, the Slaverer: A monster covered in mouths, and when he eats his victims, their mouths appear on his body. When his victims scream, the mouths that cover him scream in unison with them.
Orphed IV: A haunted song that kills whoever hears its final movement.
Astra Plaudit: An extradimensional traveler who can pass cleanly between second, third, and fourth dimensional space, and from the fourth can see an immense amount of the third dimension and touch the interiors of objects (and people) without being touched.
Fortune: A villain that cannot manipulate probability, but can innately sense the most likely outcome of any scenario. Interesting combatants include Scarlet Witch and Gambit. He essentially nullifies many of their powers' more cerebral effects.
Torque: An alien from a planet much more massive than our own who is capable of feats of enormous physical strength and yet completely incapable of grokking even simple human ideas.
Pustular: A central nervous system disease that gains intelligence as a collective the more neurons it infects. Eventually, it crowd-sources an incredible amount of brainpower and begins to enact increasingly complex plans for total pandemic.
Cherenkov: A scientist who creates unspeakably complex gadgets, like knives so sharp they effortlessly and exactly cut atoms' nuclei.

Anyway, all of these would be better than another dude with a sword or a gun. No offense to Ronin and Steppenwulf and all the beefy boys who hit each other with large, unseemly thuds. No offense to Stan Lee. I'm sure some of these have been done before, anyway. Not Grintlebix, but. You know what I mean.

12.11

Ideas for villain objectives better than glowing cubes of poorly-defined energy (Transformers, Avengers, Justice League).

Enemy learns that if his biological material is ingested by an Earth creature, it becomes him. He starts breaking himself into pieces and feeding himself to Earth.

Enemy is trying to drain Earth's core of its thermal energy to power her spaceship. She's using magnetic resistance to rob the core of rotational inertia.

Enemy is obsessed with platonic solids and is found in the desert, compacting sand into cubes and spheres and such.  Enemy sees a plane fly overhead and follows it to Cairo or something and starts compacting all structures and immobile objects, then people, then the heroes show up.

Enemy has lost his ability to feel pain, and suffers an emotional loss that he can't feel, so he starts destroying things, looking for someone who can hurt him enough in retribution that he'll remember and be able to mourn.

Enemy wants to create macabre works of art, and uses people's conscientiousness as a medium. She pulls minds from skulls and sculpts, paints, composes with them.

Those aren't free, Hollywood, but they're extraordinarily cheap. Hit me up in my DMs.

12.10

I rode on the flat, at ten miles an hour, for a half a mile, and I could feel the muscles in my legs begin to burn. Whatever I had is gone now. Whatever I was is dead.

12.9b

I used to live outside every day. When I see the stars or the light through the clouds or a sunset on hills, I pause for a breath so short I choke on it, and say I used to live outside every day I look around at the untold stories of vaprous morning airs drifting through long pines and with the world I exhale the aching truth of my past, when I used to live outside every day the house creeps in on me in closing circles of anthropogenic wood and rock, an obscene reminder of the fact that I used to live outside every day the soft chant of the weather tapped its methodic rhythm on the outside of my skull to communicate in the only way it knew how of the permanency of my position in the world and the immediacy of my knowledge of it and the brevity of my time in which it was true that I used to live outside every day the pattern of my life appears more set, more foreign to that time when the night air was my window to God and the sound of urgency was an incomprehensible tongue that spoke only in terms that I could understand because I used to live outside every day. I am circumscribed by this, I am losing words to it, I am trumcated, and the truth is: I used to live.

12.9

"He's going to reveal to her that he's her father, and then he's going to die." They're setting up this relationship so that he can find absolution. He's been our villain for three films; they won't let him go without it.
A half hour later, she falls past him and he grabs her hand.
"It's now, mom." The actress looks at him meaningfully. "He's going to die, soon." Thirty seconds later, she knows that he's her father and he falls to his death. I spread my arms expansively, but honestly all I feel is rage that I could have written a better film than this, but nobody gives me any money.

12.8

"Frikin gorgeous."
"Yeah."
"And you know, she's about my age. That's what gets me really annoyed."
"Hm."
"Well, she's a few years younger, anyway."
"You know, this photo looks really touched up, anyway."
Both women lean over the newspaper.
"Augh, just look at her! So beautiful."
"Yeah."
There's a long moment of silence.
"She's probably lonely, though."
"Yeah . . ." but it's noncommittal. "What really annoys me, though, above all of it, is: she can sing."
They toss the paper down.

12.7

I have one more week with these students, man. They're all thinking about next semester without me. In a way, it's very gratifying, their horror. I just wish I had better served the actual teacher. I hope they like her as much or more than they like me.
I've had four losses, or rather, four seasons of loss.

And now I won't even have Fujifilm 100C to picture it. I used to take pictures of my sixth graders with it. I loved that film. It has now joined dodos and dinosaurs, and I can't quite fathom my life without it. Declining sales, they said. Profit margins, they cited. Well, I would pay twice what they were charging, and I still bought twenty packs of ten. So I don't know who's dropping the ball, because I certainly did my part.

Goodbye, past. I'll miss you forever.

12.6

"I'm trying to find ripe fruit in the produce section when I see, out of the corner of my eye, a man fall down. I feel more than hear his shriek as he topples into the oranges, scattering the display across the linoleum. It's more than I can bear to admit it, but the plum I had been holding I juiced instead. So that's why I'm here."
"Even so, sir, I really don't know if I can allow you to buy . . . uh, pulp, I guess. I'm not sure how I would ring it up."
"Ok. I'll just . . . I guess I'll just leave this here with you, then?"
"Please don't."

12.5

Mom died in a very off-the cuff way. It wasn't a big thing, for some reason. Or maybePhilip and I didn't make a thing out of it. Regardless, I told him the news and he, shuffle-wise, stepped to do his duty. We had already dug one hule i the yard that day; what was a nother?

He started the trench for th grave off-kilter to the house and property, more at a thirtydegree angle slightly more east-west than north-sout, oriented from the southwest corner near the creek-crossing to the telephone pole. He put itsouth and west of the pergola and the bird tree, in the open spae between trees in the flat. I thought of all the symbolic ways I could prepare her body to besent off into the great hereafter. Put a copy of the eye of horus in her mouth and call it a horcrux? Sure. That sounds about as stupid as anything I could come up with awake. I didn't do it.
Dad wasn't really upset, either. Katy wasn't there.

Tonight, I buried my mother.
December 4 five actually at four vivety five am ugh spelling is hard

12.3

There is no majesty in the taste of your blood, my dear friend. I never intended to hit you. But now that I have (or rather, now that you've thrust yourself directly into the force of me, destroying yourself in the process), I find a rather grim positivity. Your legs, splayed and frightening as you violated gravity, contained a puissant beauty. The soft morning air discovered you and the sound of your bones, an unbelievable symphony of one. And from a life of forgotten anonymity, friend, I have plucked you permanently. I will never forget my first kill.
Live forever, victim--perpetual friend.

12.1

[So, I wrote a poem about two people who don't know each other having sex, and I'm very proud of it and it's technically proficient and mildly interesting. Too bad for you that you'll never read it.]

So, once the fire of you had leached out every liquid contained in my hot sack of self, I began to wish that by drinking you in I could sate the thirst my nervous sweat had thrown out with wild abandon. Sadly, I'm going to die, now. When your magnificent haircut hides the single tear you'll shed at my wholly unexpected funeral, I hope for the universe's sake that karma guides the droplet to my yawning grave.

11.30

Whose perspective am I writing from, anyway? Is it mine, the author, or some nameless third party? And if not mine, who is this person, anyway? I don't know if they're allowed to be hispanic, or asian, black, middle eastern, or indigenous. Maybe not female, or trans, queer or otherwise. But if I'm not allowed to speculate from the shoes of another person, what then? Write myself incessantly?

I think what I take issue with is incorrectly characterizing minorities. I think the horror that creeps my flesh is patronizing representations. I think that I'm mostly afraid of accidentally becoming the definitive voice for a person I will never be. As long as I'm careful to write humans, respectfully, quietly--what sin am I, to be someone I'm not?

11.29

I splurged on you, spent my time, my energy, my wishes on you. There's no regret now: you must know that. But I've found my pockets empty for so long since that I feel like I've been scrounging for scraps. Where have the good times gone, back when the world was plentiful and life was fat? I miss you, even though you were nothing especially special. You were worth spending on.

11.28

1:6
She never learned ratios, but now she's one of six. 1/6, and I'm not sure how fully six years later, I still haven't learned this basic lesson, either. Expressed as 0.1666666 interminable excruciating pain of continual search with no guarantee that I'll stick with only six.
Me:You

11.27

I like watching gasses come out of solution.
I like it when suddenly, crystals form.
I like when tracing a shape on cold windows, my finger's alive to ethereal art.

I like clouds in my sunsets in mountains.
I like clear skies for sunrise in deserts.
I like smelling the closeness of skin.
I like finding some opalescence on bugs.

I like seeing things far, far away from me.
I like talking to interesting folk.
I like learning new things from a friend.
I like sitting on rugs on the floor.
I like checking my phone just to find a half dozen messages from someone who misses me.
I like things that snap into place.

I have a lot of small, cheap desires that I will indulge in on every whim, but you are not cheap, nor small in the slightest.
You, I will savor.
You are the end.

11.25

I can't guarantee that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life. I honestly hope so, and I'll do my best to guarantee it, but some brief moments of happiness may claw their way through and break the forsaken monotony of boredom, rejection, and loss I have planned for you. At those times, when you find yourself smiling and relieved, please think back to this moment and consider this my advance apology.
Now, then, shall we get down to business? You've destroyed countless people's lives, and it's only fair for someone to return the favor. Hm. A curious problem—uh, normally, I would say 'Thank you for your time,' but this is an interesting case, so, I guess I'll just say: 'To our great adventure: may you always be sad, and may my imagination never be empty."
Welcome to hell on Earth. Let's begin.

11.22

My name is Robby and I'm here to say: I hate what I'm doing in a major way. I've got no rhymes and I've got no skill. I'm one rapper you won't call ill; but I am! Physically ill. I wish I would stop, but I have no chill.

11.21

It's obscured by the corner of the building and a travel trailer and all, but the spilling light from the garage through the keyhole slit illuminates more than I care to see. His back is to me, and he hovers over the deer's carcass, meticulous in his movements. Every now and again, I can catch a shallow glint of moving steel. I'm on the other side of a pane of double glass--double far, it seems, from the emotion I should feel. The clock in the background softly calls the time and the refrigerator hums a harmony too soft to compose. And I, man and child both, watch a hunter in his necessary work. And I, horrified and still, watch with an unmeasurable dread as a sanguine disaster spreads across the bed of his pickup truck in the half-cold air of a dead November evening.

11.20

Stephanie placed the last pencil she owned into the rattly case and zipped it closed again. She blinked down at the blank page, stoic, undefeated. The only betrayal was a thin veneer of wet that crept to the corners of her eyes, and this she quickly wiped away.
"It's okay. Sometimes, people come in; they have nothing they want to keep. You're not alone. Are you ready?"
She nodded. The technician put a hand on the back of her neck and gently lowered her down into the machine. The gel, although room-temperature, felt ice cold on her skin. She felt it seep through her hair to the scalp. She closed her eyes so she couldn't see the technician count down from ten, replacing her birthday.

11.19

I like light, especially. I'm interested in chasing it. You know, I write about light more than anyone else I know. I take pictures of good examples of it and agonize over how inadequate the feel of it is, all of a sudden. I gasp when I see a good display or contrast or portrayal. I seek it.
I didn't know it, until today,
that I wanted to go to Antarctica for the light.
I wouldn't find out, until today,
that I had been looking for light the whole time.
I couldn't realize it, until today,
that I was interested in seeing the sun in every mood.

Good luck, me.

11.18

I taste like a fortune cookie, I look like a clam. I open in segments and don't know what I am. Who am I? Honestly, I don't know, this isn't a riddle and it isn't a joke. Please, what unlawful combination of things am I?

11.16

Something shiny, something sharp! Tines to peel your food apart! Forks for stabbing, forks for toast, forks to thrust into a roast! Forks! Forks! Forks are forks! You don't know just how it works!

11.15

I'm a Prussian lady, clothed in Prussian blue. My skin is open to the blood-red sky, crimson-tinged, sanguine. I'm sad, roughly sad, unlovely sad. I chose my clothes for sadness, but the day has trashed my plans. My deep-sea clothing fades, and I love myself by chance. Tomorrow, I think I will be ochre. And after, perhaps green. One day, I will find how to overcome red. But I know that today, my chance is dead.

11.14

[I honestly can't with this right now. I've written about ten pages of ridiculously good scholarly work in three days and my brain is not in creative mode. Here is the last paragraph of my paper:]

Of course, no mental health specialist can sit old King Lear on a psychiatric couch to diagnose him properly. Any definition of Lear’s disorder is needfully pock-marked with caveats, but perhaps he could be diagnosed. And if Shakespeare’s keen eye saw in the seventeenth century what we now define in the twenty first, chalk one up to the bard.

11.13

Suddenly, the ice shifts and cracks, opening its face to reveal a crevasse thousands of feet deep, and this with you on top. You're suddenly in open air, relying for life on your frozen harness and a single thin cable. What's worse, the line is attached to a sledge that you've spent fifty hours trying desperately to make lighter in each and every possible way. Now you're hoping that its weight will hold you as inexplicably you fall to the very doorstep of hell itself.
You've already lost most of your nose, several toes, the skin from your hands, the ability to see, and now you face losing your life. You're Apsley Cherry-Garrard, and you're only here because you paid to be. Are you enjoying your vacation yet?

11.11

"The quality," I whisper, "of light--"
"You talk about light a lot, did you know that?"
"It's what I see with."
"Not your eyes?"
"You know what I mean." But maybe not. I stretch again, trying to see over the distant treetops to where the crest of the hills fades out into an indistinct blue line.
"What exactly are you trying to see?"
"Look over there," I say, quieter still, and pointing at the edge of sight.
"What am I looking for?"
"See how the edge of it is so distinct? You'd never see that on a wetter day."
"It's dry? You mean the air?"
"And cold."
"You mean the light?
"Yes."
"So what exactly are you trying to see?"
"Everything."

11.9

Fifteen minutes later, the engine was still running. Snowflakes vanished against the windscreen. They ran out of things to say, and she pushed herself up out of the seat and then, paused.

He anticipated her. "Call me tomorrow?"

"Sure."

She swung her legs out over the curb and let the door fall to behind her. He could hear the muted crunch of her boots through the new snow. She was to her door now, fumbling with the key. He turned the engine off, and she hesitated, turned around.

He opened the door.

Standing on the running board, he looked over the roof and called out, "Hey--"

and she said

"Yeah?"

It was a long bit of silence. She felt, rather than saw him decide: no, not tonight. Before he even shifted to lower himself back into the car, the moment lost its tension, and she ran her fingertips back and forth across the key. He closed the door, so softly she couldn't even hear it. He didn't start the car, though, and snowflakes were just fighting to hold their shape before they disintegrated on the glass. She turned around smartly and let herself in. She closed the door, locked it. Took her boots off.

She walked to the window without turning on the lights and watched him through the blinds. He sat static in the driver's seat for an uncomfortable spell, then started the car and drove away into the night.

11.8

Today, I read your writing. It was like holding your beating heart, not for safe-keeping, but because you needed someone else to feel its weight. I knew you, as I read it. Not the things you were saying, but more and greater, the difficulty of you, the passion, the fear and the self-doubt. Your writing was emphatic and emotional, the effort of beauty writ plain. I have nothing left to say. Stop editing; it's perfect.

11.7

I was in the west Texas panhandle when the road turned to absolute snot under my tires, as packed-dirt roads are wont to do in a sudden shower. Sometimes, I think back to that nasty old abandoned house and the puddle, the mold, the cracks and the collapses. I think back to the cows that trooped in like neighbors dropping by on a Sunday afternoon, just to check on you after church and say hello before heading home. Sometimes, I wish I were back on the road, picking the stickiest, most unlikeable mud from between my fender and my tire. Sometimes, I wish I were back walking my bicycle through the ditch, surrounded by yucca and sage. Sometimes, I wish I were back in that collapsing hovel, eating the last of my food, hoping against hope that I would see New Mexico tomorrow.

I would do it all again, if I were born again today. But I would prefer that you came with me. Honestly? Adventures are better shared.

11.6

A found poem, for your birthday.

Is this enough? Should I say more? Perhaps you didn't expect it on a resume. I'm sorry. I'll go now.

11.5

I've opened up this door a hundred times today, and each time it's always the same drab closet behind it. I'm getting mad. I swear; this morning I stumbled to the bathroom, and, as a consequence of being in this new (old) house, I opened the closet door and caught the briefest glimpse of a passageway just behind the panelling. It was illuminated by a dim lanternlight shed by nothing and from nowhere. I shrieked and slammed the door, recoiling. Just as fast as I could, I pulled the door open again and saw only my boxes of keepsakes and the folded linens, just as I had left them.
Maybe next time. I'll try in five minutes, maybe.

11.3

Martha, my dear:
Though I spend my days in contemplation, you have seen right through me. I endeavored to design a mind uncrackable, with depths and convolutions of introspection. What has been my end you've seen as though transparent from the beginning. Why do you see me as though from above, at great distance, while simultaneously knowing all intricacies as though you've completed a study of my inntermosts with microscope and scalpel? Why can I not confound you?
Sincerely yours.

11.2

Curtis always said he hated science fiction. He's an idiot, sometimes. The purpose of science fiction is to deliver a story so pure that it can finally cut through the human tendencies of frail authors so the true story can appear.

Akira: Cathartic. Horrifying. Obliterative.
Snowpiercer: Impossible. Personal. Prophetic.
Arrival: Expected. Unhurried. Now.

And that's what these are: True. Unalloyed. Lovely. I would watch them again, if you'd like.

11.1

I like seeing skeletons through flesh and skin. I like the places where bones present themselves, shy and demurring. Wrists, ankles, iliac crest. Rib edges, spine prominences, chins. But I can't stand a bone that's too showy. All that flash and razzle, but who for? You're not my fascination.

10.31

I've been bird-dogging you for years. I've been in love with you for longer than that, I suppose. I know you've noticed, but I know you've overlooked it, perhaps unwilling to engage with the plain evidence. I'm afraid neither one of us is prepared to change, so I'm prepared to

I put down my grandfather's letter, unfinished by his hand and my mind both. I couldn't believe what I was reading, but just like the girl he didn't marry, I was unwilling to engage with the plain evidence.

10.29

I've filled my car with books. The suspension is sagging, the doors are trapped, the windows strained. Every time I brake, I can hear the edges of some page or other grating on a thousand more. I may not get there quickly, but where I'm going, I'll have what I need, and it won't be you. Get out of my life, YouTube. Stay home, Twitter. Burn in a fire, Facebook. Hasta la Vista.

10.27

"I've said too much, too often. It's difficult. People let me talk, most times, when I should be listening. I can see it, the reasoning there. Folks are nervous and clam up. I'm nervous and I spit words like I'm terrified. I'm nervous now, you see, and I can't shut up, so I just keep rattling on. I'm sure it's understandable, I mean, the nervousness. It's commonplace, I'm sure, but I just can't--"

"Shut up!"

"Yes, exactly. I'm really quite--"

"I didn't want the speech, I just wanted your money. Holy Moses."

"No problem. I'm sure it's here somewhere, obviously. There's no use denying that, of course. That would be tedious. I'm sure it happens all the time, folks misplacing their money accidentally, but really just trying to hide where they've put it, but I must reassure I have mine, and I've got it here someplace, and I will find it just as soon as I am able. It's not in that pocket, however. I'll keep looking. It's bound to turn up--"

"You get two more words, or I shoot you. Your two words are yes and no. Do you understand?"

""

"Well?"

""

"Oh, chrissakes."

10.26

One week ago today, I felt my hair twitching across my chest and toward my arm. It felt like a crawling. I swear it was a crawling. I slapped it, trying to stop it, trying to kill. It came back. And again. I stripped my shirt off and a long, thin-legged black violation of my body fell to the ground. I threw it outside and shuddered and thought I was done.

Every time a hair moves on my body, it's an insect.

For a week, I've been living in hell.

10.24

I wonder how many words I've written over my lifetime. I wonder how many unique sentences I've constructed from spit and furor and bile. I wonder if, when you put them all in alphabetical order, they mean anything? I wonder what my Zipf count is for the word "I." What about "me," or "self." What about "her?" Because I figure, if you rolled everything up that I've ever talked about and put a neat bow on it and gave it to your uncle as a present, he would thank you kindly and put the whole organized disaster on a shelf somewhere and donate it to the library in a month. I figure the whole mess is worth less than I think it is. And that's not much.

10.23

I've been wondering if there's a casual way to bring up a dream to someone. Not the whole dream, complete with non-sequiturs and dead-end idiocies, but just the most beautiful moment in it, the bit that really ripped me up, you know? I've been wondering how to tell you that you betrayed me last night, tried to kill me, stole my ribs and ran. I was able to round on you, though, and I towered above you in that moment, so angry. It was an anger that only a dream could contain. My body shook with it, and my fist came down on your face again and again, but every reverberation through my arm was less sweet than I wanted, and the revenge was disquieting, and the revelry of the people watching was fallow. I woke up with a sour taste in my mouth and dry on my tongue. Every thought this morning has turned to ash. I was just wondering, then, if I told you, would it somehow be okay again?

10.21

I touched that bat and I've been feeling mega bad ever since. I've been headachy and tired and I just can't get to sleep except for I took a nap during the day today. I've been so sensitive that I had to wear sunglasses even though it was overcast. And what's worse is that my mouth has been so dry I can hear my tongue. I don't want to blame the bat for this, but I think, honestly, I've been changing? Like, the nurse at the ER thought it was really weird when I asked if I could see where they keep the blood bags, but I was just being curious and very very bored. I was there for five hours, honestly.
Well, gotta go. Mom made spaghetti and garlic bread and I'm getting super nauseated just thinking about eating. I'm gonna just go find a tree where I can hang upside down and see if the blood pooling in my head can do anything about this ripping headache.

10.20

I've got a pencil gripped between my teeth and a pile of papers in my arms. You can see me from the car, but we're waiting. You haven't even unlocked the door. The smell of ground-oil is omnipresent; the saturation of scent is driving us back to the first time we met. I'm looking at you through the downpour, thinking about how the rain will soon rob the air of that fresh-wet smell, and you're looking at me through the obscurity of the windscreen, thinking about holding my hand for the first time as the almost-hot August died around us, rain falling, fingers slick and feverish and cramped from their tight grip on another hand.
You're starting to cry, now, but I can't see it. I'm waiting for the clouds to close back up before I make the dash, pell-mell to the car, hoping against hope that my papers don't wrinkle and die. You've decided long ago that you want to get married, but I still haven't asked the question. At this point, you're afraid to bring it up. Maybe there's something wrong, some misgiving, some broken deal that constrains me. Maybe I'm not in love with you anymore. It's a garbage hypothesis, I'm sure you know, but you've thought it twice now since that first day, in the rain. This time, the thought is foreign, alien, like you've forgotten what it feels like to lack that security, but the thunderous sound of the water on the thin, membranous roof is taking you back to the tin shed where we stood to wait out the first, most terrified rain of our infant love. You can feel the pulse in your hands as you grip the steering wheel, staring at the indefinite me across the plaza. You could feel the pulse in my hands, count the beats with your palms, register the shattering shock of it up your arm like an insistent metronome cracking out an amorous allegro. You're now picturing it, and it has taken on shades of blue and green only, even the blackest shadows of the storm washed with ocean hues. You're smelling it, now, the strongest memory-tied scent you've ever believed in, and that only because you live it each time it rains and it shocks you back to that moment when I took your hand.
You reach over and turn off the air in the car. The tears have washed through the tissues of your face, and your nose couldn't register the smell anymore, anyway. The rain is abating, and you can see me shift, restlessly. You lean over, just out of my view, and I crane my neck to see what's happening, and I can't quite make out you opening up the glove compartment and stirring around for a napkin. In the rear-view mirror, you carefully collect the tears and fold the napkin around them. You still look put together. The rain lapses, and you catch movement as I sprint across the pavement to the car. You've reached over and opened the door before I even find the curb, and I'm in the seat by the time the door bounces lightly on its hinges.
I'm breathless. I turn to you, a laugh caught, still-born, on my face. It slides away just like the thin wash of water down the windscreen.
I see you.
"Did you smell it?"
You, of course, don't answer.
"I smelled it."
You look away, through the other window, but every muscle in your arms and legs look electrified, uncomfortable, motionless and limp and entirely on edge.
"I smelled our Alabama August." I shift, and it's the only sound in the car because the rain has stepped back and is watching, holding its breath. I've only just put my hand next to yours, and, as if by instinct, as if by feeling the heat radiating from my skin, you've felt my presence. Simultaneously, we reach for each other's hands, and I can feel my bones stretch with how tightly you hold to me. The papers are still in my lap, and the center console is digging into my hip, and the seatbelt is holding you back, but we're close. As close as humans can be. There's no physicality to this, but only truth. I can't see your face, but I know it. You feel the awful regularity of the thunderous heartbeat once more, and the wash of it travels up your arm and you reverberate.

10.18

Tonight, I fell asleep while a former JPL scientist talked about the Cassini mission in the planetarium at the high school where I work. I didn't want to fall asleep, but I've been staying up these past few nights much longer than I should. There's just always so much information to absorb every day. I scrape through twitter for the interesting articles posted by the people I follow. I try to cultivate a healthy spread of topics in a link aggregator Google put together. I read statistical articles and think pieces and pithy jokes about politics. I watch youtube videos about science and sociology. I read books about anything in particular. I stay up too late. I run myself ragged trying to intake as much as I can, and more and more I feel like a foreigner in my own country, an immigrant from the fact-soaked nighttime, now out in the simplistic day. I rub shoulders with ignorance and shake hands with contentment, and return each night to find my mistress waiting for me, her arms warm and soft and glowing blue, an endless drip-feed of fascination.

Philip, Katy: go to sleep.

10.17

She used to talk about how good a glass of liquor looked, and I couldn't understand, but honestly, I think I did. I must have been lying to myself because I look with envy on the rapture on the faces of carnivores sometimes. I desperately want to know what ribs taste like, or saucy wings, or caviar, foie gras, and kobe beef. Why do I deny myself when she relented? Why do I feel like that makes me a worse person, somehow?

10.16

I like when the sky is a smooth gradient from top to ragged edge. The whole of it has a much more accessible feel, to my eye, a grand vastness that bends down to touch and be touched. When will the wonders of this vast, unblinking dome give out their last trance?

10.15

My shoulder is sore from throwing rocks in the lake with you. Sometimes, the pleasant rhythm of the soft plonk is broken by a bird call overhead, but we don't mind the interruption. Sometime soon, we'll have a measurable effect. Sometime soon, we'll fill this lake and turn our backs to find the water has moved behind us, to the hole we've excavated.

10.14

Toad turned to Newt, eyes first and body following, to hiss softly at the soft, wet salamander. "Hey, Newt." Newt's eyelids slowly glossed past his shining iris, and then back. Toad could see the swift vibrations of Newt's heart, rattling the thin skin of the chest. "Hey," Toad hissed again. "Hey." Newt did not respond. Even this was fairly rude by Toad's standards, but it was nothing in the grand scheme of things. Toad was not a sensitive soul. Tougher stuff, as went the saying. Tougher stuff. One more try, perhaps. Toad shuffled just that tiny step closer, a dry sound of legs and lips as the once-more hiss pissed out over a long second--"Heeeeeeey."
"What!?" Newt exploded back.
"Just checking."

10.12

I put a bird back in its cage for no reason other than vindictive justice. You may call me rude or cruel, but you can't change my actions now. The pitiful squeaking call is flying through the house, but I've put the bird back in the cage. Flying is out of the question.

10.11

Fortunately, nothing even remotely exciting happened after that. As it was, the standard-issue hubbub was far more than enough, and Rodney found himself hyperventilating into his puffed cheeks. One of these days, he was sure, the stress and unholy fear he felt about reaching out would fade. He was sure that with enough practice, he could finally just say the words "Sasha, I like you. We should go out—how about this weekend? Coffee?" Anyway, he'd keep practicing in the mirror and praying for Mason and Frank to move away just in case they liked her too. And one of these days, something exciting would happen, and perhaps his heart would just fail utterly and he could finally sleep without dreaming of her.

10.10

There is a place for people like me, a place we go when we're all used up like a tube of toothpaste. I wish I could say I've been squeezed from the middle and there was a lot left of me, but that would be misrepresenting the truth. In terms of actual fact, I've been rolling myself up as I go along, and nowadays I don't hold much more than a day or two. I'm the last bit of carpet from that construction job you meant to finish, I'm the remnant cloth that you saved for patches later, I'm the coil of wire collecting dust behind the vcr that won't get used again. But that's me, and I'm coming to terms with it. How are you? Still a person, I see. Well, one of these days you'll be a metaphor, too. I guarantee it.

10.9

It's a discovery I'm making every day, this eyesight thing. I'm getting used to it. Before, when the browns and blacks dominated, when the unremitting smear of life dulled my keenest sense, I grew so adept at pulling meaning from the murk that I could navigate in a silt storm. But now—in color—there's so much surefit of information that I have been laughing, laughing every day at the decrepit fools who look around and complain that they're restricted, excluded. Well, I say: if you can't see with this, what other clarity could you possibly want?
And then, of course, I return to my reverie and repeat my daily discovery.

10.8

I went on a bicycle ride, today. I saw a box cutter on the side of the road. I stopped, turned around, waddled my bicycle back to the knife. Opening the cutter, I found the extra blade inside and tucked the first in with it. I closed the knife back up and carelessly tossed it back to the road. The dangerous edge was now concealed, and I flipped my machine around and pedaled away. In a small way, the world was safer, kinder, and more lovely. In a very small way. The very smallest way. Insignificant.

I have avoided all the most important things I could do to improve my world, but I'm willing to fix a blade on the roadside.

10.7

Fierce and unlikeable, she stood at the edge of the cliff and watched the children daring each other to jump. The water wasn't that far below, but they took their time, all the same. Her mouth was curled into a disapproving grimace. Children. One by one, they splashed into the water and kicked great gouts and yelled at each other in tiny voices. Ludicrous. What infantile, purile--but at this, her boyfriend, who had snuck up behind her, grabbed her in both arms and tackled her clean out into the open air.
When she hit the water, she was screaming. When she came up, she was still in the same protracted scream. He, however, was doubled over laughing, struggling to stay at the surface, gasping for air. She kicked off him to get back to the shore, where she dragged herself out and stood, shivering.
"Up yours, Maybrey."
"Love you, Poll."
She turned to find a towel, and lost composure for a fraction of a second. A smile leaked out before she could snap it back where it belonged.

10.6

I remember him milking the cow who's teat had a tear. She was healing, but she still let her milk down every morning because she didn't know any better. She didn't make any noise as he pulled milk into the bucket between his knees, not using the milker, not letting her milk go with the other cows'. On every alternate stroke, a thin stream of blood commingled with the milk and glazed the surface of the bucket a sickening twist, non-homogenized, violence in a place of innocence, injury in a baby's food.
It turned my stomach, and it still does, but I drink milk.

10.5

I just had a dream. I was trying desperately to go be with this extremely cool girl, and on my way to our date, I catch sight of her sister's face. We're talking and together, we figure out she's been having an auditory hallucination. She's so freaked out, and all I want to do is go on this date, but I invite her. I try to save her from being alone. I put her on my shoulders and we all three walk together. We end up by a lakeshore on a flooded road. The amount of amphibian and reptile life in the water is astonishing. Utterly unbelievable. Tadpoles take up all the available space between the eels and lizards and aquatic snakes and frogs. I've gotten my feet wet and we're all laughing or heads off when the girl on my shoulders sort of kicks and gasps. The whole mass of animals has turned as one and all their dark green bodies are moving towards me on the water. The lizard at the front is making a disgusting hissing, smeking noise. They want to taste me. I'm as terrified as the girl was of her hallucinating. I wake up.

The girl I was going on a date with was not Delight.
She was secular but had joined I Cantori. Sure liked dry, intelligent jokes. She was seemingly always in a good mood. She did not blame me for things outside my control. We didn't get a chance to kiss because her sister was hallucinating.
The girl I was going on a date with was not Delight.

10.4

October 3
I was forcibly separated from my soul, today. Someone took a spiritual vacuum hose and held it against my forehead. It made a loud squeaking noise, and then a violent pop. I felt the old boy leave, but honestly, at that point, what could I do? I just sat in a small silence for a moment. The woman with the vacuum must have seen my face because she said "We'll bring it back round at five. Don't worry; we only need it for the day."
I've got him back, now, and he's telling me strange stories about yesterday, and the day before. I'm not sure I believe him, honestly. He says I forget when I sleep, but I think I would remember something like that.

October 4
Some strange woman came in with a vacuum of sorts, today, and pulled my soul right out of my body.

10.3

I glanced at the open-face sandwich between us. She had put it down with the lettuce, the tomato, onion, pickle, cheese, all face-down on the plate with the bread covering, protecting it. She wiped her fingers so carefully and said something that should make me laugh, but I was too stressed out. She picked the sandwich up again and held it with the lettuce cradling the fragile construction above. And then—as she pulled her mouth away—the lettuce ripped clean away and the sandwich tumbled piece-wise to the plate below.
"Oh!" she said. Using the fork, she scraped her sandwich together on the plate and abandoned the bread, now eating an open-faced salad with mustard for dressing.
I stood up.
"The restroom—" she paused, swallowed, and pointed. "Have Gavin show you where it is."
I did not need a restroom. I needed an escape.

10.2

I need to vilify you, or I run the risk of becoming a villain myself. There's a villain in every story, isn't there? And in a story with two actors only, one only can be the hero for there must be a villain, mustn't there? And if you're the villain, I don't have to be the villain, do I?
Unless the main work of villains is to vilify their exes.

10.1

When, exactly, does a person fall, or rather, when can you say he has fallen? Is it the jump, or the landing? Is it the whistle of air in his ears? Or is it the too-bright sun that streamed in the bedside window, sun that he blinked at, rolled over, and grumbled his way out into the kitchen to find a pot of cold coffee waiting to kick him out the door and into the car where he struggled his way into town just to find that he had, in fact, lost his job yesterday and just forgot, a tragedy stifled only by a concerted effort and a resolution to try something new today and a chance to spend the last paycheck he would receive for some time on a frivolous plane flight and a parachute lesson from a woman he'd been seeing for some time but not professionally, mostly because he was concerned that he might be falling for her. Or is it somewhere in between?

9.30

Today, I summited the mountain, and looked down, and all I saw was milky whiteness. The wind pulled fingers of fire and ice alternating through my skin, and I shivered behind a thin layer of solid stone. Today, I summited the mountain, and nothing will ever be above me again.

9.29

Rah Rah America
The good old, good old, U S of A.
A country I live in--I suppose it's okay.

[Written while putting on flag socks to go to school today]

9.28

"Have you heard what the teens are doing these days?"
She leans forward, spins her head. Her breath hovers in her chest. "No, I haven't. My Maisie doesn't come by as often as before, but--"
"I'll tell you, they've gone and cut holes all down their pants. All down their pants, Mary, you wouldn't believe."
"Maisie used to come over just about every afternoon." At this point, there's no attentive attitude. She's melted back into her seat and let go of that bated breath.
"The pants--well, they're more shorts than pants, but with a strip of cloth running down the backside to an ankle at the bottom. There's no fabric from shin to thigh on the front! It's a riot, Mary."
"We used to have such a lovely time." The room around her isn't, anymore. She's on the front porch with the door open, watching a toddler trying to put the water back into a sprinkler on the yard.

9.27

Her wingtips are silvered, like she flew through a lightning storm and came away with just a bit of that electricity on her. The line of her leg is terminated by a talon. Her eyes are golden yellow.

9.26

Do you tell yourself stories? I do. I imagine myself in mundane scenarios. I imagine people handling me in a conversation. I imagine women ignoring me. I imagine conversations with friends, with enemies, with myself. I imagine myself trapped, constrained, trying to deal with the interminate future of four close-set walls. I imagine being used, being described, being opened up and examined.

I don't tell myself stories of victories, though, of reciprocal desire, of small comforts.
I'm happy enough in my everyday life. I wouldn't need the fantasies; I'd waste them. I'll save them for later, but--

What if you only have so many stories before you run out?
What if all my stories are sad?
I should look it up, but nobody's written that book yet.

9.25

Pouring another glass of the thick, black medicine, I concentrated on the musical sound of my grandmother's voice in the other room. "Well, I started seeing him when I was only a child, you know, but he started seeing me when he was a man. Really, it was just a case of missed connections." I leaned into the doorframe with the glass in a white-knuckled hand.
"Ready?"
"Oh, never. I've enjoyed talking to you, though." She turned, and patted the empty air, as if to say "I'll miss you, of course." I handed her the glass, and she drank it without complaint. Her eyes lost the light of moments before, and she looked around the small room as though she was surprised to find herself in the place. She turned new eyes on me. "Again?"
"Yeah."
"Who was I this time?"
I shook my head. There was no point in telling her. It would only hurt. I sat down, and we drank the silence for a time.

9.24

I'm quarrelsome today. I groused at my mother and whined at my work, but I did the chores and I struggled through the assignments.
Who can say if I was a good man at the end? Must I go silently through my day, or can I yell and scream as long as I, at the end of the day, have accomplished my goals?

Anyhow, three lines. Such a small task, but today--overwhelming.

9.23

Antecedent grief to a previous sorrow still informing the shape and sound of the current disaster, I have chapters. What is it like to die? I don't think about it. Flesh is squishy and wet. Is that what it's like inside mine? I don't think about it. What caused my brain to initialize? What happens after it terminates? I don't

think about it.

[Stephen sent me this song two weeks ago. It's still in my head sometimes.]

9.22

Troth is I, thy most flight-happy captive, spite-having,
Who can lose a heart to you (beats, that is, if truthfully youth
Has what for loss), but you, my mishap perhaps, wait.
Thy inner cavity thus metronomically replete withal, and
My members removed to move in you withal, and
Our "something" become as stagnation within,
I feel: dry heat, a fresh weal, live bones now cracked steel,
Shared skeleton and flesh fresh mine, I find
That pulmonary sack filling a puissant lack, is
Now first to pain, gnarled, fired, and slain
Ludicrous, lavish solution to a lost life.
Theft? No. I think to thieve, a gift won't do.
My organ, our chest, our life, my grist.

Be, beauty, a better bride.

9.20

I watched a kid lean into his girlfriend today, his toes tense and his neck bent. I heard a woman laugh with her partner today, hearing a funny story for the millionth time. I saw a man's ring today, bounding his finger and signing his commitment. I saw a full life today, and I fancied the colors of it. Hot yellow, white at the fringes crumbling into old, used red. Bright blue, flashing out blue, unlivable blue. A soft, permanent black, a nighttime gloom, limned with silver and hiding white. The palette of today was worth painting for you.

9.20

I've been more fastidious, more contientious, more dedicated before. I've accomplished, experienced, lived. The problem is that I've never done so much all at once. I'm too large inside, uncontainable, indeterminate. I'm a symphony in sets of three, and I'm overwhelmed, overjoyed, underdeveloped.

9.18

Posthumously, I will fear you. For right now, you're human, flesh and blood and dripping snot, a sack of skin and muscle laid atop a spire of bones. Posthumously, you'll be legend and lore: untouchable. That, I can fear. That, I will fear, for I fear the unknowable, the unknown.

9.17

That same old lariat is pooled around the toes of his working boots. He hasn't touched it in years, and it's cracking into dust. There's no new mud in the tread, no new tears in his shirt, no new scars on his hands. The old work has died and took with it his self, and if you don't think that's sad, you're looking in the wrong place. He falls asleep, there on the edge of the bed, his boots just fresh kicked off, his hand trailing, gripping the coils below as though for the first time, as though he can use it to lasso the better times to bring them back.

9.16

This is not a pitiful story.

I wrote a paragraph about a cracked glass. I hated it.
Three sentences a day is supposed to be enough, right? But I've lost the edge I once had. I'm incapable of writing about anyone but myself because I don't know anyone else. My parents are too happy or too sad, I'm not sure. My friends are thousands of miles away. The people I interact with daily are either not daily or just shallow acquaintances. I'm sequestered. I don't listen to people or watch them interact anymore.
Maybe this teaching thing will be good for me, to have a responsibility every day again for a time. I just hate having to do something I didn't choose for myself, don't understand completely, am not excellent at. I hate it.

That's why I hate writing, finally. I might not be good at it anymore.
This is weepy.
I'm done.

Maybe I'll write something good for you tomorrow. Something enticing, something about a sword and an enemy and three paths at a fork in the woods. Something ugly and acceptable and loving taking the place of the beautiful broken people in your life.
Maybe I'll stop writing about her.

9.13

I am thankful for my crazy cool body, the way my eyes work, the precision with which my limbs move, the way the skin moves over the back of my hands, the scars on my arms and knees.
I am thankful for my incredible brain, the way I read and understand, the intuition into other people's emotions by subtle facial cues, the language I can use to communicate when my face fails, the incredible emotion I feel when good things happen.
I am thankful for the freedom to do nothing some days and still feel financially secure.
I am thankful for the inanimate benefits that prop me up every day.

9.12

I've held the bar of my kite as the wind whistled, loud, through the foil. I'll be honest, it was terrifying, that knowledge: any second, a gust could come and knock me off my feet. White-kuckled, I held to the bar, desperate to let go, holding to the edge of my ability, my feet light on the ground as I desperately struggled to dig in, begging for the grass to wind up around my ankles, to keep me from flipping away on the next breeze. Let me tell you, I wanted so badly for my forearms to give up their ache, to feel strong again so I wasn't so afraid of the power of the kite. But terrified as I was, I would do it again.

Maybe it's this way with life. Maybe we make poor decisions and skate at the edge of our ability for so long because it's the thrill and the rush of feeling that knife's edge of death at our throat. But we don't see the precipice of chance for what it is, and when we're finally, inevitably dragged from the edge, we reach our fists up and curse God and the fates for doing to us what we could have seen, had we opened our eyes.

I'm waiting for the wind to rise again, though. I wish you could come fly with me. We'd poke at the probability of faceplanting, of lacerations and contusions, of wrapping the kite around a power line or a tree and losing it permanently. We'd take the risk because that's what's worth living. Don't say you're not tempted. Come, fly a kite with me.

9.11

I got new glasses today, and the pounding spike of iron between my eyebrows is probably their fault. I won't explain to you the gnaw of it, the pulsing dread of it, the inevitability of it. I'll only couch it in these terms: I have never not had a headache. Other people turn to me and complain of theirs, and I'll assess, in that moment. Inevitably, there's a dull ache scraping the lining off the inside of my skull. Today, it's risen above the noise and asserted itself into my consciousness.

Sometimes, I wonder if it's congenital, or if there's something I did wrong. Sometimes, I wonder about a cure. I suppose trepanation might solve me, or lobotomy, or cephalectomy. Wouldn't you like that? If I do it, I'll be sure to send you the results.

9.9

The arcane remnant of youth clung still to the thin frame sitting in front of me. Long since lost, it spoke through her teeth, as though pushed through a sieve. "I had desire, once. Heat! Ha! I remember it. But the warmth of it still dries the damp days in this cobwebbed cloister." I rocked forward in my chair, anxious. It sounded like the beginning of an unbelievable story.

9.7

The steel frame of this poor car is twisted just a few degrees from true. It's not so that you'd notice when you're looking at it, but it's enough that when you corner hard enough, brake hard enough, drive hard enough, one tire will lift from the ground. It's interesting that the owner still drives it, but honestly--there's nothing else much wrong with it. It's a functional car. It has air conditioning, a radio, comfortable seats, and a frightening wobble at highway speeds. I've seen him demanding more of this poor car, and it delivers every time. You wouldn't hardly know about the frame. I guess it's just one of those things. What are you going to do?

The wooden frame of this old house is twisted just a few degrees from true. From the inside, it's almost imperceptible. You have to stand outside and use the trees around as reference, and then you can see the list. It's still a habitable home, I swear it. The issues are miniscule. In a hard, face-on wind, you can see the walls shudder. A few of the doors stick in the jambs, and of course you can't open any of the windows or you'd never get them back down. But it has a functioning kitchen, a shower, air and heat, and a propensity to fall down in strong winds. I've seen the family that lives here, and they're normal in every way; they just live in an off-kilter house. What's wrong with that?

The human frame of this child is twisted just a few degrees from true.

9.6

I watched the wind tear needles from the pines, today. They tapped against the glass inaudibly, a golden cascade of thin light flecks. I was alone, inside, with no reason to stay, but I just didn't walk out. When it's that beautiful moment outside, and I'm in this husk of a house, I question myself. Yet the door stood closed, handle unturned. My shoes will never get the adventure they deserve.

9.5

Can I describe bone-tiredness?
There's a feeling I get in my chest when I really should be asleep. It's a feeling like the connective tissue behind my breastbone is all wore out from breathing so much. Its elasticity fails, or maybe it retracts back into its cave to sleep, and all I'm left with is a nagging pull on the back of my sternum.
There's a motion to my eyes. The lids droop closed, but that's not how I know I'm bone tired. When I'm fully exhausted, when I flick those hooded lids back open, I'll find that the left eye has wandered. It's just ever so slightly lazy, and it really starts to give up the ghost when I'm tired. I've been so tired before I couldn't keep it straight when the eyes were fully open. I don't do that anymore while I'm driving.
There's a sickness to my emotions. I'm never in bed. It's always too large. There's never enough space. Where a you should go, there are cold sheets. I miss waking up sweating, your legs uncomfortably hot against my legs, your back stuck to my chest, your breathing slow and shallow. I miss the idea of you.

9.4

Am I willing to be stuck writing the same love story over and over again? The pen of my life has ink left in it, but the scrawl is the same sentence, same sentence, ad infinitum. I want for inspiration, but this old heartbreak is all I have.

9.3

I have a skeleton inside me. Sometimes, I hear it clatter against itself. I can only see it in my mouth. I have a skeleton inside me.

9.2

I have waded out, deepening waters clutching my legs, tearing with cold fingers at the hairs there, sweeping a constant threat against the tenuous friction that holds my shoes against the rocks below. I'm open-faced, young, optimistic. I'm engaged and intelligent. The river below doesn't understand all this; to her, I'm only another fool who won't survive a lifetime with her, won't be able to keep up with her coursing strength, won't throw myself headlong into the fullness of her like so many others have failed to do before. She is strong and never static, pushing herself forward relentlessly. I dredge my fingers through the top slip of glassy coolness, and that tenor gurgle joins the baritone turbulence behind my legs and the bass tumble over the rocks beyond.
I'm obsessed. An hour passes; my legs grow numb. I've forgotten her constraints. She is encompassing, powerful. My mind neglects above, beyond. The rock below, the air above, the banks to the sides. I adore her and continually forget the conventions she can't break, the constraints she can't avoid, the collapsed view of the world her narrow valley affords.
Why do I lift, exalt? I want to, you understand. I close my eyes to the outside world. I make myself a river. All I want is to constrain myself to her boundaries. I lay back. I collapse into her world. My ears full of the sounds of her, my teeth now chattering, my bones now fluid, my breath now choked. My limbs now, my depth now, my heart now.
I stand, I leave before the bass tumble of water over rocks catches me and carries me down and over and through the wringer, before she destroys me, unthinking, unknowing that I exist, uncaring of her ignorance.
I drip dry on the bank and walk uphill, freer than she could ever dream, enslaved to her yet.

8.31

The feel of my bones is old ash, only holding its old shape because no one has come by to stir the fire, no structure beneath has collapsed. The hot air winding through my frame serves only further to hold me up and strip away any unburnt remnant. The true part of me is away in the atmosphere, now, expanding, gaseous, larger than I could ever be, not this carbonaceous ossification.

8.29

The Violet, a criminal name I concocted for myself, is an unlikely burglar. Honestly, did you ever suspect me? I admit, it's a stretch to assume a thief in these clothings, but I'm prepared to confess all the same. You have your choice to believe me, of course: as in all things, you deserve your own opinions, untainted and un--
As I was saying, the Violet: the story begins somewhat cooly, somewhat coincidentally, as it turns out. I was in Sir Ranulph's house, as I recall, a somewhat stately and short-ceilinged mansion, a brickwork skeleton with a stone façade. There was something insignificant about the way he handled his artifacts, actually. I remember finding an ancient bit of Indus River civilization leaning up against a book about British mice having been nearly exterminated by the arrival of the Norwegian rat, at least, according to the archeological record, and picking it up to see the book, fascinated as I am by my own Norse heritage, I found no place to put it. It was some small stone artifact, I'm sure, or perhaps a bit of well-preserved pottery. I shouldn't guess, since I'm far removed from the expert in the room, my dear. Getting on with the book in one hand and the shard in the other, I found myself more and more indisposed by my juggling act until I gave up and placed the dull brown antiquity into my shirt pocket. You must believe that I intended the act to be purely temporary. Alas, the shard stayed in my pocket until I returned home, heavier for the thought that my ancestors had--even temporarily--destabilized the natural order of things with the unexpected consequences of their more obvious goals.
I'm sure you're trying to ascertain a connection between my puckish thievery and the more accomplished act you have interrupted tonight. Perhaps a bit of Viking pillage, even? Give me a little credit for subtlety, please.
I discovered the bit of ancient earth in my shirt pocket when I was preparing to drop a few items at the cleaner's. For a long time, I couldn't remember where it was from, so it was no use trying to take it back. In fact, it wasn't until I was in Professor Lindburgh's house just down Coventry way that I remembered. I saw that same edition of that same history of rodentia and had the old feeling sweep over me like a terrible déjà vécu. At that time, I was surrounded by friends in a comfortable study. I stood up unexpectedly, strode to the shelf, and slipped the volume from its company. I do remember some small talk of my good-natured curiosity, and then the conversation slipped away again. I rifled through the first pages, looking for the author's name, finding only the publisher's information. There was an empty envelope there, addressed to the good professor. I took pencil and envelope and recorded the significant information to follow up on it later, to find a copy of my own, somewhere. With the envelope light in my trouser pocket on the way out the door that evening, I remembered the Indus relic and had a sinking moment of guilt. But I haven't been back to Sir Ranulph's house, you see--otherwise I'm sure the pretty piece of history would be mouldering on his shelf once more. And as for the stamp on the envelope, well, I'm sure Professor Lindburgh had no idea of its value. I know I didn't until I was at the very office of the publisher, asking after the editor who had composited the aforementioned rodent volume. The young woman saw the envelope ready in my hand and gasped. Unnerved, I gave her a sharp "Excuse me?" but she was already lifting the envelope from my hand and explaining in a rapid pace the value of the misprint stamp, and I was already building a vast labratory of lament in my head for the honest mistake of twinned thefts one upon another. Upon hearing her breathy exclamation of "Ten million deutchmarks," I turned upon my heel and flung myself upon the door handle. She immediately saw my distress and cried "You didn't know--" to my rapidly retreating back. I hailed a cab and was whisked immediately to the University, you must believe me, to find the Professor and return his unknown possession. You cannot think me party to his mysterious disappearance that day, or his mysterious reappearance a thousand miles away in the arms of the foreign dowager regnant. His relatives being deceased and his will forfeit, the stamp in my possession and the Professor exiled, what was I to do? I sat on the steps of Cloysetter Hall, my head in my hands, and my hands themselves shaking.
You begin to doubt my veracity, I see, but I have no objective in lying to you. What gain is it?
I returned home, freed of returning the stamp, shaking unbelievably. The peril had passed, but a strange feeling still held me, a feeling I was unaccustomed to and unable to place. You probably already know the feeling, this being your line of work, after all. But I set to pacing the floor in my chambers, wearing a strip out of the rug. I was frustrated with my inability to dissect my own brain, I tell you, and I went to see my good friend Doctor Antella, an expert in the psychological intricacies. The good Doctor was out for lunch, but the receptionist told me to wait inside. I continued my pacing, increasingly distraught with the absence of a friend in my hour of need, when I looked up on the turn, I saw a large volume detailing the careful breeding of labratory animals: doves, mice, guinea pigs, and rats. The shaking feeling that had obsessed me for hours intensified, and I could feel nothing in my hands and legs but an alien animus, frightfully strong. I ranged through the small room, crashing from one corner to the next, fighting like a trapped animal. I tell you, I fought it, but my fingers closed on a thick, smooth coin, worn down to indiscriminate design, resting near a bookend and the scabbard of an old army saber. It went in my pocket, but the feeling was still there, uncomfortably prescient and unsated. I cast about for anything I could tell was old, small, and valuable. I know how this must paint me, but I make no apologies to you. A first-edition collection of Coleridge was small enough to tuck into my waistcoat. A small jade cat from some Southeast Asian country. These joined my first theft, the coin. My time was rapidly dwindling, and my heart was still dancing a terrible tarantula in my chest. I rushed from my fair friend's office, guilt plaguing me, chasing me through the call of the girl's "Excuse me?" flying behind me. Doctor Antella was nowhere to be seen. I had escaped without consequence, and only after I had somewhat cleared the building did my heartbeat dissipate. I found my clammy palm wrapped tightly around the edges of that coin, its edges digging into my skin. I have since found out that the coin is Roman.
But I suppose that immaterial matter doesn't concern you whatsoever. I tell this story so that you can perhaps understand how we came to be locked in this unmitigated enmity without any intention of my own. Can't you see the pattern establishing itself? Can't you understand my fear, totally without equal, of the biology department of the university, the natural history section of the museum, the ratcatcher? It's merely your misfortune, honestly. How could I have known that Lord and Lady Bracebridge had an extensive collection of murine phenomena from their son's peculiar studies with the Society for Scientific Inquiry? Why would I have any reason to expect Judge Collury to leave open, on his side-table, the account of the bubonic plague, open to a spread with illustrations of vermin? Who could have anticipated the stuffed collection of mammalia in Orenwood Hall? I walked from those places with artefacts, documents, memorabilia, collectibles, and once a loose jewel from its setting in an ornate set of decorative jewelry boxes. I shouldn't guess that the items together would even amount to more than several thousand in value, surely. I didn't think I had crossed your radar. I had supposed even this theft--I recognize it's much larger--would be far below your notice. I recognize my casual name for myself, The Violet, as purple prose would have it, seems more than a little homage to your own criminal exploits. I understand. You must believe I had no idea you were breaking into these places, searching for these specific unnameable articles. You must understand the absolute impossibility of predicting a master cat-burglar and stealing exactly those items targeted by the next theft. You must understand I never once anticipated you, only reacted to the unspeakable animus that the presence of these works on rodents works in me. I do not wish you harm.
And yet, here we are in this dance, me holding the most famous painting in the country, you waiting patiently for me to finish the story so you can relieve me of it. Regardless, I don't ask for your forgiveness or your acceptance. I'm only asking that you understand how the painting of the stoat behind you could have precipitated this moment, improbable as it may seem, and that you understand how fortuitous it is that you should come along at this exact moment to relieve me of the guilt of the next few moments in which, inevitably, I escape out this door behind me, painting in tow, and you stay, locked into the art museum you accidentally freed me from.
Before I go, I'm just curious: which do you fancy yourself as? The foreign rat, or the native mouse? I suppose it doesn't matter. Good day, my fortuitous friend.