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.