This is why I haven't been blogging

An excerpt from my story "Frances," one of the stories from my thesis:

Alan Butler was always mean to my best friend Frances. Every day she'd have more bruises from him picking on her in the lunch line, in gym, at recess, everywhere, and the coward almost always waited for when I wasn't around. It made me so angry that I'd pick a fight with him at least once a week. But he had bigger friends, and the teachers were on his side because I was a troublemaker with a potty mouth. So every week I'd end up with bruises to match Frances', and we'd compare their size and color on the bus each Friday, my arm to her thigh on the sun-heated pleather bench seat. Somehow in the sunshine and the musty school-bus air, we'd find something to laugh about, and there we'd be, giggling like we were ten again and none of this mattered. I remember her gray, crinkled eyes glistening in the shadow of her hair. I remember silently promising to kill whoever hurt her.

So today, for the first time in my life, I'm going to get the drop on Alan Butler. James, Frances' dad, told me not to cause any problems or to make much noise while he's out foraging, but I've made up my mind, and today's the day. The rifle's barrel is getting heavy – I don't know how long I've been watching Butler through the sights – so I rest it on the windowsill and move the butt around until his big, fat head is back in the cross-hairs. Nobody's listening, but I whisper, "For Frances" anyway. I remember to put the butt snug against my shoulder like James showed me, take a deep breath, and squeeze the trigger gently, gently, and the rifle kicks back against me and I'm on my back on the dusty bell-tower floor in the First Community Church.

“Fuck!”

I heave myself back to a crouch, my ribs and tailbone and shoulder searing from the fall. Down below, the crowd of shambling monsters has changed little, but I look for the hole in the herd that will tell me I finally killed that asshole motherfucker. He had been on the corner of Main and Peach when I first spotted him around lunch. All afternoon, I sat in the tower, eating the leftover Vienna sausages from breakfast and watching him. He proved to be a tricky shot – perhaps there was something of the old Butler left in that rotted brainpan? – as he shuffled behind the light pole, the crashed bread truck in front of the café, and Mr. Johnson, who's at least six foot three. When I find the empty spot in the crowd of zombies, I slap the rifle to the floor. Butler’s still where he was, his big god-damned mouth still dribbling some poor sap’s blood and guts all over the sidewalk, still dead – still alive? still dead? – still staring, like they all do, into some unseen eternity. Next to him, Mr. Johnson hasn’t noticed that he’s missing an arm where I shot it clean through at the elbow.

"That god-damn son-of-a-bitch!" I curse a long string that would have gotten me detention had this been before, and I instantly feel bad for using them. In another life, my parents would have been disappointed to hear me say them or to find out I got detention again for using them. But hearing the cuss echo in the belly of the bronze bell behind me is comforting, a brassy validation of my anger. The words have always come to me when I'm white-hot and angry, when things are unjust or nonsensical. Frances told me once that I make the world happen with my words, that it doesn’t exist until I’ve yelled at it. She’d always sit by my side, completely quiet, when I got that way, even if it was her I was angry with. I don't know what to do when I feel nothing, it's only numbness and a soundless scream inside, when Frances is not beside me, when Frances walked off to march with the decaying throng weeks ago. I am wordless at night.

But now I'm in a noise-making mood. I mutter out the window some more. I feel it's my duty. The other people were quiet to the very end – that’s how the zombies got everyone without even a scream. They were just so busy trying to make sense of it that they didn’t have a chance to get scared. They crawled on scraped knees to the million nameless places people go to die, brows wrinkled, trying all the while to decide which promised apocalypse had befallen them. I know they were working it out in their dull little minds: Is this what the Second Coming looks like? Has society had gone too far in its search for scientific breakthroughs, had re-engineered one too many genetic codes? Or perhaps the Soviets or the Chinese have finally cashed in on their grudges. Oh, we were so sinful, so hasty, and so stingy with our democratic values, they thought, as their lives were pulled from their bones by dozens of snatching fingers. 

So now it's my job to make noise, to scream, to yell, to fill up this silently shuffling town with words, even if James is right and it'll bring the zombies running to our tower, even if Frances doesn't know I shout for her. I'm not going to die like the others, quietly and alone. I shudder because that's exactly how Frances died. I must be strong, though. I'm not going to spend my time wondering what caused this. It's a waste of time. The end has been really too real to be predicted by any ancient tome or stupid analyst's report. No wormy woodcut or low-budget History Channel special could depict a catastrophe so vividly wild as the one outside the window.

I glance down, still muttering, to find the silencer - the one James told me I must always use - laying on the floorboards, and I'm back to shouting. "Fuck fuck fuck!"  I was supposed to use it. I could have used it. I just wanted a better shot. I didn't see the zombies swarming, I reason. I don't hear them clawing or moaning or anything the movies say they do. Maybe everything's okay. Maybe I could take another shot at Alan, make it worth not using the silencer, but I know I'm in trouble with James already. He's a very particular man, the kind that likes things done his way and his way alone. One time he told Frances - and right on cue, I hear James' heavy footsteps on the ladder. At least I think they're James', hope they're just James' - yes, there's his key in the lock. I watch the trapdoor swing open, and he's in the room and angry.

"Oh, hi, James," I manage to get out before his hand comes crashing down and across my face and I'm spun to the floor.

"What did I tell you about shooting? About the silencer? They'll come running now. We'll have to escape again, and where are we going to go? Who's going to fall behind this time, Leah? You're fucking lucky I even made it here before they did."

I have slivers in my hands. The heat is rising on the left side of my face, and echoes of pain reverberate from bone to skin and back again. I speak, my lips half-numb now: "But they- they're not- I didn't see them come-"

He explodes at me. "Goddamn it, Leah! You want to fucking risk that? Get the ropes; we might have to rappel out of here. We'll see if I even take you with." He paces towards me, and I cringe again, but he only leans over me to peer out the window. He stands there a long while, fixed on the scene below, until he is satisfied that we won't be stormed, that we won't become like them.

He kneels and gently lifts my chin. My eyes meet his, and I see that they're watery. "I'm sorry, Leah. After Frances- after the monsters killed my Frances-" James stops and searches the floor for words. "You and Frances were all I had. And now that it's just you- it scares me, Leah. Those, those things could come get you or me at any time. We need each other, so I need you to be careful. You got that? I'm sorry."

I nod. I'm still dizzy from the blow and all of a sudden tired. His argument makes sense, though. We're stressed. Scavenging has been hard lately, our fellow townspeople hungry. I shouldn't have been making noise; we're not sure what sets them off yet. Maybe he just snapped. It's understandable. 

I shift my weight until I can lie my head on James' shoulder, and he falls back on his butt to sit. We watch the tip-top of the sunset  like this, gazing up and over the rooftops, trying to forget about what's under our town's eaves. 

"You're a lot like her, you know," he whispers, and I try to smile. Nobody has ever told me this before. My mind searches for any similarities, but I'm loud, a troublemaker, and she's quiet and sweet; I'm stout, freckled, blond, and she's tall, oblong, with dark hair and gray eyes; I'm plain and she is - was - perfect, unique, my only- then James catches my eye and beams. 

"Yes, you're just like my Frances."

Hourly Comic Day 2010!

If you weren't around me over the course of February 1st, you may not be privy to the glorious holiday that is Hourly Comic Day. If you're too lazy to follow the link and look around the website at the other end of it, here's HCD in a nutshell: every January, the very talented John Campbell of Pictures for Sad Children spends the entire month making a two-panel comic, every waking hour, about what happened in his life that hour. That is many hours and many comics, so on February 1st, in solidarity with John's cause (whatever the hell that is), a bunch of people (cartoonists, artists, and even laypeople like me) join in by making a measly day of hourly comics. I have wanted to do HCD for a couple years now, but only this year have I gotten my act together in time to actually do it. I did a few practice comics (they're hilarious; maybe I'll post them sometime), marked the day in my planner, and set to it. Of course, I was an idiot and missed the first hour, but I think I made up for it a little.

And so, without further ado, my poorly-drawn, not-so-funny hourly comics (click on any to enlarge, btw):

Season of Light

upon black mountains
dark storm breaks open, spills out
snowy streams of light

It seems that every holiday event I've attended thus far has focused on light. I think it says something about humanity that we all (and by all, I mean major religions that my friends observe) find in this dark season a reason to celebrate light. Of course, I know that it isn't the same, cold December the world over, and certainly not in the places where the faiths of which I speak originate, but maybe what we really yearn for, what we really celebrate this time of year is more metaphorical.

Perhaps people gathering together to light a small candle against the darkness around them would do a whole lot of good.




PS: Look guys! I posted something! Crazy. Happy midwinter holiday of choice.

Mulling in Multnomah County

It's funny how I ended up taking zero pictures of the city even though I was really excited to photograph Portland. The pressure to look like a native instead of like a tourist was overwhelming (so many hipsters!), I guess, but that's unusual for me. I guess it was that and the fact that I was in bed sick for a whole day of the trip. That is how trips go, I suppose!



And now back to working on my senior project. Here's the abstract for it (awkwardly in present tense even though it's not done yet; story subject to change without notice!):

“Blinds” uses poetry and short prose to explore the relationship of a pair of lovers, one whimsical, one practical, who, because of the outside world’s demands on their time, are rarely together. Their interactions are complicated by a large rainstorm raging outside which threatens to flood their home. The setting is limited to the bedroom, of which the focal point is the titular blinds over the room’s single window, the patterns of light and shadow that they project into the room and the thoughts that the couple projects onto them. The confusion of the worlds within and without the room permeates the dreams of the characters, and they come to understand each other and society through these dreams.

The form of the piece is unique. It consists essentially of two parts: the central short story of the pair of lovers above and a series of poems, prose poems, and flash fiction pieces that tell the couple’s dreams. Together the two parts will form a sort of frame story in which the telling of dreams and real life will alternate. As the story progresses, the characters increasingly incorporate into their waking life themes and ideas from their imaginings until all or nearly all of their interactions with the ‘real’ world are illuminated by their dreams.

This project is inspired by several fiction traditions, including magical realism, folklore and myth, and paranoid and speculative fiction. The project places these elements in a modern context and updates them for a post-9/11, digital, and ever-idealistically-divided world. To reinterpret Mexican literary critic Luis Leal, “Blinds” not only “suggest[s] the magical in our world,” but also suggests the magical in our world as an alternative to the black and white thinking that threatens society.

At the corner of Anxiety and Self-Loathing

I've been thinking a lot about my honors thesis lately. The little things - voice, organization, research, citation style, and even topics covered - are going to matter a lot in this thesis because of the subject matter: how sciences and arts are really more entwined than we give them credit for, and that it is important to learn both. I really want my thesis to be a reflection of their integration. A little while ago, I conceived of making it a many-faceted project rather than merely an extended essay. Now the budding thesis in my mind is a mixed-media extravaganza: poetry and stories, surely, but also socio-psychological studies, historiography, cross-genre metaphors (the only one I have so far is entitling a short essay "String Theory" and having it be about theoretical physics and music), political arguments... everything I can work in.

I still have many anxieties about this, though. For one, it's huge. Two, I will be sooo disappointed if it does not turn out the way I envision it. That's a big one. I don't deal well with turning in work (especially important works, like, ahem, an honors thesis) that I don't feel is the very best. I'm not entirely sure how this will work. Three, I'm a procrastinator. Four, I'm not sure how it'll go down when I show my parents. When I gave my mom the basic overview a few months ago, she said, "Hmm." Keely, Colleen, and I all know that "Hmm." It means disapproval, short and simple. Also, since I came up with the idea, my dad has, two or three times, offered his thoughts on arts and sciences, a sort of "how dare anyone call that a science! Science is the purest of the pure! Do not got contaminating the name of Science with [insert social science here]!". Yeah, I haven't told him what my thesis is about yet. But I sure am glad I didn't major in psychology.

I could probably easily eliminate all these problems if I just did what every English writing major does: write a few chapters of a novel or round up all the short stories and poems I've written over my college career and turn that in. I can't bring myself to do it. Remember what I said about not being able to turn in work I don't feel great about? I have an opportunity to turn in what is probably the easiest thesis in the world, but that would feel too much like cheating. I tried to get around this by trying to come up with a theme to write my poems and short stories to. I just couldn't find any to which I could commit. I tried to come up with an interesting technique I could experiment with. When I told one of my potential thesis readers that I was going to craft my thesis entirely of writing exercises and experiments, he demanded to know more before he would sign off on being my reader (I promptly got rid of him and found someone who was willing to sign a blank check for me. God knows I don't need more doubters than myself in on this.)

So I've dug my own grave. And my project for the next few months is to find the inspiration to keep digging that grave until I reach the China of thesis success. God help me.

Cleaning Out a Desk Haiku

in waves like the sea
the typhoon tells me to go
it lifts me away


Date of original version unknown. I had written this down on a scrap of paper and forgotten about it. Talk about your "found poetry." I guess moving is good for some things. Yesterday I found an Old Navy gift certificate for 25$ from my sister and her (now ex-) fiance, so I now have a cardigan and a tshirt on the way. At 4:15 this morning the fire alarms in my building went off, and I had to wait outside in the cold while the Housing staff and the firefighters deliberated over whether or not there was a fire until 5, reminding me that I should have slept in my new room last night instead. I think somebody's trying to hurry me out of here. They're luring me, too. I found an excellent, ancient sewing machine by the trashcans on my new floor. It weighs 30 pounds, but I think it might actually work. Who knows what this summer holds?

May Day

This is what it’s like:
the raven
blacker than the night
caws to the hills of white
that melt to grass
punches of green
bruise my heart
a sunshiney sort of wound
where the dew pours
out of caterpillar capillaries
may day or mayday or m’aidez
who will answer if not
the raven
blacker than the night?

Let's start with your mother...

About a third of my readers (lol with me, now) asked about the creative writing class exercise that spawned this poem (with the help of this excellent story by Ann Leckie [I recommend everything from Strange Horizons - I've not ever been disappointed by its stories]), and so here it is in its full glory, along with an exercise from another class (Nature Writing).

Exercise One

This one was word association. My professor (Dr. Anne Bauer with an 'e') listed off the words one at a time, and we wrote down whatever images came to mind. The slashes aren't really necessarily line breaks here, but more just a feature of my shorthand.

rage: red/ shattered glass and drops of blood/ why did you do it?/ the metal's mengled - now rust will form when it rains/ red glass and blood on chip-seal

order: the waitress stands straightly, writing quickly but perfectly/ there's not a stain on her uniform/ she took an hour to do her hair

justice: blindfolded, as always/ blue from the years of storms/ her arm must hurt from holding those scales/ day and night

common: peasantry. linen. dirty streets/ small bird, unassuming; people call it common, but it soars; they're common

mercy: it's what the weak, the downtrodden cried - see their bodies in the streets?/ God have mercy on us and no-one else/ stained glass and sad Jesus/ he bleeds/ Mary cries/ mercy.

pain: the knife enters. it's the hand. please don't hit the bones, the vessels. oh the nerves! in the palm it hurts the worst. i move my fingers. click. click. the warm darkness squishes out. yup. it broke some bones.

hunger: a peanut butter and jelly. no - a meatball sub. steak. ANYTHING.

god: white, right? and bearded, always. why not young? why not green? a crane. I like cranes isn't that more noble than a humanoid, anyway?

After, she had us look at our responses to see if there was something that popped up a lot. Turns out I'm a bit bloody. Freud would have a field day!



Exercise Two

This one was a little less serious, and followed this format:
"If your writing was a(n)..., it would be...."

continent - Australia
color - green
Olympic event - 100 meter dash
state - North Dakota
celestial body - Horsehead Nebula
body of water - Lake Baikal
time - late evening, when the moon is up
kitchen utensil - spatula
natural disaster - tsunami
bird - redwing blackbird

When You Sleep I Stare at Your Eyelids

I want you close like when
you turn up the volume louder and louder until 
you cringe but
it’s not enough so you press the headphones deeper until 
you hurt but 
it’s still not enough because you just want it inside you
inside your head
inside your heart 
in your belly in your hands in your feet 

I want to see you like 
when you read a book all about someone’s life and 
they seemed to know 
just what to do at every turn I know I don’t
but it doesn’t matter 
because isn’t it wonderful that someone lived loved
if they’re gone now
that doesn’t matter 
because I will watch you peel potatoes put on socks blink and
I don’t know much but
we will hold hands when the sun explodes 

I want to feel you like 
a painting when you look at the woman’s face 
and the colors and the lines 
and the soft palet ridges
they mix and blur and you can’t touch it because 
the sign says 
and because you can’t
it was another time another place
maybe the artist 
made love with the model 
every dust-filtered afternoon, but he was bothered 
he couldn’t paint the little lines in her eyes 
just right I’ve tried 
to draw you your eyes your eyes
but I couldn’t get it right.



(A revision of this prose poem).

White, right?

From a word-association exercise in Creative Writing yesterday:

White, right?
and bearded.
Always.
Good luck, then.
For me, a crane.
I like cranes
No crane ever cried
war. Never
hated. Never drowned
the world in rain. Never
did much
but fish,
and I thought you liked
fishers.
You say wrath?
I never fear
my crane-god's
wrath. It's mercy
that you want?
My crane-god grants it–
won't punish one sin.
See the crane in the water–
won't you step in?

Mother Nature (Part One)

As shadows swarmed around the woodcutter,
he tried to recall the little things, those that had seemed
so clear, so important, that morning when
he had stamped his way past the trees. He squinted
into the darkness, searching his misty mind.
Where had he come from? Where was he going?
But the way home was lost to him now, and he,
having forgotten what it was for, had dropped
his axe some time ago. Fruitless, he gave up
remembering, and settled to surveying the
twirl of the squirrels’ amorous embraces, to smell the
toadstool-kissed, decaying trunks, to heed the
sound of the salmon fry emerging in the quick, cold water.

At times he felt the forest pulse, pressing
him forward, so he went. His skin, weathered by decades
of forgotten storms and suns, became buttery;
beneath harsh wrinkles formed smooth rolls of fat.
He wiggled his toes, which seemed somehow closer, as
still the limbs pushed the little woodcutter
onward, where a growing light shimmered, summoning.
The air was thicker here; it coagulated
in his lungs until he almost choked when the very forest
floor bent itself to throw him forward; he hurtled
past spruce and moss and stream until at last
he emerged into the heavy glow. He blinked. He wept.


(Updated 3/27/09, pm)

Dead birds and then some.

When I first came to Helena, I saw at least three dead birds around town within about a one-month period. It struck me deep down. I don't think I had ever seen that many dead birds before in my life (outside of poultry, of course), but it was more than shock that affected me so deeply. I didn't – and don't – know what to think of it, but I knew it was important. Dead birds to me are perhaps the ultimate contradiction and the utmost tragedy. I once told my mother that a short life as a bird – flying, swooping, free in every way – would be better than a human lifespan filled with drudgery. She rejected this, and I've always regretted what she said a bit. Predators, she mentioned, and danger everywhere. "But they fly," I thought, and still think."But they fly."

My relationship with the night, and subsequently the moon, started out very differently. I can remember the first time I listened to Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World". He sang, "I see skies of blue, clouds of white; the bright blessed day," and I vividly remember expecting him to say something about the "dark, scary night." It is obvious now that I did not know Satchmo very well. Nor the night. "The dark, sacred night," he sang. It was a line that shook my world, and I've been growing to understand it little by little ever since.

.... Which (kinda) leads me to this poem. My Nature Writing professor Murphy let us out on Wednesday to enjoy the sunshine and write poetry, our first poetry assignment. He gave us the line "Atop this hill waiting for a glance" to use as our first line. I wrote no fewer than three different starts of poems with this, none of them satisfactory. I had all but given up until tonight, when, reading an article for some ridiculous assignment, I found that the planets had alligned. In short, I don't know what set me off, but I started scribbling on the back of the article, and this poem, for better or for worse, came into being. It may or may not be good, but at least I won't be empty-handed when Murphy comes to collect my poem.



Dead Birds

Atop this hill, waiting for a glance
a bird lies alone. During the day,
the sun beams down weakly; it tries
to heat the tiny, stagnant heart, sighing
not on my watch, dear God
not on my watch, not again.

From far away, the wind sweeps in
to say its goodbye, caressing every feather
holding each aloft just to watch it fall
again. It remembers them all, and murmurs
goodbye old friend, I understand
goodbye old friend, but we must part.

Then one silver eye glances, then gazes
into the bird’s milky one. The moon
looks silently upon her lover. She pulls
a dark veil over her face and smiles.
But he flew, she laughs.
But he flew.



Although it really deserves its very own post, "Repenti" by French crooner Renan Luce was on repeat the entire time I wrote this poem. Even if you don't understand the lyrics (I tell myself they improve my French, though I don't understand half of them), the video, though not high in quality, says it all. This song has been a favorite of mine from the first time I heard it. The repeated phrase "Repenti; j'ai trahi" means "I repent; I betrayed". I'd have embedded this baby so hard, but someone was a jerk and didn't let me.

The Glow

The Glow creeps upon the floor
its spiny dexterous fingers grasp
squeeze savagely the wisps of dark
and rend them from curtains
and couch and carpet
until he wants to scream

when slowly it crawls
up his pant leg, pulling
dim strands from the threads
as it slinks onto his hands his face
The Glow spits in his eyes
and to his fearful squints whispers
“Let go of shadows.”




A re-imagining of this haiku.

This is what you get when you ask me about posting, I guess.

My Nature Writing professor, Murphy, had us write 4 paragraphs in class on Friday (a place, a place within that place, a person you associate with that place, and a living creature you associate with that place), and here's the revised version. One of you even co-stars with a hermit crab in it!



When you pull over to go to Third Beach, you may question why you’re stopping there. There is no beach in sight, only trees. But you get out anyway and start walking; surely it’s just over this next hill. It isn’t. By the second hill, though, you can’t hear the highway. You may have even forgotten that it’s there. You look around and find that the trees have been doing nimble backbends over your head, trying to whisper in your ear the whole time. They’re sneaky, those trees. As you look up at them, you breathe in their message, and you find that it’s a faintly piney one. You learn to do your tromping carefully because you wouldn’t want to misstep and somehow fall from this place. You walk on, and the trees’ whispers take on the churning rhythm of gossip. Their breath is salty now. You remember why when the sea appears from around a corner. Perhaps you’re tempted to throw the trees a wink as you clamber over the driftwood and onto the beach. Do it.

You may sit for a little while once you reach the sand. Start a fire. Talk to your friends. Dare the cold, white surf to catch you. Let it. Then go exploring. If you travel up the beach, you’ll find a small chapel hewn from the rock. You can’t miss it. It’s always filled with the most faithful locals – hundreds of steadfast limpets, snails, barnacles, and chitons who adhere resolutely to the holy rock, though the waves of the world may batter them and try to convince them to falter. As you stoop further into that dark and eternally damp sanctuary, you, too, will want to join the fold. Casting your eyes up to the heavens, you’ll see the tiny apostles stacked high into the darkness, stretching to the point that you cannot tell where the creatures end and the crevice begins. You’ll know then that you envy what the stone around you has; you want to touch every clinging creature so intimately as these walls do. Press your hands to the rock – let them become as clammy as the rock. Fit yourself into the tightest space in the darkest corner. Maybe you’ll want to talk to the small snail by your thumb. Chat away.

When you emerge from your cave, you’ll find your friend Christine sitting on the beach. Watch her a little while. See the way her dark curls drift on the wind? The way she closes her eyes? She more than merely knows Third Beach. She feels it. Go ahead and approach her; she doesn’t mind. She only abstractedly realizes that you are there, and when you sit down beside her she’ll look a little surprised, like a librarian discovering one last patron in the stacks after closing time. At once she is both beside you and light-years from you. You know her to be a serene, spiritual woman, yet somehow you know that this time it’s different. She’s a poet, but she won’t need any words to describe her thoughts about the beach. Just look in her brown eyes. It’s all there: the hazy gray sky, the colorless sand. The waves. The sand. The sea. Third Beach.

Because you are not Christine, you get distracted. Tide pools! Tiny animals! Plunge your fingers in. Ignore the cold. Find a discarded snail shell for your collection. Don’t put it in your pocket, though. See the claws, the spider-like legs? It’s a hermit crab. You set the shell on your palm and hold your breath. Your legs get tired and your eyes strain as you wait for the crab to surface. He doesn’t, the little brat. You’ll show him. Put him back in the tidal pool and watch, sitting on your heels. Touch the green, sticky anemones next to him just to watch them pull all their tendrils in. You did it, didn’t you? Bully. The hermit crab’s still not come out. You turn and look back at Christine for a moment. You turn back and look at the hermit crab’s shell. It’s gone!


Maybe you haven’t quite figured out Third Beach, you think. You haven’t.

Out of my mind.

This is mostly intentionally punctuation-light. I think I'll call it poetry. Feel free to put in line breaks and punctuation how you imagine one would. We could call it creative essay, perhaps. This is what listening to Tegan and Sara does to you. I'd listen to this song while reading in order to get the full effect. Boy, do those girls have a way with things.


I want you close to me like the music like when you turn up the volume louder and louder until it almost hurts and you’re cringing but that’s not enough so you press the headphones deeper into your ears until it almost hurts but this time not because it’s too loud but because it’s still not enough because you just want it inside you, inside your head, inside your heart in your belly in your hands in your feet Oh God, I can’t get close enough I can’t I can’t I can’t

But you go and I know you must, so I put my music on repeat and turn up my headphones.

I want to see you like when you read a book all about someone’s life and how they seemed to know just what to do at every turn or they didn’t but it doesn’t matter because isn’t it wonderful that somebody had a life and that they lived it, and if it’s gone now it doesn’t matter it’s just that they lived they loved and I want that I want to know that it all turns out okay that we hold hands peacefully when the sun explodes and I try to remember the future but can’t.

But you go and I know you must, so I plot out the rest of our days with a little room for secret plans.

I want to feel you like a painting when you look at the lines and the woman’s face and the colors how they mix and blur and you can’t touch it because the sign says and because you can’t; it was another time another place and maybe the artist made love with the model every afternoon, but he was bothered because he couldn’t paint the little lines in her eyes just right I’ve tried to draw you, your eyes your eyes, but I just couldn’t get it right and nobody would understand and I don’t think I do either

But you’re tired and want to sleep so I stare at your eyelids.

Time traveller.

can he even know
the time travelling he does
while his eyes are shut?
the clock shines 1:30
where he sleeps
but the dark, silent star
of my 12:30 dream
sighs and turns his cheek
an hour away

Back by popular demand.

Since all three of my readers have officially made me feel guilty about not writing anything for so long, I suppose I can make myself write a post or two.

But I have (or, as it were, had) so many good excuses for utterly forsaking this little patch of cyberspace. My computer's long-lobbied mutiny against me (I ask you, little iMac, was it all the cephalopod porn? Was it the blogging? The presence of Windows Office? Was I jamming your keyboard too hard? WHY OH WHY??!) was rather crippling. And I've been busy, I guess, though I'll often find myself alone in my room doing nothing in the middle of the day, which, as you know, is the perfect environment for hatching a blog post (note post time).

One factor is that I haven't had any homework from which to procrastinate. Believe you me, homework spurs a great many blog posts in this world. If I had to guess, I'd say that the imminent threat of actual work prompts about, oh, 98% of all clutter in the blagosphere. Livejournal, Blogger, Wordpress... all of these have been found under microscopic examination to be comprised almost entirely of a digitalized compound of laziness and fear of doing real things. Just look at the pixels on the page of any blog. You can see that they ooze with loathing for actual work. However, since I have had very little actual work that involved me sitting at a computer this summer, I have not been able to generate enough laziness and fear to excrete a blog.

See? Completely not my fault, and in a simple, explainable, concise form.




Frankly, I can't believe that, either. Really I've spent most of this summer, and really probably most of this year, being utterly terrified. It hasn't kept me up at night or anything, but I can't help but feel overwhelmed with my choice of college major. I love reading; literature gives me a jolt like few things can. I love writing; there is no joy quite like creating something that you know is good. The problem is where these two joys and my perfectionism intersect. I read great fiction by people such as Joey Comeau and Megan McCarron and wonder to myself how the hell I would EVER be able to come up with something witty, creative, and moving enough to even lick the shoes of a story like "Where Are You Off To Now?" or "The Flying Woman" or even projects such as 55 Words. My creative writing class ended with my miserable failure at creating a cohesive short story (for me, a favorite medium), and I find myself afraid now to even try - and, well, that doesn't leave a blog based mostly on writing in any kind of a good place, does it?

Maybe I'll buck up and get over it. Surely I'm not going to change my major based on this. I've let similar bouts of perfectionist paralysis mess up my schooling far too many times. So for now, my three dear readers, I shall do my best to overcome this. Bear with me, but don't be afraid to push me, either. And, over all, thanks for everything.

The broken lift.

(This is the first scene of a story I began for Creative Writing class, but didn't want to finish. Maybe some other time I will finish it, but for now, here it is, and here it stays.)


The bellhop felt that he had never seen such a couple as the pair he was escorting to room 902, but he was not sure why. The lift was out, so the wiry, scarlet-uniformed bellhop made his usual show of brassy apologies and led the way up the sweltering back staircase used only by the help. Even carrying the ginger-haired man’s navy-blue matched suitcase set, the bellhop breezed up the stairs, clearing two tall steps at a time in his customary swooping march. Behind him, the lady in the red dress panted elegantly and clutched at the dilapidated railing. The ginger man tried gallantly to cover his own breathlessness, but sixteen stairs ahead, the bellhop could hear his half-stifled gasps. He was so busy listening to them that he forgot to count how many levels they had climbed.

“Just a little farther, Sir, Madame,” the bellhop announced confidently, making the first break in the icy silence. He was sure they felt that this staircase was as interminable as he did, and as he looked back, he saw the woman shoot him a grateful look. The man glowered. He said nothing, but puffed a bit of air from his red cheeks, reminding the bellhop of cartoon bulls on television. The bellhop quickened his pace a little. “Will they have the lift fixed soon?” the woman asked. Hearing the ghost of a southern accent in her voice, the bellhop realized that it was the first time she had spoken. He thought her softness a strange contrast to the man’s throaty growl; earlier he had commanded the attention of the entire lobby, barking at the staff about parking, prices, and poor service while the woman clutched his arm and smiled a faint but sincere apology to everyone else.

“A repairman is already working on it, and it should be functional by this evening. I am sorry for the inconvenience,” the bellhop told her, then could not help but imagine that if they did not get there soon, the man might make him sorry. The elevator’s repair was outside the bellhop’s control, a condition he resented deeply. The bellhop was sure that the ginger-haired man was the type that would reward anyone who eagerly jumped to his every command. He had seen a million self-important men do the same thing: roar orders, then, remembering the way their fathers had treated the help, smile and pull out a fifty-spot for the bellhop with his pleasingly quaint “Sirs”. It was American. There was something tickling the bellhop’s mind, though. This one didn’t share the snarling smile of the other businessmen; there was something carnal, almost beastly, about his casual domination, and here in the closeness of the concrete staircase, the musk of his power was overwhelming. The bellhop gulped down the feeling that his every footstep was sinking frantically like bare, blistered feet in a dune. He tried to take three stairs in one step to overcome the sensation and stumbled on his patent leather shoes.

The wad of scarlet and navy and shiny black tumbled wordlessly down twenty-one stairs, making a thud thud thud all the way. It halted limply at the woman’s feet. “Oww,” it groaned. The woman dropped to her knees, her soft repetitions of “Are you okay?” falling all around the bellhop’s rumpled form. It was less of a question and more of a statement, but, with his eyes still closed, the bellhop thought to himself that he didn’t mind. He tasted blood, and a headache had already begun to bloom in his head. Opening his eyes, the bellhop gazed up into the woman’s pale face and marveled at the tamed flames of her lips. He watched them as they repeated one last “Are you okay?” and had to blink to guard his eyes from her luminosity. He suddenly felt the clumsiness of his lanky frame and the grunge of his sweaty uniform and spent several seconds thinking of how to fix himself. The bellhop answered, “I’m quite alright, thank you, Ma’am,” because he could think of nothing better to say.

“Well, since you’re fine, get up already,” the man said in a grunt that grew into a seething growl, “You’ve gone and thrown my goddamn suitcases all over the goddamn place, and now you think you get to take a nap? I should report you.”

“I’m very sorry, Sir,” the bellhop announced with more composure than he felt. He stood, brushed himself off, and took the dented scarlet fez from the woman’s hands in one graceful motion. Heaving the suitcases into the air again, he felt his achy joints lurch forward and was afraid that he was going to fall again, but he caught himself and as simple as that was walking again. They were just a flight of steps below the ninth floor landing, a fact for which the bellhop was very grateful. He could feel bruises swelling beneath his uniform; his right shoulder, left shin, and forehead throbbed in unison like sarcastic applause for the worst performance of his career. Although they were steep, he had never fallen on these stairs, and he wondered where exactly he had gone wrong. The bellhop recognized that the fall had ruined any chance of receiving a tip from the man. The bellhop was good at his job, and he knew it, but now he had screwed it all up; these rich guys never paid out if even a single thing was amiss.

The wobbling first steps after the fall became steadier as they climbed, but they also took on a sort of hopelessness. Though he was strong from carrying silver trays and suitcases throughout the extensive hotel, the bags felt heavy in his hands. He hoped he had broken something in them when he fell. The bellhop tried to pay his own body no attention. He distracted himself by watching the pair out of the corner of his eyes. They, unaware of his surveillance, staggered stoically, heads down to watch each step. It was as if they were the first explorers to cross some oriental desert; the woman clutched her purse now as if she might plant it in the name of some great nation. The man occasionally glanced up at her as if he might use her the same way. His aura of command had increased now that his panting echoed in the oven of the staircase and two large rings of sweat plunged from his armpits, and he seemed to push the other two upward with only his presence. As the ninth floor rose haltingly before them, the chorus of heavy footfalls changed. The woman, her red dress streaming behind her, surged past the bellhop and for a moment eclipsed his view of the ninth floor door.

The bellhop decided right then that he hated them, both of them. He had never thought anything of carrying duck a l’orange to pinstriped businessmen or misguiding housewives long-distance in Dubuque while their munificent husbands cavorted – they were all but fixtures to him, and he begrudged them nothing; he was content to be able to pay the grocer, the landlady, and the bartender. But these people… they made him desperate. He had to reach the top first. Yes, that was the way it had best be. He looked up at the red dress swooshing its way up. He increased his stride to three, now four steps, dodged to the woman’s right, listened to her swoosh by, and then dove to his left, blocking her. One stride, a second, and the door stood before him. The bellhop set one bag down, used his newly freed hand to turn the latch, and plunged into the air-conditioned hallway, carelessly tossing aside instincts that begged him to hold the door, and listened, for the what seemed like the first time, to his instinct to breathe, to breathe, to breathe.

After the war.

The peak of the blood-red barn only barely managed to stand out against the fleshy sunset sky, but he didn’t care to notice. He saw only the thin, wriggling-worm path stretched out beneath him and the loneliness of seeing only his two feet beating the dust. The old man looked up only once, and, seeing how callously the worm squirmed its sharp way into a puncture in the barn’s carcass, dropped his eyes again. He entered through the wound, flipped the switch, and like that, he forgot again. Scratching his head, he slumped onto the bale of hay to his right and gazed thoughtlessly straight ahead. The cows began to line up on either side of his vision, hoofed militias set on mooing the other side into submission. First one side would start, then the other, and the old man found himself sleepily cheering for the side he had traditionally milked. Finally their barrage of complaints jolted him awake. He had come here to milk them. After he finished with the cows that were his comrades, he paused, shook his head, and milked the enemy forces. As he heaved the overfull pails back to the farmhouse, the combatants’ milk sloshed and mixed in their galvanized containers, spilling dark splotches onto the red, parched earth.

Teardrops and fanfares.

Only the gray water saw the girl’s gray, watery eyes, but it dealt admirably with the honor. To cheer its short life’s one witness, the basin of water reflected the images of the eyes back to their owner. She ignored the courtesy. Suddenly the girl’s face plunged into the water, splashing sparkling bits of it all over the table. The water wrapped itself around every curve of her face, exploring her – it dove into her nostrils, rushed the length of the great rift between her lips, and whispered to her eyelids to open up. Soon, though, she pulled away, and, with a cloth, gently scrubbed her still-wet features. The basin reflected this, too, hoping to entice her back with its tender caricatures. The girl soon acquiesced; her dark ringlets floated on top of the water, gathering the suds in their black tendrils. They tickled the water with their extravagance. In too short a time, the girl was done. She pulled the plug in the bottom of the basin, and, as the water swirled down and away from the light, it gave a faint gurgle of gratitude and farewell to the girl.