and it feels like nothing has changed, everything remains the same. except, of course, that everything is different.
i tried to give it up | as if that could have been enough | but it didn't work | because of that shirt you're wearing | that shows every freckle | i know | every freckle i want to follow.
black feather dusters, and other interesting stories:
the post op mix, take II. pressing my luck. walking to my (former) castle in the rain. half-naps. fat squirrel. being on the inside of my head, and looking out through a backwards mirror. girltalk, with peanut butter. showing the world to kate. the smell of lakeshore. water at the high top, and the shy sidling eyes. being assured of telephone wires. lake mendota, the amazing guitar, and black jacks. dirty girl scouts and green fish bowls. running down three flights of stairs, and still not being far enough away. the release of fear. parking lots. fences and alleys and sidewalks under crescent slivered glow. knees. small voices in early morning hours. chocolate cake pans, washing the dishes, and falling asleep to [bob, ani, simon, & rob]. mike droho and his covers of [the freshman, your song, crash]. riding in vans. seeing sully from the other side. reenactments. horrible spanish. too much drunk. being warm. revelations, realizations, resignation, and rage. getting lost in milwaukee (kind of). my person. chick flicks, waltzing in grocery stores, and playing chef with avocado and ham. SING. olive garden ala sex and the city. 40 year old jaeger bombs. the card trick table. spooning. not having to talk, and only needing to listen. roadtrips.
if i push too hard, its because i want things to be better.
i want us to be better. i want you to be better.
sure, i make waves.... i mean, you have to.
if i'm better off | better off
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Monday, May 07, 2007
rule number seven
7. write as if it were for only one person. if you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
[ rules for creative writing 101, introduction to bagombo snuffbox. k. vonnegut]
this is my ecuavida.
living in wooden houses, with too many cucarachas, and twice as many rats. rain at night, flooded muddy roads in the morning. constantly greeting everyone, even when i’m in no mood to be friendly. red beans and vegetables and crispy burnt rice. the pacific (at night, by sunset, in my hair, in the pages of my books, in my heart). herba luisa [fresh, not from the tea bag]. mold. the bats (murcielagos) which swoop through the (sometimes) flooded river valley at exactly 620 in the evening. the crack in the shower wall that looks like a spider when the light isn’t right. trying not to slip and fall in the mud on the way to the bathroom in the nighttime. the triple curves in the road to tabuga which i count subconsciously in my head on the way to school. playing politics in spanish. being trapped by a flooded river with andrea at the house of a wide-eyed Italian man in the middle of the ecuadorian costal campo, having calamar, fresh basil, and espresso, and talking about international politics and futbol. taking pictures of pictures. my chicos. leading them into the reserve, and watching as they fall in love with el bosque, and each other. panaderias and the fruit market on the corner. the springwater of pd (a rum and coke). taking over the dance floor, crazy gringa style. the loud ass ecuadorian polka music at six o’clock in the morning. the “bombed little man” that is our chef. being sad to watch the baby aullador scramble inside the rice sack, and being happy to watch the wild troupe take him back up into the trees. attempting to understand the social class balancing act I have found myself inside. angelito, gisela, moises, deci, jonathan, andrade, and duana. being escorted down a dark dirt road by a parade of small children. bear hugs from lorena. cooking beans in hostel kitchens. fumigation headaches. being not-so-terrified to give speeches, in spanish, in front of more than 100 people at the town meeting. helping to begin an environmental association, and calling for the vote. hummingbirds, and mosquitos, and camarones del rio. camarones al ajillo. contemplating the loss of memory while watching the coast blur by on a bus. rancheros and the wind. riding in the backs of giant red pickup trucks after rainstorms. spontaneous freestyle jam sessions on the beach, at 3 in the morning, with harmonica mac and joe’s guitar. being awake by 730. hearing news of a massacre, and feeling my lungs collapse from remembering how it is to be stunned, claustrophobic, of needing to be elsewhere and not being able to get there fast enough. drinking tea beneath the trees. free grapefruit, oranges, maracuya, and watermelon. conversations about soul with the lanky longboarder [ how it can get lost in LA and how there is more in the california waters, and why walking on the tips of the waves is more than just a meditation on the impossibilities of eternity]. three, or north through manabi. inappropriately comical situations. beach writing. reading the lorax. the parrots in the menagerie (how many birds have died in cages, thinking the ceiling was the sky?) galloping. watching “the thin red line” in a party bar. ridiculously vivid dreams about sharks, and climbing stairwells with falling rocks, and giant tarantulas on the streets. the traveler v. the tourist, and expanding my reality. collecting new music. reading, and bawling, and being all the lighter for it. maybe thinking I know what I want to do, at least for now. making friends with fishermen, and a strange encounter with land owning, awkward English-speaking ghouls. mercedes, and her artesanian heart (she calls me “mi hija”). vultures on the cross in pedernales. the hanging of the red plastic chair. everything is dissolving.
a collection.
way down deep (past the light and the sound, where the squid and the whale fight battles in the dark) this is where our dreams go in the morning. our eyes open, and they float, like plastic bags with tentacles and moving metal parts. as they sink, they rust and scatter into bits, but only physically. they stay there forever, and when we die, we are plunged back into our forgotten, long lost subconscious thoughts. haunting? maybe, but at least it is the truth. and no one can avoid that. close your eyes, and think of all the bubbles of love you’ve made… [medusa dreams]
but what happens to people who forget each other? are there holes? like rotting windows in our solemn dreams, our salty bloody seas? gravity is infectious. the weight of it, I mean. the bodily feeling of falling, especially in water or through air, passed buildings and towers and ravines eight miles deep. the poet who wrote about the death of the flying stewardess (1968) caught in photographic words our human obsession with the war against the weight of the earth. to fight, and fail – to flail and cease endlessly – is such an ugly truth, but at the same time, horribly delicately beautiful. is this wondering, this desire to test fate, and flight, why some choose to jump without a parachute? I wish their final thoughts were made into documentaries and broadcast in 8 mm silent frames on the walls of subway stations, like a fleeting glimpse of their eternal struggle, caught in flickers of light on the cement. [for existing in the first place]
you’ve got me by the hand and I can’t quite remember the sensation of being alone of how to stand this vertigo its got me hanging on with both hands (to your untouchable face) and how I can’t remember why we even existed in the first place
there are ants in my pants, or ants in my shoes; ants in my shoes and my pants and the grooves (between your nightmare necessity needing, and my absolute apathy towards disaster). what a place, what a sound they must make, if we set them ablaze from our match burning betting. I sink heavy in mud, in barbed wire mud, loaded with rain and the awareness of fear. my feet carry me through doors, and windows, and walls, but one candle bright cannot compete with them all. careful where you step my friend, my lover of light, and I’ll carry you there on my back, in my bones. I’ll carry you anywhere – your heart is my home. [careful there]
I’m done leaning over my shoes; out over the ocean and singing the blues. and why for this within, can I find no without? but for the searching the rocks are crumbling, and I can’t say that I haven’t always been this way; we are from another time, you and I; our bones are from the sea but at their depths only where the light comes from the enigmatic glowing. where time has not yet reached (and so it is nearly one hundred years before). are the fishes lonely in their vacuum, missing the movement of the soul as it grows older? [rainer on the point]
breathe breathe breathe. ocean. breathe. ocean, breathe. ocean ocean ocean. breathe. ocean. breathe breathe.
this ink is everywhere.
two sides of the abyss not given a page a photograph or a paragraph written to claim them at 7th and Jackson the microphone’s open the moment of the music never will you see me be a judas to the movement used to be a student of the beat until I mastered it and then I set it free to be let it be the energy. . .
the blue scholars, [evening chai]
[ rules for creative writing 101, introduction to bagombo snuffbox. k. vonnegut]
this is my ecuavida.
living in wooden houses, with too many cucarachas, and twice as many rats. rain at night, flooded muddy roads in the morning. constantly greeting everyone, even when i’m in no mood to be friendly. red beans and vegetables and crispy burnt rice. the pacific (at night, by sunset, in my hair, in the pages of my books, in my heart). herba luisa [fresh, not from the tea bag]. mold. the bats (murcielagos) which swoop through the (sometimes) flooded river valley at exactly 620 in the evening. the crack in the shower wall that looks like a spider when the light isn’t right. trying not to slip and fall in the mud on the way to the bathroom in the nighttime. the triple curves in the road to tabuga which i count subconsciously in my head on the way to school. playing politics in spanish. being trapped by a flooded river with andrea at the house of a wide-eyed Italian man in the middle of the ecuadorian costal campo, having calamar, fresh basil, and espresso, and talking about international politics and futbol. taking pictures of pictures. my chicos. leading them into the reserve, and watching as they fall in love with el bosque, and each other. panaderias and the fruit market on the corner. the springwater of pd (a rum and coke). taking over the dance floor, crazy gringa style. the loud ass ecuadorian polka music at six o’clock in the morning. the “bombed little man” that is our chef. being sad to watch the baby aullador scramble inside the rice sack, and being happy to watch the wild troupe take him back up into the trees. attempting to understand the social class balancing act I have found myself inside. angelito, gisela, moises, deci, jonathan, andrade, and duana. being escorted down a dark dirt road by a parade of small children. bear hugs from lorena. cooking beans in hostel kitchens. fumigation headaches. being not-so-terrified to give speeches, in spanish, in front of more than 100 people at the town meeting. helping to begin an environmental association, and calling for the vote. hummingbirds, and mosquitos, and camarones del rio. camarones al ajillo. contemplating the loss of memory while watching the coast blur by on a bus. rancheros and the wind. riding in the backs of giant red pickup trucks after rainstorms. spontaneous freestyle jam sessions on the beach, at 3 in the morning, with harmonica mac and joe’s guitar. being awake by 730. hearing news of a massacre, and feeling my lungs collapse from remembering how it is to be stunned, claustrophobic, of needing to be elsewhere and not being able to get there fast enough. drinking tea beneath the trees. free grapefruit, oranges, maracuya, and watermelon. conversations about soul with the lanky longboarder [ how it can get lost in LA and how there is more in the california waters, and why walking on the tips of the waves is more than just a meditation on the impossibilities of eternity]. three, or north through manabi. inappropriately comical situations. beach writing. reading the lorax. the parrots in the menagerie (how many birds have died in cages, thinking the ceiling was the sky?) galloping. watching “the thin red line” in a party bar. ridiculously vivid dreams about sharks, and climbing stairwells with falling rocks, and giant tarantulas on the streets. the traveler v. the tourist, and expanding my reality. collecting new music. reading, and bawling, and being all the lighter for it. maybe thinking I know what I want to do, at least for now. making friends with fishermen, and a strange encounter with land owning, awkward English-speaking ghouls. mercedes, and her artesanian heart (she calls me “mi hija”). vultures on the cross in pedernales. the hanging of the red plastic chair. everything is dissolving.
a collection.
way down deep (past the light and the sound, where the squid and the whale fight battles in the dark) this is where our dreams go in the morning. our eyes open, and they float, like plastic bags with tentacles and moving metal parts. as they sink, they rust and scatter into bits, but only physically. they stay there forever, and when we die, we are plunged back into our forgotten, long lost subconscious thoughts. haunting? maybe, but at least it is the truth. and no one can avoid that. close your eyes, and think of all the bubbles of love you’ve made… [medusa dreams]
but what happens to people who forget each other? are there holes? like rotting windows in our solemn dreams, our salty bloody seas? gravity is infectious. the weight of it, I mean. the bodily feeling of falling, especially in water or through air, passed buildings and towers and ravines eight miles deep. the poet who wrote about the death of the flying stewardess (1968) caught in photographic words our human obsession with the war against the weight of the earth. to fight, and fail – to flail and cease endlessly – is such an ugly truth, but at the same time, horribly delicately beautiful. is this wondering, this desire to test fate, and flight, why some choose to jump without a parachute? I wish their final thoughts were made into documentaries and broadcast in 8 mm silent frames on the walls of subway stations, like a fleeting glimpse of their eternal struggle, caught in flickers of light on the cement. [for existing in the first place]
you’ve got me by the hand and I can’t quite remember the sensation of being alone of how to stand this vertigo its got me hanging on with both hands (to your untouchable face) and how I can’t remember why we even existed in the first place
there are ants in my pants, or ants in my shoes; ants in my shoes and my pants and the grooves (between your nightmare necessity needing, and my absolute apathy towards disaster). what a place, what a sound they must make, if we set them ablaze from our match burning betting. I sink heavy in mud, in barbed wire mud, loaded with rain and the awareness of fear. my feet carry me through doors, and windows, and walls, but one candle bright cannot compete with them all. careful where you step my friend, my lover of light, and I’ll carry you there on my back, in my bones. I’ll carry you anywhere – your heart is my home. [careful there]
I’m done leaning over my shoes; out over the ocean and singing the blues. and why for this within, can I find no without? but for the searching the rocks are crumbling, and I can’t say that I haven’t always been this way; we are from another time, you and I; our bones are from the sea but at their depths only where the light comes from the enigmatic glowing. where time has not yet reached (and so it is nearly one hundred years before). are the fishes lonely in their vacuum, missing the movement of the soul as it grows older? [rainer on the point]
breathe breathe breathe. ocean. breathe. ocean, breathe. ocean ocean ocean. breathe. ocean. breathe breathe.
this ink is everywhere.
two sides of the abyss not given a page a photograph or a paragraph written to claim them at 7th and Jackson the microphone’s open the moment of the music never will you see me be a judas to the movement used to be a student of the beat until I mastered it and then I set it free to be let it be the energy. . .
the blue scholars, [evening chai]
Monday, April 02, 2007
an amalgamation.
GINSBERG. i wanna go out in a car | not leave word where i’m going
the rest of the earth is unseen | an outer universe invisible | unknown except thru language | or prophecy of the secret heart the same | in
SKYWRITERS, LIARS IN THE FACE OF DIVINITY
but i will die only for poetry; that will save the world.
god but i loved his murdered face when he talked with a mouth full of rain in
i am talking to myself again (everybody must have been a spy)
he threw up his hands & wrote
the universe don’t exist
& died to prove it.
(an amalgamation).
three, their bellies lit gold feathers dripping molten drops of yellow sand melded from the tips of sunflares too close, like icarus, they float passed the sun, and across the steps. where have they come from? deep. others come in droves, like fighter planes in formation. wings outstretched, catching the invisible channels of air, and sleek like metallic humming engines with heartbeats, they arrive across the seas. (petrels are the smallest.) between the mountainous peaks of
pacific pelagic swells
in
and out
quick! on their feet. skimming.
great silent wind beaten rises steady as the pelicans glide, gulping. the frigates dive and wail, stealing fish from the mouths of the gulls of the red-footed boobies. pirates, corsairs of the skies. the rest, they come in
two’s
three’s
ten’s and twenties, in the shape of their bodies, spread through layers of the atmosphere as if it were a glass staircase, and they were resting on its forward moving steps out to sea. to their element. where nothing is sacred but the spray, and the precarious return to waiting chicks? or scattered feathers, to deathly cold flesh. no bird knows the truth. like a chandelier of paper cranes strung on tinsel wire above the volcanic remnants left by the crushing waves, they seem to spin, float, freely flying without movement, the expenditure of energy. the invasion comes as the sun is dropping heavy on black satin set to undulating. their droves fight the currents in the air, and I watch them, tumultuous, unable to resist leaping from the bow to join in their persuasion.
beach as eternal sunshine. the infinite abyss. photons bounce up and over gullies of sand which have been furrowed by feet and waves waves waves. bioluminescent glow from turquoise lamps hidden in the ocean floor. the distance disappears where they have faded and all sound has been sucked out into the rolling and rushing of the water as it swings wildly into the Pacific basin (coast to coast, the currents driving the wind from beneath, the fishes leaping as their dorsal extravagances break the tidal blue tierra)
there is something about total blackness that is comfortable to me. it allows my brain to fold into itself, find layers of sound that had been obscured by other senses and in memory I can remember these firings of synapse and recall their exact location. one day, when I am old and unable to see I will live in these sounds, cataracts smiling with the recollection.
ahhhh! this is my barbaric yawp.
I hate the circus. but I’d run away to one in a heartbeat, elephants and all. I could set them free.
there would be a stampede!
even the jungle can become like habit. one foot after another, along the ground, your body becomes rhythmic, almost mechanic. but the strain on your muscles is the reminder of the distance you’ve covered. fluid movement, around bends and through trees, its like a walking meditation. something more ephemeral than the congregation of all the minutes in your life. like, for the moment as you pass through the holes in the canopy towering, you are made of snake skin, of speckled air.
(the shins make me miss home. and “backyard” makes me think of 894, of driving solo unbeknownst to my mother, to visit k. of wispirgish road trips. of
we are all obsessed with our own origins. where our blood began. in the scheme of things, none of it really matters, I guess, but when attempting to look backwards over the magnifying glass on your miles, you need a point in the distance to center yourself. an umbrella for the tightrope.
the snipers zero in on us. each shot becomes a word spoken by death. death is talking to us. death wants to tell us a funny secret. we may not like death, but death likes us. victor Charlie is hard but he never lies. guns tell the truth. guns never say “I’m only kidding.” war is ugly because the truth can be ugly and war is very sincere. – gustav hasford.
the ink spills black and sticks; you scrub your skin with stiff haired wire and still it stays. the sand between your toes slides slow and silent into the sea, where there are fishes floating still in the midst of all that salty dreaming. (whatever will we do with ourselves when we’ve got nothing left to talk about; nothing left to love without. my ears are yours and only time will tell how long their echoes will remember the sound). and in the end, you’ll see, there is nothing so glorious as this blood racing terror we’ll be trapped inside, because within that painful thumping, the great racheting breach of your ribs, there is the sensation of visceral life, without which, no one would ever be really sure of their living. and in the end, this is all that really matters.
to everyone who has given me words. beautiful ones and heartbroken ones and angry ones too. you are the reason I have the memory that I do.
…waiting for me to hold on, for me to breathe out.
we warm ourselves on bloody songs and sunny dreams. bloody psalms and salty dreams. bloody palms and sawdust dreams. Aristotle, like a long lost lover; ma universe blows, and the planet spins heads or tails with her man, watching, waiting to engulf her. on the axis, even she tries to reverse. there is nothing so fragile as me, when it comes to you.
Dolabrifera dolabrifera: warty sea cat (so cute!)
Oceanites gracilis: Elliott’s storm petrel
to remember:
bronze skin.
revel. let it be.
pretty mcdimples face and gordito mcnasty pants.
the surfers five and their sailboat of chaos (the wynndakken)
april fools day.
[evening chai]
impeccable drunken spelling.
conversations on benches in art museums.
it is okay to be a girl. (even in
socialismo.
ginsberg: [witchita vortex sutra] [iron horse] & [don’t grow old]
the short-timers, by g. hasford.
hallways.
[sympathy] and [can’t get it right]
grey’s anatomy, and missing.
dreams about the pool, and the stable.
swimming with fins.
jesus and the glass tiendita.
the look, and those eyes, and the reason.
god says yes to me. (kaylin haught)
i asked god if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes.
i asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is.
i asked her if i could wear nail polish or not,
and she said HONEY
(she calls me that sometimes)
she said you can do just exactly what you want to.
thanks god, i said.
and is it even okay if i don’t paragraph my letters?
SWEETCAKES god said,
(who knows where she picked that up)
what i’m telling you is
yes. yes. yes.
Friday, March 23, 2007
and this is when everything gets a little crazy.
maybe we´re not meant for it. maybe its as it should be. but at least, while we were here, it was good.
in the islands, everything seems more like an adventure.
this could also be due to the fact that i´ve just celebrated my birthday, in the middle of the ocean,
and we have parties on sailboats.
not our sailboats, mind you.
the surfers´. did you know there would be surfers sailing the world? i wasn´t expecting it.
and this is when everything gets a little crazy.
"i disposed of my little green man long ago"
thumbs, and the question master, and other circle of death festivities.
camarones al ajillo.
gillian welch and the fugees and michael jackson, all within minutes.
dance parties under galapagaenian skies, on deck, sans shoes.
4 second meteorites.
barhopping professors. tequila shots. birthday parades.
spontaneous trips in pangas.
smoke.
smoke and mirrors.
five boys on a boat.
the british brothers, and the explanation of a "twitcher"
making up words.
being a sound young lady, and also la chica mas seria en el barco.
the invasion of prince phillips´steps (the flight of the booby)
pretty black eyes.
jazz on street corners.
the hat party.
marching squads of shouting soldiers, with guns.
tales of pirate attacks, whale beachings, twin confusion, firefights, and angry french missionaries.
telephone dates.
ice cream, coffee chocolate cake, and banana pancakes.
we wanted to jump. venice beach, california. 1997.
friday.
we wanted to jump, but we couldn’t. it was right there in front of us; the surf, the space between the balls of our feet and the sand as we sailed through the air. but we couldn’t do it. not after what we had seen.
you first, I said.
no. it was your idea.
it was both of ours.
but you said it first.
that doesn’t matter, I said. what matters is that it’s here, and if we don’t take it now, it’ll never happen. and then we’ll be sitting on our asses in Minneapolis in November some day in three years, and you’ll be drinking a cup of that horrible tea. the one that makes the kitchen smell like rotting fish. and then you’ll say it’s a shame we didn’t take it. in that voice you always use when you’re talking about things you wish had happened differently. like when you told me about –
ok, we’ll do it, he said. why Minneapolis?
are you going to count?
sure. I guess so. do you want me to count?
no. it’ll be easier if we just do it. without the build up.
yea. without the build up. you ready?
since this morning. let’s go.
when?
what do you mean, “when”? now.
well now just happened, so that’s not going to work. without one of us counting, how will I know when you’re going to jump? he said. how will I know if you are even going to follow through? I could just be doing it by myself, and I’d spin in mid air and see you standing there, your eye staring off all sideways like it does, your thumb up your ass. meanwhile, I’m flailing about in the water, and then those bright green motherfuckers come floating up, and I’m done for. down for the count.
we looked at each other. he turned, and started walking back towards the boathouse. I stood, rocking slightly as I let my knees relax. they had been tense, anticipating; the muscles in my thighs had been coiled like springs. my eyes caught a piece of sea glass, the remnants of an old Heineken bottle, caught in the gravel between my toes, and I bent. then I heard him. the shish shush of the sand as it spun out wildly from beneath him. he was running. I spun on one heel, and caught his eye just as he came rushing up behind me.
now! he shouted. and then there was silence. all I saw was his silhouette as he left the earth, his arms and legs flapping haphazard in every direction. like when you’re a kid on the playground and you’re in a swing jumping contest, and the more space you can put between yourself and the ground the better. so you flap, as if by some stroke of genius, you might be the one to finally discover how to fly. of course it never helps, no one ever gets farther by thrashing their limbs in the air. if you think about it, I’m sure it probably makes things worse; the physics of it, I mean.
I watched for a moment as the wake from his body sent white spray skipping across the surface of the sea, and then I realized I was still hunched over at the edge. without even thinking, I pushed off, soaring blindly in an arc over the water. I went in head first, and my stomach filled instantly with salt water. I had forgotten to close my mouth.
xviii. brick (inspired by the film)
its like walking home in the morning with a coat
too
thin.
you haven’t slept, and the wind cuts straight through the wool,
where holes in the silk lining give you away. across the field it’s
especially bad,
because there are no trees,
and the valley pulls the air down like a drainpipe.
but it’s not the cold that gets to you. it’s those words he whispered in your ear just before you let the screen swing closed.
they are spurring you across the street, your heels rubbing the skin
raw near your toes.
no one wears heels in the winter. except the girls with fake pearls in their ears. the girls with fancy black cocktail parties to go to on saturday nights, but no one to take them home on sunday mornings.
so you walk.
it was a mistake to stay on the couch. it would have been worse
to sleep in his bed,
but you should have left when the going was good, when the booze was still swimming
weighty in your veins. when he was still too gone to hide. but by light fall, he always remembers what he’s got to lose, and all bets are off. the cards sit on the table, growing yellow. the queen of spades is fading gray.
there was an impromptu piano jam, with spoken word, and
floating
white
tea
lights
in pitchers of red wine. every once in a while, someone would forget, and pour, igniting the sides of the glass like they were made of oxygen. it never dripped, never left a stain; that’s how fast the fire spread.
you were waltzing on wood floors, your shoes hardly making a sound as the silk of your dress clung to your chest. the girl at the piano, who was singing about some jazzy bird named eleanora, who tells everyone she meets that she was born in missouri even though it’s a lie, asks you what you want to hear.
nina simone,
you croon, and sway
on the balls of your feet,
with one arm in the air,
eyes closed.
whatever you say, lady day, he laughs from the corner, eyes glowing bronze from the candles. (he’s not even right. you knew it then, but you let him say it. he was looking. he was watching. this was all that mattered in the moment. but billie holiday was lady day, and nina simone sang about birds in cages.)
by three, there were only a few still sitting on bar stools around the kitchen counter,
plucking
petals
from
the roses and slurring slightly.
he tells a joke about an old man from Brooklyn, and everyone smiles, their teeth catching the first flecks of daylight as they s k i d across the ceiling. from outside, a man on a bicycle could see the sadness in you, and if he’d had the chance, he would have swept you away on the back of his spokes.
like sixth grade romance.
but you never looked, never saw him in the street. so he rode away, and you stayed til dawn.
he pulled you into the living room, his hands dwarfing yours (like they always did when you used to sleep curled inside his shell, arms entangled). as you’d brushed the black paint around your eyes
that night, pupils dilated in the mirror and searching for the strength not to notice the truth, you had promised not to stay. not to let him stay in your way.
but there is nothing so convincing as the promise of a miracle, the exception to every deceitful rule.
the chimes of the grandfather clock struck seven, and the morning light shone through the window
revealing plastic cups in corners
and a pile of ash on the stained couch cushion.
though his knee was pressed against yours, its presence was tentative, and you almost choke on the tears as they slide down your throat when he says
you’d better leave.
(he has to work.)
you should probably go out the back door.
( it’s more quiet that way.)
creaking porch steps draw his attention to your feet as he steps toward the car door from behind the garage. for a moment, you think he’s going to say something,
the way his mouth opens slightly,
the way his breath freezes in the air around his eyes.
but neither of you can find it in the other to speak, and as he drives away, your heels
sink (sink heavy heavy heavy)
into the layer of dead leaves in the yard. the sidewalk is empty; no one is up this early on a sunday.
the coffee shop on the corner near his house looks different in the daylight.
the letters on the sign are still blue, but
without the luster of their electric luminescence,
it is difficult to think of anything but a
broken bulb.
the lake is rocking steady against the rocks behind your house, it’s hushing rhythm abrasive behind your eyelids. the door doesn’t open – the lock is frozen shut. as you creep hesitantly through the dried brambles of the garden under the second story window, your foot catches on a rock, and you stumble. the wool of your coat too thin rips slowly,
stitch by stitch,
and as you press your way through the french doors downstairs, the wind swirls up the staircase.
your bed is cold when you sink into the sheets.
in the islands, everything seems more like an adventure.
this could also be due to the fact that i´ve just celebrated my birthday, in the middle of the ocean,
and we have parties on sailboats.
not our sailboats, mind you.
the surfers´. did you know there would be surfers sailing the world? i wasn´t expecting it.
and this is when everything gets a little crazy.
"i disposed of my little green man long ago"
thumbs, and the question master, and other circle of death festivities.
camarones al ajillo.
gillian welch and the fugees and michael jackson, all within minutes.
dance parties under galapagaenian skies, on deck, sans shoes.
4 second meteorites.
barhopping professors. tequila shots. birthday parades.
spontaneous trips in pangas.
smoke.
smoke and mirrors.
five boys on a boat.
the british brothers, and the explanation of a "twitcher"
making up words.
being a sound young lady, and also la chica mas seria en el barco.
the invasion of prince phillips´steps (the flight of the booby)
pretty black eyes.
jazz on street corners.
the hat party.
marching squads of shouting soldiers, with guns.
tales of pirate attacks, whale beachings, twin confusion, firefights, and angry french missionaries.
telephone dates.
ice cream, coffee chocolate cake, and banana pancakes.
we wanted to jump. venice beach, california. 1997.
friday.
we wanted to jump, but we couldn’t. it was right there in front of us; the surf, the space between the balls of our feet and the sand as we sailed through the air. but we couldn’t do it. not after what we had seen.
you first, I said.
no. it was your idea.
it was both of ours.
but you said it first.
that doesn’t matter, I said. what matters is that it’s here, and if we don’t take it now, it’ll never happen. and then we’ll be sitting on our asses in Minneapolis in November some day in three years, and you’ll be drinking a cup of that horrible tea. the one that makes the kitchen smell like rotting fish. and then you’ll say it’s a shame we didn’t take it. in that voice you always use when you’re talking about things you wish had happened differently. like when you told me about –
ok, we’ll do it, he said. why Minneapolis?
are you going to count?
sure. I guess so. do you want me to count?
no. it’ll be easier if we just do it. without the build up.
yea. without the build up. you ready?
since this morning. let’s go.
when?
what do you mean, “when”? now.
well now just happened, so that’s not going to work. without one of us counting, how will I know when you’re going to jump? he said. how will I know if you are even going to follow through? I could just be doing it by myself, and I’d spin in mid air and see you standing there, your eye staring off all sideways like it does, your thumb up your ass. meanwhile, I’m flailing about in the water, and then those bright green motherfuckers come floating up, and I’m done for. down for the count.
we looked at each other. he turned, and started walking back towards the boathouse. I stood, rocking slightly as I let my knees relax. they had been tense, anticipating; the muscles in my thighs had been coiled like springs. my eyes caught a piece of sea glass, the remnants of an old Heineken bottle, caught in the gravel between my toes, and I bent. then I heard him. the shish shush of the sand as it spun out wildly from beneath him. he was running. I spun on one heel, and caught his eye just as he came rushing up behind me.
now! he shouted. and then there was silence. all I saw was his silhouette as he left the earth, his arms and legs flapping haphazard in every direction. like when you’re a kid on the playground and you’re in a swing jumping contest, and the more space you can put between yourself and the ground the better. so you flap, as if by some stroke of genius, you might be the one to finally discover how to fly. of course it never helps, no one ever gets farther by thrashing their limbs in the air. if you think about it, I’m sure it probably makes things worse; the physics of it, I mean.
I watched for a moment as the wake from his body sent white spray skipping across the surface of the sea, and then I realized I was still hunched over at the edge. without even thinking, I pushed off, soaring blindly in an arc over the water. I went in head first, and my stomach filled instantly with salt water. I had forgotten to close my mouth.
xviii. brick (inspired by the film)
its like walking home in the morning with a coat
too
thin.
you haven’t slept, and the wind cuts straight through the wool,
where holes in the silk lining give you away. across the field it’s
especially bad,
because there are no trees,
and the valley pulls the air down like a drainpipe.
but it’s not the cold that gets to you. it’s those words he whispered in your ear just before you let the screen swing closed.
they are spurring you across the street, your heels rubbing the skin
raw near your toes.
no one wears heels in the winter. except the girls with fake pearls in their ears. the girls with fancy black cocktail parties to go to on saturday nights, but no one to take them home on sunday mornings.
so you walk.
it was a mistake to stay on the couch. it would have been worse
to sleep in his bed,
but you should have left when the going was good, when the booze was still swimming
weighty in your veins. when he was still too gone to hide. but by light fall, he always remembers what he’s got to lose, and all bets are off. the cards sit on the table, growing yellow. the queen of spades is fading gray.
there was an impromptu piano jam, with spoken word, and
floating
white
tea
lights
in pitchers of red wine. every once in a while, someone would forget, and pour, igniting the sides of the glass like they were made of oxygen. it never dripped, never left a stain; that’s how fast the fire spread.
you were waltzing on wood floors, your shoes hardly making a sound as the silk of your dress clung to your chest. the girl at the piano, who was singing about some jazzy bird named eleanora, who tells everyone she meets that she was born in missouri even though it’s a lie, asks you what you want to hear.
nina simone,
you croon, and sway
on the balls of your feet,
with one arm in the air,
eyes closed.
whatever you say, lady day, he laughs from the corner, eyes glowing bronze from the candles. (he’s not even right. you knew it then, but you let him say it. he was looking. he was watching. this was all that mattered in the moment. but billie holiday was lady day, and nina simone sang about birds in cages.)
by three, there were only a few still sitting on bar stools around the kitchen counter,
plucking
petals
from
the roses and slurring slightly.
he tells a joke about an old man from Brooklyn, and everyone smiles, their teeth catching the first flecks of daylight as they s k i d across the ceiling. from outside, a man on a bicycle could see the sadness in you, and if he’d had the chance, he would have swept you away on the back of his spokes.
like sixth grade romance.
but you never looked, never saw him in the street. so he rode away, and you stayed til dawn.
he pulled you into the living room, his hands dwarfing yours (like they always did when you used to sleep curled inside his shell, arms entangled). as you’d brushed the black paint around your eyes
that night, pupils dilated in the mirror and searching for the strength not to notice the truth, you had promised not to stay. not to let him stay in your way.
but there is nothing so convincing as the promise of a miracle, the exception to every deceitful rule.
the chimes of the grandfather clock struck seven, and the morning light shone through the window
revealing plastic cups in corners
and a pile of ash on the stained couch cushion.
though his knee was pressed against yours, its presence was tentative, and you almost choke on the tears as they slide down your throat when he says
you’d better leave.
(he has to work.)
you should probably go out the back door.
( it’s more quiet that way.)
creaking porch steps draw his attention to your feet as he steps toward the car door from behind the garage. for a moment, you think he’s going to say something,
the way his mouth opens slightly,
the way his breath freezes in the air around his eyes.
but neither of you can find it in the other to speak, and as he drives away, your heels
sink (sink heavy heavy heavy)
into the layer of dead leaves in the yard. the sidewalk is empty; no one is up this early on a sunday.
the coffee shop on the corner near his house looks different in the daylight.
the letters on the sign are still blue, but
without the luster of their electric luminescence,
it is difficult to think of anything but a
broken bulb.
the lake is rocking steady against the rocks behind your house, it’s hushing rhythm abrasive behind your eyelids. the door doesn’t open – the lock is frozen shut. as you creep hesitantly through the dried brambles of the garden under the second story window, your foot catches on a rock, and you stumble. the wool of your coat too thin rips slowly,
stitch by stitch,
and as you press your way through the french doors downstairs, the wind swirls up the staircase.
your bed is cold when you sink into the sheets.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
it´s a long story, i´ve already told you that
it’s a long story, I’ve already told you that. if I were to tell it to you, you wouldn’t believe a word. no one ever believes everything. you know?
it is never, ever possible to hear everything…what do you hear? it’s not only all those animals you have seen, and all those you haven’t seen, and all those no one will ever see, making sounds. and that which isn’t possible to hear, the song of the fish that once cheered the waters, though now they no longer know how to sing. and if they still sing, they do it, most certainly, with no sound. with notes our ears are not able to hear. silently they sing, on another plane…
within our very being there sound the memories of all that we have heard throughout our lives, dances and flutes and promises and lies and fears and confessions and the cries of war and the murmurs of love. the voices of the dying that one has been or that one has merely heard. true stories.
memory is more, it’s much more, do you see? true memory conserves all that is to come. and even that which will never come, that is also conserved. imagine. just imagine. who could possibly hear it all, tell me that?
who could possibly hear it all, all at once, and believe it?
-ino moxo
living in the rainforest for three weeks is a very interesting thing. not only because of the reasons you hear about in the “most extreme tropical adventures gone wrong!” sort of tv shows [examples: nearly being attacked by giant conga ants, tarantulas with a leg span of approximately twelve inches, cryptic snakes with deadly venom and a nasty temper, or the possibility of contracting various afflictions ala yellow fever, malaria, lechmeniesis (that is spelled incorrectly: it is a flesh eating protozoan) or a botfly which could one day burst out from under your skin after months of chewing miniscule parts of your muscle away.]
not only because of los monos. (monkeys). they clamber through trees, swinging from their prehensile tails and plucking fruits from nearly unreachable branches. they stare down through the canopy at their binoculared fascinated cousins, their curious black eyes illuminated against the darkness of the tree shadow. woollys will stick around for a while if you’re quiet, because they are calmer, mas tranquilo, than the rest. if you listen closely you can hear the howling of los aulladores (the howlers) which resembles the growling of the stealthy jaguars in the distance. squirrel monkeys are more likely to jump over your head, carrying babies on their backs and squeaking their annoyance at your presence. they are curious too, but a bit more skiddish than the larger species, probably because they know not everyone is a friendly presence in their trees. the tiny ones, like the pygmy marmosets and the golden mantled tamarins are a rarity, but if you can see them amidst their vine tangles, their little faces will make your day.
spending so much time in the rainforest is interesting not only because of the charismatic megafauna, although they are definitely a highlight. along the river banks, you can see capybara, the world’s largest rodent, bounding their round not-so-little butts back into the cover of the forest. there are birds of every color, and every combination as well, like the scarlet macaw and the paradise tanager, and even the ancient hoatzin, which resembles (especially when still young) the archaeopteryx from eons ago. there are oropendolas, who send out sounds more similar to the dripping of water in a cave than to that of the orioles they are related to. there is the cacique, capable of mimicking everything from a parrot’s harsh crackle to the grumble of a riverboat engine. and there is the laughing falcon, who, along with the cackling witch toad, haunts the early morning hours with its eerie laughing call. there is the tapir, happy as can be, trundling along the bank and searching out leaves with its elephantine proboscis. the otters, swimming and playing graceful along the banks.
you couldn’t be more wrong darling you misunderstood no meaning I’m not falling for this one if love is surrender then who then who’s war is it anyway? do just what I tell you and no one will get hurt don’t come any closer I still don’t know how long I can hold my heart in two just look at the state of you babe you’re not listening to this and just for once could you let me let me finish a sentence if you know what’s good for me why would I be loving you now I’ve had it up to here don’t ever try that again why are you so quiet so suddenly go on a bit, you’re just dying to try me
living in the rainforest for three weeks is a very interesting thing because of the way it brings out the truth in people. being sweaty and dirty and covered in mosquito bites all day long is taxing, but a necessary evil in order to enjoy all of the pleasures of the jungle. but when living with other people who you don’t know all that well, who don’t know your insecurities and obscurities and eccentricities, it is difficult not to become exhausted of human presence. It’s eye opening, really, to discover so much about yourself that you adore, but that seems to rub others the wrong way.
I ask questions. sometimes they’re not very easy to answer, and sometimes they seem random and out of place. I have a tendency to ramble, and digress, and go off on tangents that are not central to the main idea. But I don’t talk much when I don’t find it important, when I don’t have something to say, so I’m not very good at relieving uneasy or awkward silence. I need time to myself to digest, but I hate being left out (this may be paradoxical. I am paradoxical.) I love discussions, especially about uneasy things, like indigenous acculturation, and the way western conservation idealism often comes into conflict with the conserved. I could argue for hours. I’d rather talk about books and the end of the world than anything else, but I could also go on and on about my favorite movies, and even quote some of the best lines. I like to watch movies that will make me cry, too.
I’m not particularly funny, but I find just about everyone else absolutely hilarious. I sing to myself, even when other people are around. Sometimes this appears to become excessive to others, but I never get sick of it, and I find it difficult to stop, even when I know someone is about to hit me over the head with their binoculars. I could spend my life on the water, and I would never regret it. Any kind really, but preferably large, and close to a sunny beach, where I can wile away the older hours of the day and watch time pass. I am indecisive. Consequently, I never really know what I want the most, although I have plenty of glaringly obvious ideas about what I don’t want. I can’t choose between many things, and would gladly take them all in stride. I am always happier when I have fruit, or coffee and some sort of dessert. Like cake. Or chocolate pudding. Listening to music while in the rainforest isn’t ignoring the natural sounds of the world. It’s creating a soundtrack. I could tell you all about my soundtracks.
living in the rainforest for three weeks is a very interesting thing because of what you miss while you’re away. the world seems to have disappeared without communication, without newspapers and the internet, and television shows blabbering on about the collapse of modern society (they never say that, but that’s what it is). and then we came flying back over the andes while reading headlines about: the impending attack on iran, and britney spears and her mental breakdown extravaganza. how is this what the world has come to? that headlines like that serve to garner equal attention? and that an attack on iran is actually feasible? really now. did we learn nothing the second time around in iraq? no, I suppose we didn’t. if the world blows up, I won’t be surprised. humanity is asking for it, if you want my opinion.
and all I am is holding back can’t you hear I’m not myself well go ahead and lie to me you could say anything small talk will be just fine your voice is everything and it all depends on you I refuse to believe that’s it only me I’m a slow motion accident lost in coffee rings and fingerprints
(I hate generalizing like that, because there are so many people that could be encompassed under ‘humanity’ that do not deserve to be incinerated, or that are doing their utmost to change the parody of a paradigm our international community has developed about “first” and “third” world interactions. there are plenty of people who recognize the hypocrisy of our policies, and are yelling. hollering. like the howler monkeys. [who are disappearing, by the way.] people like my profs. joe and catherine. you should all meet them someday. and mayor. my seventy year old ecuadorian pseudo-grandfather, who used to be a hunter, but now wanders around the jungle showing monos to hapless tourists without a clue about the ecosystem he understands better than anyone. these people are not asking for “it”.
but you! you who contribute to the continued deforestation in brasil, and indonesia, and the congo. you who contribute ignorantly I should say, because everyone contributes to this, as much as I hate to admit it. unless you live on a desert island and the only products you have consumed in the last fifteen years are your own tattered, dirty clothes, you are included as well. even conservationists use petroleum to get where they’re going. we should all listen to tommy the firefighter in “i heart huckabees”. the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I don’t even believe in hell, and I understand the sentiment of that sentence.
you! you who encourage the pet trade. you are included. monkeys and parrots and snakes should never be found outside of the their original habitats. you may not notice how lonely those amazons are when they sit on their perches, preening their feathers absentmindedly, or how terribly sad the capuchin babies are as they leap from hotel tree to hotel tree, waiting for a cast-off french fry, and being greeted instead by a skinny man with a scar above one eye and stick in his left hand. the toucans are the worst, because they hop along the ground, their flight feathers clipped, clacking their bills together in the air and staring at the walls. you may not notice how horrible all of this is because you haven’t seen these creatures in the wild. but I have. I’ve seen them. they are not supposed to be like that! they are supposed to be sitting in cecropia trees, and eating grasshoppers, and flying over the canopy under the sun. ) that was my ranting tangent.
I wish I knew how it would feel to be free I wish I could break all these chains holding me I wish I could fly like the birds in the sky I wish I could be all things that I could be then you’d see and agree everyone should be free
soundtrack for my rainforest serenade.
acetate prophets & lesson 6: jurassic 5
variation #2 on canon in d major: unknown
(this is) the dream of evan and chan: dntel
nature boy: david bowie
eleanor rigby: the beatles
i wish i knew how (it would feel to be free): nina simone
don’t come any closer: frou frou
post-war: unknown
gravel: ani difranco
lean on me: bill withers
track 9 from (black woman and child): sizzla
hoping for a miracle: bloc party
a distorted reality, pt II: elliott smith
whose blood is this?: unknown
ziggy stardust: seu jorge
the smoke too thick to breathe the tile floors glistened I slowly stirred my drink and when you started to sing you spoke with broken speech that I could not understand and then you grabbed me tightly I WON’T LET GO I WON’T LET GO even if you say so, oh no I’ve tried and tried with no results I won’t let go I won’t let go he then played every song from 1993 the crowd applauded and he curtsied bashfully your eyelashes tickled my neck with every nervous blink and it was perfect until the telephone started ringing ringing ringing ringing ringing off…
favorites: people with smiley eyes. the curly haired ecuadorian hippie and the old man in the canadian hat who lead native americans through the jungle. parahuaco, especially la playa of the tapir, the valley of socrates, and the log bridge. ceiba trees. tang (not really, but it became sort of traditional). real coffee. choclo, burrito night, and the biggest pizza slices in the world. olvidio and his hysterical laughter. monsanita. the monsanita vs. lucho debate (the only reason to choose lucho is because the name comes from louis armstrong, a trumpeter just like monsanita…or is it lucho?) watching the life aquatic with steve zissou in the station’s library, eating popcorn and reveling in the humor of pseudo-biologists gone crazy over jaguar sharks. reading to educate myself, but not forcibly (confessions of an economic hitman and song for a blue ocean). spit. egyptian rat screw. adventurous walks in the nighttime through vine tangles and leafcutter pass to the tower, and sleeping surrounded by the sounds of the canopy. sunrise with macaws, and woollys. banana pancakes with peanut butter. reese’s. raisins. bracelets made of chambira (palm) leaves. the matapalo. brown eyes. otters on the bank, and saving turtles by the trees. tortoise sex. trying to count painted conga ants (not). russian roulette over insect orders. meditating in the dark. heliconia, bauhinia, capirona, and duroia. reading genius indigenous literature (latin american literature in general). reminiscing on the chaotic events of last summer, and last semester. seeing the andes above the clouds. the huaorani in the dugout. debates. caciques and their mimicry. plotting paintings and epic memoirs and trying to decide what to do with my life this summer. wanting to ride on a fishing boat back to the west coast of the us and hitchhike/bus through the country back to wisconsin. my person.
put a dollar into the machine and you’ll remember when say the money just ain’t what it used to be man how we used to tear apart this town put a dollar into the machine and you’ll remember how
it is never, ever possible to hear everything…what do you hear? it’s not only all those animals you have seen, and all those you haven’t seen, and all those no one will ever see, making sounds. and that which isn’t possible to hear, the song of the fish that once cheered the waters, though now they no longer know how to sing. and if they still sing, they do it, most certainly, with no sound. with notes our ears are not able to hear. silently they sing, on another plane…
within our very being there sound the memories of all that we have heard throughout our lives, dances and flutes and promises and lies and fears and confessions and the cries of war and the murmurs of love. the voices of the dying that one has been or that one has merely heard. true stories.
memory is more, it’s much more, do you see? true memory conserves all that is to come. and even that which will never come, that is also conserved. imagine. just imagine. who could possibly hear it all, tell me that?
who could possibly hear it all, all at once, and believe it?
-ino moxo
living in the rainforest for three weeks is a very interesting thing. not only because of the reasons you hear about in the “most extreme tropical adventures gone wrong!” sort of tv shows [examples: nearly being attacked by giant conga ants, tarantulas with a leg span of approximately twelve inches, cryptic snakes with deadly venom and a nasty temper, or the possibility of contracting various afflictions ala yellow fever, malaria, lechmeniesis (that is spelled incorrectly: it is a flesh eating protozoan) or a botfly which could one day burst out from under your skin after months of chewing miniscule parts of your muscle away.]
not only because of los monos. (monkeys). they clamber through trees, swinging from their prehensile tails and plucking fruits from nearly unreachable branches. they stare down through the canopy at their binoculared fascinated cousins, their curious black eyes illuminated against the darkness of the tree shadow. woollys will stick around for a while if you’re quiet, because they are calmer, mas tranquilo, than the rest. if you listen closely you can hear the howling of los aulladores (the howlers) which resembles the growling of the stealthy jaguars in the distance. squirrel monkeys are more likely to jump over your head, carrying babies on their backs and squeaking their annoyance at your presence. they are curious too, but a bit more skiddish than the larger species, probably because they know not everyone is a friendly presence in their trees. the tiny ones, like the pygmy marmosets and the golden mantled tamarins are a rarity, but if you can see them amidst their vine tangles, their little faces will make your day.
spending so much time in the rainforest is interesting not only because of the charismatic megafauna, although they are definitely a highlight. along the river banks, you can see capybara, the world’s largest rodent, bounding their round not-so-little butts back into the cover of the forest. there are birds of every color, and every combination as well, like the scarlet macaw and the paradise tanager, and even the ancient hoatzin, which resembles (especially when still young) the archaeopteryx from eons ago. there are oropendolas, who send out sounds more similar to the dripping of water in a cave than to that of the orioles they are related to. there is the cacique, capable of mimicking everything from a parrot’s harsh crackle to the grumble of a riverboat engine. and there is the laughing falcon, who, along with the cackling witch toad, haunts the early morning hours with its eerie laughing call. there is the tapir, happy as can be, trundling along the bank and searching out leaves with its elephantine proboscis. the otters, swimming and playing graceful along the banks.
you couldn’t be more wrong darling you misunderstood no meaning I’m not falling for this one if love is surrender then who then who’s war is it anyway? do just what I tell you and no one will get hurt don’t come any closer I still don’t know how long I can hold my heart in two just look at the state of you babe you’re not listening to this and just for once could you let me let me finish a sentence if you know what’s good for me why would I be loving you now I’ve had it up to here don’t ever try that again why are you so quiet so suddenly go on a bit, you’re just dying to try me
living in the rainforest for three weeks is a very interesting thing because of the way it brings out the truth in people. being sweaty and dirty and covered in mosquito bites all day long is taxing, but a necessary evil in order to enjoy all of the pleasures of the jungle. but when living with other people who you don’t know all that well, who don’t know your insecurities and obscurities and eccentricities, it is difficult not to become exhausted of human presence. It’s eye opening, really, to discover so much about yourself that you adore, but that seems to rub others the wrong way.
I ask questions. sometimes they’re not very easy to answer, and sometimes they seem random and out of place. I have a tendency to ramble, and digress, and go off on tangents that are not central to the main idea. But I don’t talk much when I don’t find it important, when I don’t have something to say, so I’m not very good at relieving uneasy or awkward silence. I need time to myself to digest, but I hate being left out (this may be paradoxical. I am paradoxical.) I love discussions, especially about uneasy things, like indigenous acculturation, and the way western conservation idealism often comes into conflict with the conserved. I could argue for hours. I’d rather talk about books and the end of the world than anything else, but I could also go on and on about my favorite movies, and even quote some of the best lines. I like to watch movies that will make me cry, too.
I’m not particularly funny, but I find just about everyone else absolutely hilarious. I sing to myself, even when other people are around. Sometimes this appears to become excessive to others, but I never get sick of it, and I find it difficult to stop, even when I know someone is about to hit me over the head with their binoculars. I could spend my life on the water, and I would never regret it. Any kind really, but preferably large, and close to a sunny beach, where I can wile away the older hours of the day and watch time pass. I am indecisive. Consequently, I never really know what I want the most, although I have plenty of glaringly obvious ideas about what I don’t want. I can’t choose between many things, and would gladly take them all in stride. I am always happier when I have fruit, or coffee and some sort of dessert. Like cake. Or chocolate pudding. Listening to music while in the rainforest isn’t ignoring the natural sounds of the world. It’s creating a soundtrack. I could tell you all about my soundtracks.
living in the rainforest for three weeks is a very interesting thing because of what you miss while you’re away. the world seems to have disappeared without communication, without newspapers and the internet, and television shows blabbering on about the collapse of modern society (they never say that, but that’s what it is). and then we came flying back over the andes while reading headlines about: the impending attack on iran, and britney spears and her mental breakdown extravaganza. how is this what the world has come to? that headlines like that serve to garner equal attention? and that an attack on iran is actually feasible? really now. did we learn nothing the second time around in iraq? no, I suppose we didn’t. if the world blows up, I won’t be surprised. humanity is asking for it, if you want my opinion.
and all I am is holding back can’t you hear I’m not myself well go ahead and lie to me you could say anything small talk will be just fine your voice is everything and it all depends on you I refuse to believe that’s it only me I’m a slow motion accident lost in coffee rings and fingerprints
(I hate generalizing like that, because there are so many people that could be encompassed under ‘humanity’ that do not deserve to be incinerated, or that are doing their utmost to change the parody of a paradigm our international community has developed about “first” and “third” world interactions. there are plenty of people who recognize the hypocrisy of our policies, and are yelling. hollering. like the howler monkeys. [who are disappearing, by the way.] people like my profs. joe and catherine. you should all meet them someday. and mayor. my seventy year old ecuadorian pseudo-grandfather, who used to be a hunter, but now wanders around the jungle showing monos to hapless tourists without a clue about the ecosystem he understands better than anyone. these people are not asking for “it”.
but you! you who contribute to the continued deforestation in brasil, and indonesia, and the congo. you who contribute ignorantly I should say, because everyone contributes to this, as much as I hate to admit it. unless you live on a desert island and the only products you have consumed in the last fifteen years are your own tattered, dirty clothes, you are included as well. even conservationists use petroleum to get where they’re going. we should all listen to tommy the firefighter in “i heart huckabees”. the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I don’t even believe in hell, and I understand the sentiment of that sentence.
you! you who encourage the pet trade. you are included. monkeys and parrots and snakes should never be found outside of the their original habitats. you may not notice how lonely those amazons are when they sit on their perches, preening their feathers absentmindedly, or how terribly sad the capuchin babies are as they leap from hotel tree to hotel tree, waiting for a cast-off french fry, and being greeted instead by a skinny man with a scar above one eye and stick in his left hand. the toucans are the worst, because they hop along the ground, their flight feathers clipped, clacking their bills together in the air and staring at the walls. you may not notice how horrible all of this is because you haven’t seen these creatures in the wild. but I have. I’ve seen them. they are not supposed to be like that! they are supposed to be sitting in cecropia trees, and eating grasshoppers, and flying over the canopy under the sun. ) that was my ranting tangent.
I wish I knew how it would feel to be free I wish I could break all these chains holding me I wish I could fly like the birds in the sky I wish I could be all things that I could be then you’d see and agree everyone should be free
soundtrack for my rainforest serenade.
acetate prophets & lesson 6: jurassic 5
variation #2 on canon in d major: unknown
(this is) the dream of evan and chan: dntel
nature boy: david bowie
eleanor rigby: the beatles
i wish i knew how (it would feel to be free): nina simone
don’t come any closer: frou frou
post-war: unknown
gravel: ani difranco
lean on me: bill withers
track 9 from (black woman and child): sizzla
hoping for a miracle: bloc party
a distorted reality, pt II: elliott smith
whose blood is this?: unknown
ziggy stardust: seu jorge
the smoke too thick to breathe the tile floors glistened I slowly stirred my drink and when you started to sing you spoke with broken speech that I could not understand and then you grabbed me tightly I WON’T LET GO I WON’T LET GO even if you say so, oh no I’ve tried and tried with no results I won’t let go I won’t let go he then played every song from 1993 the crowd applauded and he curtsied bashfully your eyelashes tickled my neck with every nervous blink and it was perfect until the telephone started ringing ringing ringing ringing ringing off…
favorites: people with smiley eyes. the curly haired ecuadorian hippie and the old man in the canadian hat who lead native americans through the jungle. parahuaco, especially la playa of the tapir, the valley of socrates, and the log bridge. ceiba trees. tang (not really, but it became sort of traditional). real coffee. choclo, burrito night, and the biggest pizza slices in the world. olvidio and his hysterical laughter. monsanita. the monsanita vs. lucho debate (the only reason to choose lucho is because the name comes from louis armstrong, a trumpeter just like monsanita…or is it lucho?) watching the life aquatic with steve zissou in the station’s library, eating popcorn and reveling in the humor of pseudo-biologists gone crazy over jaguar sharks. reading to educate myself, but not forcibly (confessions of an economic hitman and song for a blue ocean). spit. egyptian rat screw. adventurous walks in the nighttime through vine tangles and leafcutter pass to the tower, and sleeping surrounded by the sounds of the canopy. sunrise with macaws, and woollys. banana pancakes with peanut butter. reese’s. raisins. bracelets made of chambira (palm) leaves. the matapalo. brown eyes. otters on the bank, and saving turtles by the trees. tortoise sex. trying to count painted conga ants (not). russian roulette over insect orders. meditating in the dark. heliconia, bauhinia, capirona, and duroia. reading genius indigenous literature (latin american literature in general). reminiscing on the chaotic events of last summer, and last semester. seeing the andes above the clouds. the huaorani in the dugout. debates. caciques and their mimicry. plotting paintings and epic memoirs and trying to decide what to do with my life this summer. wanting to ride on a fishing boat back to the west coast of the us and hitchhike/bus through the country back to wisconsin. my person.
put a dollar into the machine and you’ll remember when say the money just ain’t what it used to be man how we used to tear apart this town put a dollar into the machine and you’ll remember how
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
your name is the splinter inside me
hark I hear the harps eternal | ringing on the hollowed shore | as I hear the swollen waters | with their deep and solemn roar | hallelujah
there are many things that I wish I could record in my head, and replay later, on blank white walls, in three dimensional loops. bits and pieces. like the flashing by of
CRASH!
what was that?
we are silent, sneaking, creeping.
a toucan? a shy, stealthy, spectacled bear?
nothing.
bamboo in the nighttime looks like kelp in the sea. floating on currents, stillness, in the water which is actually only clouds come down to look for its lost light.
Plate Billed Mountain Toucan : Ramphastos laminirostris
Sangre de Drago: Croton magdalensis
Gorgeted Sunangel: Heliangelus strophianus
I love this. viscerally. breathing in this rainforest air, pressing my hands into the ground and soaking it in…
funneling pathways, down mudslicked slopes. we go to el pahuma (which, in quichua, means the flattened place). and it is, for the most part. mora, growing wild and purple on vines covered in prickles. hopefully they do not become hallucinogenic, because the pathway back could become treacherous under the influence of imagined things. to the lookout, where we can see down into the Andean valley, through the cordilleras, between a break in the clouds, before the fog rolls in once again. wanting to leap from the top, to fly across el piso del cielo [the floor of heaven] gliding along the surface, through all of those canopied trees.
orchids.
ngo’s, and the formation of orchid reserves, and the politics of crazy things.
candalosa: puntas (Ecuadorian moonshine, made from sugarcane) + jugo de naranjilla + fire. warms your soul, from the pit of your stomache way up into your nose.
mountain toucan sitings in the early morning hours, before walking meditations along mountain sides, and through the frigid cold waters of the waterfalls of the quichua persuasion. humming birds. toasts made of pilsener (the beer of the Ecuadorians) to things like salud, and amor, and la vida. choclo. tostados. besos de ciao.
Monday, January 15, 2007
overload.
the blacked hatted women, with multicolored skirts.
old, grey-haired men; tired shoulders, round bellies. mostly because of the altitude, and the blood that was pushed from their hearts under iron fisted rule.
the valley appears behind the twists and turns of the hills. these andean monsters who slumber and lull (with their rumbling, with their seismic rocking) all these millions of creatures to daily peace.
daily peace is different than what beauty queens wish for, that impossible state of human compassion, synergy, quiet madness in the face of unstoppably brutal reigns. daily peace is the feeling (hiding in the pit of your stomach, resonating a comfortable, throbbing pleasure) which only appears when the glittering lights of the city are calming and do not taunt from their distance, when the howling of street dogs is a symphony between the rusted telephone wire forest, sprouting from every angle and criss-crossing black through the air. {can you feel the buzz-buzzing?} it is there, in their silence, that daily peace resides. acceptance.
the buildings here, houses and high rises, press into each other, merging at the spine and becoming chaos. from the window of the bus, i see these walls take shape, come alive with moving people; as i imagine the woman in front of me walking along the broken sidewalk, and through the open air to her kitchen, which she cannot see as we curl and caress the asphalt with our rubber-bus wheels, but she knows it is there, has memorized the stain in the ceiling tile, the blush pink hibiscus bursting from the corner of the window above the sink. i can see her in it. i can see her walking, with the strain on her calves as she heads uphill, the smooth sliding stillness of her eyelids as she blinks. she knows the exact moment to stand, wave down the driver, because she has eaten this time. the twenty-seven minutes from cumbaya to the road side stop just below the market, they have been made into ice and eaten. frozen. and now they are hollow in her stomach, but singing, 'now! now is your time to escape!' and so she does.
at eight o'clock in the evening, every night, without fail, the dogs always start barking. not loud angry barking, or the kind no ear is able to ignore (the kind that comes when the dog is in pain, or afraid and backed, hackles raised into a corner). this barking is pure speech, for fun, or maybe not, but only between each other. the dogs are telling the night stories of the city. [this can be read two different ways, and both are correct. it is to the moment to determine which it will be. is the night a vast audience, soaking in the words like disappearing starlight? or is it the stories OF the night that the dogs are howling at us as we pass, as we sit in our vacant rooms, staring out windows and seeing nothing, when really, it is everything?] maybe i am wrong about everything. people are almost always wrong about everything. especially when it comes to each other, but even more so when it is things that we do not understand, cannot comprehend. maybe these dogs are only barking to make themselves heard. to make themselves hoarse. merely to hear their own voices echo off the walls, funnelling down their throats like burning sand. this is why it is called howling.
cuaron once said 'green is the only color i understand' and this is true for me, as well. of all things, green makes sense to me. don't ask me to explain my logic, because i won't be able to, but when i am drawn [to the weeds, we are brave like soldiers, falling down, under pale moonlight...] in, it is usually because of green. or the ocean.
Enhydra lutris: sea otter (lutra)
Bothrops asper: fer-de-lance
it's terrifying, really, how little sound you hear when there is no limitation to your speaking. when no one understands, when you recognize how loud everything is, everything is amplified.
the act of missing is painful. it is visceral, i don't care what anyone says. you are causing aches in my chest, in my eyes, in my mouth. when i return, you will be flattened. i will hug you so hard, you will break. be ready, for i will be leaping.
favorites:
-el parque el hjedo, and el mercado de artesanias.
-the circling pigeons of la plaza de santo agosto
-0,25 centavos for helado
-discotecas
-making friends with ecuadorian security guards
-dali dripping from the walls
-jugo de EVERYTHING
-el libro se llama 'cuentos del ecuador'
non-favorites:
-whistles
-feeling hunted after dark
-gringo bars
-clumsy words, clumsy tongues
-missing pieces
take me home tonight i don' wanna let you go 'til you see the light take me home tonight
old, grey-haired men; tired shoulders, round bellies. mostly because of the altitude, and the blood that was pushed from their hearts under iron fisted rule.
the valley appears behind the twists and turns of the hills. these andean monsters who slumber and lull (with their rumbling, with their seismic rocking) all these millions of creatures to daily peace.
daily peace is different than what beauty queens wish for, that impossible state of human compassion, synergy, quiet madness in the face of unstoppably brutal reigns. daily peace is the feeling (hiding in the pit of your stomach, resonating a comfortable, throbbing pleasure) which only appears when the glittering lights of the city are calming and do not taunt from their distance, when the howling of street dogs is a symphony between the rusted telephone wire forest, sprouting from every angle and criss-crossing black through the air. {can you feel the buzz-buzzing?} it is there, in their silence, that daily peace resides. acceptance.
the buildings here, houses and high rises, press into each other, merging at the spine and becoming chaos. from the window of the bus, i see these walls take shape, come alive with moving people; as i imagine the woman in front of me walking along the broken sidewalk, and through the open air to her kitchen, which she cannot see as we curl and caress the asphalt with our rubber-bus wheels, but she knows it is there, has memorized the stain in the ceiling tile, the blush pink hibiscus bursting from the corner of the window above the sink. i can see her in it. i can see her walking, with the strain on her calves as she heads uphill, the smooth sliding stillness of her eyelids as she blinks. she knows the exact moment to stand, wave down the driver, because she has eaten this time. the twenty-seven minutes from cumbaya to the road side stop just below the market, they have been made into ice and eaten. frozen. and now they are hollow in her stomach, but singing, 'now! now is your time to escape!' and so she does.
at eight o'clock in the evening, every night, without fail, the dogs always start barking. not loud angry barking, or the kind no ear is able to ignore (the kind that comes when the dog is in pain, or afraid and backed, hackles raised into a corner). this barking is pure speech, for fun, or maybe not, but only between each other. the dogs are telling the night stories of the city. [this can be read two different ways, and both are correct. it is to the moment to determine which it will be. is the night a vast audience, soaking in the words like disappearing starlight? or is it the stories OF the night that the dogs are howling at us as we pass, as we sit in our vacant rooms, staring out windows and seeing nothing, when really, it is everything?] maybe i am wrong about everything. people are almost always wrong about everything. especially when it comes to each other, but even more so when it is things that we do not understand, cannot comprehend. maybe these dogs are only barking to make themselves heard. to make themselves hoarse. merely to hear their own voices echo off the walls, funnelling down their throats like burning sand. this is why it is called howling.
cuaron once said 'green is the only color i understand' and this is true for me, as well. of all things, green makes sense to me. don't ask me to explain my logic, because i won't be able to, but when i am drawn [to the weeds, we are brave like soldiers, falling down, under pale moonlight...] in, it is usually because of green. or the ocean.
Enhydra lutris: sea otter (lutra)
Bothrops asper: fer-de-lance
it's terrifying, really, how little sound you hear when there is no limitation to your speaking. when no one understands, when you recognize how loud everything is, everything is amplified.
the act of missing is painful. it is visceral, i don't care what anyone says. you are causing aches in my chest, in my eyes, in my mouth. when i return, you will be flattened. i will hug you so hard, you will break. be ready, for i will be leaping.
favorites:
-el parque el hjedo, and el mercado de artesanias.
-the circling pigeons of la plaza de santo agosto
-0,25 centavos for helado
-discotecas
-making friends with ecuadorian security guards
-dali dripping from the walls
-jugo de EVERYTHING
-el libro se llama 'cuentos del ecuador'
non-favorites:
-whistles
-feeling hunted after dark
-gringo bars
-clumsy words, clumsy tongues
-missing pieces
take me home tonight i don' wanna let you go 'til you see the light take me home tonight
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
of busses, and voices, and quiet.
so here we are.
have you ever thought that the world was too big? that there were too many corners and crevices and cracks, too many spaces to fill in with light before you could catch it all in the lenses?
every day is an adventure. every second, even, because it´s all in another language. a foreign tongue. nobody tells you, before traversing across miles, over oceans and mountains, through cities with cracking pavement and all that nonsense - nobody tells you how hard it is. life is hard, we know that. college is hard, too. classes, yeah, but the people. people are hard to understand. but living in another country where you could hardly claim to be bilingual, where the culture and the politics and everything else is totally different, this is difficult. but so totally amazing! oh. it´s fantastic how hard everthing is. i´m not drifting through each day, completely oblivious to my own breathing. here i have to contemplate each step.
a las avenidas de zamora y brasil.
there goes a car
another.
another, but with a boy, maybe sixteen, seated in the back. he looks tired.
three busses, one of which i was supposed to be on.
[how do i say this is spanish? who should i ask? he looks nice. the one in the yellow sweatshirt. he has a long nose. strong. maybe i´ll ask him.]
step into the street, across -
there! there is my bus.
and there is the city. flashing past, through open doors. i am standing, praying to the floor with my toes that it will not let me go, and watching the street as we drive, me without a seat, without a tongue, without a voice.
around corners, clinging to the bar that will keep me inside, away from the pavement, above the crushing wheels. who would notice if i fell? would anyone stop the bus if i tumbled out, into the street?
(¡más libertad!) scrawled in red on the plain concrete sides, spilling their crumbling mortar into the street. the graffiti here means something. la voz de las murales.
sitting. three people, travellers. a beautiful woman, tall, wearing striped purple and blue pants, made of wool. indigenous. her lip is pierced. no, it is a scar. (from what? her blood was spilled for some reason, her mouth mangled. she was in a fight, when she was nine. maybe ten, but regardless, her older brother pushed her down, and she bled. it is an elegant scar, clean and straight.) her eyes follow the tumbling body of a four year old boy, con mullet. he is laughing, rolling on the floor of the bus. the eyes of everyone on the bus are drawn to his laughter, bouncing off of the dusty walls, but his eyes are attached to a box, which rests on the head of his father (his father? i don´t want to assume, but he shares the same nose, and perhaps they are a travelling family of gypsies, riding on busses across continents, wearing purple striped pants and singing songs about little black birds and rejoicing in their simplicity. no, this is too romantic. their bodies are tired, and they do not rejoice because it is all they have known. but it is enough. so maybe...) the man has curly black hair pulled into a ponytail at the base of his neck, and brown boots. the box has holes. in a former life, it was used to transport tangerines. but now, now there is a sound coming from the box.
a kitten!
there is a small brown kitten climbing out of the box.
the woman sees me staring, watches my eyes follow her son, her lover, her cat. she blinks, and continues singing.
live here with me. voiceless.
i have never known what it is to be voiceless.
everyone should realize this someday.
in america, many have been silent for decades. their families
quiet, ignored, questioned.
we should all be made voiceless for
minutes
hours
months.
to understand the quiet.
we live in it.
"for beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us...
and so i hold myself back and swallow the call-note
of my dark sobbing. ah, whom can we ever turn to
in our need?"
-r. m. rilke
have you ever thought that the world was too big? that there were too many corners and crevices and cracks, too many spaces to fill in with light before you could catch it all in the lenses?
every day is an adventure. every second, even, because it´s all in another language. a foreign tongue. nobody tells you, before traversing across miles, over oceans and mountains, through cities with cracking pavement and all that nonsense - nobody tells you how hard it is. life is hard, we know that. college is hard, too. classes, yeah, but the people. people are hard to understand. but living in another country where you could hardly claim to be bilingual, where the culture and the politics and everything else is totally different, this is difficult. but so totally amazing! oh. it´s fantastic how hard everthing is. i´m not drifting through each day, completely oblivious to my own breathing. here i have to contemplate each step.
a las avenidas de zamora y brasil.
there goes a car
another.
another, but with a boy, maybe sixteen, seated in the back. he looks tired.
three busses, one of which i was supposed to be on.
[how do i say this is spanish? who should i ask? he looks nice. the one in the yellow sweatshirt. he has a long nose. strong. maybe i´ll ask him.]
step into the street, across -
there! there is my bus.
and there is the city. flashing past, through open doors. i am standing, praying to the floor with my toes that it will not let me go, and watching the street as we drive, me without a seat, without a tongue, without a voice.
around corners, clinging to the bar that will keep me inside, away from the pavement, above the crushing wheels. who would notice if i fell? would anyone stop the bus if i tumbled out, into the street?
(¡más libertad!) scrawled in red on the plain concrete sides, spilling their crumbling mortar into the street. the graffiti here means something. la voz de las murales.
sitting. three people, travellers. a beautiful woman, tall, wearing striped purple and blue pants, made of wool. indigenous. her lip is pierced. no, it is a scar. (from what? her blood was spilled for some reason, her mouth mangled. she was in a fight, when she was nine. maybe ten, but regardless, her older brother pushed her down, and she bled. it is an elegant scar, clean and straight.) her eyes follow the tumbling body of a four year old boy, con mullet. he is laughing, rolling on the floor of the bus. the eyes of everyone on the bus are drawn to his laughter, bouncing off of the dusty walls, but his eyes are attached to a box, which rests on the head of his father (his father? i don´t want to assume, but he shares the same nose, and perhaps they are a travelling family of gypsies, riding on busses across continents, wearing purple striped pants and singing songs about little black birds and rejoicing in their simplicity. no, this is too romantic. their bodies are tired, and they do not rejoice because it is all they have known. but it is enough. so maybe...) the man has curly black hair pulled into a ponytail at the base of his neck, and brown boots. the box has holes. in a former life, it was used to transport tangerines. but now, now there is a sound coming from the box.
a kitten!
there is a small brown kitten climbing out of the box.
the woman sees me staring, watches my eyes follow her son, her lover, her cat. she blinks, and continues singing.
live here with me. voiceless.
i have never known what it is to be voiceless.
everyone should realize this someday.
in america, many have been silent for decades. their families
quiet, ignored, questioned.
we should all be made voiceless for
minutes
hours
months.
to understand the quiet.
we live in it.
"for beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us...
and so i hold myself back and swallow the call-note
of my dark sobbing. ah, whom can we ever turn to
in our need?"
-r. m. rilke
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
the messiest year in the world
seriously.
"how is the word, infinitely? i hate that word. forever. i can love forever."
12 december, 2006.
i am a techno-ballerina and this is my symphony. sympathy. symphony.
there is a sparrow in the fireplace, sitting on the piles of ash (cold for months) flying up the stairs in patches of sunlight that catch in the folds of the wrought-iron railing.
1 may, 2006.
things are precarious, and i am uneasy. but i am most loveable when i am rambling about random things that really do not connect, when i am being totally ridiculous, immediately after running when my face is flushed and i am full of energy, when you remember to ask little things that no one ever notices.
flying pink carnations, falling through the air in slow-motion, time erased.
14 february, 2006.
there is a dime in the dregs of my apple tea, and you're hiding behind the barbed wire fence that is covering the rabbit hole in your front yard. you called me alice, and i laughed, but it was bittersweet, because i spoke to the walrus the other day, and he told me there was a tea party in the abandoned hallway between your mousetrap and the laundry machine. too bad you forgot - i know the walls of your house are glass.
baby baby baby, there is nothing so fragile as me, when it comes to you. but this splinter here, spider cracked and spilling further along the side of my face, this splinter isn't made of matter, the shrapnel that you left me with. you can't call me alice anymore. there is a dime in the dregs of my apple tea, waiting to be uncovered, discovered, left in peppermint leaves.
14 october, 2006.
i want to dance. barefoot, for the rest of my life. wearing old slips, made of lace and satin [the kind the dressmakers used to place on their bodies, stiff and silent in the attic gloom;] bright red satin. or black. i will walk the curves in these roads, barefoot. letting the peculiar pieces of granite, and asphalt cling to the pads of my toes. soon, i would be three feet taller! if i didn't stop to take them out, that is. i will teach our children to climb trees (barefoot, all of us). when we reach the top, we will holler at the top of our lungs. about things like civil rights, and lung cancer, and underwear. we will scream obscenities into the wind [but only here, at the top of the world.]
27 july, 2006.
if i write it down, that means that's it. i'm done. no turning back. no ranting, no hoping, no thinking, no more. i'm done.
28 february, 2006.
bad habits die hard. summer of arms and legs entwined under a haze of blue smoke, or between sheets of seventy proof champagne skies. my hands are small and weary of being held, but from behind my back i'll let yours drift to my hips, passed my ribs, through my lungs. we're going to start a revolution, between the two of us. will you be that one i've been running towards? the one who doesn't hold on all the time?
2 september, 2006.
i came back for you, she said.
i know,
he looked at the flowers on the table - white and freshly cut. these smell horrible, he said. they smell like granite, and hospital gowns.
it was the thought that counts, kiddo, she sighed.
she hated lilies, he said.
no one but you knew that.
except for her.
except for her, she said.
they look like tumors, too. white, bulbous tumors.
she fell silent. there was nothing to say.
i didn't expect you to, come back, i mean. he said finally.
what else am i here for? she asked, and filled the room with light. he shut his eyes.
he swirled a glass of red wine and held it up, high in the air, as if he hoped, if he let it go, it might stay there, floating.
you'd have done the same, she said.
he grunted, said 'i don't know.'
true, she said.
the chiming of seventeen individual grandfather clocks echoed in his head, interrupted by the slow, wheezing gasp of the closing of a screen door.
he followed her into the street. i'm sorry, he said.
don't be, she said. sit in the dark for a while. i'll leave the light on for you.
5 august, 2006.
these tired eyes, that pirate smile; we were always good at being tired; he stays still; tight tight tight; body to body, he never stays still.
30 december, 2006.
crazy german ladies hiding yelling dogs following english toffee with the milwaukee folk. tornado warnings, lightning billowing, brewers games michaelangelos and the chocolate shoppe, and the squid and the whale, all over and everywhere. cacciato at the union in the mornings and by the fiberglass muralled cows, dance parties in the kitchen [FAKIN AMNESIA] james brown and rhythm is a dancer, singing soulful in the stairwell, the messiest orange in the world, and a mouse in the frying pan.
4 june, 2006.
you do what you can | when you can | why you can. | and when you can't | you can't.
23 september, 2006.
"now you just look over there, a'right? anything the matter, bru? yah yah. . . and if you ever threaten my life like that again, my friend, i'll peal your face back off your 'ead."
i'm yelling! i'll drown you out. you'll drown me out.
life is like the surf, so give yourself away like the sea.
28 december, 2006.
reading poetry in the morning. peanut butter and jelly. sudden violin outbreaks which sound like wailing after i've drawn on my toes and spoken to a pair of old men in houndstooth bowler hats and matching (each other, not the hats), decided to continue dancing wherever possible, regardless of the threats from mental health workers. love, whenever possible. love HARD and often.
13 january, 2006.
oh, this time we'll be infinite.
but not, like you said.
not forever.
that's too much time. it's just that the bound(arie)s will hold us down, and for
the time it takes to cross the space
we're in
we'll be infinite.
29 november, 2006.
the truth hurts. so we lie.
4 march, 2006.
we sit in the coffee shop, surrounded. on the couch, there is a man and a woman. she lays her head on his shoulder, talking straight into his ear. everyonce in a while, she flings her head sideways, her bouncy brown curls sliding across the rosy peach of her cheeks. she continues to chatter, laughing and explaining about how some man on the bus asked her where she'd gotten her boots (which are black and pointed, making click-clack sounds which echo on the tile when she walks) could she tell him where to find them? his wife would like them. she laughs when she tells her man this story, her arm pressed between his and his ribs, her hand resting quietly on his thigh. she laughs because she is comfortable in her love.
but he is not paying attention, watching instead the woman across from them, alone at a table reading a newspaper over her black-rimmed glasses. he does not love the woman who laughs.
17 november, 2006.
big things are occurring, and i don't even know if they're phasing me enough as they should. cliff jumping with the sidewalk revolutionaries of the yellow traffic lights (aka: the dead rabbits). el presidente (amsterdam), the secretary of war, the personal assassin, the secretary of propaganda, rocco, and i (the muse, the speechwriter)
the voice of pacifism in the chaos of anarchy.
3 august, 2006.
i am in espresso, and through the frame of the front windows, the overture centers' doors reign over the street. there is a line of men on bicycles, waiting for the stoplight in front of them to signal that they are free to go. one of them is looking down at his hand, wondering whether he will need to buy new gloves before winter's end. these men are splayed against the backdrop bricks of the building behind them, ivory and cream colored stone that reminds the busses not to exhale too much dust into the air. the stoplight turns green, and they are gone.
13 december, 2006.
you're singing, but i can't hear a word that you're saying.
it's all like a caucaphony of words, words and jumbled up birds
in my ears.
they're falling like glass through that turquoise blue lava you're spewing
true
why can't i hold on to you?
just let me sleep for a while, and maybe i'll hear what you're singing.
maybe i'll hear every word that you're praying...
25 march, 2006.
sepia tone loving. champagne. speaking in letters, and smoking out windows, and sailing into fits of giggles. charlie the unicorn. waking up in hotels, slipping in and out of sleep. coffee shop goodbyes. love HARD and often.
1 january, 2007.
seriously!
"how is the word, infinitely? i hate that word. forever. i can love forever."
12 december, 2006.
i am a techno-ballerina and this is my symphony. sympathy. symphony.
there is a sparrow in the fireplace, sitting on the piles of ash (cold for months) flying up the stairs in patches of sunlight that catch in the folds of the wrought-iron railing.
1 may, 2006.
things are precarious, and i am uneasy. but i am most loveable when i am rambling about random things that really do not connect, when i am being totally ridiculous, immediately after running when my face is flushed and i am full of energy, when you remember to ask little things that no one ever notices.
flying pink carnations, falling through the air in slow-motion, time erased.
14 february, 2006.
there is a dime in the dregs of my apple tea, and you're hiding behind the barbed wire fence that is covering the rabbit hole in your front yard. you called me alice, and i laughed, but it was bittersweet, because i spoke to the walrus the other day, and he told me there was a tea party in the abandoned hallway between your mousetrap and the laundry machine. too bad you forgot - i know the walls of your house are glass.
baby baby baby, there is nothing so fragile as me, when it comes to you. but this splinter here, spider cracked and spilling further along the side of my face, this splinter isn't made of matter, the shrapnel that you left me with. you can't call me alice anymore. there is a dime in the dregs of my apple tea, waiting to be uncovered, discovered, left in peppermint leaves.
14 october, 2006.
i want to dance. barefoot, for the rest of my life. wearing old slips, made of lace and satin [the kind the dressmakers used to place on their bodies, stiff and silent in the attic gloom;] bright red satin. or black. i will walk the curves in these roads, barefoot. letting the peculiar pieces of granite, and asphalt cling to the pads of my toes. soon, i would be three feet taller! if i didn't stop to take them out, that is. i will teach our children to climb trees (barefoot, all of us). when we reach the top, we will holler at the top of our lungs. about things like civil rights, and lung cancer, and underwear. we will scream obscenities into the wind [but only here, at the top of the world.]
27 july, 2006.
if i write it down, that means that's it. i'm done. no turning back. no ranting, no hoping, no thinking, no more. i'm done.
28 february, 2006.
bad habits die hard. summer of arms and legs entwined under a haze of blue smoke, or between sheets of seventy proof champagne skies. my hands are small and weary of being held, but from behind my back i'll let yours drift to my hips, passed my ribs, through my lungs. we're going to start a revolution, between the two of us. will you be that one i've been running towards? the one who doesn't hold on all the time?
2 september, 2006.
i came back for you, she said.
i know,
he looked at the flowers on the table - white and freshly cut. these smell horrible, he said. they smell like granite, and hospital gowns.
it was the thought that counts, kiddo, she sighed.
she hated lilies, he said.
no one but you knew that.
except for her.
except for her, she said.
they look like tumors, too. white, bulbous tumors.
she fell silent. there was nothing to say.
i didn't expect you to, come back, i mean. he said finally.
what else am i here for? she asked, and filled the room with light. he shut his eyes.
he swirled a glass of red wine and held it up, high in the air, as if he hoped, if he let it go, it might stay there, floating.
you'd have done the same, she said.
he grunted, said 'i don't know.'
true, she said.
the chiming of seventeen individual grandfather clocks echoed in his head, interrupted by the slow, wheezing gasp of the closing of a screen door.
he followed her into the street. i'm sorry, he said.
don't be, she said. sit in the dark for a while. i'll leave the light on for you.
5 august, 2006.
these tired eyes, that pirate smile; we were always good at being tired; he stays still; tight tight tight; body to body, he never stays still.
30 december, 2006.
crazy german ladies hiding yelling dogs following english toffee with the milwaukee folk. tornado warnings, lightning billowing, brewers games michaelangelos and the chocolate shoppe, and the squid and the whale, all over and everywhere. cacciato at the union in the mornings and by the fiberglass muralled cows, dance parties in the kitchen [FAKIN AMNESIA] james brown and rhythm is a dancer, singing soulful in the stairwell, the messiest orange in the world, and a mouse in the frying pan.
4 june, 2006.
you do what you can | when you can | why you can. | and when you can't | you can't.
23 september, 2006.
"now you just look over there, a'right? anything the matter, bru? yah yah. . . and if you ever threaten my life like that again, my friend, i'll peal your face back off your 'ead."
i'm yelling! i'll drown you out. you'll drown me out.
life is like the surf, so give yourself away like the sea.
28 december, 2006.
reading poetry in the morning. peanut butter and jelly. sudden violin outbreaks which sound like wailing after i've drawn on my toes and spoken to a pair of old men in houndstooth bowler hats and matching (each other, not the hats), decided to continue dancing wherever possible, regardless of the threats from mental health workers. love, whenever possible. love HARD and often.
13 january, 2006.
oh, this time we'll be infinite.
but not, like you said.
not forever.
that's too much time. it's just that the bound(arie)s will hold us down, and for
the time it takes to cross the space
we're in
we'll be infinite.
29 november, 2006.
the truth hurts. so we lie.
4 march, 2006.
we sit in the coffee shop, surrounded. on the couch, there is a man and a woman. she lays her head on his shoulder, talking straight into his ear. everyonce in a while, she flings her head sideways, her bouncy brown curls sliding across the rosy peach of her cheeks. she continues to chatter, laughing and explaining about how some man on the bus asked her where she'd gotten her boots (which are black and pointed, making click-clack sounds which echo on the tile when she walks) could she tell him where to find them? his wife would like them. she laughs when she tells her man this story, her arm pressed between his and his ribs, her hand resting quietly on his thigh. she laughs because she is comfortable in her love.
but he is not paying attention, watching instead the woman across from them, alone at a table reading a newspaper over her black-rimmed glasses. he does not love the woman who laughs.
17 november, 2006.
big things are occurring, and i don't even know if they're phasing me enough as they should. cliff jumping with the sidewalk revolutionaries of the yellow traffic lights (aka: the dead rabbits). el presidente (amsterdam), the secretary of war, the personal assassin, the secretary of propaganda, rocco, and i (the muse, the speechwriter)
the voice of pacifism in the chaos of anarchy.
3 august, 2006.
i am in espresso, and through the frame of the front windows, the overture centers' doors reign over the street. there is a line of men on bicycles, waiting for the stoplight in front of them to signal that they are free to go. one of them is looking down at his hand, wondering whether he will need to buy new gloves before winter's end. these men are splayed against the backdrop bricks of the building behind them, ivory and cream colored stone that reminds the busses not to exhale too much dust into the air. the stoplight turns green, and they are gone.
13 december, 2006.
you're singing, but i can't hear a word that you're saying.
it's all like a caucaphony of words, words and jumbled up birds
in my ears.
they're falling like glass through that turquoise blue lava you're spewing
true
why can't i hold on to you?
just let me sleep for a while, and maybe i'll hear what you're singing.
maybe i'll hear every word that you're praying...
25 march, 2006.
sepia tone loving. champagne. speaking in letters, and smoking out windows, and sailing into fits of giggles. charlie the unicorn. waking up in hotels, slipping in and out of sleep. coffee shop goodbyes. love HARD and often.
1 january, 2007.
seriously!
Thursday, December 28, 2006
lists.
5 day marathons with 20 hours sleep, total.
fettuchine alla crema di scampi, chocolate raspberry truffle, the italian, asian kitchen, and sunroom.
rain.
chicago, with green shoes, and busses.
trenchcoats.
sethela!
crazy, stress-induced explosions of wrestling madness, and being thrown about.
half-assed papers, and apathy.
naps on couches, involving dreams about missing babies, blocked stairwells, and yelling.
qdoba with cath, and the "but i want a STRAW" incident.
drunk (thanks, bradley).
drunk tour II.
the attic, and the drawer full of fire alarms.
fixing my doorknob, tipsy.
almost falling out the window, and the last sounds of the lake.
seeing 7 am from the otherside.
chopping garlic, drinking catabwa juice, and dreaming of international gun-running.
leinenkugel's apple cider.
the wife! the triangle! perfect christmas-going away-valentine's-st. patty's-birthday presents.
caribou.
tirades on conundrums, paradoxical problems, and boys.
kate!
seeing randoms, shopping wildly, and step up. mmm.
these are a few of my favorite things.
fettuchine alla crema di scampi, chocolate raspberry truffle, the italian, asian kitchen, and sunroom.
rain.
chicago, with green shoes, and busses.
trenchcoats.
sethela!
crazy, stress-induced explosions of wrestling madness, and being thrown about.
half-assed papers, and apathy.
naps on couches, involving dreams about missing babies, blocked stairwells, and yelling.
qdoba with cath, and the "but i want a STRAW" incident.
drunk (thanks, bradley).
drunk tour II.
the attic, and the drawer full of fire alarms.
fixing my doorknob, tipsy.
almost falling out the window, and the last sounds of the lake.
seeing 7 am from the otherside.
chopping garlic, drinking catabwa juice, and dreaming of international gun-running.
leinenkugel's apple cider.
the wife! the triangle! perfect christmas-going away-valentine's-st. patty's-birthday presents.
caribou.
tirades on conundrums, paradoxical problems, and boys.
kate!
seeing randoms, shopping wildly, and step up. mmm.
these are a few of my favorite things.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
say goodnight and go
he starts to say
i feel like -
- we're caught in a cage, she finishes.
they were always good at finishing.
he smiles.
yea, he says.
non-favorite things:
male-chavinists and misogynism
7 hours sleep in 72 hours
16 page papers
being afraid of the dark
saying goodbye
favorite things:
imogen heap in the kitchen
drinking fat squirrel while dancing
making bread
hugs
cute TA's
eggers
1) thoughts are made of water and water always finds a way.
2) if you can't dodge the water, run.
Why d'ya have to be so cute? | It's impossible to ignore you | Must you make me laugh so much | It's bad enough we get along so well
Friday, December 15, 2006
all of this
how many birds have died in cages, thinking the ceiling was the sky?
use me c’mon and use me
da da da da dum da da dum da da dum dum
da da da da dum dum
and all again I wait for this to fill the hole, to shake the sky in two
wait...there is a light...there is a fire
illuminated attic.
Fate? or something better? i could care less,
just stay with me a while
da da da da dum da da dum da da dum dum
da da da da dum dum
a cloud hangs over this city by the sea
please do persist, boy its time we met and made a mess.
he would splash paint across the great back of that invisible elephant, beg her to watch as the color dripped down its sides,
as it was elucidated.
he would try to bring it up, saying
that he was sorry, that even though he couldn't explain why
all he could do was love her.
and she would sigh, sad.
she would move as if to walk away, and he would rise, she would push her hands against his chest, holding her palms steady for a moment,
pressing down hard.
don't, she would say.
the slow jangle of a banjo, the first chords, would drift from the stereo, 'for the widows' following her footprints through the sand as she disappears behind the shelf, climbing steady down the rock face toward the ocean.
that was how he would find her, an hour before sunrise.
illuminated by the reflection of the moon off the rough pacific surf, she would stand, there in the steaming wake of a beached whale.
its grey skin drying, sending
life
evaporating into thin air.
she would bend, hold her body to his massive side, and rise slowly as he inhaled.
he would ask if she could forgive him, and she would say
look how quiet he is.
he was lost, and panicked; somehow,
he found himself too far along to turn back,
and now he's dying.
we could push,
maybe call the coastguard, he says.
and she would say
but look how quiet he is.
…and people are always runnin around giving their forever away…
i gave me away
i could have knocked off the evening
but i lonelily loomed him into my bone
i feel like -
- we're caught in a cage, she finishes.
they were always good at finishing.
he smiles.
yea, he says.
da da da da dum da da dum da da dum dum da da da da dum dum
use me c’mon and use me
da da da da dum da da dum da da dum dum
da da da da dum dum
and all again I wait for this to fill the hole, to shake the sky in two
wait...there is a light...there is a fire
illuminated attic.
Fate? or something better? i could care less,
just stay with me a while
da da da da dum da da dum da da dum dum
da da da da dum dum
a cloud hangs over this city by the sea
please do persist, boy its time we met and made a mess.
he would splash paint across the great back of that invisible elephant, beg her to watch as the color dripped down its sides,
as it was elucidated.
he would try to bring it up, saying
that he was sorry, that even though he couldn't explain why
all he could do was love her.
and she would sigh, sad.
she would move as if to walk away, and he would rise, she would push her hands against his chest, holding her palms steady for a moment,
pressing down hard.
don't, she would say.
the slow jangle of a banjo, the first chords, would drift from the stereo, 'for the widows' following her footprints through the sand as she disappears behind the shelf, climbing steady down the rock face toward the ocean.
that was how he would find her, an hour before sunrise.
illuminated by the reflection of the moon off the rough pacific surf, she would stand, there in the steaming wake of a beached whale.
its grey skin drying, sending
life
evaporating into thin air.
she would bend, hold her body to his massive side, and rise slowly as he inhaled.
he would ask if she could forgive him, and she would say
look how quiet he is.
he was lost, and panicked; somehow,
he found himself too far along to turn back,
and now he's dying.
we could push,
maybe call the coastguard, he says.
and she would say
but look how quiet he is.
…and people are always runnin around giving their forever away…
i gave me away
i could have knocked off the evening
but i lonelily loomed him into my bone
i feel like -
- we're caught in a cage, she finishes.
they were always good at finishing.
he smiles.
yea, he says.
da da da da dum da da dum da da dum dum da da da da dum dum
Sunday, December 10, 2006
the denial twist
if you think that a kiss is all in the lips | c'mon | you got it all wrong, man
peach riesling + cloves + race rants. j. newsom! at the union, in the great hall, for free. the threat of a hipster riot. accordians, banjos, bass drums, glockenspiels, and musical saws. oh, and the harp. oblivious celebrity sightings in bathrooms. moon conversations and back-route wanderings with 99 stabbers. bruised palms. sleeping in when i really shouldn't be, feeling guilty about it, and then falling asleep again. signing leases [meaning: i have somewhere to live next year.] accidentally calling my lovelies, and not realizing it. winding up to wind it way down, and being terrified to say goodbye.
and there was a booming above you | that night, black airplanes flew over the sea | and they were lowing and shifting like | beached whales
peach riesling + cloves + race rants. j. newsom! at the union, in the great hall, for free. the threat of a hipster riot. accordians, banjos, bass drums, glockenspiels, and musical saws. oh, and the harp. oblivious celebrity sightings in bathrooms. moon conversations and back-route wanderings with 99 stabbers. bruised palms. sleeping in when i really shouldn't be, feeling guilty about it, and then falling asleep again. signing leases [meaning: i have somewhere to live next year.] accidentally calling my lovelies, and not realizing it. winding up to wind it way down, and being terrified to say goodbye.
and there was a booming above you | that night, black airplanes flew over the sea | and they were lowing and shifting like | beached whales
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
i like a man who grins when he fights
three stories i loved when i was ten:
1) harriet the spy
2) a wind in the door
3) from the mixed-up files of mrs. basil e. frankweiler
why?
who doesn't want to run away and live in the metropolitan museum of art? [see the royal tenenbaums for further evidence of the merit of such adventures; margot and richie tenenbaum, at ages similar to claudia and jamie of mrs. basil... ran away to the natural history museum in new york city and slept surrounded by dinosaur skeletons and the taxidermied bodies of mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, and the {famous further thanks to wes anderson} "squid and the whale." man, what i wouldn't give to be a kid in new york city. everyone gets to hide somewhere fascinating!]
who didn't pretend to belong to an elite spy association? i did this while hiding in my bushes with a notebook, invisible-ink pen, and 'tape recorder' (actually a defunct-walkman), recording my every mundane observation about the obnoxiously-boringly-normal neighbors and the wonder-bread delivery man who came every wednesday afternoon. i also hid stores of ordinary stones, maple leaves, and paperbirch sticks in my shed. this was quite obviously for an emergency, in case i had to live there for an extended period of time, such as if i were to be discovered and had to run away. [i had no other choice of location, not living nearby a museum interesting enough to hide within.]
what child didn't want a drove of dragons hanging about in their garden, their mitochondrian/farandolae having mental breakdowns and needing internal adventures, and a black psychic garter snake named louise living in their stone wall? i sure did. also, further evidence of said desires: see the episode(s) of jim henson's muppet babies in which the babies must escape the nursery in order to adventure inside a) skooter and his broken immune system, taking trips into the memory files of his brain and flying around his bloodstream in a submarine, and b) in order to prevent the watermelon seed fozzie swallowed from becoming a sizeable fruit. those two really only refer to the internal adventures aspect, but i did write a paper in a.p. bio about a wind in the door, and ms. kahlstorf wanted me to research further on the existence/importance of farandolae, as scientists at this point in time are aware of only the importance of mitochondrian. ha!
sleeping in the library last night made me feel as if i partially experienced one of the three, even if it were not in a museum, not for an extended period of time, and not actually illegal. i'd still much rather hide out in the Met, much rather have to hide from security guards in toilets and under artifacts, than to sleep in awkwardly shaped armchairs and wake up to the janitors moving the furniture about. but at least i can pretend, right? right.
¿me deseas? necesito saber antes de salir por los bosques, antes de salir por las islas, porque me he vuelto muy loca, y te amo. esta es la verdad. no el tipo de amor que es en las películas, no entre las personas viejas que han casado por muchos años, no el tipo de amor que es profundo en el corazón. esta es un tipo de amor fugaz, y no quiero amarte. pero hago.
favorites: [charlie] and [hard to concentrate] by the red hot chili peppers. greys marathons. [emily] by j. newsom. tomato-basil-cheese pizza, after consuming nothing but (1) cup coffee in 24 hours. [violent pornography] by system of a down. being cranky. [for the widows...] by s. stevens. dark jeans that make a) my ass look good and b) me look tall + my houndstooth heels. [winter] by j. radin. hot tomales and peanut butter m&m's. [globalization and its discontents as sung by joseph stiglitz] by sean (unknown). having my window open again (even though its -3 degrees outside).
non-favorites: wisconsin winter weather and waiting to waltz my way to ecuador (oh, i am good. look at that alliteration!) the impending doom of finals week. making appointments at the ecuadorian consulate in chicago. trying to sign a lease in the midst of a shitstorm, all by myself. knowing i am going to miss people i don't want to be missing. knowing i am going to miss people i want to be missing. flakes. not sleeping.
i like a man who grins when he fights [ ear to ear. it's the irish in me. ]
1) harriet the spy
2) a wind in the door
3) from the mixed-up files of mrs. basil e. frankweiler
why?
who doesn't want to run away and live in the metropolitan museum of art? [see the royal tenenbaums for further evidence of the merit of such adventures; margot and richie tenenbaum, at ages similar to claudia and jamie of mrs. basil... ran away to the natural history museum in new york city and slept surrounded by dinosaur skeletons and the taxidermied bodies of mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, and the {famous further thanks to wes anderson} "squid and the whale." man, what i wouldn't give to be a kid in new york city. everyone gets to hide somewhere fascinating!]
who didn't pretend to belong to an elite spy association? i did this while hiding in my bushes with a notebook, invisible-ink pen, and 'tape recorder' (actually a defunct-walkman), recording my every mundane observation about the obnoxiously-boringly-normal neighbors and the wonder-bread delivery man who came every wednesday afternoon. i also hid stores of ordinary stones, maple leaves, and paperbirch sticks in my shed. this was quite obviously for an emergency, in case i had to live there for an extended period of time, such as if i were to be discovered and had to run away. [i had no other choice of location, not living nearby a museum interesting enough to hide within.]
what child didn't want a drove of dragons hanging about in their garden, their mitochondrian/farandolae having mental breakdowns and needing internal adventures, and a black psychic garter snake named louise living in their stone wall? i sure did. also, further evidence of said desires: see the episode(s) of jim henson's muppet babies in which the babies must escape the nursery in order to adventure inside a) skooter and his broken immune system, taking trips into the memory files of his brain and flying around his bloodstream in a submarine, and b) in order to prevent the watermelon seed fozzie swallowed from becoming a sizeable fruit. those two really only refer to the internal adventures aspect, but i did write a paper in a.p. bio about a wind in the door, and ms. kahlstorf wanted me to research further on the existence/importance of farandolae, as scientists at this point in time are aware of only the importance of mitochondrian. ha!
sleeping in the library last night made me feel as if i partially experienced one of the three, even if it were not in a museum, not for an extended period of time, and not actually illegal. i'd still much rather hide out in the Met, much rather have to hide from security guards in toilets and under artifacts, than to sleep in awkwardly shaped armchairs and wake up to the janitors moving the furniture about. but at least i can pretend, right? right.
¿me deseas? necesito saber antes de salir por los bosques, antes de salir por las islas, porque me he vuelto muy loca, y te amo. esta es la verdad. no el tipo de amor que es en las películas, no entre las personas viejas que han casado por muchos años, no el tipo de amor que es profundo en el corazón. esta es un tipo de amor fugaz, y no quiero amarte. pero hago.
favorites: [charlie] and [hard to concentrate] by the red hot chili peppers. greys marathons. [emily] by j. newsom. tomato-basil-cheese pizza, after consuming nothing but (1) cup coffee in 24 hours. [violent pornography] by system of a down. being cranky. [for the widows...] by s. stevens. dark jeans that make a) my ass look good and b) me look tall + my houndstooth heels. [winter] by j. radin. hot tomales and peanut butter m&m's. [globalization and its discontents as sung by joseph stiglitz] by sean (unknown). having my window open again (even though its -3 degrees outside).
non-favorites: wisconsin winter weather and waiting to waltz my way to ecuador (oh, i am good. look at that alliteration!) the impending doom of finals week. making appointments at the ecuadorian consulate in chicago. trying to sign a lease in the midst of a shitstorm, all by myself. knowing i am going to miss people i don't want to be missing. knowing i am going to miss people i want to be missing. flakes. not sleeping.
i like a man who grins when he fights [ ear to ear. it's the irish in me. ]
Sunday, November 26, 2006
beautiful songs, nervous hearts, and awkward jazz.
like a nervous heart that | is crazy beating | so back up back up | don’t you mess up mess up | wake up wake up this aint just a thing that you | give up give up don’t you say that I’d be | better off
hiding in my basement, drinking jazzy red wine and telling stories from the past three months. dunn brothers study sessions and awkwardly adorable crazy elderly person #1 [the elf lady]. stress-induced breakouts. happy feet! insomnia. unexpected and emotionally unsettling messages.
and all the gold dust in her eyes | won't reform into rain | you had and lost the one thing | of the girl who made you her own | and how you left her alone | over playing the blues with the light on
DEAD POETS SOCIETY (i still have a crush on nuanda). mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie and being mistaken for my cousin repeatedly by my grandfather. impromptu meetings in the living room when he goes missing, and reappears at the park. tiny relations attempting to leap from platforms and dinner tables.
tense hour long dramas involving (future) baby-doctors and surgeons with shaky fingers.
m: please? please please please? [cute rocking]
mcd: you know what would say thank you better than anything? [mouths] "sex."
m: the-boy-induced-giggle giggling
babe here's your song | babe it took too long | you're nina simone | when you talk on the phone
really bad movies about gymnastics. travel clinic appointments in which i am told repeatedly of the many ways in which i could die. and also of the many ways in which the vaccinations i am receiving [ouch!] could also kill me. but that 95% of people who go adventuring into the jungle have a wonderful time. thanks. caribou, and awkwardly adorable crazy elderly person #2 [the old man with the broken zipper]. to rookies! for the playing bosbens and crowds of drunken ex-high school hotshots. awkward? hilarious? both?
come on put a little love here in my void| he said, "It's all in your head"| and I said, "so's everything'" but he didn't get it| hunger hurts, but starving works, when it costs too much to love
to kate's, for conan. in which there is a comic who tells the following jokes:
"now, i'm one of those people who has a tendency to make awkward situations even more awkward. so i was moving into my apartment, and i'm carrying my mattress. this old woman opens the door for me, which i thought was nice. then she says to me, 'i let you in because i know you're not a rapist. rapists don't have beds like that.' that's a pretty awkward way to start a conversation. what i should of said - nothing. what did i say? 'you'd be surprised.'"
"i'm not a republican, but i guess george w. is a pretty likeable guy. i mean, he's one of those guys you'd invite to a barbeque. but then things could start to get out of control. he'd probably want to play wiffel ball, but he'd get a little competitive, and he'd hit the wiffel balls into the neighbors' yards. tell them they should play wiffel ball too. some people just don't like wiffel ball! but he wouldn't care. if they didn't play with him, he'd start throwing hamburgers at them. dare them to throw hamburgers back. and the thing is - some of them don't even have hamburgers!'"
every word you say | i think | i should write down | don't want to forget come daylight
to my cousin's house. where 3 giant dogs sit on my lap and cover me in kisses. hugs from dominic, panera baked potato soup and awkward cole-aversions. waiting for hours, photo shoots in the mummy sack, gollum, scene it! and annoying orders about parked cars. breakfast at brueggers. sledge-hammering my doorknob off.
[the little things] and [bubbly] : c. caillat.
[star mile] [these photographs] and [paperweight] : j. radin (feat. schuyler fisk).
[paper bag] : f. apple.
[bleeker street] [the times...] [go tell it...] and [peggy-o] : simon & garfunkel
[elias w. beautiful soul & if i am] : the bosbens
[peach, plum, pear] : j. newsom
voices leaking from a sad cafe | smiling faces try to understand | i saw a shadow touch a shadow's hand | on bleeker street
hiding in my basement, drinking jazzy red wine and telling stories from the past three months. dunn brothers study sessions and awkwardly adorable crazy elderly person #1 [the elf lady]. stress-induced breakouts. happy feet! insomnia. unexpected and emotionally unsettling messages.
and all the gold dust in her eyes | won't reform into rain | you had and lost the one thing | of the girl who made you her own | and how you left her alone | over playing the blues with the light on
DEAD POETS SOCIETY (i still have a crush on nuanda). mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie and being mistaken for my cousin repeatedly by my grandfather. impromptu meetings in the living room when he goes missing, and reappears at the park. tiny relations attempting to leap from platforms and dinner tables.
tense hour long dramas involving (future) baby-doctors and surgeons with shaky fingers.
m: please? please please please? [cute rocking]
mcd: you know what would say thank you better than anything? [mouths] "sex."
m: the-boy-induced-giggle giggling
babe here's your song | babe it took too long | you're nina simone | when you talk on the phone
really bad movies about gymnastics. travel clinic appointments in which i am told repeatedly of the many ways in which i could die. and also of the many ways in which the vaccinations i am receiving [ouch!] could also kill me. but that 95% of people who go adventuring into the jungle have a wonderful time. thanks. caribou, and awkwardly adorable crazy elderly person #2 [the old man with the broken zipper]. to rookies! for the playing bosbens and crowds of drunken ex-high school hotshots. awkward? hilarious? both?
come on put a little love here in my void| he said, "It's all in your head"| and I said, "so's everything'" but he didn't get it| hunger hurts, but starving works, when it costs too much to love
to kate's, for conan. in which there is a comic who tells the following jokes:
"now, i'm one of those people who has a tendency to make awkward situations even more awkward. so i was moving into my apartment, and i'm carrying my mattress. this old woman opens the door for me, which i thought was nice. then she says to me, 'i let you in because i know you're not a rapist. rapists don't have beds like that.' that's a pretty awkward way to start a conversation. what i should of said - nothing. what did i say? 'you'd be surprised.'"
"i'm not a republican, but i guess george w. is a pretty likeable guy. i mean, he's one of those guys you'd invite to a barbeque. but then things could start to get out of control. he'd probably want to play wiffel ball, but he'd get a little competitive, and he'd hit the wiffel balls into the neighbors' yards. tell them they should play wiffel ball too. some people just don't like wiffel ball! but he wouldn't care. if they didn't play with him, he'd start throwing hamburgers at them. dare them to throw hamburgers back. and the thing is - some of them don't even have hamburgers!'"
every word you say | i think | i should write down | don't want to forget come daylight
to my cousin's house. where 3 giant dogs sit on my lap and cover me in kisses. hugs from dominic, panera baked potato soup and awkward cole-aversions. waiting for hours, photo shoots in the mummy sack, gollum, scene it! and annoying orders about parked cars. breakfast at brueggers. sledge-hammering my doorknob off.
[the little things] and [bubbly] : c. caillat.
[star mile] [these photographs] and [paperweight] : j. radin (feat. schuyler fisk).
[paper bag] : f. apple.
[bleeker street] [the times...] [go tell it...] and [peggy-o] : simon & garfunkel
[elias w. beautiful soul & if i am] : the bosbens
[peach, plum, pear] : j. newsom
voices leaking from a sad cafe | smiling faces try to understand | i saw a shadow touch a shadow's hand | on bleeker street
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
j. newsom is a genius
That means no Where i come from I am cold, out waiting for the day to come
I chew my lips And i scratch my nose Feels so good to be a rose
Oh don't Don't you lift me up Like i'm that shy no-no-no-no-no, just give it up
See, there are bats all dissolving in a row Into the wishy-washy dark that can't let go I cannot let go
So i thank the lord And i thank his sword Though it be mincing up the morning, slightly bored Oh
oh oh, morning Without warning Like a hole Oh, and i watch you go
There are some mornings when the sky looks like a road There are some dragons who were built to have and hold And some machines are dropped from great heights lovingly And some great bellies ache with many bumblebees And they sting so terribly
I do as i please Now i'm on my knees Your skin is something that i stir into my tea And i am watching you And you are starry, starry, starry
(and you will never Ever know how Very sorry you will be ... I am)
And i'm tumbling down And i check a frown Well just look around That's why i love this town To see me;
Serenaded hourly Celebrated sourly Dedicated dourly
Waltzing with the open sea Clam, crab, cockle, cowrie
Will you just look at me! Oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh
[clam crab cockle cowrie] - j. newsom
I chew my lips And i scratch my nose Feels so good to be a rose
Oh don't Don't you lift me up Like i'm that shy no-no-no-no-no, just give it up
See, there are bats all dissolving in a row Into the wishy-washy dark that can't let go I cannot let go
So i thank the lord And i thank his sword Though it be mincing up the morning, slightly bored Oh
oh oh, morning Without warning Like a hole Oh, and i watch you go
There are some mornings when the sky looks like a road There are some dragons who were built to have and hold And some machines are dropped from great heights lovingly And some great bellies ache with many bumblebees And they sting so terribly
I do as i please Now i'm on my knees Your skin is something that i stir into my tea And i am watching you And you are starry, starry, starry
(and you will never Ever know how Very sorry you will be ... I am)
And i'm tumbling down And i check a frown Well just look around That's why i love this town To see me;
Serenaded hourly Celebrated sourly Dedicated dourly
Waltzing with the open sea Clam, crab, cockle, cowrie
Will you just look at me! Oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh
[clam crab cockle cowrie] - j. newsom
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