2010, i'd live it again
it was weird it was good,
and i made a few friends
2011 be kind please
remind me
that i have sights to see
2011 be mine please
let me shake you up
coconuts and palm trees
JUST KIDDING THAT'S NOT REALLY MY LAST POST OF THE YEAR
Oh wait no it totally is because I have to go soon and I'm running on two hours of sleep!
2010 was ridiculously good to me. I'm thinking about it, about regrets and resolutions, and this year has been amazing.
I've never ended a year more excited for the next one.
Thank you to family and friends, and thanks for the times that blur the line between them.
Thank you for reading, and happy New Year's Eve!
Friday, December 31, 2010
Day 99.
We filed in, finding seats, heads swiveling to each person who walked in the room in semi-recognition. That first-day smell of new pencils and fresh paper and shampoo and all possible material representations of a New Start were there. And there was a sense of waiting, a quiet, rare agreement to withhold judgement until the teacher showed.
The man at the front of the classroom scribbled on the blackboard: "Mr. Smith, Math Slayer."
In every interesting class, there is a kid whose brain connects directly to their vocal chords. Jenna was that kid.
"Um, yeah, like, excuse me, but aren't you supposed to like math? Like, didn't you get a degree in it?"
He bared his teeth.
"Kids," he snarled, "it's always a good idea to know your enemy." He punctuated the last three words with his fist on the desk. "I am perfectly suited to be a math teacher, and here's why. I hate math. It's a godawful fucker of a subject. No, okay, who here has a problem with me cursing, by the way? God no, keep those hands down. I never want to see hands. The day you raise your hand to say something in real life is the day your self-worth dies. What was I saying. Oh. Yes. What happens when you love something? You let it past your guard!" He paused. "Who here loves math?"
Franklin twitched and shoved his hands in his pockets.
Mr. Smith surveyed the class. "Alright, fine, hide. Well if you're out there, I'm just trying to prepare you for the inevitable heart break of life."
Jenna's eyebrows furrowed. "What inevitable heart break?"
Mr. Smith turned around, appearing not to have heard her. He pulled out an ancient overhead and placed a sheet on the screen, then turned to check his roll sheet.
"Jonathan, do this problem. It's your monster, now here's your weapon: It is given that x=2. Go." He handed Jonathan a marker and sat at Jonathan's desk, commenting.
"That's right, that's right. Goddamn, add those, can't you see- okay, okay. Hey, you whip this problem or it whips you, got it?"
Finally Jonathan, turning red, capped the marker. "Alright, go sit down somewhere, I like your chair better. Jesus, that was a fucker. You took her down! Pat yourself on the back. That's it. You need a cigarette? I'm joking, I'm joking, sorry."
It was amazing: he talked like a combination radio advertiser and drill sergeant.
"Hey, who in here can do rings though? You know? Puff, puff. I'm a motherfucking magic dragon."
The man at the front of the classroom scribbled on the blackboard: "Mr. Smith, Math Slayer."
In every interesting class, there is a kid whose brain connects directly to their vocal chords. Jenna was that kid.
"Um, yeah, like, excuse me, but aren't you supposed to like math? Like, didn't you get a degree in it?"
He bared his teeth.
"Kids," he snarled, "it's always a good idea to know your enemy." He punctuated the last three words with his fist on the desk. "I am perfectly suited to be a math teacher, and here's why. I hate math. It's a godawful fucker of a subject. No, okay, who here has a problem with me cursing, by the way? God no, keep those hands down. I never want to see hands. The day you raise your hand to say something in real life is the day your self-worth dies. What was I saying. Oh. Yes. What happens when you love something? You let it past your guard!" He paused. "Who here loves math?"
Franklin twitched and shoved his hands in his pockets.
Mr. Smith surveyed the class. "Alright, fine, hide. Well if you're out there, I'm just trying to prepare you for the inevitable heart break of life."
Jenna's eyebrows furrowed. "What inevitable heart break?"
Mr. Smith turned around, appearing not to have heard her. He pulled out an ancient overhead and placed a sheet on the screen, then turned to check his roll sheet.
"Jonathan, do this problem. It's your monster, now here's your weapon: It is given that x=2. Go." He handed Jonathan a marker and sat at Jonathan's desk, commenting.
"That's right, that's right. Goddamn, add those, can't you see- okay, okay. Hey, you whip this problem or it whips you, got it?"
Finally Jonathan, turning red, capped the marker. "Alright, go sit down somewhere, I like your chair better. Jesus, that was a fucker. You took her down! Pat yourself on the back. That's it. You need a cigarette? I'm joking, I'm joking, sorry."
It was amazing: he talked like a combination radio advertiser and drill sergeant.
"Hey, who in here can do rings though? You know? Puff, puff. I'm a motherfucking magic dragon."
Day 98. NO MORE NONFICTION.
sort of song lyrics?
in cars at night you heard the thrum
soft-slurred songs, steady drums
reverberations in concrete
the words don't matter with your voice so sweet
the houses blur, but the stars are clear
your mind is far but you so near
your reflection pans across my window like the racing of the rain
there is no pain
you've smoothed my rough edges to your frame
in cars at night you heard the thrum
soft-slurred songs, steady drums
reverberations in concrete
the words don't matter with your voice so sweet
the houses blur, but the stars are clear
your mind is far but you so near
your reflection pans across my window like the racing of the rain
there is no pain
you've smoothed my rough edges to your frame
Day 97.
I miss my Conn8D....Why do I always forget it at school over breaks?
Also, college essays are weird because they make you write about every aspect of your life in positive realizations and lessons learned.
For a brief minute you become high off the sensation that yes, you do have everything figured out, yes, you are a fully realized person, yes, everything has turned out for the best and you are a god of everything!!!!! EVERYTHING!
.....And then you remember what you're writing and for what purpose and your head deflates and you feel insignificant again.
What a relief!
TIME FOR A DRAMATIC BAND ESSAYLETTE!
The stage lights are blinding at first, but they always are. It helps me forget I'm playing to people. I pick up my French horn, breathe, and release the opening bars of Zdechlik's Chorale and Shaker Dance. My section has a soli coming up. I cannot back away: the future is approaching like a hurtling glacier and there is no avoiding it, I can't even spare a moment to wonder if I'm being too dramatic because being in band involves a certain type of dramatic honor; a responsibility to the whole band, to your section, and finally to yourself to not fake it. So I play, and hope it comes out with all the feeling I put into it.
One of my music teachers once told me his theory that we pick the instruments we play because on some level we identify with their sound. I didn't pick French horn at first; I played flute for three years, but middle school bands typically overflow with flutes. When my old band director asked who wanted to switch to the less popular horn, I instinctively put my hand up. It has been exciting, because a French horn is a little like an explosive. All the parts can be in order, all protocols followed, but there's still a certain degree of unpredictability. The closeness of partials on the instrument mean that to play a note, you have to hear it in your head first; even then, injured moose sounds and ungainly squawks are not uncommon. That beautiful, aching undertone you heard in a symphony was a French horn, but so was the accidental atonal blare at your local high school concert. Despite the hazards of horn and the parts written for it (three pages of offbeats, eighty measures of rest and a single whole note) I wouldn't switch for anything. French horn is a Dickensian instrument, containing the best of sounds and the worst of sounds, and when I play it, the best and worst of me.
Also, college essays are weird because they make you write about every aspect of your life in positive realizations and lessons learned.
For a brief minute you become high off the sensation that yes, you do have everything figured out, yes, you are a fully realized person, yes, everything has turned out for the best and you are a god of everything!!!!! EVERYTHING!
.....And then you remember what you're writing and for what purpose and your head deflates and you feel insignificant again.
What a relief!
TIME FOR A DRAMATIC BAND ESSAYLETTE!
The stage lights are blinding at first, but they always are. It helps me forget I'm playing to people. I pick up my French horn, breathe, and release the opening bars of Zdechlik's Chorale and Shaker Dance. My section has a soli coming up. I cannot back away: the future is approaching like a hurtling glacier and there is no avoiding it, I can't even spare a moment to wonder if I'm being too dramatic because being in band involves a certain type of dramatic honor; a responsibility to the whole band, to your section, and finally to yourself to not fake it. So I play, and hope it comes out with all the feeling I put into it.
One of my music teachers once told me his theory that we pick the instruments we play because on some level we identify with their sound. I didn't pick French horn at first; I played flute for three years, but middle school bands typically overflow with flutes. When my old band director asked who wanted to switch to the less popular horn, I instinctively put my hand up. It has been exciting, because a French horn is a little like an explosive. All the parts can be in order, all protocols followed, but there's still a certain degree of unpredictability. The closeness of partials on the instrument mean that to play a note, you have to hear it in your head first; even then, injured moose sounds and ungainly squawks are not uncommon. That beautiful, aching undertone you heard in a symphony was a French horn, but so was the accidental atonal blare at your local high school concert. Despite the hazards of horn and the parts written for it (three pages of offbeats, eighty measures of rest and a single whole note) I wouldn't switch for anything. French horn is a Dickensian instrument, containing the best of sounds and the worst of sounds, and when I play it, the best and worst of me.
Day 96.
I never posted this-- but it was part of my CSSSA Application, the creative nonfiction assignment about telling a childhood memory in the voice of a child.
My family, we go to the zoo. There are orangutans, with swingy arms and deep-back eyes, and a baby they leave on the ground while they climb so high my head can't tilt anymore. And there are flamingoes, lots of them, pink and red like loud valentines. And there is a polar bear with tangled fur, a wrong sun-yellow. And he keeps going in the pool and getting out again and I yell, stop it polar bear, stay in or go out, but he doesn't listen. When I turn around Mommy is gone and Connie and Daddy are walking away and so I gallop to catch up and my purple jacket is slipping from its knot at my middle, so I try to hold it up and look sideways at everything i am running by, all the tanks and nets and bars. But tall leg trunks are everywhere, moving so I can't see clearly. But it's okay because I read Harriet the Spy and so I follow Connie and Daddy to the bathroom and we wait there a long long time and I try to touch every plant, ripping off leaves and tearing them into tiny pieces, dropping the pieces. Daddy says to stop. And finally mommy comes out and I hear daddy ask How much blood? And his glasses are pushed up by the wrinkles in his face. Mommy says, Too much. I ask for a churro because i can smell them so close and hear sugar crunchy rolling on my tongue already. But then Mommy asks for my purple jacket to tie around her middle and before she ties it on I see the spot on the back of her pants, like she's trying to steal a flamingo, and then we run run run to the car and I am laughing because when I run with mommy sometimes my feet forget to touch the ground. And then we're in the parking lot, magma asphalt I feel through my socks and my shoes, and the way Daddy closes the car door is different and the way he drives is different and there is a hunch in his back.
It is Adventure and it feels scary. I lie flat out on the car seat and look up at the changing sky and play with the pages of Red Fish Blue Fish. I want to turn more pages because everything is happening too slowly and I have too many questions.
My family, we go to the zoo. There are orangutans, with swingy arms and deep-back eyes, and a baby they leave on the ground while they climb so high my head can't tilt anymore. And there are flamingoes, lots of them, pink and red like loud valentines. And there is a polar bear with tangled fur, a wrong sun-yellow. And he keeps going in the pool and getting out again and I yell, stop it polar bear, stay in or go out, but he doesn't listen. When I turn around Mommy is gone and Connie and Daddy are walking away and so I gallop to catch up and my purple jacket is slipping from its knot at my middle, so I try to hold it up and look sideways at everything i am running by, all the tanks and nets and bars. But tall leg trunks are everywhere, moving so I can't see clearly. But it's okay because I read Harriet the Spy and so I follow Connie and Daddy to the bathroom and we wait there a long long time and I try to touch every plant, ripping off leaves and tearing them into tiny pieces, dropping the pieces. Daddy says to stop. And finally mommy comes out and I hear daddy ask How much blood? And his glasses are pushed up by the wrinkles in his face. Mommy says, Too much. I ask for a churro because i can smell them so close and hear sugar crunchy rolling on my tongue already. But then Mommy asks for my purple jacket to tie around her middle and before she ties it on I see the spot on the back of her pants, like she's trying to steal a flamingo, and then we run run run to the car and I am laughing because when I run with mommy sometimes my feet forget to touch the ground. And then we're in the parking lot, magma asphalt I feel through my socks and my shoes, and the way Daddy closes the car door is different and the way he drives is different and there is a hunch in his back.
It is Adventure and it feels scary. I lie flat out on the car seat and look up at the changing sky and play with the pages of Red Fish Blue Fish. I want to turn more pages because everything is happening too slowly and I have too many questions.
Day 95.
An intellectual experience. Another essaylette.
In tenth grade, I took Art History. The final project of the class had a reputation: twelve 4x4'' paintings, self portraits in the styles of twelve different artists. I had never painted seriously before, and I struggled. It would take me hours to get the style of the artist right, and then I would realize it looked nothing like me. For the last month of class, those self portraits followed me everywhere. I remember taking out my paints waiting in the doctor's office, trying to fix my Emily Carr portrait (I got an a first-name basis with these portraits, so she was Emily.)
When I finished Emily I started on Egon (Schiele)-- the tortured, repressed teenager shielding himself with his sharp angles, sallow skin. I never really got the parchment color of that skin right. The pain, almost paranoia, in his eyes was harder still to get on the small square of posterboard.
Roy (Lichtenstein) was nicer to me than Egon. I painted a cartoon girl, a bubble of thought proclaiming her blankness in a world gone nuclear.
And Francis (Bacon) went quietly--inside the black box, my face was swollen like his. Blurred almost, a face like discolored pewter, with a smear of white and pink, an abstracted pig nose, black slits for eyes.
Vincent, Salvador, Paul, Gustav, Amadeo-- my parents looked at me sprawled on the floor painting at 4 am, newspapers on the carpet, and told me the Modigliani looked fine.
"No no," I said, "the eyes are all wrong! They have to be distant, unknowable. And the nose isn't graceful yet."
They stared at me like I was crazy.
Painting those self-portraits made me a little crazy, but it also taught me so much more about the artists than I could have learned just from looking at their work. I think that's what I found engaging-- the process of becoming.
In tenth grade, I took Art History. The final project of the class had a reputation: twelve 4x4'' paintings, self portraits in the styles of twelve different artists. I had never painted seriously before, and I struggled. It would take me hours to get the style of the artist right, and then I would realize it looked nothing like me. For the last month of class, those self portraits followed me everywhere. I remember taking out my paints waiting in the doctor's office, trying to fix my Emily Carr portrait (I got an a first-name basis with these portraits, so she was Emily.)
When I finished Emily I started on Egon (Schiele)-- the tortured, repressed teenager shielding himself with his sharp angles, sallow skin. I never really got the parchment color of that skin right. The pain, almost paranoia, in his eyes was harder still to get on the small square of posterboard.
Roy (Lichtenstein) was nicer to me than Egon. I painted a cartoon girl, a bubble of thought proclaiming her blankness in a world gone nuclear.
And Francis (Bacon) went quietly--inside the black box, my face was swollen like his. Blurred almost, a face like discolored pewter, with a smear of white and pink, an abstracted pig nose, black slits for eyes.
Vincent, Salvador, Paul, Gustav, Amadeo-- my parents looked at me sprawled on the floor painting at 4 am, newspapers on the carpet, and told me the Modigliani looked fine.
"No no," I said, "the eyes are all wrong! They have to be distant, unknowable. And the nose isn't graceful yet."
They stared at me like I was crazy.
Painting those self-portraits made me a little crazy, but it also taught me so much more about the artists than I could have learned just from looking at their work. I think that's what I found engaging-- the process of becoming.
Day 94. five words that maybe sort of describe me
sparsile.
i am not in a constellation.
the pictures you could draw from me to other people are indistinct at best.
i draw my own pictures.
i will not be grouped or mythologized.
enthusiastic.
YES!
adventurous.
road trip state of mind.
humanist.
by which i mean, optimist and idealist
curious.
as in George, as in "spends too much time utilizing Wikipedia's random article feature"
i am not in a constellation.
the pictures you could draw from me to other people are indistinct at best.
i draw my own pictures.
i will not be grouped or mythologized.
enthusiastic.
YES!
adventurous.
road trip state of mind.
humanist.
by which i mean, optimist and idealist
curious.
as in George, as in "spends too much time utilizing Wikipedia's random article feature"
Day 93.
Is posting college essays on here selling my soul?
Oh well.....
Essay for Brown: What is the best piece of advice you have received and why?
I got a lot of good advice during CSSSA-- the California State Summer School for the Arts, where, for a month, I lived on the Cal Arts campus and studied creative writing.
On the first day the director of all the programs told us, "This month is what you make of it." I resolved to write as much as and as well as I possibly could. I wrote a scene sprawled on the cold tile of my dorm's bathroom floor because I was keeping my visual artist roommates up with the light; I wrote a poem while crunched into a cave-like space under the big desk in the writer's lounge because my teacher told us to write in different places.
His advice made me approach that month like a dare, but I still managed to bring some of my old fears: I was nervously reading one of my pieces to the whole writing department, swaying a little, when Eva Marie, the theater coach, told me, "Don't be cute. Cute ain't comfortable." She had me stand in what I call a power stance and what she called normal, and start over. Now, months later, when I talk in front of an audience I always look down to double check that my feet are firmly planted David Bowie style.
But the last and best piece of advice I got at CSSSA was from Zay, a short man in hipster glasses."Do something while you're here that scares you," he told us. I doubt he was the first to say it, and he didn't pretend he was, but the strange glint in his eye seemed to expect great things from us. Merely squishing spiders would not satisfy this glint. Jumping off buildings would not satisfy this glint.
Only confronting our own personal boggart would satisfy this glint.
So on the last night of CSSSA, I sang (with my friend Veronica on guitar) a song called "Blue or Gray" in front of maybe a hundred people, and they clapped and waved and called my name even though I was magnificently off-key and I had brought the lyrics up with me because I knew I'd forget them. And then we danced, way too many of us, in a tiny room sweating with joy, and people I'd never met came up and high-fived me and bear-hugged me-- just because that's how it was there.
And then, the next morning, I carried all my bags out to my family's car, and I went home. The whole car ride, while I heard mismatched pieces of what I'd missed, I flashed through the people I'd just left, the places I'd loved. My dorm room, with its hoarded food and the Bijou theater, where Holly and I read our spoken word poem. What made CSSSA special was besting our fear, and letting things surprise us: whether the cafeteria food's edibility or the reaction of an audience.
When faced with my daily routines, it was difficult at first to find room for fear (and the conquering of.) But soon I couldn't stop seeing opportunities: the tricky passage I always faked my way through in the piece I was playing in orchestra, the physics teacher who spoke in an intimidating drawl and punctuated all his sentences with a forcefully capped marker and the phrase "Simple as that." Looking for fears has become a game with myself, and though I don't always win (in fact sometimes I don't even play) it's given me a lot of something Zay could tell you all about: material.
Oh well.....
Essay for Brown: What is the best piece of advice you have received and why?
I got a lot of good advice during CSSSA-- the California State Summer School for the Arts, where, for a month, I lived on the Cal Arts campus and studied creative writing.
On the first day the director of all the programs told us, "This month is what you make of it." I resolved to write as much as and as well as I possibly could. I wrote a scene sprawled on the cold tile of my dorm's bathroom floor because I was keeping my visual artist roommates up with the light; I wrote a poem while crunched into a cave-like space under the big desk in the writer's lounge because my teacher told us to write in different places.
His advice made me approach that month like a dare, but I still managed to bring some of my old fears: I was nervously reading one of my pieces to the whole writing department, swaying a little, when Eva Marie, the theater coach, told me, "Don't be cute. Cute ain't comfortable." She had me stand in what I call a power stance and what she called normal, and start over. Now, months later, when I talk in front of an audience I always look down to double check that my feet are firmly planted David Bowie style.
But the last and best piece of advice I got at CSSSA was from Zay, a short man in hipster glasses."Do something while you're here that scares you," he told us. I doubt he was the first to say it, and he didn't pretend he was, but the strange glint in his eye seemed to expect great things from us. Merely squishing spiders would not satisfy this glint. Jumping off buildings would not satisfy this glint.
Only confronting our own personal boggart would satisfy this glint.
So on the last night of CSSSA, I sang (with my friend Veronica on guitar) a song called "Blue or Gray" in front of maybe a hundred people, and they clapped and waved and called my name even though I was magnificently off-key and I had brought the lyrics up with me because I knew I'd forget them. And then we danced, way too many of us, in a tiny room sweating with joy, and people I'd never met came up and high-fived me and bear-hugged me-- just because that's how it was there.
And then, the next morning, I carried all my bags out to my family's car, and I went home. The whole car ride, while I heard mismatched pieces of what I'd missed, I flashed through the people I'd just left, the places I'd loved. My dorm room, with its hoarded food and the Bijou theater, where Holly and I read our spoken word poem. What made CSSSA special was besting our fear, and letting things surprise us: whether the cafeteria food's edibility or the reaction of an audience.
When faced with my daily routines, it was difficult at first to find room for fear (and the conquering of.) But soon I couldn't stop seeing opportunities: the tricky passage I always faked my way through in the piece I was playing in orchestra, the physics teacher who spoke in an intimidating drawl and punctuated all his sentences with a forcefully capped marker and the phrase "Simple as that." Looking for fears has become a game with myself, and though I don't always win (in fact sometimes I don't even play) it's given me a lot of something Zay could tell you all about: material.
Day 92.
Mini-essay for Brown: why are you interested in your interest?
When I was little I would wake up before the sun and read. In those peaceful hours I learned to love books, the quiet flick of their pages, the front and back covers neat before and after markers. Now I have less time; I read on the bus, while teachers take roll and during passing periods. (I've mastered the walking-while-reading technique.) When I was younger I read for characters that felt like friends, the places I knew like home, the plot that even on a third re-reading kept me in suspense. I still read for all of those reasons, but now I appreciate how literature shows us different versions of ourselves, how it lets us become other people and lets us inside their heads.
I started looking for the deeper meanings in my favorite books—to understand the incongruities as metaphors and symbols, to get at the blood and bone, to find what makes these stories move and breathe. Because when something is important to us we tell a story about it, and I want to tell stories of my own.
When I was little I would wake up before the sun and read. In those peaceful hours I learned to love books, the quiet flick of their pages, the front and back covers neat before and after markers. Now I have less time; I read on the bus, while teachers take roll and during passing periods. (I've mastered the walking-while-reading technique.) When I was younger I read for characters that felt like friends, the places I knew like home, the plot that even on a third re-reading kept me in suspense. I still read for all of those reasons, but now I appreciate how literature shows us different versions of ourselves, how it lets us become other people and lets us inside their heads.
I started looking for the deeper meanings in my favorite books—to understand the incongruities as metaphors and symbols, to get at the blood and bone, to find what makes these stories move and breathe. Because when something is important to us we tell a story about it, and I want to tell stories of my own.
Day 91.
Letter to my roommate--one of Stanford's mini-essays
Hi Roomie!
So there's really only four things you need to know about me:
1) I talk in my sleep. But hey, free entertainment.
2) I'm scared of the dark and spiders. If you're scared by the light and an absence of spiders then Stanford has done a great job of matching us and we'll make a great team. If not, I'm sure we can muddle through. I have a tried and true strategy for dealing with fear involving a combination of high-kick running (fight AND flight!) and Walt Whitman's barbaric yawp.
3) I am probably three to four times as messy as anyone else you know. It sneaks up on me: one moment my room is clean, floorboards visible and shining, and the next my desk is a mountain and the floor is treacherously hiding under books, papers, and clothes. But messiness is not the life-consuming problem many make it out to be. I still have friends. I function fairly normally. I just can't always find things. However, this has turned out for the better in several ways. When I lost my keys, I became well-versed in the art of breaking into my own house, effectively testing its security (the bathroom window was the weak spot.) My friends stopped expecting me to dress normally the day I couldn't find pants and came to school in a t-shirt, shorts, and magenta kneesocks, so that's one thing I don't worry about. And I've become good at memorizing things, like my 14 digit library card number, so I always have them when I need them.
4) Hopefully I can make up for 1-3 with my baking. Baking is how I communicate. A batch of cookies can say "I was being a jerk," or "What happened sucks, do you want to talk about it?" or "I heard you were hungry," or simply, "I am glad that we are roommates."
I hope you like baked goods. And adventures/exploring.
--Your Roomie
Emily Rose Clarke
Hi Roomie!
So there's really only four things you need to know about me:
1) I talk in my sleep. But hey, free entertainment.
2) I'm scared of the dark and spiders. If you're scared by the light and an absence of spiders then Stanford has done a great job of matching us and we'll make a great team. If not, I'm sure we can muddle through. I have a tried and true strategy for dealing with fear involving a combination of high-kick running (fight AND flight!) and Walt Whitman's barbaric yawp.
3) I am probably three to four times as messy as anyone else you know. It sneaks up on me: one moment my room is clean, floorboards visible and shining, and the next my desk is a mountain and the floor is treacherously hiding under books, papers, and clothes. But messiness is not the life-consuming problem many make it out to be. I still have friends. I function fairly normally. I just can't always find things. However, this has turned out for the better in several ways. When I lost my keys, I became well-versed in the art of breaking into my own house, effectively testing its security (the bathroom window was the weak spot.) My friends stopped expecting me to dress normally the day I couldn't find pants and came to school in a t-shirt, shorts, and magenta kneesocks, so that's one thing I don't worry about. And I've become good at memorizing things, like my 14 digit library card number, so I always have them when I need them.
4) Hopefully I can make up for 1-3 with my baking. Baking is how I communicate. A batch of cookies can say "I was being a jerk," or "What happened sucks, do you want to talk about it?" or "I heard you were hungry," or simply, "I am glad that we are roommates."
I hope you like baked goods. And adventures/exploring.
--Your Roomie
Emily Rose Clarke
Day 90.
Written for Pomona's supplemental essay: What do you do for fun?
..I didn't expect to write about hair, it sort of just happened.
I speak from personal experience: there is no better time to cut your own hair than 2 a.m. and no better tool than kitchen scissors. It is oddly freeing--as if when you cut hair, you cut off all the problematic memories you acquired with it, as if all the stress and worry of the past months could just be severed. And it grows back, even if you mangle the back, sides, or front (or all three.) When I was a freshman I cut fourteen inches of hair off by pulling my ponytail to one side, creating a bob about four inches longer on the left than on the right. That lasted for about three months, until my OCD aunt cornered me at a family reunion and reintroduced me to the kitchen scissors, tossing thick chunks of my hair into the grass like it would just be absorbed.
The postcards from my three donations to Locks of Love hang on my wall, but I would lying if I said cutting my hair was purely altruistic. It's also just fun. For one thing, hair is too often a disguise. Protection. Think of long bangs, or the girl who can cover her whole face if she so much as looks at the floor. Short hair forces you to be unflinching. But hair can also be a statement, a declaration--think of the entirety of the movie/musical Hair. And for many people, hair determines gender, which can be entertaining. I thought it was just me, since I am nearsighted, but it turns out that since my last haircut I am consistently referred to as "that nice man over there" in grocery stores. At the school for creative writing I went to last summer, when I attempted a drag-king social experiment, the only double takes I received were for my penciled-in mustache (which I realize in retrospect was overdoing it.)
At one point my hair fell all the way down my back, but over the course of high school it has shrunk to my shoulders, my chin, now my ears, I guess, in a pixie cut: the product of late nights and looking in the mirror hoping to see something new. All of them but the pixie went well-- it's hard to make the back of your head look normal. Only trained professionals should attempt it with professional tools, like my friend Justin with safety scissors when we had an hour to kill before rehearsal and he couldn't deal with my mullet. I love my hair now though--bedhead is infinitely better with short hair. And with gel, short hair is much more versatile. I went from Edward Scissorhands to an extra in the Alejandro video to Zoolander to Rihanna in under five minutes.
I've tried to convince friends to let me cut their hair, but so far no takers. Maybe it's the sort of joy you have to find on your own.
(Alternate last line: But I'm feeling like a change is in order. I'm thinking mohawk.)
..I didn't expect to write about hair, it sort of just happened.
I speak from personal experience: there is no better time to cut your own hair than 2 a.m. and no better tool than kitchen scissors. It is oddly freeing--as if when you cut hair, you cut off all the problematic memories you acquired with it, as if all the stress and worry of the past months could just be severed. And it grows back, even if you mangle the back, sides, or front (or all three.) When I was a freshman I cut fourteen inches of hair off by pulling my ponytail to one side, creating a bob about four inches longer on the left than on the right. That lasted for about three months, until my OCD aunt cornered me at a family reunion and reintroduced me to the kitchen scissors, tossing thick chunks of my hair into the grass like it would just be absorbed.
The postcards from my three donations to Locks of Love hang on my wall, but I would lying if I said cutting my hair was purely altruistic. It's also just fun. For one thing, hair is too often a disguise. Protection. Think of long bangs, or the girl who can cover her whole face if she so much as looks at the floor. Short hair forces you to be unflinching. But hair can also be a statement, a declaration--think of the entirety of the movie/musical Hair. And for many people, hair determines gender, which can be entertaining. I thought it was just me, since I am nearsighted, but it turns out that since my last haircut I am consistently referred to as "that nice man over there" in grocery stores. At the school for creative writing I went to last summer, when I attempted a drag-king social experiment, the only double takes I received were for my penciled-in mustache (which I realize in retrospect was overdoing it.)
At one point my hair fell all the way down my back, but over the course of high school it has shrunk to my shoulders, my chin, now my ears, I guess, in a pixie cut: the product of late nights and looking in the mirror hoping to see something new. All of them but the pixie went well-- it's hard to make the back of your head look normal. Only trained professionals should attempt it with professional tools, like my friend Justin with safety scissors when we had an hour to kill before rehearsal and he couldn't deal with my mullet. I love my hair now though--bedhead is infinitely better with short hair. And with gel, short hair is much more versatile. I went from Edward Scissorhands to an extra in the Alejandro video to Zoolander to Rihanna in under five minutes.
I've tried to convince friends to let me cut their hair, but so far no takers. Maybe it's the sort of joy you have to find on your own.
(Alternate last line: But I'm feeling like a change is in order. I'm thinking mohawk.)
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Day 89. The Thieving Geologist
you think i'm listening--
i'm picking your brain for stones that i might add to my pockets.
pretty stones, broken stones i carry them all the same
like a child walking on a beach for the first time.
me, i walk the pages of the giant, ancient atlas
my dad has
(the one that still recognizes the soviet union in both political and geographical form)
trying to lose your stones.
carrying these stones across every river,
from the Yangtze to the Nile,
casting them on every bit of ground i can find like i could
get rid of them just like that,
throwing them into the air
letting them leave my hands long enough for the
sun to swallow them into its skyly body,
i'm letting them fall through the page into
an ocean probably, another continent
but i'll chase them down-- I don't lose stones.
maybe i'm looking for a river where your stones,
yours and mine and everyone we know's stones,
will pull me down and down
pockets of lead leading to the pebbly bottom
where i can bury myself under smaller things and
cozy up to bedrock.
maybe i'm looking for a map in my dad's atlas
marked with different places to hide your stones,
where they can weather over time until
in trillions of years
when the sun burns out
they are
sand at the bottom of a vast dark ocean
right before it freezes
into what will look like
marble, or granite, or quartz.
i'm picking your brain for stones that i might add to my pockets.
pretty stones, broken stones i carry them all the same
like a child walking on a beach for the first time.
me, i walk the pages of the giant, ancient atlas
my dad has
(the one that still recognizes the soviet union in both political and geographical form)
trying to lose your stones.
carrying these stones across every river,
from the Yangtze to the Nile,
casting them on every bit of ground i can find like i could
get rid of them just like that,
throwing them into the air
letting them leave my hands long enough for the
sun to swallow them into its skyly body,
i'm letting them fall through the page into
an ocean probably, another continent
but i'll chase them down-- I don't lose stones.
maybe i'm looking for a river where your stones,
yours and mine and everyone we know's stones,
will pull me down and down
pockets of lead leading to the pebbly bottom
where i can bury myself under smaller things and
cozy up to bedrock.
maybe i'm looking for a map in my dad's atlas
marked with different places to hide your stones,
where they can weather over time until
in trillions of years
when the sun burns out
they are
sand at the bottom of a vast dark ocean
right before it freezes
into what will look like
marble, or granite, or quartz.
day 88.
My Recent Google Searches
price of baby iguana
wikipedia julian assange
wikipedia Koschei
wikipedia conductors who died while conducting
why is don't ask don't tell not repealed yet
"a list of terrible things that have happened to ann coulter"
what do you mean zero results
i don't believe in karma anymore
price of baby iguana
wikipedia julian assange
wikipedia Koschei
wikipedia conductors who died while conducting
why is don't ask don't tell not repealed yet
"a list of terrible things that have happened to ann coulter"
what do you mean zero results
i don't believe in karma anymore
Day 87. WOO LOWERING MY STANDARDS
HOW IS ALREADY DECEMBER 17TH? *panicpanicpanic*
time to break out the terrible school projects....
this is a rewritten holiday song i did for AP Gov.
Babe It's Not Cheap Out There-- Lyrics to a Duet Sung by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama
I really can't pay/ Babe it's not cheap out there
Hair's going gray/ And I've got a country to repair
Campaigning has been/ Please don't kick me in the shin
So very cruel/ Do you take me for a fool
My husband will start to worry/ His favor you shouldn't curry
My banker will be pacing the den/ It's nothing next to American debt!
Things started so well/ You were official
I was a fundraising gazelle / Your press wasn't prejudicial
I was establishment/ I was out selling myself
The primaries / --invisible were a fresh breeze
I met all the categories/ people questioned my birth cert. (Jeez)
I'm over 35, no one denies/ 14 plus years of residency no surprise
I really can't pay/ I'm gonna hold out
(Obama) Babe it's not cheap out there
Then the real thing/ Iowa and New Hampshire
My dreams taking wing/ I felt like a baby hamster
Front page every newsday/ soon there was Super Tuesday
But I won't lie/ The stress compressed me like a bonsai
Then the national convention/ Your pantsuits looked delicious
Democrats wanted no tension/ Division would look suspicious
Now I'm Secretary of State /Gosh the polls looked delicious
How about just a couple shots more?/ Never such a horse race before!
Then I faced debt/Babe it's not cheap out there
Made my banker upset /And I've got a country to repair
I really can't pay/ I'm gonna hold out
(Obama) Babe it's not cheap out there!
time to break out the terrible school projects....
this is a rewritten holiday song i did for AP Gov.
Babe It's Not Cheap Out There-- Lyrics to a Duet Sung by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama
I really can't pay/ Babe it's not cheap out there
Hair's going gray/ And I've got a country to repair
Campaigning has been/ Please don't kick me in the shin
So very cruel/ Do you take me for a fool
My husband will start to worry/ His favor you shouldn't curry
My banker will be pacing the den/ It's nothing next to American debt!
Things started so well/ You were official
I was a fundraising gazelle / Your press wasn't prejudicial
I was establishment/ I was out selling myself
The primaries / --invisible were a fresh breeze
I met all the categories/ people questioned my birth cert. (Jeez)
I'm over 35, no one denies/ 14 plus years of residency no surprise
I really can't pay/ I'm gonna hold out
(Obama) Babe it's not cheap out there
Then the real thing/ Iowa and New Hampshire
My dreams taking wing/ I felt like a baby hamster
Front page every newsday/ soon there was Super Tuesday
But I won't lie/ The stress compressed me like a bonsai
Then the national convention/ Your pantsuits looked delicious
Democrats wanted no tension/ Division would look suspicious
Now I'm Secretary of State /Gosh the polls looked delicious
How about just a couple shots more?/ Never such a horse race before!
Then I faced debt/Babe it's not cheap out there
Made my banker upset /And I've got a country to repair
I really can't pay/ I'm gonna hold out
(Obama) Babe it's not cheap out there!
Monday, November 29, 2010
This doesn't count as an actual day, it just makes me laugh. I wrote this when I was on codeine for my tonsillectomy and I was like "yeah this is pretty good stuff i'm writing! codeine doesn't affect me at all! I'm going to go back to bed now."
I just found it while going through my files-- this is the entire thing.
Are you hungry, it's lunchtimes
Yeah i could do with some food, what were you thinking
i wasn't. make something for yourself. he walks off
what! uhhhh. pasta.
she takes out a package of ramen.
boil water. she puts a pan on and
she turns on the oven.
this won't take long.
she puts it in unbroken up, in a floating lump.
Sean?? Seaaaannn!
What
I need you
Right now
Right now
I just found it while going through my files-- this is the entire thing.
Are you hungry, it's lunchtimes
Yeah i could do with some food, what were you thinking
i wasn't. make something for yourself. he walks off
what! uhhhh. pasta.
she takes out a package of ramen.
boil water. she puts a pan on and
she turns on the oven.
this won't take long.
she puts it in unbroken up, in a floating lump.
Sean?? Seaaaannn!
What
I need you
Right now
Right now
Day 86.
thoughts about the lovely How to Be Alone video-- from a while back.
It's only been recently that I've been okay with being alone. I flick on the lamp and settle into the floor with a book. I write and I sing and I am happy. I don't think everyone feels like this though. I think we have forgotten. We go to the bathroom in groups and shout through the stalls, we bring our phones everywhere, and we look down at them if by some mistake we end up in a corner. Loner is the worst insult any of us can think to throw. Untouchable.. but it's a choice and it's one we all need to make once in awhile, because we can't even connect to each other when we're so bothered with trying. And if we just let it be-- we'd learn to be alone again, so we know who we are. So that we don't, as Joan Didion writes, run away to find oursevles and find that no one is home.
It's only been recently that I've been okay with being alone. I flick on the lamp and settle into the floor with a book. I write and I sing and I am happy. I don't think everyone feels like this though. I think we have forgotten. We go to the bathroom in groups and shout through the stalls, we bring our phones everywhere, and we look down at them if by some mistake we end up in a corner. Loner is the worst insult any of us can think to throw. Untouchable.. but it's a choice and it's one we all need to make once in awhile, because we can't even connect to each other when we're so bothered with trying. And if we just let it be-- we'd learn to be alone again, so we know who we are. So that we don't, as Joan Didion writes, run away to find oursevles and find that no one is home.
Day 85.
My essay for the second UC prompt. Not sure that counts as an ending?
My first kiss was a sycamore tree. I was thirteen years old and hiking near the Potomac River, my family somewhere ahead or behind. I didn't even think about it. Under my lips, the dappled bark was wrinkled and sun-warmed. I heard the rustle of leaves, and a bird, and further off, the river. And that was the beginning of my love affair with trees.
It's common courtesy that if you love something, you should know its name. So in freshman year, I joined a club at my school sort of like an environmental Acadec, called Envirothon. Each school has a team that goes to the state competition, and each team had a person who specialized in one of the five areas: aquatics, wildlife, soils, current issue, and forestry. As the forestry expert, I learned that there are many things you can know from a tree: whether there is a river nearby, what kind of animals depend on it, what kind of soil there will likely be. I learned how to measure a tree's height with a clinometer, a Biltmore stick, and an educated guess. But my favorite things I learned, my proudest accomplishment, were the names of almost every native tree in Southern California, common and scientific. I learned that the tree I kissed was a Planatus occidentalis and that its sibling in California was Planatus racemosa. To remember the names, I looked up the meanings, which mainly consisted of obscure botany terms and the explorer or naturalist that named the plant. But there were many surprises: The genus name for manzanita, Arctostaphylos, is a combination of the Greek for "bear" and "bunch of grapes"--probably because of the berries and red-brown bark; the name for willow, Salix, is a combination of the Latin for "near" and "water." I love being able to know my surroundings like this, to tell which living things preceded humans here. Knowing names lets me talk about them, and it connects me with centuries of people seeing these trees. I read what Thoreau thought of the pitch pine or what John Muir thought of the hundred-foot Douglas fir he climbed in a Sierra windstorm, and think that on the massive cliff of things I don't know, knowing and loving these trees is a foothold allowing me a view.
My first kiss was a sycamore tree. I was thirteen years old and hiking near the Potomac River, my family somewhere ahead or behind. I didn't even think about it. Under my lips, the dappled bark was wrinkled and sun-warmed. I heard the rustle of leaves, and a bird, and further off, the river. And that was the beginning of my love affair with trees.
It's common courtesy that if you love something, you should know its name. So in freshman year, I joined a club at my school sort of like an environmental Acadec, called Envirothon. Each school has a team that goes to the state competition, and each team had a person who specialized in one of the five areas: aquatics, wildlife, soils, current issue, and forestry. As the forestry expert, I learned that there are many things you can know from a tree: whether there is a river nearby, what kind of animals depend on it, what kind of soil there will likely be. I learned how to measure a tree's height with a clinometer, a Biltmore stick, and an educated guess. But my favorite things I learned, my proudest accomplishment, were the names of almost every native tree in Southern California, common and scientific. I learned that the tree I kissed was a Planatus occidentalis and that its sibling in California was Planatus racemosa. To remember the names, I looked up the meanings, which mainly consisted of obscure botany terms and the explorer or naturalist that named the plant. But there were many surprises: The genus name for manzanita, Arctostaphylos, is a combination of the Greek for "bear" and "bunch of grapes"--probably because of the berries and red-brown bark; the name for willow, Salix, is a combination of the Latin for "near" and "water." I love being able to know my surroundings like this, to tell which living things preceded humans here. Knowing names lets me talk about them, and it connects me with centuries of people seeing these trees. I read what Thoreau thought of the pitch pine or what John Muir thought of the hundred-foot Douglas fir he climbed in a Sierra windstorm, and think that on the massive cliff of things I don't know, knowing and loving these trees is a foothold allowing me a view.
Day 84.
The Samson twins, whether from habit or from need, were never found apart. In their classes, their desks were an inch closer together than the others students', so that their elbows met over the aisle, and when they walked through the halls of Lincoln High School it was together, one drifting in the same weaving, dreamy way as the other, so that their shoulders were not jarred into separation. They almost seemed to exist as halves of a whole, the opposite of a person with multiple personalities: like the two shared one personhood. Jane never cringed when teachers mistook her for Jasper, and Jasper didn't mind that people tended to call him Jane.
In the first few months of their freshman year, other students didn't seem to notice Jane and Jasper. If they turned their heads when the pair passed; if their eyes lingered on the twins' long, tangled thicket of blond hair that tumbled to their waists in twisted ropes, it was only for a moment. Until someone did notice, and then, at once everyone noticed, in the curiously glossy way of children who have registered that something is out of place but cannot decide what to do about it.
And the twins' hair, combined with their baggy jeans and nondescript backpacks, did make them look like poorly-disguised god-children, mischievous refugees of a fairy-tale world. They quietly enjoyed the muttering, the stares. The twins made it a game: who could get Lincoln High to believe a more ridiculous thing? Jane told anyone who would listen that she and Jasper were allergic to sunlight and grew their hair long as protection. Jasper started a rumor: their sibling, the third triplet, had died of a scissor wound, and their mother, broken with grief, had forbade them from going near scissors of any kind, raised them to fear the twin silver blades. Then, one sunny December day, Jane whispered to a boy in her history class that she and Jasper kept their strength in their hair. That if it was cut, they would not live to see the next day.
Even teachers heard the rumors, which floated up to their desks as students rummaged for pencil or paper. The splash of the drinking fountains seemed to murmur them. If Frank Klimt and his friends had not herded the twins into the quad at lunch, someone else would have. But it was Frank, baring his teeth at Jasper (or was it Jane?), Frank cracking jokes like seeds between his teeth, Frank's head swiveling to find a grin in the surrounding crowd that would be the spark of something happening.
Jasper and Jane kept their heads slightly bowed, Jane's arm around Jasper's shoulder. They shot glances between them like a magician and his assistant, drawing out their secrets.
They did not struggle as Frank pulled the curtains of hair from their faces, turned them up like sunflowers towards the cloudless sky. There was a moment of impatient silence from the throng of people, but the twins did not burn or break into hives or so much as sneeze. Now their small smiles had vanished. They shook loose from Frank's minions and stood back to back, spines straight, each vertebrae of each back finding a notch in the other. The minions were prepared: five pairs of stolen scissors were drawn like pistols from pockets, brandished wildly.
The twins exchanged a second's glance but did not show fright as the crowd, buzzing with disappointment, pressed closer: the second rumor was also false. Frank grabbed hold of their arms and motioned for his friends to bring their scissors. Jasper did not have to look at Jane to see that her face was crumpling; he fought his own brimming tears. They were surrounded on every side, reaching hands trying to pull out strands of that strange yellow hair. Then two pairs of scissors flashed in the golden sunlight, and two locks of hair fell into the melee.
* * *
The twins were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they had slipped away, although no one could understand how it happened so suddenly. But there was a distraction: a unique epidemic had afflicted all the students and teachers, administrators and custodians: everyone was losing hair in massive chunks. One girl's bangs fell off in her morning shower. A teacher's scraggly beard simply slipped off his chin in the middle of a lecture about friction. In a matter of days, everyone was bald. The phones in the office were disconnected due to the constant threatening calls from family lawyers, and attendance at Lincoln High School plummeted. The students who did come to school touched each other's smooth scalps in wonder. Everyone was strangely androgynous; friends didn't recognize each other in the hallways. Some girls hid out in the bathroom and cried, caking on ever more makeup, and the less bulky boys hid too, eating lunch in cramped stalls. Mothers cradled their now baby-headed children and told them what pretty eyes they had, how their forehead acne would improve dramatically. The punk kids replaced their gelled spikes with scalp tattoos.
And slowly, the regrowing of Lincoln High began, watched in mirrors over months of mornings. Some students kept their old hair as it grew back, but most took up shaving their heads. For one thing it had become the norm, but there was another reason: they found that there was a certain pride in facing the world raw.
In the first few months of their freshman year, other students didn't seem to notice Jane and Jasper. If they turned their heads when the pair passed; if their eyes lingered on the twins' long, tangled thicket of blond hair that tumbled to their waists in twisted ropes, it was only for a moment. Until someone did notice, and then, at once everyone noticed, in the curiously glossy way of children who have registered that something is out of place but cannot decide what to do about it.
And the twins' hair, combined with their baggy jeans and nondescript backpacks, did make them look like poorly-disguised god-children, mischievous refugees of a fairy-tale world. They quietly enjoyed the muttering, the stares. The twins made it a game: who could get Lincoln High to believe a more ridiculous thing? Jane told anyone who would listen that she and Jasper were allergic to sunlight and grew their hair long as protection. Jasper started a rumor: their sibling, the third triplet, had died of a scissor wound, and their mother, broken with grief, had forbade them from going near scissors of any kind, raised them to fear the twin silver blades. Then, one sunny December day, Jane whispered to a boy in her history class that she and Jasper kept their strength in their hair. That if it was cut, they would not live to see the next day.
Even teachers heard the rumors, which floated up to their desks as students rummaged for pencil or paper. The splash of the drinking fountains seemed to murmur them. If Frank Klimt and his friends had not herded the twins into the quad at lunch, someone else would have. But it was Frank, baring his teeth at Jasper (or was it Jane?), Frank cracking jokes like seeds between his teeth, Frank's head swiveling to find a grin in the surrounding crowd that would be the spark of something happening.
Jasper and Jane kept their heads slightly bowed, Jane's arm around Jasper's shoulder. They shot glances between them like a magician and his assistant, drawing out their secrets.
They did not struggle as Frank pulled the curtains of hair from their faces, turned them up like sunflowers towards the cloudless sky. There was a moment of impatient silence from the throng of people, but the twins did not burn or break into hives or so much as sneeze. Now their small smiles had vanished. They shook loose from Frank's minions and stood back to back, spines straight, each vertebrae of each back finding a notch in the other. The minions were prepared: five pairs of stolen scissors were drawn like pistols from pockets, brandished wildly.
The twins exchanged a second's glance but did not show fright as the crowd, buzzing with disappointment, pressed closer: the second rumor was also false. Frank grabbed hold of their arms and motioned for his friends to bring their scissors. Jasper did not have to look at Jane to see that her face was crumpling; he fought his own brimming tears. They were surrounded on every side, reaching hands trying to pull out strands of that strange yellow hair. Then two pairs of scissors flashed in the golden sunlight, and two locks of hair fell into the melee.
* * *
The twins were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they had slipped away, although no one could understand how it happened so suddenly. But there was a distraction: a unique epidemic had afflicted all the students and teachers, administrators and custodians: everyone was losing hair in massive chunks. One girl's bangs fell off in her morning shower. A teacher's scraggly beard simply slipped off his chin in the middle of a lecture about friction. In a matter of days, everyone was bald. The phones in the office were disconnected due to the constant threatening calls from family lawyers, and attendance at Lincoln High School plummeted. The students who did come to school touched each other's smooth scalps in wonder. Everyone was strangely androgynous; friends didn't recognize each other in the hallways. Some girls hid out in the bathroom and cried, caking on ever more makeup, and the less bulky boys hid too, eating lunch in cramped stalls. Mothers cradled their now baby-headed children and told them what pretty eyes they had, how their forehead acne would improve dramatically. The punk kids replaced their gelled spikes with scalp tattoos.
And slowly, the regrowing of Lincoln High began, watched in mirrors over months of mornings. Some students kept their old hair as it grew back, but most took up shaving their heads. For one thing it had become the norm, but there was another reason: they found that there was a certain pride in facing the world raw.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Day 83.
So Cappelli gave us the quote at the top of my last post and told us to write a sonnet based on it.
I don't know how I feel about this one.
The lights are always on near where you live.
In your yellow windows lightning pauses,
and soon that illumination will give
way to thunder. I don't know what causes
the delay that lets me measure in time
our distance, whisper the seconds in some
improbably dark corner, where sublime
fists start fights; where compelling wrecks become
legend or tragedy, or both. Because
your blackened eye like a ripe plum will swell
and you will tell me that maybe there was
sort-of beauty in how these pieces fell.
Broken things have stories, so we listen.
We mark them ours to watch the shards glisten.
I don't know how I feel about this one.
The lights are always on near where you live.
In your yellow windows lightning pauses,
and soon that illumination will give
way to thunder. I don't know what causes
the delay that lets me measure in time
our distance, whisper the seconds in some
improbably dark corner, where sublime
fists start fights; where compelling wrecks become
legend or tragedy, or both. Because
your blackened eye like a ripe plum will swell
and you will tell me that maybe there was
sort-of beauty in how these pieces fell.
Broken things have stories, so we listen.
We mark them ours to watch the shards glisten.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Day 82. Autobiography.
"Don't tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass." -- Anton Chekhov
here it is:
my dirty city, my
strung together suburbs like christmas tree lights city, my
neon signs up all night city, my
roadside attraction city, my
isolation city, my
strip clubs next to middle schools city, my
black magic city with young blood, young bones--
my air conditioned buses leaking freon city, my
city of a thousand movements.
my city of women on the beach who sell chopped
mangoes with lemon and chili powder and my
city of whatever lives under the pier, my
frontier city breathing santa ana winds, my
"meek wives with carving knives" city , my
"garbled vomit on the shore" city.
i'm yours,
my city with sneaky seasons. my
city of tour buses and eleven million languages
one for everyone get your own today only 9.99 call now-- my
city of lost cats and found dachshunds.
my city wanting so hard, my
sleek and waxy city like the clementines that come in crates each winter.
underneath is the leathery skin,
pins and needles smell of citrus
the shade of groves--
that past is long gone, what could it mean to my
fifteen seconds of fame city? my
planes for shooting stars city, my
scribbled notes found crumpled in parking lots city, my
sweet disposition-ed downtown buildings city, my
high-up curlicued stone city, my
monsoon melodrama city, my
union station city with spanish tiles and sunshine. my
neighbor's pungent gingko tree city, my
city of droughts and floods and sidewalks sanded with broken glass.
my hallways of ficuses and palms city, my
pilgrimage city. my amnesiac city, my
city of myth, my
city where we worship
people who pretend to be heroes on a screen. my
seizing grin city, my song on the radio city, my
curving prows of silver ships echoing centuries of oceanic crescendoes city, my
roach coach city of deliciousity. my
city of postage stamp gardens and potted hopes. my
opinionated city, my grandmother's city when she
worked as the telephone operator-- connecting
one angeleno to another like los angeles itself.
here it is:
my dirty city, my
strung together suburbs like christmas tree lights city, my
neon signs up all night city, my
roadside attraction city, my
isolation city, my
strip clubs next to middle schools city, my
black magic city with young blood, young bones--
my air conditioned buses leaking freon city, my
city of a thousand movements.
my city of women on the beach who sell chopped
mangoes with lemon and chili powder and my
city of whatever lives under the pier, my
frontier city breathing santa ana winds, my
"meek wives with carving knives" city , my
"garbled vomit on the shore" city.
i'm yours,
my city with sneaky seasons. my
city of tour buses and eleven million languages
one for everyone get your own today only 9.99 call now-- my
city of lost cats and found dachshunds.
my city wanting so hard, my
sleek and waxy city like the clementines that come in crates each winter.
underneath is the leathery skin,
pins and needles smell of citrus
the shade of groves--
that past is long gone, what could it mean to my
fifteen seconds of fame city? my
planes for shooting stars city, my
scribbled notes found crumpled in parking lots city, my
sweet disposition-ed downtown buildings city, my
high-up curlicued stone city, my
monsoon melodrama city, my
union station city with spanish tiles and sunshine. my
neighbor's pungent gingko tree city, my
city of droughts and floods and sidewalks sanded with broken glass.
my hallways of ficuses and palms city, my
pilgrimage city. my amnesiac city, my
city of myth, my
city where we worship
people who pretend to be heroes on a screen. my
seizing grin city, my song on the radio city, my
curving prows of silver ships echoing centuries of oceanic crescendoes city, my
roach coach city of deliciousity. my
city of postage stamp gardens and potted hopes. my
opinionated city, my grandmother's city when she
worked as the telephone operator-- connecting
one angeleno to another like los angeles itself.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Day 81. The Purgatory Between Buildings E and F
(first draft)
Truth is, you won't remember now.
If you're living day by day,
keeping time on a pocketchain,
you'll keep record of the small
things that momentarily halt the routine--
but even so this will
evade you like an invisible gorilla.
The days sneak past and
even your ups and downs are predictable.
You could take a different staircase but it wouldn't
get you there just right just
so
Yes, it's better this way.
--although
you do wonder, right?
When the future will come
(if it does.)
and your mistakes will only be toys
you let your children play with--
when there will be nothing to jeopardize.
This isn't a call to action.
You don't like it when books or movies, stories about youth, get into
the inevitableShort. Verb. Command. Sentences
(goleaplaughcrysoar)
because you feel only the absence of feeling
you should be crying, you should be throwing that story across the room as you
say yes to motorcycles, to tequila-filled chocolates--
but you're alone and no one's watching
so who's to say you're here?
Alive.
It's a word you've heard since birth and before
but you still don't know what it means.
The sugar bones in your feet were made to break
and you've worn your claws to stubs;
still you feel the growl inside.
Alive.
Forget your stolen promises to make this a better year.
Time is found in transitions, so linger
for the long goodbye.
Plays would not be the same without their (beats) and neither would you.
Let this be your first memory.
Unfold the origami of a staircase.
If you want to remember-- find the hidden sides.
Truth is, you won't remember now.
If you're living day by day,
keeping time on a pocketchain,
you'll keep record of the small
things that momentarily halt the routine--
but even so this will
evade you like an invisible gorilla.
The days sneak past and
even your ups and downs are predictable.
You could take a different staircase but it wouldn't
get you there just right just
so
Yes, it's better this way.
--although
you do wonder, right?
When the future will come
(if it does.)
and your mistakes will only be toys
you let your children play with--
when there will be nothing to jeopardize.
This isn't a call to action.
You don't like it when books or movies, stories about youth, get into
the inevitableShort. Verb. Command. Sentences
(goleaplaughcrysoar)
because you feel only the absence of feeling
you should be crying, you should be throwing that story across the room as you
say yes to motorcycles, to tequila-filled chocolates--
but you're alone and no one's watching
so who's to say you're here?
Alive.
It's a word you've heard since birth and before
but you still don't know what it means.
The sugar bones in your feet were made to break
and you've worn your claws to stubs;
still you feel the growl inside.
Alive.
Forget your stolen promises to make this a better year.
Time is found in transitions, so linger
for the long goodbye.
Plays would not be the same without their (beats) and neither would you.
Let this be your first memory.
Unfold the origami of a staircase.
If you want to remember-- find the hidden sides.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Day 80. True Facts.
Night. Residential backyard. MOM closes the back door; it locks. EMILY, CONNIE, and SAROH are walking to the car already. MOM reaches into her pocket, then looks up in panic
MOM
Emily, you have keys right?
EMILY
Uh... no....
MOM
Connie, do you?
CONNIE
Yeah they're in my backpack, let me go get them
MOM
Your backpack... inside the house?
CONNIE
Yeah... OH.
MOM
Okay, nobody get worried, we're just going to think this through. I have the car keys, my phone, and my purse..
CONNIE
Emily, didn't you break in through the bathroom window that one time?
EMILY
Yeah but then I told Dad and instead of being proud of me he fixed it.
CONNIE
What about the time you broke in through the patio door?
EMILY
He fixed that too.
Meanwhile, SAROH hunts for paperclips
MOM
I didn't bolt the door...it's just that flimsy lock...
(she shakes it)
I'm going to go around the house and see if any of the windows are unlocked.
CONNIE
Can't we just like... kick it?
series of increasingly awkward high kicks to the door
Has anyone here watched more than an hour of Cops?
silence
EMILY
Wait wait I can totally do this.
EMILY begins trying to kick in door. CONNIE grabs her by one calf; EMILY grabs onto door; chaos ensues. EMILY is on ground in fetal position clutching her arm when MOM comes back.
MOM
Oh my god what happened
CONNIE
Well see Emily was trying to kick the door in so I tried to
EMILY
I'm pretty sure you removed my arm from its socket.
MOM
NO GOOFING AROUND. Connie, go get the toolbox from the car.
EMILY
Hey Mom? Should I break the window, or the lock?
MOM
NEITHER
House phone rings; ALL strain to hear as it goes to voicemail.
DAD
Hey guys, it's Dad, Arrowhead's great, it's so nice up here, just wondering how you are. I bet you're out having a good time. Alright talk to you later!
CONNIE is attempting to open the back door with a leaf wrapped around a stick. EMILY is trying to hand her a credit card.
MOM is scrolling through phone contacts
OH STEPHANIE HAS KEYS! I'll call her.
EMILY, CONNIE, and SAROH: BUT WE WERE SO CLOSE!!!
MOM
Emily, you have keys right?
EMILY
Uh... no....
MOM
Connie, do you?
CONNIE
Yeah they're in my backpack, let me go get them
MOM
Your backpack... inside the house?
CONNIE
Yeah... OH.
MOM
Okay, nobody get worried, we're just going to think this through. I have the car keys, my phone, and my purse..
CONNIE
Emily, didn't you break in through the bathroom window that one time?
EMILY
Yeah but then I told Dad and instead of being proud of me he fixed it.
CONNIE
What about the time you broke in through the patio door?
EMILY
He fixed that too.
Meanwhile, SAROH hunts for paperclips
MOM
I didn't bolt the door...it's just that flimsy lock...
(she shakes it)
I'm going to go around the house and see if any of the windows are unlocked.
CONNIE
Can't we just like... kick it?
series of increasingly awkward high kicks to the door
Has anyone here watched more than an hour of Cops?
silence
EMILY
Wait wait I can totally do this.
EMILY begins trying to kick in door. CONNIE grabs her by one calf; EMILY grabs onto door; chaos ensues. EMILY is on ground in fetal position clutching her arm when MOM comes back.
MOM
Oh my god what happened
CONNIE
Well see Emily was trying to kick the door in so I tried to
EMILY
I'm pretty sure you removed my arm from its socket.
MOM
NO GOOFING AROUND. Connie, go get the toolbox from the car.
EMILY
Hey Mom? Should I break the window, or the lock?
MOM
NEITHER
House phone rings; ALL strain to hear as it goes to voicemail.
DAD
Hey guys, it's Dad, Arrowhead's great, it's so nice up here, just wondering how you are. I bet you're out having a good time. Alright talk to you later!
CONNIE is attempting to open the back door with a leaf wrapped around a stick. EMILY is trying to hand her a credit card.
MOM is scrolling through phone contacts
OH STEPHANIE HAS KEYS! I'll call her.
EMILY, CONNIE, and SAROH: BUT WE WERE SO CLOSE!!!
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Day 79.
line your eyes so everyone will see your wet despair, your hairless hope.
coax your hair to look like the picture from a magazine (torn edges, you stole it while
waiting in the grocery line)
wear your heels like cat's bells so everyone knows where you are, what little mischief
you will accomplish next--
twitch on their table--let them pin you down
as they try to understand their own creation(you).
the effort is
heartfelt.
then
stand at precipices, skirts billowing
around you in a shell
and bellow from your gut (not your petticoat, nor your girdle)--
I AM NOT VENUS--
SHE WAS NOT BORN
coax your hair to look like the picture from a magazine (torn edges, you stole it while
waiting in the grocery line)
wear your heels like cat's bells so everyone knows where you are, what little mischief
you will accomplish next--
twitch on their table--let them pin you down
as they try to understand their own creation(you).
the effort is
heartfelt.
then
stand at precipices, skirts billowing
around you in a shell
and bellow from your gut (not your petticoat, nor your girdle)--
I AM NOT VENUS--
SHE WAS NOT BORN
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Day 78
the night the Gore and Spectacle stopped
we were suspended on puppet strings,--
minds aloft,
we were transfixed in taxonomy-- the carousel
turned, chasing lights of spinning mirrors
accordions breathing in the yellow-gold gauzy light and
gilt horses leaping mechanical magic
tracing out centuries of
souls leaving bodies
except, they don't quite anymore, just pull at the edges
until we shake them back into our shapes.
beside me you sang low notes from the back of your throat.
we leaned on the banister and watched.
tears in my eyes, i hoped it would collapse--
all our strings could strangle us and still we'd move like marionettes
for as long as the music played.
we were suspended on puppet strings,--
minds aloft,
we were transfixed in taxonomy-- the carousel
turned, chasing lights of spinning mirrors
accordions breathing in the yellow-gold gauzy light and
gilt horses leaping mechanical magic
tracing out centuries of
souls leaving bodies
except, they don't quite anymore, just pull at the edges
until we shake them back into our shapes.
beside me you sang low notes from the back of your throat.
we leaned on the banister and watched.
tears in my eyes, i hoped it would collapse--
all our strings could strangle us and still we'd move like marionettes
for as long as the music played.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Day 77
JUNIPER
Rob, this is ridiculous. I really, really don't want to confront you about this but...... I keep finding blowup dolls in the closets and frankly, it worries me. I'm kind of disturbed. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful that you offered me this room at such low rent, but you need to keep your ........things...... in your own room.
If I find one more doll, I'm out of here, I'm serious. One more flesh-colored inflated plastic harbinger of chauvinism and I am gone.
ROB
Juniper-- Juniper.
(he's been trying to interrupt her the whole time)
I'm sorry, okay? I didn't know they bothered you.
JUNIPER
Of course they bother me!! It's like being attacked! Yesterday I almost fainted when I pulled open the shower curtain and found one in there, I thought there was an intruder in the house! And just this morning two of them just sort of fell on me when I was trying to put away my clean laundry!
ROB
You weren't hurt, were you? They're not very substantial.
JUNIPER
(deep sigh)
It's creepy, Rob, okay? It's creepy.
ROB
(regards her, perplexed)
They won't fit in my closets anymore.
JUNIPER
(intensely uncomfortable)
Well.... great.
ROB
Deflating them seems wrong to me somehow.... I don't know.
JUNIPER
Christ almighty.
ROB
I shouldn't have put them in your closet. I should have asked you.
JUNIPER
Yeah, you should have.
ROB
They're very clean, though.
JUNIPER
That's ...sort of reassuring. I guess.
ROB
I think the one with the brown eyes is the prettiest, don't you?
JUNIPER
Why do you even have multiple blow up dolls?
ROB
Impulse purchases, mostly.
JUNIPER
Cause, I don't know if you know this, it doesn't seem like you do, but those are meant for guys who can't get real women. You know.
(pause)
in bed.
(pause)
So.... I just don't get like......why do you need six--
(she sighs)
Do you just not understand my discomfort at all?
ROB
No, no, it's just.... I don't use them like that.
JUNIPER
Oh my god what.
ROB
I just like being held sometimes. Before I go to sleep.
(pause)
I keep ordering more, but none of them really live up to their advertising.... They just don't feel like people, do you know what I mean? There's imagination, but I mean, only to a point.... anyway, I can move them out of your closet. They'll probably fit under the sink.
JUNIPER
It's... okay.
ROB
Maybe you could just put your clothes on them? Like mannequins! Then they wouldn't be so scary, because they'd be wearing your clothes.
JUNIPER
Rob, I didn't know you were lonely.
ROB
Are you going to move out?
JUNIPER
I don't know.
(ROB nods, then leaves)
Later that night, outside Rob's bedroom. Juniper knocks on the door.
JUNIPER
Rob? It's me.
Rob, this is ridiculous. I really, really don't want to confront you about this but...... I keep finding blowup dolls in the closets and frankly, it worries me. I'm kind of disturbed. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful that you offered me this room at such low rent, but you need to keep your ........things...... in your own room.
If I find one more doll, I'm out of here, I'm serious. One more flesh-colored inflated plastic harbinger of chauvinism and I am gone.
ROB
Juniper-- Juniper.
(he's been trying to interrupt her the whole time)
I'm sorry, okay? I didn't know they bothered you.
JUNIPER
Of course they bother me!! It's like being attacked! Yesterday I almost fainted when I pulled open the shower curtain and found one in there, I thought there was an intruder in the house! And just this morning two of them just sort of fell on me when I was trying to put away my clean laundry!
ROB
You weren't hurt, were you? They're not very substantial.
JUNIPER
(deep sigh)
It's creepy, Rob, okay? It's creepy.
ROB
(regards her, perplexed)
They won't fit in my closets anymore.
JUNIPER
(intensely uncomfortable)
Well.... great.
ROB
Deflating them seems wrong to me somehow.... I don't know.
JUNIPER
Christ almighty.
ROB
I shouldn't have put them in your closet. I should have asked you.
JUNIPER
Yeah, you should have.
ROB
They're very clean, though.
JUNIPER
That's ...sort of reassuring. I guess.
ROB
I think the one with the brown eyes is the prettiest, don't you?
JUNIPER
Why do you even have multiple blow up dolls?
ROB
Impulse purchases, mostly.
JUNIPER
Cause, I don't know if you know this, it doesn't seem like you do, but those are meant for guys who can't get real women. You know.
(pause)
in bed.
(pause)
So.... I just don't get like......why do you need six--
(she sighs)
Do you just not understand my discomfort at all?
ROB
No, no, it's just.... I don't use them like that.
JUNIPER
Oh my god what.
ROB
I just like being held sometimes. Before I go to sleep.
(pause)
I keep ordering more, but none of them really live up to their advertising.... They just don't feel like people, do you know what I mean? There's imagination, but I mean, only to a point.... anyway, I can move them out of your closet. They'll probably fit under the sink.
JUNIPER
It's... okay.
ROB
Maybe you could just put your clothes on them? Like mannequins! Then they wouldn't be so scary, because they'd be wearing your clothes.
JUNIPER
Rob, I didn't know you were lonely.
ROB
Are you going to move out?
JUNIPER
I don't know.
(ROB nods, then leaves)
Later that night, outside Rob's bedroom. Juniper knocks on the door.
JUNIPER
Rob? It's me.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
day 76.
Wrote a review of I'm Still Here, which I saw with Heather and her Canadian friend Bryan (the undignified one), for L.A. Youth.
http://www.layouth.com/movie-review-im-still-here/
http://www.layouth.com/movie-review-im-still-here/
day 75.
so here i am, pulling you in.
You had reached the farthest part of your orbit and thought you could break free
maybe in a physics-defying inexplainable moment of
arrow-stabbed still-bleeding humanity
Ignore me and find a new universe so clean such an
expanse--
But here i am
eclipsing your eyes like cataracts
Wobbling in my path around
my planets, my suns, my stars
only they aren't mine at all
and one day retrograde motion will take them out of my life.
and here i am gravitating towards you
only when i am not wanted
because i have to maintain this much distance and
nothing more--
here i am
at arm's length
a galaxy away
here i am because
i am trying to tell you i have been where you are
been the hurtling rock leaving destruction
so someone will know
I was there--that was my shadow you saw around the corner, we only
just missed each other--
and i was the one who was not there (then where?)
but smiled all careful teeth--
Only it's not cosmic or even planetary how we treat each other it's just
small monstrous acts of loneliness
like roadkill whose eyes are still open.
You had reached the farthest part of your orbit and thought you could break free
maybe in a physics-defying inexplainable moment of
arrow-stabbed still-bleeding humanity
Ignore me and find a new universe so clean such an
expanse--
But here i am
eclipsing your eyes like cataracts
Wobbling in my path around
my planets, my suns, my stars
only they aren't mine at all
and one day retrograde motion will take them out of my life.
and here i am gravitating towards you
only when i am not wanted
because i have to maintain this much distance and
nothing more--
here i am
at arm's length
a galaxy away
here i am because
i am trying to tell you i have been where you are
been the hurtling rock leaving destruction
so someone will know
I was there--that was my shadow you saw around the corner, we only
just missed each other--
and i was the one who was not there (then where?)
but smiled all careful teeth--
Only it's not cosmic or even planetary how we treat each other it's just
small monstrous acts of loneliness
like roadkill whose eyes are still open.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Day 74.
from CSSSA; the prompt was to write instructions to someone else
How To Live With Being An Insatiable Klutz
You will smack into the cabinet protruding from the wall. Take it
in stride; run into
other walls; make it a dance.
You will skid on the wet floor, unstoppable momentum.
Keep that look of terror off your face-- this is only a move that took all your years to perfect.
You will walk into plate glass. Pretend to be a bird--
dazed but flying.
You will spill drinks at every opportunity, onto other people's things--
when you go for paper towels to wipe it up, drop them airily on the floor
like snowflakes and
with your feet, push them in a pile.
You will injure people accidentally-- a door swung open exactly wrong,
sudden movements-- this too you can live with, though
they will remember you by a scab or faded scar.
A tumbled, I'm so sorry, and then run off because
you're not just a klutz, you're a socially incapable klutz.
You will break the unbreakable plates your mom bought. Call it
a science experiment.
You will put your foot through the windshield of the family car.
Probably while on the freeway-- but you're the reason they made car glass that crumbles
instead of breaking-- so don't worry.
You will find new verbs for falling, use millions of years of evolved and refined limbs in altogether new ways--
you will not be the dancer in the music box, twirling consistently
but who wants to open to the world on command?
Glory in your freedom from gracefulness, and
you can live with being a klutz.
How To Live With Being An Insatiable Klutz
You will smack into the cabinet protruding from the wall. Take it
in stride; run into
other walls; make it a dance.
You will skid on the wet floor, unstoppable momentum.
Keep that look of terror off your face-- this is only a move that took all your years to perfect.
You will walk into plate glass. Pretend to be a bird--
dazed but flying.
You will spill drinks at every opportunity, onto other people's things--
when you go for paper towels to wipe it up, drop them airily on the floor
like snowflakes and
with your feet, push them in a pile.
You will injure people accidentally-- a door swung open exactly wrong,
sudden movements-- this too you can live with, though
they will remember you by a scab or faded scar.
A tumbled, I'm so sorry, and then run off because
you're not just a klutz, you're a socially incapable klutz.
You will break the unbreakable plates your mom bought. Call it
a science experiment.
You will put your foot through the windshield of the family car.
Probably while on the freeway-- but you're the reason they made car glass that crumbles
instead of breaking-- so don't worry.
You will find new verbs for falling, use millions of years of evolved and refined limbs in altogether new ways--
you will not be the dancer in the music box, twirling consistently
but who wants to open to the world on command?
Glory in your freedom from gracefulness, and
you can live with being a klutz.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Gaaah i should be sleeping. Day 73.
ONE MONTH
I cut my nails twice while the moon grew and shrunk
watched some truly terrible movies and some true ones--
I stayed out of cars but read Autobahn-- six short plays within two front seats and a windshield.
I used a hundred forks, and spilled (only) three drinks
I tumbled down hills, got mowed grass patchworked over my feet-- new nights, new skin.
I ate mulberries and let the juice run down my arms like blood
climbed in a human sized cage
played truth or dare in a shack.
I wrote my fears in a cardboard monster
I lost my glasses, my wallet, bits of Before.
I sang to a crowd, sang with a crowd,
had conversations everywhere-- the tiny stairwell up to the roof, the caves under desks, under stairs and under trees and in trees and
sometimes i remember them, the trees the people,
what was said or how.
I watched the sunrise on the last day from the edge of a parking lot, huddling close to my roommates, and thought about how things have
only the meaning you give them.
like a friend can be for a lifetime or just while time lasts.
like a place can be a home or just a stop on the road.
like a month can be a change or just the inevitable turn of a circle that
nonetheless
holds fragile surprises.
I cut my nails twice while the moon grew and shrunk
watched some truly terrible movies and some true ones--
I stayed out of cars but read Autobahn-- six short plays within two front seats and a windshield.
I used a hundred forks, and spilled (only) three drinks
I tumbled down hills, got mowed grass patchworked over my feet-- new nights, new skin.
I ate mulberries and let the juice run down my arms like blood
climbed in a human sized cage
played truth or dare in a shack.
I wrote my fears in a cardboard monster
I lost my glasses, my wallet, bits of Before.
I sang to a crowd, sang with a crowd,
had conversations everywhere-- the tiny stairwell up to the roof, the caves under desks, under stairs and under trees and in trees and
sometimes i remember them, the trees the people,
what was said or how.
I watched the sunrise on the last day from the edge of a parking lot, huddling close to my roommates, and thought about how things have
only the meaning you give them.
like a friend can be for a lifetime or just while time lasts.
like a place can be a home or just a stop on the road.
like a month can be a change or just the inevitable turn of a circle that
nonetheless
holds fragile surprises.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Day 72.
(fiction)
To My Alleyway Mama
Mama, it's me. I know you don't remember but it's okay. I want you to remember but I don't need you to. Maybe a couple things. Remember one Christmas I bought you a bicycle? I saved up the endless spending money Father gave me. You had a lifelong fear of being run over so you rode it in quiet afternoon alleyways, mapping out where the overhanging fig branches or blackberry brambles were. You knew which neighbors had turned out beloved, broken furniture to rust and fade and grow skins of dust and spiderwebs. You heard their backyard secrets through the fences as you pedaled. You were not very good at steering. The vagrant cats and slinking dogs had their eyes on you after their first terrifying close call with your front wheel. But you were fond of them, even if they came out of nowhere to scare you and swerve you. You called them names that made no sense to me, and would refer to them as people, old friends, news of whom could make or break a day. You even named the bicycle: Clarise. I told this to Father one day and he changed the subject and mussed my hair. I heard him packing from my room but you were on the bike, and you were on the bike when Father started the car, and you were on the bike when I skidded into the kitchen where he left the note: I have an apartment on the other side of town. I'll call you. I'm sorry.
I ran outside. You were coming home and he was leaving and you saw my face and knew. You followed him to the busy street two blocks down, and then you stood and let Clarise fall on the sidewalk and you were crying, but you smiled because I was running after you like an irritated bird with my elbows out like that. You told me Get on the handlebars so I did and you were unsteady but we made it home okay.
You still call him Papa when he comes to pick me up.
To My Alleyway Mama
Mama, it's me. I know you don't remember but it's okay. I want you to remember but I don't need you to. Maybe a couple things. Remember one Christmas I bought you a bicycle? I saved up the endless spending money Father gave me. You had a lifelong fear of being run over so you rode it in quiet afternoon alleyways, mapping out where the overhanging fig branches or blackberry brambles were. You knew which neighbors had turned out beloved, broken furniture to rust and fade and grow skins of dust and spiderwebs. You heard their backyard secrets through the fences as you pedaled. You were not very good at steering. The vagrant cats and slinking dogs had their eyes on you after their first terrifying close call with your front wheel. But you were fond of them, even if they came out of nowhere to scare you and swerve you. You called them names that made no sense to me, and would refer to them as people, old friends, news of whom could make or break a day. You even named the bicycle: Clarise. I told this to Father one day and he changed the subject and mussed my hair. I heard him packing from my room but you were on the bike, and you were on the bike when Father started the car, and you were on the bike when I skidded into the kitchen where he left the note: I have an apartment on the other side of town. I'll call you. I'm sorry.
I ran outside. You were coming home and he was leaving and you saw my face and knew. You followed him to the busy street two blocks down, and then you stood and let Clarise fall on the sidewalk and you were crying, but you smiled because I was running after you like an irritated bird with my elbows out like that. You told me Get on the handlebars so I did and you were unsteady but we made it home okay.
You still call him Papa when he comes to pick me up.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Day 71.
assignment: kill an abstraction.
It was English that killed Abstraction, and English did it slowly, as if freezing off a blemish. Culling the herd by using the same words until they meant nothing. Abstraction made big gestures that meant nothing and spoke final words that meant nothing to anyone.
When Abstraction died, Love became a question mark, Freedom became a blank stare, Loneliness became shunned.
Political systems, belief systems, these died with hands turned upward, mouths synchronized in Wanting. Success and Failure died quietly, holding hands. Happiness and Sadness wept and laughed as they drowned in concrete. Life and Death held each other, and some later said they fused together as they burned.
The day abstraction died many did not know what to do.
They would curl up in corners and try to describe terms that used to come easy to their lips, and finally they would clutch their hands or face and start from their own bodies: They said, My heart beats faster when she's around, and She makes my sweat glands overproduce, and She makes my throat close and my pupils dilate. This might be l-l--" They stuttered, and then trailed off, looking confused.
English teachers rejoiced.
The dead words had finally been strangled by overuse, and there were many meanings to be made of everything.
The man with the hunched back walked along the shore and picked up every colorful thing he saw.
It was English that killed Abstraction, and English did it slowly, as if freezing off a blemish. Culling the herd by using the same words until they meant nothing. Abstraction made big gestures that meant nothing and spoke final words that meant nothing to anyone.
When Abstraction died, Love became a question mark, Freedom became a blank stare, Loneliness became shunned.
Political systems, belief systems, these died with hands turned upward, mouths synchronized in Wanting. Success and Failure died quietly, holding hands. Happiness and Sadness wept and laughed as they drowned in concrete. Life and Death held each other, and some later said they fused together as they burned.
The day abstraction died many did not know what to do.
They would curl up in corners and try to describe terms that used to come easy to their lips, and finally they would clutch their hands or face and start from their own bodies: They said, My heart beats faster when she's around, and She makes my sweat glands overproduce, and She makes my throat close and my pupils dilate. This might be l-l--" They stuttered, and then trailed off, looking confused.
English teachers rejoiced.
The dead words had finally been strangled by overuse, and there were many meanings to be made of everything.
The man with the hunched back walked along the shore and picked up every colorful thing he saw.
Day 70. Tire Swang
based on the description thingy we did!
Tom swung, high and higher, legs wrapped tightly around the tire, imprinting them with the patterned tread. He bent his hips so the tire swing turned and turned on its rope and then reversed all its motions, and he watched his world spin around him; the two grandfather oak trees, bent as if to pick up their grandchildren; the clouds strewn across the sky like the remains of a quilt pecked by crows.
Tom held on only with his legs, arms waving, and the tire swung towards the grandfather tree. The tire paused at the end of its rope, like it was a pendulum in a clock, and the time it measured had stopped. And then Tom hit the tree, hard, and slipped off the swing, foot still tangled in the tire. The momentum dragged his head across the ground, his hair melding with the dry grass bleached bone white by sun. He scuffed up the old yellow grass beneath the white. He left the ground raw.
They found him at midday, when the air was the temperature of fevered skin, and they held his bones together, and he screamed and screamed as his father sawed the rope of the swing, cutting down the tire to hurl it across the yard.
The world was sick with summer.
Tom swung, high and higher, legs wrapped tightly around the tire, imprinting them with the patterned tread. He bent his hips so the tire swing turned and turned on its rope and then reversed all its motions, and he watched his world spin around him; the two grandfather oak trees, bent as if to pick up their grandchildren; the clouds strewn across the sky like the remains of a quilt pecked by crows.
Tom held on only with his legs, arms waving, and the tire swung towards the grandfather tree. The tire paused at the end of its rope, like it was a pendulum in a clock, and the time it measured had stopped. And then Tom hit the tree, hard, and slipped off the swing, foot still tangled in the tire. The momentum dragged his head across the ground, his hair melding with the dry grass bleached bone white by sun. He scuffed up the old yellow grass beneath the white. He left the ground raw.
They found him at midday, when the air was the temperature of fevered skin, and they held his bones together, and he screamed and screamed as his father sawed the rope of the swing, cutting down the tire to hurl it across the yard.
The world was sick with summer.
Day 69. hurr hurr.
Scene opens on couple eating at a table in a cafe. Nighttime. They are next to two women, ONE and TWO. The couple is silent. They doctor their coffee.
1: Are you getting chocolate ice cream?? Gosh, I'm so particular, I never get chocolate ice cream. I'm very individual that way, about food.
You know when i was little I only drank milk and water. Like I didn't drink hot cocoa, i didn't drink lemonade, I didn't drink soda or juice or sparkling water or coffee or tea. Just milk and water. And I've only started drinking other things recently. Like really recent. Like... a month ago. Hahaha. Anyway.
2: I like chocolate ice cream.
1: So anyway for the longest time I never ate chocolate ice cream. Like at all. I don't know, it's just so.... I don't know. But i love chocolate cake. Me and my friends have this thing where we go get cake once a month, it's like our monthly cake month thing, and i always, always get chocolate. the store calls it chocolate overdose. isn't that hilarious?
MAN: (forced, quiet) Are you hearing this?
WOMAN: Hearing what?
MAN: That.... drivel?
WOMAN: Shhh
MAN: I don't know how you stand it.
WOMAN: There's nothing to stand. At least they're talking.
MAN: One of them is. In an unending monologue.
WOMAN: Harold, you never think other people will hear you talking about them, and they always do.
MAN: Well maybe they need to hear it.
WOMAN: Or maybe they're happier not knowing
MAN: You're missing the point completely.
(beat)
You know, there's self respect in being honest enough to say what you think.
WOMAN: There's self respect in not being egotistical.
MAN: Actually i think Ayn Rand would disagree.
WOMAN: You know what, go have dinner with Ayn Rand then.
MAN: I can't, she's dead.
WOMAN: (she sighs) I hate these conversations.
MAN: I don't. I loathe them
WOMAN: No wonder you alienate everyone.
MAN: If I alienate everyone, then you lie.
WOMAN: It's the truth, you push people away, and then you're misera--
MAN: No, no, I'm saying, you lie to people. You put up with them far longer than anyone else can and then you're their only friend.
WOMAN: You are so oblivious.
MAN: What are you even talking about.
WOMAN: If what you said is true --
MAN: Which part?
WOMAN: All of it, if that's true, then it applies to you too.
MAN: Are you seriously--
WOMAN: You push everyone else away. I'm the only one left. Do you still think i should stop being nice?
MAN: Yeah, you know what? I take it back. Maybe it's meaner to just pretend. maybe having fake friends isn't such a nice person thing to do after all.
WOMAN: They're not fake! I'm not pretending!
MAN: Don't get defensive.
She narrows her eyebrows.
WOMAN: looks around, sees that ONE AND TWO are staring at them.
She half-smiles and nervously looks down at her drink.
MAN: No, you know what, that's fine. Whatever makes you happy, i guess. (he leaves)
WOMAN: Same to you, then!
The women at the other table are still staring.
WOMAN: (rudely) What?
1: Are you getting chocolate ice cream?? Gosh, I'm so particular, I never get chocolate ice cream. I'm very individual that way, about food.
You know when i was little I only drank milk and water. Like I didn't drink hot cocoa, i didn't drink lemonade, I didn't drink soda or juice or sparkling water or coffee or tea. Just milk and water. And I've only started drinking other things recently. Like really recent. Like... a month ago. Hahaha. Anyway.
2: I like chocolate ice cream.
1: So anyway for the longest time I never ate chocolate ice cream. Like at all. I don't know, it's just so.... I don't know. But i love chocolate cake. Me and my friends have this thing where we go get cake once a month, it's like our monthly cake month thing, and i always, always get chocolate. the store calls it chocolate overdose. isn't that hilarious?
MAN: (forced, quiet) Are you hearing this?
WOMAN: Hearing what?
MAN: That.... drivel?
WOMAN: Shhh
MAN: I don't know how you stand it.
WOMAN: There's nothing to stand. At least they're talking.
MAN: One of them is. In an unending monologue.
WOMAN: Harold, you never think other people will hear you talking about them, and they always do.
MAN: Well maybe they need to hear it.
WOMAN: Or maybe they're happier not knowing
MAN: You're missing the point completely.
(beat)
You know, there's self respect in being honest enough to say what you think.
WOMAN: There's self respect in not being egotistical.
MAN: Actually i think Ayn Rand would disagree.
WOMAN: You know what, go have dinner with Ayn Rand then.
MAN: I can't, she's dead.
WOMAN: (she sighs) I hate these conversations.
MAN: I don't. I loathe them
WOMAN: No wonder you alienate everyone.
MAN: If I alienate everyone, then you lie.
WOMAN: It's the truth, you push people away, and then you're misera--
MAN: No, no, I'm saying, you lie to people. You put up with them far longer than anyone else can and then you're their only friend.
WOMAN: You are so oblivious.
MAN: What are you even talking about.
WOMAN: If what you said is true --
MAN: Which part?
WOMAN: All of it, if that's true, then it applies to you too.
MAN: Are you seriously--
WOMAN: You push everyone else away. I'm the only one left. Do you still think i should stop being nice?
MAN: Yeah, you know what? I take it back. Maybe it's meaner to just pretend. maybe having fake friends isn't such a nice person thing to do after all.
WOMAN: They're not fake! I'm not pretending!
MAN: Don't get defensive.
She narrows her eyebrows.
WOMAN: looks around, sees that ONE AND TWO are staring at them.
She half-smiles and nervously looks down at her drink.
MAN: No, you know what, that's fine. Whatever makes you happy, i guess. (he leaves)
WOMAN: Same to you, then!
The women at the other table are still staring.
WOMAN: (rudely) What?
Monday, August 2, 2010
Day 68.
my bio for the lit mag. :3
Emily Clarke likes strange stories and stranger realities. She kind of looks like a Salvadorian John Cusack circa Say Anything. But she's writing this herself, so don't trust her.
Emily Clarke likes strange stories and stranger realities. She kind of looks like a Salvadorian John Cusack circa Say Anything. But she's writing this herself, so don't trust her.
Day 67.
Description of a place in five minutes; plotless plootleing
There is dry yellow summer california grass, which fades into green where there is shade. i hear a crow caw as it swivels overhead. the wind only barely stirs the leaves.
the air tastes like dust, and smells a little bit like skunks.
I'm not far from the road, and there's the consistent sound of fading and approaching cars, like water running by but smoother, more predictable. there;s two big oak trees here, old and gnarled, and bent like a grandpa about to pick up grandchildren.
I see a faded and rotting tomato in the grass next to a paper plate: proof that this is not my spot alone. A tire sways slightly on its rope, swishing with water. I don't know how it got there because it has not rained in the longest time. i hear a thumping noise, sort of like wings beating and sort of like drumming . There's a tray nearby, and the way the grass is matted down in certain paths down the hill tells me what its for. Everything has shades of gray. The wispy clouds over head seem to have been combed into the hair of the sky. today the sky is blue. today the grass is greenish, I put my face to the ground and see spiders weave through the tangled grass. its one big connected mat, like walt whitman wrote. on the top level the dry grass is bleached bone white, but beneath it is yellow, and beneath that there are green shoots coming up. for fall. The air feels the temperature of skin, maybe a fever.I put my hand to this hill's forehead. sick with summer.
The crow is not happy. It sings to its brother in a raspy voice.
I've heard that crows sing patterns; that if you mock their calls they add on, as if teaching you their language.
The sun on the leaves filters through, makes everything dappled like horses.
There is dry yellow summer california grass, which fades into green where there is shade. i hear a crow caw as it swivels overhead. the wind only barely stirs the leaves.
the air tastes like dust, and smells a little bit like skunks.
I'm not far from the road, and there's the consistent sound of fading and approaching cars, like water running by but smoother, more predictable. there;s two big oak trees here, old and gnarled, and bent like a grandpa about to pick up grandchildren.
I see a faded and rotting tomato in the grass next to a paper plate: proof that this is not my spot alone. A tire sways slightly on its rope, swishing with water. I don't know how it got there because it has not rained in the longest time. i hear a thumping noise, sort of like wings beating and sort of like drumming . There's a tray nearby, and the way the grass is matted down in certain paths down the hill tells me what its for. Everything has shades of gray. The wispy clouds over head seem to have been combed into the hair of the sky. today the sky is blue. today the grass is greenish, I put my face to the ground and see spiders weave through the tangled grass. its one big connected mat, like walt whitman wrote. on the top level the dry grass is bleached bone white, but beneath it is yellow, and beneath that there are green shoots coming up. for fall. The air feels the temperature of skin, maybe a fever.I put my hand to this hill's forehead. sick with summer.
The crow is not happy. It sings to its brother in a raspy voice.
I've heard that crows sing patterns; that if you mock their calls they add on, as if teaching you their language.
The sun on the leaves filters through, makes everything dappled like horses.
Day 66. 10% fiction, 100% truth
Drag King
EXT. CALARTS PARKING LOT OUTSIDE CHOUINARD - DAY
EMILY stands in a parking lot with RUTH and SPENCER. Ruth is penciling in a thin mustache on Emily. She is wearing two sports bras, loose pajama pants, a huge hoodie, and a baseball cap with her hair pushed in.
EMILY (V.O.)
In this moment, the world falls quiet. I am about to infiltrate
the great unknown. I will be an outsider on the inside.
I will be in... the boy's hall at CSSSA. Of course, you have
questions. So do I. Am I doing this to get some? False. Why
would I go to the boy's hall to do that. Gross. I am here
for an experiment concerning cultural constructions of
gender and heteronormativity. And to fuck shit up. How
have I gotten this far? Sheer balls. And the help of Spencer,
my bro guide. Will my true identity be revealed? Only time
will tell. How far will I go? ....We'll see.
INT. PHLEGM-COLORED HALLWAY - DAY
Emily walks down hallway, pants sagging, with Spencer leading the way. They walk by BOYS, whose heads turn, mouths open. They look confused.
EMILY (in a deep voice)
Okay is this a realistic guy voice?
SPENCER
Don't talk.
Song begins playing: Lola, by the Kinks
"Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up muddled up, shook up world"
INT. DORM ROOM AT CALARTS - DAY
Spencer and Emily walk into his room triumphantly. Emily looks around and speaks into a recorder. The room is messy.
EMILY
I have infiltrated. It smells of success. And sweat.
But mostly success.
SPENCER
Alright let's go.
INT. RANDOM HALLWAY - DAY
They are walking down random corridors because they can. Emily points to one door.
SPENCER
I don't know where that goes.
EMILY (into recorder)
I will follow all paths. I am a seeker of truth.
They exit.
EXT. CHOUINARD HALL, SIDE ENTRANCE - DAY
They are trying to get back in discreetly.
EMILY
Shit when did they lock this!!
SPENCER
We'll go through the lobby, there weren't any
R.A.s there last time.
EMILY (into recorder)
We are entering the enemy's den. We might
be destroyed. Fortunately I have covered my
picture on my name tag with masking tape.
INT. CHOUINARD HALL LOBBY - DAY
The R.A. looks up briefly. Emily looks down, the baseball cap's bill covering her face. The R.A. turns back to normal conversation.
EMILY and SPENCER
VICTORY!!!
They high five.
EXT. CHOUINARD HALL PARKING LOT - DAY
Ruth rejoins Emily, who changes back into jeans and girly shirt. Her R.A. ASHLEY walks by with a FRIEND.
RUTH
Hi!
Emily zips fly and turns around to wave. Ashley and friend walk away.
EMILY
Do I still have a mustache?
EXT. CALARTS PARKING LOT OUTSIDE CHOUINARD - DAY
EMILY stands in a parking lot with RUTH and SPENCER. Ruth is penciling in a thin mustache on Emily. She is wearing two sports bras, loose pajama pants, a huge hoodie, and a baseball cap with her hair pushed in.
EMILY (V.O.)
In this moment, the world falls quiet. I am about to infiltrate
the great unknown. I will be an outsider on the inside.
I will be in... the boy's hall at CSSSA. Of course, you have
questions. So do I. Am I doing this to get some? False. Why
would I go to the boy's hall to do that. Gross. I am here
for an experiment concerning cultural constructions of
gender and heteronormativity. And to fuck shit up. How
have I gotten this far? Sheer balls. And the help of Spencer,
my bro guide. Will my true identity be revealed? Only time
will tell. How far will I go? ....We'll see.
INT. PHLEGM-COLORED HALLWAY - DAY
Emily walks down hallway, pants sagging, with Spencer leading the way. They walk by BOYS, whose heads turn, mouths open. They look confused.
EMILY (in a deep voice)
Okay is this a realistic guy voice?
SPENCER
Don't talk.
Song begins playing: Lola, by the Kinks
"Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up muddled up, shook up world"
INT. DORM ROOM AT CALARTS - DAY
Spencer and Emily walk into his room triumphantly. Emily looks around and speaks into a recorder. The room is messy.
EMILY
I have infiltrated. It smells of success. And sweat.
But mostly success.
SPENCER
Alright let's go.
INT. RANDOM HALLWAY - DAY
They are walking down random corridors because they can. Emily points to one door.
SPENCER
I don't know where that goes.
EMILY (into recorder)
I will follow all paths. I am a seeker of truth.
They exit.
EXT. CHOUINARD HALL, SIDE ENTRANCE - DAY
They are trying to get back in discreetly.
EMILY
Shit when did they lock this!!
SPENCER
We'll go through the lobby, there weren't any
R.A.s there last time.
EMILY (into recorder)
We are entering the enemy's den. We might
be destroyed. Fortunately I have covered my
picture on my name tag with masking tape.
INT. CHOUINARD HALL LOBBY - DAY
The R.A. looks up briefly. Emily looks down, the baseball cap's bill covering her face. The R.A. turns back to normal conversation.
EMILY and SPENCER
VICTORY!!!
They high five.
EXT. CHOUINARD HALL PARKING LOT - DAY
Ruth rejoins Emily, who changes back into jeans and girly shirt. Her R.A. ASHLEY walks by with a FRIEND.
RUTH
Hi!
Emily zips fly and turns around to wave. Ashley and friend walk away.
EMILY
Do I still have a mustache?
Day 65. Not in courier, but screenplay nonetheless.
FADE IN:
EXT. SOMEWHERE IN THE FAR NORTH - DAY
Huddling, dark masses of Nordic PEASANTS stand below a large, ornate stage. They are silent, faces tilted up despite the slowly falling snow, looking at the cage with a dancing BEAR inside.
BEAR (V.O. )
I am a dancing bear. The peasants are very hungry.
The king's hunt has killed off all the other animals in the
woods and the peasants are very hungry. I am so large
one of my arms would feed a family for a week.
The masses are suddenly much closer.
INT. PRISON - DAY
There is a labryinth of high cement walls, with barbed wire on top. A GIRL runs through one of the passages, then hits a dead end and whips around her long brown hair and runs the other way. Everything gets blurry.
INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT
Same girl tosses and turns in her bed.
EXT. PARK BENCH - MORNING
Girl sits. A kindly older MAN sits. He offers her a pickle from his trench coat. She shakes her head and smiles.
MAN
Why don't you like pickles? They're very nutritious!
(beat)
My wife doesn't like pickles either. She's dead. Are you
dead?
INT. SCHOOL CAFETERIA - DAY
THREE GIRLS sit or lie on the floor, drawing on a big white piece of paper. An indistinct TEACHER figure mumbles praise at them, and they smile at each other. There is a sound at the door. THREE MEN enter. One is carrying a huge gun. The girl starts running. Everyone is stock still, watching. She gathers momentum and grabs the gun, chucking it outside. She thinks this has solved everything. One of the men gestures to to the other to go out and get the gun. They do, but the girl is running again, and she throws the gun into a campfire.
The man looks back in consternation, then grabs it with his bare hand. Suddenly he is covered in blood. He looks up from under his long eyelashes and tosses the gun on the floor. It has turned into an alarm clock.
INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT
Girl tosses and turns.
EXT. BEACH - EARLY MORNING
Calm, lapping waves. It's cloudy, and everything is gray. Not too deep out, there is a circle of PEOPLE holding things above their heads: babies. Slowly, ceremoniously, they lower the babies into the waist-deep water, and bring them out again in the same fluid motion. Suddenly this image breaks, as if hit with a hammer.
INT. BEDROOM - MORNING
Alarm clock goes off. Very annoying beeping and flashing, gets progressively more annoying. Girl hits alarm, which subsides. She blinks and looks vaguely confused.
INT. KITCHEN - MORNING
Girl eats cereal in kitchen. Her mom is drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.
MOM
Did you have good dreams?
GIRL
No.
(beat)
I don't remember.
FADE TO BLACK.
EXT. SOMEWHERE IN THE FAR NORTH - DAY
Huddling, dark masses of Nordic PEASANTS stand below a large, ornate stage. They are silent, faces tilted up despite the slowly falling snow, looking at the cage with a dancing BEAR inside.
BEAR (V.O. )
I am a dancing bear. The peasants are very hungry.
The king's hunt has killed off all the other animals in the
woods and the peasants are very hungry. I am so large
one of my arms would feed a family for a week.
The masses are suddenly much closer.
INT. PRISON - DAY
There is a labryinth of high cement walls, with barbed wire on top. A GIRL runs through one of the passages, then hits a dead end and whips around her long brown hair and runs the other way. Everything gets blurry.
INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT
Same girl tosses and turns in her bed.
EXT. PARK BENCH - MORNING
Girl sits. A kindly older MAN sits. He offers her a pickle from his trench coat. She shakes her head and smiles.
MAN
Why don't you like pickles? They're very nutritious!
(beat)
My wife doesn't like pickles either. She's dead. Are you
dead?
INT. SCHOOL CAFETERIA - DAY
THREE GIRLS sit or lie on the floor, drawing on a big white piece of paper. An indistinct TEACHER figure mumbles praise at them, and they smile at each other. There is a sound at the door. THREE MEN enter. One is carrying a huge gun. The girl starts running. Everyone is stock still, watching. She gathers momentum and grabs the gun, chucking it outside. She thinks this has solved everything. One of the men gestures to to the other to go out and get the gun. They do, but the girl is running again, and she throws the gun into a campfire.
The man looks back in consternation, then grabs it with his bare hand. Suddenly he is covered in blood. He looks up from under his long eyelashes and tosses the gun on the floor. It has turned into an alarm clock.
INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT
Girl tosses and turns.
EXT. BEACH - EARLY MORNING
Calm, lapping waves. It's cloudy, and everything is gray. Not too deep out, there is a circle of PEOPLE holding things above their heads: babies. Slowly, ceremoniously, they lower the babies into the waist-deep water, and bring them out again in the same fluid motion. Suddenly this image breaks, as if hit with a hammer.
INT. BEDROOM - MORNING
Alarm clock goes off. Very annoying beeping and flashing, gets progressively more annoying. Girl hits alarm, which subsides. She blinks and looks vaguely confused.
INT. KITCHEN - MORNING
Girl eats cereal in kitchen. Her mom is drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.
MOM
Did you have good dreams?
GIRL
No.
(beat)
I don't remember.
FADE TO BLACK.
Day 64?
Lizard Nights
my skin, at the elbows
is where it starts.
i disintegrate into
rough and scaly
lizard skin
so i will posture in the sun
so i will wait for everyone to leave
so i will let my brain hand me
basic functions of life.
eat sleep talk shit die.
i am a lizard inside a lizard inside a lizard
my mind crawling over eleven different time zones
none of them the present
none of them
this moment.
i think about how:
when i was young i didn't believe i was real.
didn't believe i was Girl
at every doctor's appointment i curled inside myself and waited for the verdict.
i don't know what i thought they'd do
to cure loneliness, near-terminal awkwardness,
a lack
of easy conversation
of beauty and its rituals
of flirting eyes
of gracefulness
everything i thought girls were;
but i dreaded something definitive all the same.
i wasn't Boy. I wasn't anything shown on TV.
i wanted to be somebody i wanted to be frontal cortex
but instead i was the lizard in the corner, back brain, old brain, fight or flight brain
laughing and smiling because lizards do not know.
now i've grown new skin
now my outside is in but
sometimes i still hide in that self.
she comes out at night and i cover my eyes
hate the way my thoughts breed and the way my shoulders hunch
into the worn down slouch of a desert boulder.
they called me nice because i was nobody.
i liked everyone because they weren't me.
and now some nights i think maybe that's my human
hiding in my tough lizard skin, not
the other way around.
my skin, at the elbows
is where it starts.
i disintegrate into
rough and scaly
lizard skin
so i will posture in the sun
so i will wait for everyone to leave
so i will let my brain hand me
basic functions of life.
eat sleep talk shit die.
i am a lizard inside a lizard inside a lizard
my mind crawling over eleven different time zones
none of them the present
none of them
this moment.
i think about how:
when i was young i didn't believe i was real.
didn't believe i was Girl
at every doctor's appointment i curled inside myself and waited for the verdict.
i don't know what i thought they'd do
to cure loneliness, near-terminal awkwardness,
a lack
of easy conversation
of beauty and its rituals
of flirting eyes
of gracefulness
everything i thought girls were;
but i dreaded something definitive all the same.
i wasn't Boy. I wasn't anything shown on TV.
i wanted to be somebody i wanted to be frontal cortex
but instead i was the lizard in the corner, back brain, old brain, fight or flight brain
laughing and smiling because lizards do not know.
now i've grown new skin
now my outside is in but
sometimes i still hide in that self.
she comes out at night and i cover my eyes
hate the way my thoughts breed and the way my shoulders hunch
into the worn down slouch of a desert boulder.
they called me nice because i was nobody.
i liked everyone because they weren't me.
and now some nights i think maybe that's my human
hiding in my tough lizard skin, not
the other way around.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Day 63.
Quest Story
We had to pull four things out of a bag: two characters, an object, and a setting, and make it into a quest with yknow traditional dramatic structure. And stuff!
Characters: Younger brother; Retail manager
Object: A beat up guitar
Setting: Rural community
It took Jimi Hendrix twenty years to reach the stereo in the bedroom of a small house in Middleton, Tennessee. Sam Jones did not care about how many years; he was playing wild air guitar and singing like a banshee, howling until he forgot the words and had to adlib shrieks.
His brother was trying to sleep on that particular Saturday morning, so he couldn't appreciate Sam's efforts to be more unpredictable in movement than anyone had ever been. Sam gyrated. Sam headbanged. Sam laid back and pretended he was stoned, though he didn't quite know what that meant, because he was seven.
" Hendrix didn't get famous without his Fender Strat. Go get a real guitar," his brother mumbled. "And then play it somewhere else."
"A Flender Trat?" Sam was breathless with wonder. His brother said something muffled that could have been "you freak." Sam crept around, excavating all the change from the crannies of his room, then his parent's room, then the living room couch, which was especially fruitful. As he was gathering the coins into his shirt, his mom stood behind him looking—well, looking like a mom.
"Hi mom," Sam quavered. "Just being an archeologist." She smiled.
"Find any bones?" He held up a wishbone he'd found under one of the sofa cushions.
"Ewww! Go throw that out!"
Sam figured it was time to go before she got up the energy to clean. He put all his pennies and all his nickels and all his dimes and all his quarters in a big jar (dumping out the oil and vegetables that had been in there before) and started walking the long, dusty path to town and the town's only music store.
"Flender Trat," he repeated to himself, "flender trap, flendner trap, slender trap, slender trap." He was pretty sure he had it right. Almost.
He reached up to open the door of the music store. It tinkled as he walked in, drawing the attention of the store manager.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
"I would like Jimi Hendrix's slender trap," Sam said, practiced from rehearsing on the way over.
"Excuse me?" The retail manager, Albert, had not been trained on dealing with children. His general policy was to lean over and smile at them until they spoke coherently. In fact, it was partly why his wife had divorced him. Albert leaned and smiled.
"I would like Jimi Hendrix's slender trap, please." Sam held up his heavy, still oily jar of money. Albert's smile became painful. Sam tried again.
"Please, do you have the slender trap guitar? The one that Jimi Hendrix used? Thank you." It was as polite as he could manage. Albert's smile reminded him of the cat in Alice in Wonderland. Then Albert's face lit up.
"A Fender Strat? You mean a Strat" He felt like a miracle worker.
"Yes. A slender trap."
"Young man, I'm guessing you don't have a thousand dollars?"
"I have a billion pennies."
"I'm not sure that's quite true."
"It is."
Albert looked around. The store was completely empty, aside from the one guy who permanently sat at the in-store drum set, staring woefully at the cymbals and the toms.
"How can you not have a Fender Trap?"
"We do, bu—" Albert stopped himself. He was having a moment. Inside his head, it was 1969 and he was sitting in his dark bedroom, hearing his crappy radio blast Hendrix at full volume.
Sam Jones was staring around the store. Drumset Guy was so pleased to have someone watch him he tried a cymbal crash. Albert turned.
"Drumset G—I mean Fred?"
"Yeah man, what's up?"
"Do you have a guitar you don't want anymore?"
"I mean sure, I guess. It's at Debbie's house though." Drumset Guy shuddered but put down the sticks. "Debbie is my violent ex-wife. Alright, let's bail." He swung his backpack in a giant arc, landing on his shoulder. "Albert, come on, man!"
Albert checked the store again. No one. "O-okay, I guess. Where's your car?"
"Don't have one. Girl dropped me off here."
"Well what are we going to do with--." Albert gestured to Sam.
"Bring him!"
"Is that even vaguely lega—"
Sam realized they were talking about him. "I'm coming with you guys!" He ran out to the parking lot. "SHOTGUN!" he yelled, and jumped in the back. Albert and Drumset guy stared at each other.
"Uh kid that's not really how shotgun works…"
"Hey does he have his seatbelt on?" Drumset Guy asked.
"Do you have your seatbelt on?" Albert had to ask back.
"Maybe."
Albert started driving.
"Okay right now left. You missed it. That's okay. Make a left up here—oh you missed that one too. Uhhhh just turn around."
"I can't turn around, there's no U-turns on roads this small."
"Dude, it's just grass on the sides. You're in a car."
"Yeah well."
Sam piped up. "Will Debbie have a Fender Strat?"
"If she doesn't eat me first kid, I will give you the Fender Strat I inherited from my grandpa. I'm a drummer anyway."
Albert fell silent and then tried a heroic wheel wrenching that put the car diagonal on the bumpy dirt road. Ten minutes later, they were at Debbie's house, ringing the doorbell triumphantly. Debbie answered the door, surveyed all three of them, and punched Drumset Guy in the gut.
"And just what do you think you're doing here at my house at ten in the morning? You think you can just show up for a fucking tea party, hmmmmm?"
Drumset Guy winced. "Debbie, please, there's children!"
Debbie whacked him across the arm this time. "Oh, you and this deadbeat clerk? Yeah, children all right. No consideration, no manners, both of you raised in a barn and conceived on a tractor I'm sure—"
Drumset Guy interrupted, somehow, over the deluge of punches and kicks Debbie was aiming at him. "Debbie I just need the guitar. Can I please, please go get it. Your MAJESTY."
Debbie stared him down, and finally looked at Sam.
"I sold it." A look that might almost be regretful creeps over her face. 'Times were rough."
Drumset Guy swayed. This was below the belt.
"But… then I felt guilty and bought a cheap one."
Drumset Guy opened his mouth and closed it, and opened it again. It was clear he was trying to articulate something, rage or confusion or hurt. But then he closed it, and nodded, and went in to get it. He came out with a guitar scratched, gouged, marked up, but loved, and handed it to Sam.
Debbie watched from the doorway, looking abashed, and Albert felt like a forty-year old male Mother Teresa, miracle worker.
Sam took it as a priest takes a relic, a holy shroud, and then remembered. "Here are my moneys, Drumset Guy."
"My name is Fred," he said, and smiled.
We had to pull four things out of a bag: two characters, an object, and a setting, and make it into a quest with yknow traditional dramatic structure. And stuff!
Characters: Younger brother; Retail manager
Object: A beat up guitar
Setting: Rural community
It took Jimi Hendrix twenty years to reach the stereo in the bedroom of a small house in Middleton, Tennessee. Sam Jones did not care about how many years; he was playing wild air guitar and singing like a banshee, howling until he forgot the words and had to adlib shrieks.
His brother was trying to sleep on that particular Saturday morning, so he couldn't appreciate Sam's efforts to be more unpredictable in movement than anyone had ever been. Sam gyrated. Sam headbanged. Sam laid back and pretended he was stoned, though he didn't quite know what that meant, because he was seven.
" Hendrix didn't get famous without his Fender Strat. Go get a real guitar," his brother mumbled. "And then play it somewhere else."
"A Flender Trat?" Sam was breathless with wonder. His brother said something muffled that could have been "you freak." Sam crept around, excavating all the change from the crannies of his room, then his parent's room, then the living room couch, which was especially fruitful. As he was gathering the coins into his shirt, his mom stood behind him looking—well, looking like a mom.
"Hi mom," Sam quavered. "Just being an archeologist." She smiled.
"Find any bones?" He held up a wishbone he'd found under one of the sofa cushions.
"Ewww! Go throw that out!"
Sam figured it was time to go before she got up the energy to clean. He put all his pennies and all his nickels and all his dimes and all his quarters in a big jar (dumping out the oil and vegetables that had been in there before) and started walking the long, dusty path to town and the town's only music store.
"Flender Trat," he repeated to himself, "flender trap, flendner trap, slender trap, slender trap." He was pretty sure he had it right. Almost.
He reached up to open the door of the music store. It tinkled as he walked in, drawing the attention of the store manager.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
"I would like Jimi Hendrix's slender trap," Sam said, practiced from rehearsing on the way over.
"Excuse me?" The retail manager, Albert, had not been trained on dealing with children. His general policy was to lean over and smile at them until they spoke coherently. In fact, it was partly why his wife had divorced him. Albert leaned and smiled.
"I would like Jimi Hendrix's slender trap, please." Sam held up his heavy, still oily jar of money. Albert's smile became painful. Sam tried again.
"Please, do you have the slender trap guitar? The one that Jimi Hendrix used? Thank you." It was as polite as he could manage. Albert's smile reminded him of the cat in Alice in Wonderland. Then Albert's face lit up.
"A Fender Strat? You mean a Strat" He felt like a miracle worker.
"Yes. A slender trap."
"Young man, I'm guessing you don't have a thousand dollars?"
"I have a billion pennies."
"I'm not sure that's quite true."
"It is."
Albert looked around. The store was completely empty, aside from the one guy who permanently sat at the in-store drum set, staring woefully at the cymbals and the toms.
"How can you not have a Fender Trap?"
"We do, bu—" Albert stopped himself. He was having a moment. Inside his head, it was 1969 and he was sitting in his dark bedroom, hearing his crappy radio blast Hendrix at full volume.
Sam Jones was staring around the store. Drumset Guy was so pleased to have someone watch him he tried a cymbal crash. Albert turned.
"Drumset G—I mean Fred?"
"Yeah man, what's up?"
"Do you have a guitar you don't want anymore?"
"I mean sure, I guess. It's at Debbie's house though." Drumset Guy shuddered but put down the sticks. "Debbie is my violent ex-wife. Alright, let's bail." He swung his backpack in a giant arc, landing on his shoulder. "Albert, come on, man!"
Albert checked the store again. No one. "O-okay, I guess. Where's your car?"
"Don't have one. Girl dropped me off here."
"Well what are we going to do with--." Albert gestured to Sam.
"Bring him!"
"Is that even vaguely lega—"
Sam realized they were talking about him. "I'm coming with you guys!" He ran out to the parking lot. "SHOTGUN!" he yelled, and jumped in the back. Albert and Drumset guy stared at each other.
"Uh kid that's not really how shotgun works…"
"Hey does he have his seatbelt on?" Drumset Guy asked.
"Do you have your seatbelt on?" Albert had to ask back.
"Maybe."
Albert started driving.
"Okay right now left. You missed it. That's okay. Make a left up here—oh you missed that one too. Uhhhh just turn around."
"I can't turn around, there's no U-turns on roads this small."
"Dude, it's just grass on the sides. You're in a car."
"Yeah well."
Sam piped up. "Will Debbie have a Fender Strat?"
"If she doesn't eat me first kid, I will give you the Fender Strat I inherited from my grandpa. I'm a drummer anyway."
Albert fell silent and then tried a heroic wheel wrenching that put the car diagonal on the bumpy dirt road. Ten minutes later, they were at Debbie's house, ringing the doorbell triumphantly. Debbie answered the door, surveyed all three of them, and punched Drumset Guy in the gut.
"And just what do you think you're doing here at my house at ten in the morning? You think you can just show up for a fucking tea party, hmmmmm?"
Drumset Guy winced. "Debbie, please, there's children!"
Debbie whacked him across the arm this time. "Oh, you and this deadbeat clerk? Yeah, children all right. No consideration, no manners, both of you raised in a barn and conceived on a tractor I'm sure—"
Drumset Guy interrupted, somehow, over the deluge of punches and kicks Debbie was aiming at him. "Debbie I just need the guitar. Can I please, please go get it. Your MAJESTY."
Debbie stared him down, and finally looked at Sam.
"I sold it." A look that might almost be regretful creeps over her face. 'Times were rough."
Drumset Guy swayed. This was below the belt.
"But… then I felt guilty and bought a cheap one."
Drumset Guy opened his mouth and closed it, and opened it again. It was clear he was trying to articulate something, rage or confusion or hurt. But then he closed it, and nodded, and went in to get it. He came out with a guitar scratched, gouged, marked up, but loved, and handed it to Sam.
Debbie watched from the doorway, looking abashed, and Albert felt like a forty-year old male Mother Teresa, miracle worker.
Sam took it as a priest takes a relic, a holy shroud, and then remembered. "Here are my moneys, Drumset Guy."
"My name is Fred," he said, and smiled.
Day 62. inspired by casey's stories about her mom.
ANNE
Do you have all your stuff? Don't forget to look under the seat, because sometimes small things can slide, I lost a pack of floss last month and it's just gone forever now--
JASON
(carrying two heavy suitcases)
I got it, Mom.
ANNE
Okay well do you want to take that pack of waters? It's very easy to get dehydrated in college…. No one looking out for you…
JASON
Yeah, cool, I'll carry it with my third arm. Aw mom, I'll be fine… I'll call a lot….
ANNE
I just wish I could move you in…. I'm so sorry about the timing, honey.
JASON
It's okay mom. Tell you what, I'll go out and get some waters from VONS or something, first thing.
ANNE
Yeah, okay.
(in a deep, mocking voice)
I'm gonna Mom! In a second!
JASON
Harsh. I'm mature now, remember? The whole college thing?
ANNE
I'll call you as soon as the plane lands and we can gossip about your roommates.
JASON
We'll have to use codenames.
ANNE
Pink power ranger and green power range?
JASON
Subtle. I like it. Okay, welll…..
ANNE
Wait! Did you remember to poop?
JASON
Mom, you can't just yell that in public! There are people everywhere!
ANNE
Well maybe some of them forgot to!
JASON
I'm leaving now.
ANNE
Jason. Wait. I need to tell you something.
JASON
Bye Mom!!!
ANNE
JASON I WILL YELL IF NECESSARY
JASON
Okay okay okay. Jesus. What?
ANNE
Did you?
JASON
What?
ANNE
Remember to poop?
JASON
YES I DID, OKAY?
ANNE
Okay, just checking. Wait! One more thing. (pause) I'll miss you, honey.
JASON
You just want to come… I bet you lived it up in your college years, I bet Gramma and Grampa were weeping and you just skipped off to party.
ANNE
Not on my life. Try the other way around! They sent me pictures of their travels and I'd sit in my dorm room and cry.
JASON
Well if you want to get your revenge, I'll understand I guess, but you'll have to ship me loads of tissues.
ANNE
No, you're going to have so much fun!
JASON
(interrupting)
And Slimfast! Geez. You had some fun though right?
ANNE
Lots! I met your dad, for one thing….
JASON
Gross. (pause) I'll miss you too, as soon as you drive away.
ANNE
I love you, Jason.
JASON
Yeah yeah yeah. Did you forget how to drive, or what?
ANNE
(smiling)
You know what, yeah. Can you drive me back home? And then stay there?
JASON
Does that mean the car is mine?
ANNE
No, I would never do that to our neighborhood.
JASON
Hey, I haven't crashed since August!
ANNE
Which was yesterday.
JASON
Bye Mom.
ANNE
Bye, chipmunk!
A couple of girls look over, smiling at the nickname. Anne starts the car. Jason looks back and waves.
Do you have all your stuff? Don't forget to look under the seat, because sometimes small things can slide, I lost a pack of floss last month and it's just gone forever now--
JASON
(carrying two heavy suitcases)
I got it, Mom.
ANNE
Okay well do you want to take that pack of waters? It's very easy to get dehydrated in college…. No one looking out for you…
JASON
Yeah, cool, I'll carry it with my third arm. Aw mom, I'll be fine… I'll call a lot….
ANNE
I just wish I could move you in…. I'm so sorry about the timing, honey.
JASON
It's okay mom. Tell you what, I'll go out and get some waters from VONS or something, first thing.
ANNE
Yeah, okay.
(in a deep, mocking voice)
I'm gonna Mom! In a second!
JASON
Harsh. I'm mature now, remember? The whole college thing?
ANNE
I'll call you as soon as the plane lands and we can gossip about your roommates.
JASON
We'll have to use codenames.
ANNE
Pink power ranger and green power range?
JASON
Subtle. I like it. Okay, welll…..
ANNE
Wait! Did you remember to poop?
JASON
Mom, you can't just yell that in public! There are people everywhere!
ANNE
Well maybe some of them forgot to!
JASON
I'm leaving now.
ANNE
Jason. Wait. I need to tell you something.
JASON
Bye Mom!!!
ANNE
JASON I WILL YELL IF NECESSARY
JASON
Okay okay okay. Jesus. What?
ANNE
Did you?
JASON
What?
ANNE
Remember to poop?
JASON
YES I DID, OKAY?
ANNE
Okay, just checking. Wait! One more thing. (pause) I'll miss you, honey.
JASON
You just want to come… I bet you lived it up in your college years, I bet Gramma and Grampa were weeping and you just skipped off to party.
ANNE
Not on my life. Try the other way around! They sent me pictures of their travels and I'd sit in my dorm room and cry.
JASON
Well if you want to get your revenge, I'll understand I guess, but you'll have to ship me loads of tissues.
ANNE
No, you're going to have so much fun!
JASON
(interrupting)
And Slimfast! Geez. You had some fun though right?
ANNE
Lots! I met your dad, for one thing….
JASON
Gross. (pause) I'll miss you too, as soon as you drive away.
ANNE
I love you, Jason.
JASON
Yeah yeah yeah. Did you forget how to drive, or what?
ANNE
(smiling)
You know what, yeah. Can you drive me back home? And then stay there?
JASON
Does that mean the car is mine?
ANNE
No, I would never do that to our neighborhood.
JASON
Hey, I haven't crashed since August!
ANNE
Which was yesterday.
JASON
Bye Mom.
ANNE
Bye, chipmunk!
A couple of girls look over, smiling at the nickname. Anne starts the car. Jason looks back and waves.
day 61.
Maybe In Other Languages
there are words for a
rain that is low-voiced and turns
on itself like this.
there are words for a
rain that is low-voiced and turns
on itself like this.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
DAY 60. partner poem!
This is my collaborative project, read by two people. (Holly's half and Tim's slideshow of hands are missing so I'm putting pictures that Alfred Steiglitz took of Georgia O'Keefe's hands. love love love)
Both: What's up?
Holly: You know
Emily: Like um I guess
H: i mean
E: Maybe
H: Sort of
E: Whatever
H: I don't know
Both: We need to talk
H: What's wrong?
E: Nothing's wrong, I say
and think about how not-false, not-true it is
Right now my cells are grating against each other
My synapses fire wrong
Right now stars, ragged holes in the sky, galaxies of stars are
imploding and exploding at once
like wrapped-up angriness.
And we stand here, mouths moving, nervous wolf smiles,
laughing because not laughing would involve fetal positional crying because
"I understand" can't even begin to apply to us, not humans--
I can't see anything from the dark of my thirty cubic centimeters of skull.
Are you hearing the words behind my words? Seeing the face right behind my eyes?
Everything is wrong, because
we are writers in a world where communication doesn't really happen in words.
It happens in a flash of eyes that means "please don't break any more plates" or a twitch of hands that says
"i will never be able to tell you that i love you"
Words are the wild, hopeful thrashing of a wounded animal--
words are the rocks we hopped to cross rivers when we were young--
but how frequently we fall into the spaces between them.
Spaces full of humans where words cannot go.
We're falling into a gap,
We're so far from all right
that people now believe they need their minds altered to be real,
to speak what they long to speak, even if
the side effects leave them stumbling over their emptiness in the heavy hollow morning.
I'm telling you that even trees talk-- sending chemical signals into the air and letting them drift
never knowing
if they were received right or at all.
When we were babies we communicated through blood.
by flesh connected with our mothers
We're amputees now, all missing pieces, but nothing's wrong--
we can't keep physical and emotional conversations straight,
these connections we confuse, indistinct and painful--
but nothing's wrong.
How are you?
(cue holly: i'm fine & her poem)
(nevermind)
(say it)
(repeat beginning up til "We need to talk")
Day 59. Aniramble.
We were supposed to turn facts about an animal into a story or an impression.... and of course, i'm an aquarium nerd. i'm not sure about this one. it feels random and disconnected. Blah.
Sea hares are basically big, weird sea slugs. Not a lot of people have heard of them, and sea hares definitely haven't heard of us. They smell things, mostly. They slumber and clamber over things, and maybe, if they're in a life-or-death situation, they ink, this dark purple cloud. They have these tiny beady eyes at the base of their "ears," but I get the feeling they're for show by the way sea hares move without regards to anything in their way.
They are the whales of the slug world: up to a foot of squishy, slimeless, sea slug, a purple Flubber. Once a year, they lay eggs like spaghetti, long trailing strands left over everything, like confetti the day after a party. They lay so many because eggs get eaten in a snap in the ocean. Sometimes, if you are patient and put your finger next to kelp they are eating, they will nibble you with their rough tongue.
At the aquarium where I volunteer, there are touch tanks, and the sea hare is my favorite thing to show people. They have no idea what to expect from the giant, purple thing that feels sort of like baby skin. Once, a girl touched it and stayed by the tank for a good fifteen minutes, saying "It likes me petting it. It likes it." People want the sea hare to like them. Once, a small boy stroked its back and said to me, "It feels like free will."
The sea hare is anything you want it to be. It is not quite slug, not quite squid, and a quite a long way from hare. It is a hermaphrodite. It would never question that, it just is. In its amorphous, lazy ways, I have seen it both stretched over its world and curled into a dark ball, where it loses all features. I imagine it is hiding from us, the traits we assign it. It could be. Their brains' nerve cells have very large axons, meandering axons, and I wonder what their thoughts would be if we could understand. They are used for human neurology research, and sometimes I hope that from that they will discover that humans and sea hares are not so different; that their internal shell that guards their organs hides more than guts. But for now, they are oblivious and kind and soft in a stuffed-animal-from-when-you-were-young way.
Ten years ago, there was an unexplained explosion in the sea hare population. They crowded the waters and everywhere you looked, they were there. Until one day, they weren't. They died off in the same way all populations that suddenly explode do.
That year I found a dead sea hare, on a beach in central California. I saw one washed up after the highest tide in months. It was soft and something was wrong; part of its flesh had turned green and spongy. I knew it was dead, but I scooped it up in my hands when my parents weren't looking and carried it into the sea. I like to think that in a tsunami, if all humans washed into the ocean, sea hares would go to our floating bodies and carry us ashore.
Sea hares are basically big, weird sea slugs. Not a lot of people have heard of them, and sea hares definitely haven't heard of us. They smell things, mostly. They slumber and clamber over things, and maybe, if they're in a life-or-death situation, they ink, this dark purple cloud. They have these tiny beady eyes at the base of their "ears," but I get the feeling they're for show by the way sea hares move without regards to anything in their way.
They are the whales of the slug world: up to a foot of squishy, slimeless, sea slug, a purple Flubber. Once a year, they lay eggs like spaghetti, long trailing strands left over everything, like confetti the day after a party. They lay so many because eggs get eaten in a snap in the ocean. Sometimes, if you are patient and put your finger next to kelp they are eating, they will nibble you with their rough tongue.
At the aquarium where I volunteer, there are touch tanks, and the sea hare is my favorite thing to show people. They have no idea what to expect from the giant, purple thing that feels sort of like baby skin. Once, a girl touched it and stayed by the tank for a good fifteen minutes, saying "It likes me petting it. It likes it." People want the sea hare to like them. Once, a small boy stroked its back and said to me, "It feels like free will."
The sea hare is anything you want it to be. It is not quite slug, not quite squid, and a quite a long way from hare. It is a hermaphrodite. It would never question that, it just is. In its amorphous, lazy ways, I have seen it both stretched over its world and curled into a dark ball, where it loses all features. I imagine it is hiding from us, the traits we assign it. It could be. Their brains' nerve cells have very large axons, meandering axons, and I wonder what their thoughts would be if we could understand. They are used for human neurology research, and sometimes I hope that from that they will discover that humans and sea hares are not so different; that their internal shell that guards their organs hides more than guts. But for now, they are oblivious and kind and soft in a stuffed-animal-from-when-you-were-young way.
Ten years ago, there was an unexplained explosion in the sea hare population. They crowded the waters and everywhere you looked, they were there. Until one day, they weren't. They died off in the same way all populations that suddenly explode do.
That year I found a dead sea hare, on a beach in central California. I saw one washed up after the highest tide in months. It was soft and something was wrong; part of its flesh had turned green and spongy. I knew it was dead, but I scooped it up in my hands when my parents weren't looking and carried it into the sea. I like to think that in a tsunami, if all humans washed into the ocean, sea hares would go to our floating bodies and carry us ashore.
Day 58. How I Saved My Brother From the Giants
he plucks up the blade of grass, aligns it with his thumbs and blows. it sounds like an angry elephant. like this, he says. he tells me that this sound will bring the king and queen of the field to us, a secret call.
he teaches me to listen to things. i hear them, i say. coming up behind me, i say, like footsteps, like a heavy rock being set down and picked up again.
good, he says. this is the first step.
do you hear it? i ask.
Always, he says, and swings me around.
hear how the steps are getting faster? see how the ants are scurrying off their path? that means the giants are coming.
the giants? i whisper.
the giants. they put you to sleep and you forget to breathe and you drown in your own spit.
how soon?
very, very soon. his raspy voice stays quiet, calm.
i cling to his sides.
Run run run! he coughs.
we do, we run, we go. into the open field.
perfect, he says, and collapses.
i wait for him to breathe and whistle grass blades, tickling his mouth with them. King and Queen! i yell. the giants have my brother, make them give him back!
my brother opens his eyes and springs up and we whistle and whistle until the grass touches the edge of the sun.
he teaches me to listen to things. i hear them, i say. coming up behind me, i say, like footsteps, like a heavy rock being set down and picked up again.
good, he says. this is the first step.
do you hear it? i ask.
Always, he says, and swings me around.
hear how the steps are getting faster? see how the ants are scurrying off their path? that means the giants are coming.
the giants? i whisper.
the giants. they put you to sleep and you forget to breathe and you drown in your own spit.
how soon?
very, very soon. his raspy voice stays quiet, calm.
i cling to his sides.
Run run run! he coughs.
we do, we run, we go. into the open field.
perfect, he says, and collapses.
i wait for him to breathe and whistle grass blades, tickling his mouth with them. King and Queen! i yell. the giants have my brother, make them give him back!
my brother opens his eyes and springs up and we whistle and whistle until the grass touches the edge of the sun.
Day 57. Ants.
our assignment was to sit alone, completely alone, for forty-five minutes, and then write for ten. most people wrote deep reflections about childhood, or individuality, or aloneness. I wrote mine on ants. (like a pro)
I'm sitting on the curb of an empty parking lot. I'm thinking that empty parking lots are pretty good metaphors for waste. Unfulfillment. Land razed. Raw ground stamped down with asphalt. Just a waiting wasteland. Life pulls at the edges. The fallen leaves ferment into soil, and there are always ants.
Oh fuck, I just sat on like thirty of them. They are going in a line all along the curb but right where i sat they're scattering, milling around in frenetic circles. I'm their natural disaster. Maybe some of them will question their ant religion.
Fuck. Now I have to move again, for like the sixth time, which makes me feel like one of the frantic ants instead of a person trying to write. I wish i was the kind of person that loved ants. Not even ants in particular-- just everything. The kind of person who can talk about your spirit animal and interconnectedness in the same breath as humming the Lion King. The kind of person who lets bugs scurry over them like raindrops, or snowflakes, like ants are the unavoidable weather of the insect world. But there is currently a prickling sensation all over my body, so, you know, I'm not quite there yet. No matter how much I tell myself that every living thing has value, ants piss me off. They're limitless, for one thing. There are just too many per square inch. Kinda like us. My theory is that ants remind us of us. Our shadows are made of their dark bodies. Here, they seem to say in their winding trails, here is where laws and civilizations have brought us.
Once, I hid an Easter egg in the garage. Bright pink. It didn't get found, not that day anyway. I guess it was a week later that I saw it, cracked and rotting, imprinted with the tire tread of our car. The ants swarmed. They radiated out from the yellow-brown-pink fragments like the egg was a sun, or a god.
I'm sitting on the curb of an empty parking lot. I'm thinking that empty parking lots are pretty good metaphors for waste. Unfulfillment. Land razed. Raw ground stamped down with asphalt. Just a waiting wasteland. Life pulls at the edges. The fallen leaves ferment into soil, and there are always ants.
Oh fuck, I just sat on like thirty of them. They are going in a line all along the curb but right where i sat they're scattering, milling around in frenetic circles. I'm their natural disaster. Maybe some of them will question their ant religion.
Fuck. Now I have to move again, for like the sixth time, which makes me feel like one of the frantic ants instead of a person trying to write. I wish i was the kind of person that loved ants. Not even ants in particular-- just everything. The kind of person who can talk about your spirit animal and interconnectedness in the same breath as humming the Lion King. The kind of person who lets bugs scurry over them like raindrops, or snowflakes, like ants are the unavoidable weather of the insect world. But there is currently a prickling sensation all over my body, so, you know, I'm not quite there yet. No matter how much I tell myself that every living thing has value, ants piss me off. They're limitless, for one thing. There are just too many per square inch. Kinda like us. My theory is that ants remind us of us. Our shadows are made of their dark bodies. Here, they seem to say in their winding trails, here is where laws and civilizations have brought us.
Once, I hid an Easter egg in the garage. Bright pink. It didn't get found, not that day anyway. I guess it was a week later that I saw it, cracked and rotting, imprinted with the tire tread of our car. The ants swarmed. They radiated out from the yellow-brown-pink fragments like the egg was a sun, or a god.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Day 56.
Almost done with February!!
Anyway this is a short-short story (under 500 words) for Mike's class that was supposed to be based on an overheard conversation. So... Zoe told me something she overheard him say. I'm a creeper. :D
"Anyways, Tim, the shirtless guy? He loved her for like ten years."
An Overheard Short Short
Tim the shirtless guy wasn't always shirtless. He used to have shirts. They just always got lost, somehow. Partly it was because he was a runner, who didn't need to be bothered with things rubbing in tender places or friction or chafing or worrying about sweat stains. He wore a t-shirt to the trailhead and then tied it to a nearby tree during his run, and was it his fault people treated things left in trees as cosmic gifts?
Somewhere along the line, he just plain ran out of shirts. There were drawbacks: he couldn't go to fancy restaurants, obviously, and his mother fretted over what society would think. But he found that, with enough confidence, he could pretty much go anywhere. Mostly he went to the smoothie place two blocks from home. The first day he'd gone in, the barista nodded at him and said, "You know, we usually don't allow shirtless people in Blend Over."
"I have a shirt on!" he says. She gives him a skeptical look. "Only the worthy can see it." He notices that she's on a footstool, and that her smile threatens to take over her face.
"Ohh," she says, "that shirt." He beams.
He went to the smoothie place every day, at first under the pretense of ordering one of everything. They were his excuse: the strawberry-banana, the mango-peach, the raspberry-lime. But when he tilted the Styrofoam cup to his lips and drank, he tasted the focused look on her face before she looked up and saw him; the practiced, graceful way she moved her stool around so she could see over the counter; the way her hair shone in the sun; the meandering of her hands.
What she never told him was that she had given her two weeks notice the day he came in, and retracted it the day after, when he came in again and looked at her over his drink menu and asked how she was, and waited to hear a real answer. Once he invited her on a run. It was like racing a child. She accused him of trying to lose (she was right) and blamed it on her short stature (she was half-right.) She invented new flavors for him, smoothies without name.
She started drawing again. She scrawled portraits on the ordering pad; she drew on napkins and stared enviously at the artists with their sketchbooks in Blend Over. She went to art college, something she'd been meaning to do for ages, and bought Tim a shirt she decorated herself: it read "I am a Cursed Shirt and if you Steal me you Die a Thousand Fiery Deaths." Sometimes he even wore it. She was gone for a long time.
Tim ran to her college once, but the way their eyes met wasn't the same, and they both agreed, in a stilted, awkward conversation, that it would be better if he kept running.
Tim the shirtless guy loved her for ten years.
Anyway this is a short-short story (under 500 words) for Mike's class that was supposed to be based on an overheard conversation. So... Zoe told me something she overheard him say. I'm a creeper. :D
"Anyways, Tim, the shirtless guy? He loved her for like ten years."
An Overheard Short Short
Tim the shirtless guy wasn't always shirtless. He used to have shirts. They just always got lost, somehow. Partly it was because he was a runner, who didn't need to be bothered with things rubbing in tender places or friction or chafing or worrying about sweat stains. He wore a t-shirt to the trailhead and then tied it to a nearby tree during his run, and was it his fault people treated things left in trees as cosmic gifts?
Somewhere along the line, he just plain ran out of shirts. There were drawbacks: he couldn't go to fancy restaurants, obviously, and his mother fretted over what society would think. But he found that, with enough confidence, he could pretty much go anywhere. Mostly he went to the smoothie place two blocks from home. The first day he'd gone in, the barista nodded at him and said, "You know, we usually don't allow shirtless people in Blend Over."
"I have a shirt on!" he says. She gives him a skeptical look. "Only the worthy can see it." He notices that she's on a footstool, and that her smile threatens to take over her face.
"Ohh," she says, "that shirt." He beams.
He went to the smoothie place every day, at first under the pretense of ordering one of everything. They were his excuse: the strawberry-banana, the mango-peach, the raspberry-lime. But when he tilted the Styrofoam cup to his lips and drank, he tasted the focused look on her face before she looked up and saw him; the practiced, graceful way she moved her stool around so she could see over the counter; the way her hair shone in the sun; the meandering of her hands.
What she never told him was that she had given her two weeks notice the day he came in, and retracted it the day after, when he came in again and looked at her over his drink menu and asked how she was, and waited to hear a real answer. Once he invited her on a run. It was like racing a child. She accused him of trying to lose (she was right) and blamed it on her short stature (she was half-right.) She invented new flavors for him, smoothies without name.
She started drawing again. She scrawled portraits on the ordering pad; she drew on napkins and stared enviously at the artists with their sketchbooks in Blend Over. She went to art college, something she'd been meaning to do for ages, and bought Tim a shirt she decorated herself: it read "I am a Cursed Shirt and if you Steal me you Die a Thousand Fiery Deaths." Sometimes he even wore it. She was gone for a long time.
Tim ran to her college once, but the way their eyes met wasn't the same, and they both agreed, in a stilted, awkward conversation, that it would be better if he kept running.
Tim the shirtless guy loved her for ten years.
Day 54.
(An active monologue about someone who is pissed about something)
It's morning. A woman leans over the recycling bin, about to toss the day's newspaper.
Woman: This is such fucking bullshit. Honestly, look at this. Weather today: Mostly sunny; some afternoon wind. High: 95 Low: 58.
That could be anything. Why don't they just print 'I have no fucking idea and I'm an overpaid, incompetent waste of space who whacks off in the break room instead of doing work.' I would volunteer to have that guy's job. High 95 Low 58. Thanks a lot, now I know exactly what's going on. I could have pulled that out of my tits. Look outside and put some random bullshit like mostly sunny. What if I did that on my job? Oh hey kids, so to work out this calculus problem we're just going to stare at it and guess answers. 72? Five thousand? Equally valid! No, I'm not overreacting. You know these kids are expected to know exactly what they're going to do in life? But no one expects a weatherman to know anything. What do you mean meteorology is a precise science? It's not about--No, I won't just 'go outside and see'! It's not about the weather!
It's morning. A woman leans over the recycling bin, about to toss the day's newspaper.
Woman: This is such fucking bullshit. Honestly, look at this. Weather today: Mostly sunny; some afternoon wind. High: 95 Low: 58.
That could be anything. Why don't they just print 'I have no fucking idea and I'm an overpaid, incompetent waste of space who whacks off in the break room instead of doing work.' I would volunteer to have that guy's job. High 95 Low 58. Thanks a lot, now I know exactly what's going on. I could have pulled that out of my tits. Look outside and put some random bullshit like mostly sunny. What if I did that on my job? Oh hey kids, so to work out this calculus problem we're just going to stare at it and guess answers. 72? Five thousand? Equally valid! No, I'm not overreacting. You know these kids are expected to know exactly what they're going to do in life? But no one expects a weatherman to know anything. What do you mean meteorology is a precise science? It's not about--No, I won't just 'go outside and see'! It's not about the weather!
Day 53.
Six Word Novels!
we had like two minutes to write these in class.
Apparently Hemingway's was: For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
oh hemingway.
Michael assigned a prompt; Emily blanked.
He kicked the robot. It died.
90% of communication is nonverbal. See?
Her eyes were a powerful portal.
(Zombie Apocalypse:) i lived, i died, i lived.
The stars are ragged sky holes.
It is not impossible to fly.
Smoke on the hills: apocalypse now?
(Twilight:) He twinkles, i love him, blah
(Harry Potter:) Magic doesn't solve problems, Harry does
(Cat's Cradle:) There is no cat, just string.
Broken, he leaped off the cliff.
Wanted: one criminal, did nothing wrong.
No packing: run run run fire.
we had like two minutes to write these in class.
Apparently Hemingway's was: For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
oh hemingway.
Michael assigned a prompt; Emily blanked.
He kicked the robot. It died.
90% of communication is nonverbal. See?
Her eyes were a powerful portal.
(Zombie Apocalypse:) i lived, i died, i lived.
The stars are ragged sky holes.
It is not impossible to fly.
Smoke on the hills: apocalypse now?
(Twilight:) He twinkles, i love him, blah
(Harry Potter:) Magic doesn't solve problems, Harry does
(Cat's Cradle:) There is no cat, just string.
Broken, he leaped off the cliff.
Wanted: one criminal, did nothing wrong.
No packing: run run run fire.
Day 52.
@casey: can this be incorporated into your musical? :D
You Are My Love Handle
You are my love handle
Babe, handle with care
I try to get rid of you
But you're always there
I came to love you
Cause you're part of me
Flesh and blood, too
You're the branches to my tree
I've learned to love my lady junk
Cause who wants just a trunk
You Are My Love Handle
You are my love handle
Babe, handle with care
I try to get rid of you
But you're always there
I came to love you
Cause you're part of me
Flesh and blood, too
You're the branches to my tree
I've learned to love my lady junk
Cause who wants just a trunk
Saturday, July 24, 2010
day 51.
total rough draft, response to musics!
second piece:
tom waits cover of hi ho
prison. she walks past inmates in stilettos. th eir tinny radio music bends and blurs as she walks. strange screams from distant, belowground maybe. dingy walls the color of phlegm, the floor made of scuffs and stains. she swears the bars of the inmates cells are chewed in some places.
the thumping of the manic inmates who tap or shake or bufds their world, the tiny window like a mirage of oasis in the desert. growly, deep voices emanate from someplace below the stomach. their voices strained through years of smoking, poured in syrup, call out to her as she passes. in the striped shadows of inmates breaking cement, she sees what she needs.
third piece:
final fantasy -- arcade fire spinoff better than worse
it's dark out, and they can't see each other as more than lumps, but they hear the guitar as if it were right next to them. one voice, alone in the dark, strumming and singing. his voice like the stick holding up the blanket fort of darkness. then it is as if they are all children again, asking for a back rub, a lullaby, some water. he likes being needed, likes the quiet calm of complete content.
above, the stars shine what light they can, the best of audiences.
the ground sweats for him. becomes cold and damp, but he plays on, taking his melodies from crickets, the rustle of small animals in the poplar trees.
second piece:
tom waits cover of hi ho
prison. she walks past inmates in stilettos. th eir tinny radio music bends and blurs as she walks. strange screams from distant, belowground maybe. dingy walls the color of phlegm, the floor made of scuffs and stains. she swears the bars of the inmates cells are chewed in some places.
the thumping of the manic inmates who tap or shake or bufds their world, the tiny window like a mirage of oasis in the desert. growly, deep voices emanate from someplace below the stomach. their voices strained through years of smoking, poured in syrup, call out to her as she passes. in the striped shadows of inmates breaking cement, she sees what she needs.
third piece:
final fantasy -- arcade fire spinoff better than worse
it's dark out, and they can't see each other as more than lumps, but they hear the guitar as if it were right next to them. one voice, alone in the dark, strumming and singing. his voice like the stick holding up the blanket fort of darkness. then it is as if they are all children again, asking for a back rub, a lullaby, some water. he likes being needed, likes the quiet calm of complete content.
above, the stars shine what light they can, the best of audiences.
the ground sweats for him. becomes cold and damp, but he plays on, taking his melodies from crickets, the rustle of small animals in the poplar trees.
Day 50.
i realized i posted the same thing twice! but i don't have anything to fill this with... so this counts as me starring in valencia's Awkwardest Movie on Earth movie. (it's called balls to the wall, look for it in theaters near you)
Day 49. nonfiction
Family Story
In the summer, my family goes to my grandparents' house often. Summer in Whittier is dry, brown, and hot, too hot to even sweat. We bake, and we hang around the pool, the kids swimming and the parents pretending that just being near the Barbie blue of the water cools them down. One summer, one day stands out for me: I had just finished seventh grade, my sister, tenth.
The sun ducked behind the hill. Connie, my sister, and I reluctantly got out and laid on the still-hot grainy cement, leaving wet shadows of us. We stared at the pruney canyons in our fingers and my dad joked like he always did about throwing us in, jostling Connie and me near the edge.
I'd been thrown in before. My dad pretended to be sorry about it, and I pretended to care, making a big show of wringing out my t-shirt. But Connie was a monkey-- he'd try to throw her over and she'd hang on his arm, terrified and delighted when it worked. It was like watching stage wrestling: I cheered for both of them, and my mom half-averted her eyes, sighing, but smiling. And she wasn't just a monkey-- she was a strong monkey, a super monkey. Even after I grew six inches in two years she would seize me and swing me around, or pick me up like she was bringing the bride over the threshold, or lift me like I was jumping a fence, grabbing me around my thighs. Sometimes I liked it, and closed my eyes and flew. Most of the time it drove me batshit insane.
This time, Connie seized Dad, and for a beautiful moment we watched as his six feet two inches left the ground, and almost touched the water, and then did, and then he plunged in to his waist, and then, Connie, still on land somehow, tried to pull him out, but from her angle, it was a sideways pull, not an upwards one.
He slammed into the side of the pool. I told you she was a strong monkey.
Connie burst into tears as my dad clambered out and started placing all the items in his pockets on the pavement. Phone. Keys. Then the wallet, which in six seconds had become completely soaked through. He pulled out card after card, receipts, to-do lists, all looking like they had been lost in a flood, or in the Titanic. My grandpa went for the hair dryer.
Later we found out my dad had broken two ribs. They jangled when he laughed. For months, we heard "don't make me laugh!" whenever we were making a joke or spilling our milk or tripping down stairs. Even after his ribs had to have knitted together, he said it, a habit.
In the summer, my family goes to my grandparents' house often. Summer in Whittier is dry, brown, and hot, too hot to even sweat. We bake, and we hang around the pool, the kids swimming and the parents pretending that just being near the Barbie blue of the water cools them down. One summer, one day stands out for me: I had just finished seventh grade, my sister, tenth.
The sun ducked behind the hill. Connie, my sister, and I reluctantly got out and laid on the still-hot grainy cement, leaving wet shadows of us. We stared at the pruney canyons in our fingers and my dad joked like he always did about throwing us in, jostling Connie and me near the edge.
I'd been thrown in before. My dad pretended to be sorry about it, and I pretended to care, making a big show of wringing out my t-shirt. But Connie was a monkey-- he'd try to throw her over and she'd hang on his arm, terrified and delighted when it worked. It was like watching stage wrestling: I cheered for both of them, and my mom half-averted her eyes, sighing, but smiling. And she wasn't just a monkey-- she was a strong monkey, a super monkey. Even after I grew six inches in two years she would seize me and swing me around, or pick me up like she was bringing the bride over the threshold, or lift me like I was jumping a fence, grabbing me around my thighs. Sometimes I liked it, and closed my eyes and flew. Most of the time it drove me batshit insane.
This time, Connie seized Dad, and for a beautiful moment we watched as his six feet two inches left the ground, and almost touched the water, and then did, and then he plunged in to his waist, and then, Connie, still on land somehow, tried to pull him out, but from her angle, it was a sideways pull, not an upwards one.
He slammed into the side of the pool. I told you she was a strong monkey.
Connie burst into tears as my dad clambered out and started placing all the items in his pockets on the pavement. Phone. Keys. Then the wallet, which in six seconds had become completely soaked through. He pulled out card after card, receipts, to-do lists, all looking like they had been lost in a flood, or in the Titanic. My grandpa went for the hair dryer.
Later we found out my dad had broken two ribs. They jangled when he laughed. For months, we heard "don't make me laugh!" whenever we were making a joke or spilling our milk or tripping down stairs. Even after his ribs had to have knitted together, he said it, a habit.
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