When you are all alone in the claustrophobic dark, it starts to feel like everyone else might be dead. That's the motherfuck about insomnia; it makes it so it is you alone with every rustling sound, and every creak and peck, until you ask yourself if it might be true, and everyone might be dead, including you. Of course, the bigger concern is how when you are alone -- in the claustrophobic dark, hearing every sound, seeing the back of your eyes -- if everyone is dead, then of course you are surrounded by ghosts.
God, I want a smoke.
This seemed like a good idea five minutes ago, when I was shifting blindly down the hall, wearing nothing but a t-shirt, moving ever so quietly so as not to wake the dead. Now, with the harsh lights of the monitor glaring in my face, it doesn't really seem like such a good idea, but it doesn't seem like such a bad one, either.
There is something about lying here on my stomach, illuminated only by the digital transmission, listening to the ghosts and the night sounds, that reminds me just a little bit of me. A different me; a louder me. Maybe a brighter me. Definitely a more reckless and dangerous me. I suppose I usually sleep through her now. Which must be good, I suppose, because being all alone in this claustrophobic dark feels a little like the onset of panic. Like you'll never sleep again, and you'll never see daylight, ever.
How grandly melodramatic, of course, but is amazing how time can rush by so fast and yet seem to stand so second-by-second still. It's like the opposite of how people in a moment of crisis say their lives rush before their eyes, all condensed into one lightening crack of nostalgia. This is the long, drawn-out trip down memory lane, where the headlights don't work, the car keeps breaking down, and you get carjacked by the last motherfucker on earth you ever wanted to see. This is the trip down memory lane that throws you right out the windshield, takes off the top of your head, and leaves you littered with fragments of glass. Oh. No, that was my brother's trip. I wonder what he saw in his lightening crack? Probably the dashboard.
That's what he got for being bright, and reckless, and dangerous.
This is what I get for lying awake and talking to ghosts.
God, I want a smoke.
This seemed like a good idea five minutes ago, when I was shifting blindly down the hall, wearing nothing but a t-shirt, moving ever so quietly so as not to wake the dead. Now, with the harsh lights of the monitor glaring in my face, it doesn't really seem like such a good idea, but it doesn't seem like such a bad one, either.
There is something about lying here on my stomach, illuminated only by the digital transmission, listening to the ghosts and the night sounds, that reminds me just a little bit of me. A different me; a louder me. Maybe a brighter me. Definitely a more reckless and dangerous me. I suppose I usually sleep through her now. Which must be good, I suppose, because being all alone in this claustrophobic dark feels a little like the onset of panic. Like you'll never sleep again, and you'll never see daylight, ever.
How grandly melodramatic, of course, but is amazing how time can rush by so fast and yet seem to stand so second-by-second still. It's like the opposite of how people in a moment of crisis say their lives rush before their eyes, all condensed into one lightening crack of nostalgia. This is the long, drawn-out trip down memory lane, where the headlights don't work, the car keeps breaking down, and you get carjacked by the last motherfucker on earth you ever wanted to see. This is the trip down memory lane that throws you right out the windshield, takes off the top of your head, and leaves you littered with fragments of glass. Oh. No, that was my brother's trip. I wonder what he saw in his lightening crack? Probably the dashboard.
That's what he got for being bright, and reckless, and dangerous.
This is what I get for lying awake and talking to ghosts.
For lulz, instead of reading this as a list of songs, try reading it aloud like you're a beat poet. Make sure to give yourself snaps at the end:
"I swallowed a dragonfly -- heartless bastards
Meds -- placebo
short stories with tragic endings -- from autumn to ashes
Lover don't have to -- bright eyes
the calendar hung itself -- bright eyes
no children -- mountain goats
rise up with fists -- jenny lewis
prevent this tragedy -- alkaline trio
the death of me -- city and colour"
Dig that groovy shit, baby.
"I swallowed a dragonfly -- heartless bastards
Meds -- placebo
short stories with tragic endings -- from autumn to ashes
Lover don't have to -- bright eyes
the calendar hung itself -- bright eyes
no children -- mountain goats
rise up with fists -- jenny lewis
prevent this tragedy -- alkaline trio
the death of me -- city and colour"
Dig that groovy shit, baby.
My fake Canadian friend told me I had two minutes to write a five sentence story.
It happened so fast, it was over before I even processed what was going on. Yet somehow I was thrown backward over a table, holding onto his blue striped polo with one hand and flinging the other one wildly about his face, screaming, "Get the fuck off me." Hands pulled, voices blurred, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the pool cue coming down on the back of his head. Blood sprayed into my mouth and eyes and he was off me. I convinced them to leave him beside the railroad tracks, instead of on them.
What's your five sentence story?
It happened so fast, it was over before I even processed what was going on. Yet somehow I was thrown backward over a table, holding onto his blue striped polo with one hand and flinging the other one wildly about his face, screaming, "Get the fuck off me." Hands pulled, voices blurred, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the pool cue coming down on the back of his head. Blood sprayed into my mouth and eyes and he was off me. I convinced them to leave him beside the railroad tracks, instead of on them.
What's your five sentence story?
One for posterity.
I didn't know what it meant to fall for them all.
It's always been that way, though.
Lucien with his Mien Kampf glare (all apologies to my girl Sylvia), spinning analogies three seats back about the relationships on stage -- painfully wrung out by foot-shuffling, hand-fretting, messy haired, chain-smoking, compound word cliched, junior college artistes -- and the movement on the western front in some obscure historical battle. You asshole. Pretentious now, idol worship worthy then, I would split the room in giggles so he could know, "I get you, man, I get you." A three piece suit, a briefcase, a natty pea coat, a scarf, a fedora, like he just walked into his separate-bed, no-toilet-having, pastel colored dream house and bellowed, "Honey, I'm home." An antiquated anomaly. Not the James Dean throw back found in rockabilly boys with their rat rods and shitty backroom ink blood blasted skin; a genuine rebel in a crew cut.
The idol worship became idle worship and then worship fell away completely. I don't know when the bloom fell off the rose, but it was somewhere around the time I recognized the limitlessness of his derision, and the cross hairs that surely included a point between my unmanicured brows. Sitting at a table of these criminally sub-par actors, beside a giant mural of french doors overlooking a colorful country garden, my eyes drifting across the acrylic brush-stroked tulips, I snapped. Words pooled out, full of all the righteous indignation only a sixteen year old could muster. Precise, low tones issued between teeth set in a line, with a tongue that hovered in prolonged fricatives, and the drawn-out sibilants implied in "seethe."
"You think you're so great." The 's' like a slow sweeping kick, the 'o' dipping like venom, "You're not so great." So beautifully clear. And the teenaged girl shed a burial shroud.
There was a lost minute where the grown man lapped up my lack of adulation, as I threw down a few dollars for the table and the time and dessert sitting uneaten on my plate, and I was out the door, the coffee still bitter on my breath. I licked it off my teeth, and for my victory it might have been blood.
Sometimes I think he must have been a spy. He doesn't seem to exist, or have ever existed. Except as he exists in a moment critical then and distorted now where I once again lost sight of the line between predator and victim.
We're all sparrows and vultures, ennit?
I didn't know what it meant to fall for them all.
It's always been that way, though.
Lucien with his Mien Kampf glare (all apologies to my girl Sylvia), spinning analogies three seats back about the relationships on stage -- painfully wrung out by foot-shuffling, hand-fretting, messy haired, chain-smoking, compound word cliched, junior college artistes -- and the movement on the western front in some obscure historical battle. You asshole. Pretentious now, idol worship worthy then, I would split the room in giggles so he could know, "I get you, man, I get you." A three piece suit, a briefcase, a natty pea coat, a scarf, a fedora, like he just walked into his separate-bed, no-toilet-having, pastel colored dream house and bellowed, "Honey, I'm home." An antiquated anomaly. Not the James Dean throw back found in rockabilly boys with their rat rods and shitty backroom ink blood blasted skin; a genuine rebel in a crew cut.
The idol worship became idle worship and then worship fell away completely. I don't know when the bloom fell off the rose, but it was somewhere around the time I recognized the limitlessness of his derision, and the cross hairs that surely included a point between my unmanicured brows. Sitting at a table of these criminally sub-par actors, beside a giant mural of french doors overlooking a colorful country garden, my eyes drifting across the acrylic brush-stroked tulips, I snapped. Words pooled out, full of all the righteous indignation only a sixteen year old could muster. Precise, low tones issued between teeth set in a line, with a tongue that hovered in prolonged fricatives, and the drawn-out sibilants implied in "seethe."
"You think you're so great." The 's' like a slow sweeping kick, the 'o' dipping like venom, "You're not so great." So beautifully clear. And the teenaged girl shed a burial shroud.
There was a lost minute where the grown man lapped up my lack of adulation, as I threw down a few dollars for the table and the time and dessert sitting uneaten on my plate, and I was out the door, the coffee still bitter on my breath. I licked it off my teeth, and for my victory it might have been blood.
Sometimes I think he must have been a spy. He doesn't seem to exist, or have ever existed. Except as he exists in a moment critical then and distorted now where I once again lost sight of the line between predator and victim.
We're all sparrows and vultures, ennit?
Crossing.
She stands midway through the overpass bike bath in that sort of cloudless yellow sky that oppresses late afternoon. Behind her, cars send a choppy wind across her back, and with the nonstop rush of tires on pavement -- if she closed her eyes -- she could imagine she was at the beach. He taught her that, once upon a time, on those nights when sleep was rattled by the sound of the freeway through her window. "Just picture the waves breaking the shore..." and it was true.
The fingers of her left hand, wrapped through the chain link, are going numb as she stares at the bisecting vehicles rushing by below. Right eye focuses and cars spill forth from her abdomen; left eye focuses and they painlessly crash into her. Unfocused eyes and she senses that she is conduit, and nothing is in the fiberglass metal cells but her own will and being. A vertigo of circulation courses through her, and she feels like every car, from every direction, sweeps her body back and forth with the velocity of transit, and again she is in the ocean.
She has never excelled in math. In college, she took Statistics for a 'Pass' -- too scared of the stacks of hieroglyphic numbers. Like a proper conscientious and educated women, she listens to her NPR, and it learns her well. Her Guardian and BBC news keep her fat on information and an unspoken hedonism in pretension. And so, in all, she knows a bit about statistics.
Left eye focuses, she breathes ten times, and estimates that twenty-five people have driven by wondering when they'll find a job. One wonders where he went. Fifteen wonder when they will love again. Eight wonder why s/he did it. Three wonder 'Who?' A breath and ten people sing; mariachi, pop, hip-hop. Two sing something they wouldn't want their friends to catch them singing. She blinks one eye and counts two and knows a rapist has passed between her legs. Ten people in poverty, eight in fear of deportation, and two on the run. Seventeen with unpaid library fees. Thirty-five with no library card. Twelve who cannot read. Twenty men thinking about sex, but not with their wives. Eight thinking about fucking, but not with their mistresses. A bead of sweat licks her, temple to chin, and some son cries about a lost mother. A muscle spasms in her leg, and some mother remembers the too-soon burial of her son. By the time she kicks off on her bike, someone who did not say "I love you," before work this morning will slide past her into an an unforeseen nightmare; an endless expanse of locked land. By the time her left foot hits the pedal, someone has broken her path who will say "I love you" before work someday, with no intention of coming home.
She admits to herself she doesn't know shit about statistics, but 100% wonders how anyone gets behind the wheel, with so much potential to breakdown.
She stands midway through the overpass bike bath in that sort of cloudless yellow sky that oppresses late afternoon. Behind her, cars send a choppy wind across her back, and with the nonstop rush of tires on pavement -- if she closed her eyes -- she could imagine she was at the beach. He taught her that, once upon a time, on those nights when sleep was rattled by the sound of the freeway through her window. "Just picture the waves breaking the shore..." and it was true.
The fingers of her left hand, wrapped through the chain link, are going numb as she stares at the bisecting vehicles rushing by below. Right eye focuses and cars spill forth from her abdomen; left eye focuses and they painlessly crash into her. Unfocused eyes and she senses that she is conduit, and nothing is in the fiberglass metal cells but her own will and being. A vertigo of circulation courses through her, and she feels like every car, from every direction, sweeps her body back and forth with the velocity of transit, and again she is in the ocean.
She has never excelled in math. In college, she took Statistics for a 'Pass' -- too scared of the stacks of hieroglyphic numbers. Like a proper conscientious and educated women, she listens to her NPR, and it learns her well. Her Guardian and BBC news keep her fat on information and an unspoken hedonism in pretension. And so, in all, she knows a bit about statistics.
Left eye focuses, she breathes ten times, and estimates that twenty-five people have driven by wondering when they'll find a job. One wonders where he went. Fifteen wonder when they will love again. Eight wonder why s/he did it. Three wonder 'Who?' A breath and ten people sing; mariachi, pop, hip-hop. Two sing something they wouldn't want their friends to catch them singing. She blinks one eye and counts two and knows a rapist has passed between her legs. Ten people in poverty, eight in fear of deportation, and two on the run. Seventeen with unpaid library fees. Thirty-five with no library card. Twelve who cannot read. Twenty men thinking about sex, but not with their wives. Eight thinking about fucking, but not with their mistresses. A bead of sweat licks her, temple to chin, and some son cries about a lost mother. A muscle spasms in her leg, and some mother remembers the too-soon burial of her son. By the time she kicks off on her bike, someone who did not say "I love you," before work this morning will slide past her into an an unforeseen nightmare; an endless expanse of locked land. By the time her left foot hits the pedal, someone has broken her path who will say "I love you" before work someday, with no intention of coming home.
She admits to herself she doesn't know shit about statistics, but 100% wonders how anyone gets behind the wheel, with so much potential to breakdown.
The first time you kissed me, it was frantic. You flew across the car and grabbed my face with your hands, twisted me toward you, and your mouth was on mine, hot and wet, and all over. I swerved slightly, caught off guard, and righted myself and my vehicle while something inside me dropped away, and something inside me exploded. I couldn't close my eyes for the fact of driving, and it was like everything sparkled: the green and red slick-shine shatters of light reflecting off the wet streets of Oak Park; the humid summer air. Gasping for breath, I broke back, dull halogen orange pulsing off the street lamps into my eyes.
"I'm fucking driving here!" The light turned red. "But now I'm not." We flew across the seats and locked fingers and lips and horns like charging rams.
Radiohead split the speakers and my head in the closing strains of "Let Down," where the sound twinkles like pixie dust in movies, but closer listening reveals millions of layered digital pings. Fairy dust as fractured digitalia. Fractured fairy dust for fucked up fairy tales, as the wolf crept in, desperate and hungry.
You kissed me like a caged animal, something feral and ferocious. You were hoping I could save you. You never kissed me like that again, and in the months ensuing I kissed you like an animal, wanting to consume you, wanting to claw back into that fairy tale moment, hide inside your belly and shift inside your skin. I wanted to try you on, because something about the beast made me feel more alive. Suddenly I was all nails on skin and wet streamers of damp hair, teeth and claws and roars. Oh my. You gave up after that initial animal kiss, and I became predatory. I kissed you like an animal, and you kissed me like a cage.
"I'm fucking driving here!" The light turned red. "But now I'm not." We flew across the seats and locked fingers and lips and horns like charging rams.
Radiohead split the speakers and my head in the closing strains of "Let Down," where the sound twinkles like pixie dust in movies, but closer listening reveals millions of layered digital pings. Fairy dust as fractured digitalia. Fractured fairy dust for fucked up fairy tales, as the wolf crept in, desperate and hungry.
You kissed me like a caged animal, something feral and ferocious. You were hoping I could save you. You never kissed me like that again, and in the months ensuing I kissed you like an animal, wanting to consume you, wanting to claw back into that fairy tale moment, hide inside your belly and shift inside your skin. I wanted to try you on, because something about the beast made me feel more alive. Suddenly I was all nails on skin and wet streamers of damp hair, teeth and claws and roars. Oh my. You gave up after that initial animal kiss, and I became predatory. I kissed you like an animal, and you kissed me like a cage.
I have nothing particularly interesting or relevant to say here, but I figured it was about time to post again.
I was trying to clean house earlier, but by the time I had gotten halfway done my roommate came though and undid everything I'd already done, so now I am eating cereal.
I did succeed in cleaning up my bedroom spic-span, and it looks rather lovely. I want to get new furniture for my room. I had a realization recently that having the same shitty particle board dresser I've had since I was eleven is rather ridiculous, even if I did slap a coat of paint over it once upon a time. I'm also tired of having my twin mattress on the floor. Other things I am tired of: Hello Kitty, unicorns, and cupcakes. I appreciate all the people who have contributed to these whims over the years, but people just keep buying this shit for me, and I no longer need to collect the same things as a fourteen year old girl*.
I think I want to rent a dumpster and just throw away everything I own and start over.
That being said, from the annals of my fourteen year old lifestyle:
We shaved that day.
Pimp slap hand is the new "West Coast" sign. Potato face is the new sneer. My hair is pink. Don't ask me how that happened.
I'm looking forward to prom.
This update is so fucking pointless.
I was trying to clean house earlier, but by the time I had gotten halfway done my roommate came though and undid everything I'd already done, so now I am eating cereal.
I did succeed in cleaning up my bedroom spic-span, and it looks rather lovely. I want to get new furniture for my room. I had a realization recently that having the same shitty particle board dresser I've had since I was eleven is rather ridiculous, even if I did slap a coat of paint over it once upon a time. I'm also tired of having my twin mattress on the floor. Other things I am tired of: Hello Kitty, unicorns, and cupcakes. I appreciate all the people who have contributed to these whims over the years, but people just keep buying this shit for me, and I no longer need to collect the same things as a fourteen year old girl*.
I think I want to rent a dumpster and just throw away everything I own and start over.
That being said, from the annals of my fourteen year old lifestyle:
We shaved that day.
Pimp slap hand is the new "West Coast" sign. Potato face is the new sneer. My hair is pink. Don't ask me how that happened.
I'm looking forward to prom.
This update is so fucking pointless.
JANUARY 2011
DECEMBER 2010
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NOVEMBER 2010
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