Pleasebesecret

2011-12-27T05:58:00.000-08:00

the rest of the world lives like this
partitioned
crumbling cement; enclosed

when pulling sweaters over heads
smelling of cigarettes
and hallways of food

unpaved roads and for once
it's above freezing

the mud and the water
smell of that day

riding bicycles through the storm
and drunk
the next morning

and i walk through the closing bazaar
warm beer in my plastic bag
white sheet metal, rusting

and the one thing i'd never thought
to show up in winter

persimmons
are everywhere
waiting to be bought

2011-10-22T13:41:00.000-07:00

a friend imagines
he's calling his mother
holidays, really
his language is fading
and each year
he says less

2011-10-02T12:23:00.000-07:00

how many films
should i watch before
i can

to call something
lynchian, the
searchlights

is seeing
through
the Kyivan
hotel window
enough

they then appear
like shafts
beneath a
swimming pool's
surface

Nostaliga

2011-07-01T12:51:00.000-07:00

Thanks Richard, I had almost forgotten.

27 months

2011-03-21T23:24:00.001-07:00

airing
that side;
reality

2011-01-27T23:42:00.000-08:00

basing the fullness of your glass
the sound of it filling in the dark
despite yourself
thirsty

2011-01-09T22:59:00.000-08:00

tracing the symbol for infinity
that small dip in your thigh
the smallest of ironies

2010-12-07T18:10:00.000-08:00

and this is integral:
would you qualify tights as socks or underwear?

2010-11-26T19:34:00.000-08:00

took me much longer than it should have to write a statement of aspiration for the PC, so painful to have to lay out goals.

still though, looking forward to navigating the Cyrillic alphabet. Look at this:

I'm so happy this is my future. I'm serious.
Given your choice of rashes.....

2010-11-04T23:36:00.001-07:00

A novel is really just a collection of details gussied up and false insights from the depths of your depression.

2010-10-27T22:19:00.001-07:00

Can't tell the wax from the wane.

Co-Eds

2010-08-29T02:03:00.001-07:00

Starched collars and
faux shock

2010-08-08T00:11:00.001-07:00

ok, man.
OK
ok
okok.

And also

2010-05-16T18:31:00.001-07:00

Writing a resume is very depressing as it seems like I've done very little with my life. Oh well, baby steps. I just have to remember that there are worse people in the world than me, although that might not be the right attitude. It just stinks of entitlement, doesn't it?

2010-04-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

now, there's always hope that no one walks into your abandoned lot, but inevitably someone will.

2010-04-11T18:21:00.001-07:00

i mean, if it's that dire, then definitely apply to the circus. i mean.

2010-04-03T19:56:00.001-07:00

And now for your daily dose of wtf:

"There's a difference between drama and melodrama; evoking genuine emotion, or manipulating emotion. It's a very fine eye-of-the-needle to thread. And it's very rare that it works. That's why I tend to dominate this particular genre. There is this fine line. And I do not verge into melodrama. It's all drama. I try to generate authentic emotional power. I write in a genre that was not defined by me. The examples were not set out by me. They were set out 2,000 years ago by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. They were called the Greek tragedies. A thriller is supposed to thrill. A horror novel is supposed to scare you. A mystery is supposed to keep you turning the pages, guessing 'whodunit?' A romance novel is supposed to make you escape into a fantasy of romance. What is the purpose of what I do? These are love stories. They went from (Greek tragedies), to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, then Jane Austen did it, put a new human twist on it. Hemingway did it with A Farewell to Arms. A Farewell to Arms, by Hemingway. Good stuff. That’s what I write. That’s what I write...There are no authors in my genre. No one is doing what I do."

--Nicholas sparks, author of such greats 'A Walk to Remember" and Whatever that Miley Cyrus Movie is Based on.

And if my parents hadn't pre-displaced me

2010-03-15T00:12:00.001-07:00

what then?

2010-03-15T00:10:00.002-07:00

I wonder if my fingers automatically knew how to flip up that catch above the cash when I worked with a real cash register.
(All I wanna do is)
(And now they've forgotten)

2010-03-15T00:10:00.001-07:00

If I were musician I'd sample every Clash song

When the protuberance of collarbones

2010-03-14T23:23:00.000-07:00

is all that is desired, the mailing of a letter is necessitated. The contemplation and the value of stamps, the distance they must travel. The search for that ending of the road, the whispering faintness of the lights from the city waving through heat and exhaust, the contemplation of the millions of bodies that must yearn and ache and achieve that highest physical pain, the bliss that comes from losing, from losing from losing from losing and retrospection. I am broken, broken, broken with the determination to move and move and ignore, to force to push to go and the sedentary weight of flesh and breath.

2010-02-03T23:53:00.000-08:00

wwwwwait, like five w's wait, how has it occurred that you should be happier than me? that there shouldn't be some kind of triple agent life, heard on the news and analyzed post scena, non ho capito non ho capito, i didn't understand said five five five times, the 'nt implying the present and a current understanding, the implying implying i don't.

2010-01-29T18:36:00.000-08:00

The idea of time and time that can't be stood.

2010-01-14T20:49:00.001-08:00

I long to lead a satisfied life.

2010-01-12T20:26:00.000-08:00

We're all very good looking.
We're all very much actors.
We wear skirts and pull them close beneath our bosoms.
Bowling balls.

I've started

2009-09-01T20:58:00.000-07:00

woodburning again. I've only done two little things so far--but it's fun.
Lookie:

It's from a photograph I took of the typewriter a while ago. I can't draw so I manipulate photos in photoshop and transfer them onto the wood with graphite paper and then burn them. The process would be a lot simpler if I had artistic talent but going through the motions is fun.

I did this last summer; it's a little paper box for my typewriter--blank ones on top and used ones on the bottom.

This:

2009-08-25T10:29:00.000-07:00

http://www.burdastyle.com/projects/my-duct-tape-dress-form

Is something that I really really want to do.

Living without Internet

2009-08-24T12:29:00.000-07:00

Isn't hard as free wi-fi is everywhere. It's an excuse to get out of the house, but a flawed one as I'm just moving from one bubble to another. But then there's the issue of money, of paying for convenience every month. I could do it, budget other things, but then there's that parking ticket beneath my windshield wiper this morning. I had half a mind to leave it there and drive off to the freeway, waiting for it to be whipped away. Instead I didn't hesitate pulling it out from beneath the wiper blades and only checked it briefly from behind the driver's wheel. For parking in a no parking zone from 7-10. What? I look up at the sign in front of me that I know clearly states in green that it's 2 hour parking from 8-6, and I'm well within the time frame, moving my car at 9:45. Up above it in sun bleached red letters that are hardly discernible from the grimy white background I make out a sign for street sweeping. It's hard to believe how unobservant I am, how I focus only on the glaringly obvious and ignore the unobtrusive that doesn't shout.

Moving

2009-08-23T20:38:00.000-07:00

Makes my soles black. Distraction doesn't come with solitude and so I stay in the laundromat watching the clothes spin by and listening to the conversations and crossing my arms over my chest. Happiness and change have never gone hand in hand, not directly anyway. There's always a delay. I enjoy crying in semi-public places.

2009-08-05T23:05:00.000-07:00

Obedience is comfort, and there's a certain rhetoric one can turn toward to affect something akin to profundity but it's a fraud and an excuse and everyone must have their hobbies, I know but I'm revolted.

Airports

2009-08-04T03:46:00.000-07:00

Watching planes come in, sat on the aisle seat from Newcastle this morning, first time. Slept.

The novelty of flying has worn off a little. I still love airplane food. I have developed an addiction to tea. My feet are bloody and the sneakers I bought brand new are worn and dirty and have acquired a particularly fantastic smell. I've worn sweaty clothes from the day before and in Italy I ran out of clean underwear because I refused to pay 10 euros for laundry.

Walked though the duty free perfume shop, testing. Woman walked up, sprayed herself with givenchy about four times and hurried to catch her flight.

Sitting in Starbucks, and listening to Milburn.

I've taken what must be a thousand pictures.

I've said goodbye to my family,
I don't know when I'll see them again.
Hopefully soon because I've realized so many things, and I'm getting my priorities in order.

I'm excited to see my sister when she comes home. I haven't seen her for over a year, and I miss her. I want to ride roller coasters with her and scream.

Things to look forward to:
coming home
san diego, sun, sea, everything else
new apartment
settling in and moving forward
moving forward
moving forward,
moving forward

goals:
writing a story on the plane
finishing up my moleskein

being frugal,
saving money
walking and eating vegetables
and smiling

London.

2009-07-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

Is a strange place. It's deceptively huge; the tube exists to transport you instantly to places the map makes seem far away, when really, you can walk. I have a horrible sense of direction. I keep trying to head toward the river, have a picture of its direction in my head to orient me, but I end up being somewhere completely off my charts. But have you ever seen the Thames? That thing is practically a zig zag, so maybe I should find something else to fix on.
I got here yesterday, after a five hour bus ride from Manchester. Got off the bus and tried to get a map. Map machine was broken. Wandered around till I found Victoria station, had some lunch and bought the map, bought tube tickets and determined my home station. When I got there I completely misinterpreted where everything was and circled the square for a few minutes until I found the right street. I spent the evening wandering around the city.
My first stop was Picadilly circus, and when I climbed the stairs I was met with a huge crowd gathered around a band, probably a college band, a French one apparently. They were huge, tons of flutes, tons of horns, saxaphones, two tuba guys, a trombone guy, two guys with drums dancing and dancing. And the crowd was loving it! They were playing mach ups of all kinds of songs, and at one point burst into that reggaton song that has the saxaphone interspersed with CULO!!
And for whatever reason standing there in the middle of everything I was completely overcome and burst into tears--to the CULO!! song of all things! It was amazing.
More wandering, ended up crossing the river and walking down by the globe and the tate modern and everything. I was sitting on the cement wall trying to take a picture of myself with the millenium bridge in the background, looked up and accidentally made eye contact with some weird guy who was walking past. Relief as he went up to the wall further down. And then I saw him out of the corner of my eye coming toward me--and I didn't even wait for him to say anything before sliding off the wall and walking away. Too wary at night and too obviously by myself to be polite.
I made my way back over the Thames via the Millenium bridge and ended up at St Paul's cathedral! It was lit up so I sat down to write. After a while got up to find the tub station (something that always involves walking around as new interesting things are spotted). Made it on, made the journey home, went to bed. Which was an experience.
I was so spoiled in the hostel in Edinburgh. It was in a wonderful old building and run by people from all over the world, young people who obviously spend most of their time traveling. The whole place was filled with paintings that previous guests had made of local sights and handmade signs for everything. Each room had a different theme and each bed labeled a subdivision. My room was the currency room and my bed was Rand! I still don't know which country that's from. Everyone was really nice and every corner was filled with something old and interesting.
Not this place. It's in a beautiful area of London, taking up quite a significant portion of old terraced houses--but there's no character in it at all. It's awful! The walls are all white and dirty with no pictures. A small attempt is made in the common room but that's it. To get to my room I have to go down two flights of stairs and five different doors. And the room itself is tiny, filled with bunk beds, one bank even three beds tall! They have curtains, and that's nice, but they're like boxes--mines practically a coffin, my head and feet press against the walls if I lie out straight.
As I was putting on my bedsheets I put the comforter and the pillow on the bunk above me so I could have a free workspace. I must have forgotten to take the pillow down because when I got back last night there was no pillow. Oh well.
Ugh, I'm tired and cold and in complaining mode so I'll make it quick. They're really strict and stingy here, no fun at all. I came home yesterday and sat on the step outside to find my keycard to get in. A man came up to me who had been pestering some other girls and asked if I lived there. Not knowing he was security I said no, so he asked me to leave. I cleared up the misunderstanding but I thought--my butt had hardly touched the ground before he told me to go. A little strict.
I woke up last night, well, I had hardly slept, to a woman shouting right outside the window. I don't know what she'd done but apparently they were kicking her out. She had to have a friend go back inside to get her belongings. The thing she kept repeating was "You have such a power trip, just because you are a security guard you think you can just do what you want!" and making sarcastic remarks and all kinds of things. They were telling her to be quiet, threatening with police. It went on for so long.
I fell asleep at the tate modern today for almost 15 minutes.
The point of this post was supopsed to be that I decided to take a walk while my laundry was in the wash....and ended up walking to St James on accident, getting on the tube and getting off at the wrong station because I thought it would be easier to walk the difference than change trains for one stop, and ended up in Picadilly again.
It's ok, got home and my stuff was still there. Which reminds me, I need to get it out of the dryer!

And also I went down this morning to rent a towel for the shower and they said they don't do that but they'd sell me one for five pounds. I dried myself with my tiny bodycloth. Fuck this place.
Not London though, just this place.

2009-07-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

running equals
legs and i
haven't got
a hand to
stand on

2009-06-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

I went through all the schoolwork I've saved over the past four years last night. It was really eerie to read someone solving and explaining logical equations in my handwriting, funny to read someone else writing a pretty competent in class final essay about the role of technology in the courtroom and how they changed each other throughout American history (oh, CAT)

Still, it's organized and all there, in a cardboard box marked HOME. All my Lit stuff is in a huge box of its own.

I've accumulated so many things and though I keep selling or donating possessions there are still so many that I deem necessary and can't let go of. It would be nice to let everything go, but then what would I sort through for hours when I'm alone?

2009-06-03T00:42:00.000-07:00

Sitting in a corner of Geisel trying to study; I look up and the corner's previous occupants had scribbled all over the cement wall. Things like "Look outside, it'll be ok" That's nice.
And then some people started talking about happiness, and then lots of people started thanking god for their happiness, and one went so far as to call happiness a man made construct, and wondered why we put it before god. And I found myself drawing an arrow and adding "and god isn't a man made construct?"

It took seeing my own handwriting on a concrete wall to finally realize this. Kind of a relief.

2009-04-29T22:45:00.000-07:00

my career as an actor
never took off
as
my face curves in
red bloated ways
when i cry
and now
everything is filmed
in high definition
and
have you seen
my skin?

there’s something about

2009-04-15T00:44:00.001-07:00

birds with their

mouths open

that catches

in my throat

that one for

instance I

found not in

the air but

the side of

a road--I

plucked it up

easily

with my four

fingers and

thumb held it

up above

just looking

I told my

self, mimicked

what I saw

how is it

that I can

let go so

easily?

coughing then

with feathers,

a whistling

beady sound

there's something about

2009-04-08T22:38:00.001-07:00

birds with their mouths open
that catches in my throat

the least I can hope for

2009-04-08T22:30:00.000-07:00

is that my hands do
not curl at odd
angles when
I die.

A Woman First

2009-03-30T21:20:00.000-07:00

Here's the film that I was working on for CAT 124, Animating the Community. The first or second week of class we were organized into groups of three and given a local veteran to interview. That weekend my group and I interviewed a married couple who had both served in the Marines. After a vague and hurried correspondence I found myself running around the student services center and the Gilman parking structure in clothes that were way too warm for the weather trying to give them directions to the room we'd found and set up our recording equipment in. Awkward flushed walk from the structure to the room and then two hours of talking with these incredibly nice people.
One of the goals of this class that I think it totally achieved was to change the students' perception of veterans. Toby and Felicia were not old, grizzled, or haunted--neither one of them had ever actually seen combat during their time in the marines. Our conversation that Saturday dealt mainly with their childhood.
While it may not look like much, a lot of work went into this film. A lot of paradigm shifts, what I started with bears no resemblance to the finished project. At least 83 'sentences', each traced over in ink three times, scanned into the computer, broken down into individual frames, layered each traced sentence above each other, saved three different files for each sentence, a slight shift in each of them, putting them together in rapid succession on a free trial version of movie software (this is discounting the three films I made with Windows movie maker, the quality of which was atrocious) each change had infinite repercussions, I lost count of how many times I started over from scratch. Don't get me started on the slow process of whittling two hours of audio down to three minutes.

I could go on, but, who cares?? It's over and I'm proud of what I've done.
This is the first animation I've ever made, if you watch it leave a comment and let me know what you think!

A Woman First from Jenny Alton on Vimeo.

2009-03-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

i want to search througs things i've written for the word
beautiful and hope that i don't find it
i'm determined now to never use it,
because i've decided there's nothing weaker

results to follow

ok so this blog says it three times excluding this post.

although now i think i've changed my mind a little
what thinkest thou?

2009-03-04T23:31:00.000-08:00

This man does not believe in god. He is sitting facing forward on a bus with a wicker basket at his feet and an umbrella held between his knees.
Inside the wicker basket you might expect to find a small dog with hair on its face, but there isn't. And it's not raining outside of the bus and it will not be for weeks.
A boy look at this man with guarded eyes because he finds umbrellas in the sunshine on a man suspicious. But this man doesn't notice.
This man's name is George Hamilton.
He is currently undergoing an experiment, performing one on himself, really. He is trying to change his handwriting He is also trying to stay awake at night for as long as he can.
He sits beneath a lightbulb housed within a Victorian stained glass shade.
It seems appropriate.

A return to something more familiar

2009-02-19T23:47:00.001-08:00

Not knowing where
to look is frightening
as most things have
signs that say
which end is the start
and which end is the end
so when they bleed
and repeat
that night you get more than
twelve hours of fitful sleep
pills that you took to aid a weight
and the noise
of voices
unloading
the dishwasher
through the wall
through unwashed fabric against your ear
you get used to it
but wake
and it’s gone
there’s absence
and running water
at the end of everything
walls are made clean
over and over
how many times before has this gone on
and how many times can something be layered
before air compounds
into an amalgamation of
past and fumes
and something
we can’t see forming
but it forms nonetheless
and look
they left the chairs that
force your gaze upward
they left those for us to look
into a ceiling that is
pipes and something I’ve always thought was asbestos
is it asbestos
that pushes through filters and into my lungs
that pushes through filters and onto my tongue
it pushes though I’m not resisting,
look.

There are lots of thing I want

2009-02-19T23:37:00.000-08:00

like time and water and drive. Though I'd settle for a good game of Uno. There's something about me that's always waiting, putting things aside anticipating the real thing.
I don't open my mouth in the company of people, I just smile and agree and think to myself "damn. I need to read more. I'll say something good next time." My fucking cheeks hurt.
I write late at night only hours before a due date, and never just for pleasure.
Oh my god, I never write for pleasure. What am I doing?
I can't take the things that should be slow slow, there's a certain lack of thought that's troubling.
I'm weary of the cobwebs and the jumble, with being vague and heavy.
I'm wondering how I could have let myself become so isolated.

2009-02-12T21:56:00.001-08:00

Work in progress... from Jenny Alton on Vimeo.

Yay! Crappy and super rough but this is the first time I've animated anything!

2009-02-04T23:24:00.001-08:00

RIP One Eyed Pete from Jenny Alton on Vimeo.

A Speech in Front of Children that Don’t Yet Understand in other words, Hypnotism

2009-02-04T21:38:00.000-08:00

A motivational speaker is someone who is willing to see themselves in the eyes of others. The only motivation they inspire is a desire to move as far away as possible.

It’s the body language that lets me know. I can see it in the way you sit rigid with your hands upon your knees. You’re not bored. There’s no whispering that fills the darkness, no laughter or the sound of shuffling legs trying to wake up. You are embarrassed and you cringe from me the only way you can with your legs crossed beneath you on a gymnasium floor.

Having an imagination and being well lit are the same things. A spotlight is no good if it shudders and it shakes, its purpose is not fulfilled if it lags behind my movements a second or two too late.

Because worse than unconscious pity is the air that rushes past me when an entire auditorium inhales with the hope that my disappearance from their view has signaled their release.

It’s no good to step back into light when the eyes that watch don’t want to see.

I used to be a clown you know, when I was younger.

I did birthday parties and church functions, the occasional Friday at office buildings, small attempts at boosting withering morale.

I moonlighted as a balloon twister at Chevy’s every other week, and I laughed along with the children when I ran rubber over their heads and made their fine hairs stand on end.

But I was young then, and dissatisfied. I’d been idealistic all my life; I had aspirations to travel and to write, I made things with my hands. It was my hands that led me to balloons, attracted to their resistance and their malleability.

One thing I’ve never been able to do is to tell a story without wandering too far.

Once when I was even younger it was someone’s birthday. They’d decorated a hall with streamers and with cake, the napkins matched the window treatments and in the corner stood a helium tank, an old one with chipped paint and sticky squares of peeling tape.

It was just as tall as I was then, so I stood on tiptoe and closed my mouth over the valve. I bit hard and dropped my heels back on the ground, pulling it down with me.

I breathed in the helium and exhaled it through my nose, reversing a technique I’d learnt through playing flute. I felt so heavy. I stumbled out of doors and, finding myself on a lawn, I spun around with arms outstretched until my back found the ground.

I lay staring up into the sky. It was blue and cloudless and it offered nothing I could focus on so I grabbed fistfuls of brittle grass that wouldn’t give and I screamed until the helium left me, my voice shrill and small and lost.

I don’t dance and I was never good at ventriloquism. I stand on stage and I speak to you. I have nothing in the way of gimmicks. There is no comedy routine or threat of audience participation.
For forty five minutes it’s me and the stage and the spotlight and you and I’m speaking.

For forty five minutes I walk head down with one foot in front of the other. It’s a good thing microphones exist, how else could my words be heard, the ones that I toss to the ground? I heap praise upon the shoddy PA systems of middle schools.

Because the sound of feedback is music you know, if you let it go on long enough. If you can touch that knot of bone at the top of your spine with the highest point of your head you can stand the shrillness, wait for it to pass. Because then comes a deeper noise, one that resonates even within itself and you feel the skin of your arms vibrating, separating delicately from your musculature, until it’s over and you’re standing in something that once meant you but doesn’t anymore.

Or sitting, really, you would be. With your legs crossed beneath you and your hands on your knees. The difference is there but it’s harder to tell in the dark when your attention is abstracted. You feel something different but it won’t be until you stand up and stretch your arms above your head that you recognize that difference.

Your fingertips can’t touch anything anymore.

And you’ll file outside with the rest of your class and you won’t blink in the sunlight but your eyes will sting as your pupils contract. It all makes you dizzy so you’ll fall to the ground and it feels like the most graceful movement that you’ve ever made.

Your back will find the grass before your head does and that knot of bone at the top of your spine will find it first of all. But above you there is nothing, no spotlight and no darkness to illustrate the difference.

There is only sky and you’ve never seen it before. You are so heavy but you are afraid so you grab the grass in fistfuls and you scream.

The noise that escapes is a high frequency wail and it will knit you back together.

This is what I’ve been trying to tell you.

he said this morning:

2009-02-04T21:36:00.003-08:00

“a time of new
politics has
arrived” and I
am pushing up
my cuticles
with fingernails
themselves not a tool
with one purpose
left sitting on
your bedroom floor

A Picture of Hands

2009-02-04T21:36:00.001-08:00

one is missing
when I push
the shutter down.
it’s a problem
because I’m trying
to show that
I use both
for this kind of thing.

Pretend Tension

2009-02-04T21:35:00.001-08:00

these don’t look
like red ants but
small things with legs
dragging
some huge part of
themselves behind,
insistent
on moving
forward
over me,
if I insist
on being stagnant,
here

On Mozart’s Turkish Finale

2009-02-04T21:34:00.000-08:00

hysteria
in the voices of
sopranos

horror
at the prospect of
a chorus

i'm living on a diet of cherrios and soy milk

2009-02-02T18:16:00.000-08:00

at least for now.

and coffee.

scratch that, then.

hi.
everything said

is somehow a
lie.

i hate rhyming

and i'm typing with one hand,
it gets rid of most

grammar

and sense.

fuck,

i'm tired.

and silent.

same thing

on mozart's turkish finale

2009-01-27T22:20:00.000-08:00

there's always that hint of hysteria
in the voices of sopranos
that sounds like horror
at the prospect of
blending in with the chorus

and it's that hysteria
that makes me smile
and lift my leg above my head
when i'm alone

2009-01-27T00:27:00.001-08:00

ac·knowl·edg·ing van·i·ty, Part 1 from Jenny Alton on Vimeo.

Two girls inside, looking out.

2009-01-15T00:05:00.000-08:00

at times i wish i smoked
when i see girls like that

the cigarette left burning
in the spaces between fingers

with wrists bent delicate
they bring their hands up to their mouths

and breathe
as if they only deign to

my fingertips smell
like kalamata olives

it makes me want to gag
sun comes too hot through the windows of this place

we had a tree when we were young
and we watched the olives fall

we hung rope from the branches
and arms above our heads we swung

2009-01-15T00:04:00.001-08:00

trepidation;
a false movement
on a stage made
clean before me,
spreading liquid paper.

2009-01-14T12:17:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wish I smoked, when I see girls sitting like that, their wrist bent at just that angle and the smoke trailing away in the wind. It’s a haughty disdain these girls have for their cigarettes, they leave them there burning and held delicate in the space between fingers before finally bringing them to their mouths and inhaling like they only deign to, looking up and to the side.

My fingertips smell like kalamata olives and I want to gag. The light is shining in through the windows of this place and it’s too hot for this time of year.

A motivational speaker is someone who is willing to make a fool of themselves on a stage. They only motivate in so far as the people watching want to be as far from them as possible.

well, 4 really,

2009-01-13T22:28:00.000-08:00

i'm in need of something radical
and i've found i just can't sit
still

'sall about the benjamins, baby

instead:this

2009-01-05T22:05:00.001-08:00

Melted my camera from Jenny Alton on Vimeo.

2009-01-05T19:55:00.001-08:00

there's a difference between writing and storytelling and the thing is that i used to be good at one but now both have gone to shit

and i can't speak anymore without stammering

i can't speak anymore and the tremor moves from my tongue
the sinew that connects with the gums
and makes my mouth move strange

i was supposed to have a speech impediment

i didn't

but i can't speak anymore without stammering
and that sinew trembles and sends echoes down my arm
and pools at the tips of my fingers
and they can't touch without bending
but they can't spread far

the main objective now is to be unabashed and to look with eyes that aren't
staring
off to the side

because before i'd persuade myself

i can lie if i want to and
that's what i'm good at

Ronald & the Fox

2008-12-15T01:11:00.000-08:00

Chapter One
Once upon a time there was a little prince named Ronald. Ronald was a handsome young man; his liquid brown eyes could rival the stare of the gentlest mother doe and his auburn hair set even the fairest maidens in the kingdom alight with envy.
He was unaware of his own allure and quite unwittingly destroyed the hearts of all his suitors, sending many a hopeful virgin to her death over his indifference.
Ronald also possessed a fierce and most peculiar aversion to anything white.
He refused his turnips at dinner and insisted that the milk brought before him at the breakfast table was turned a dark brown that very nearly matched his eyes through the addition of no less than three tablespoons of pure unsweetened cocoa powder, imported every other week from somewhere in South America.
This aversion had been apparent since his infancy, when only a few days old, he had been dressed in his christening gown and had cried till he was blue in the face. His worried nurse had hurried the screaming baby out of the cathedral and up to the nursery in the castle, where as soon as she stripped him of his ceremonial garb he lay silent at last.
The nurse for her part had more shrewdness than many thought, and she conducted a series of experiments to confirm her suspicion. She held in front of the infant Ronald a succession of toys and objects of varying color, and inevitably, when that toy or object was particularly pale in pigment the baby would scream his tiny lungs out until the offending item was removed from his sight.
His parents, the King and Queen, and all the unnamed Courtiers grew to think the child was some kind of demon; for who but the devil incarnate would be endowed with such beauty and an apparent repugnance for all things holy?
Ronald remained unconscious of his uncommon beauty due to the fact that the sight of his pale skin in the mirror drained the blood from his face in horror, a sight which, one can imagine, only increased his terror. The prince would often faint if he caught a glimpse of himself in any one of the highly polished surfaces that adorned the great halls of the castle. Consequently, the older Ronald grew the less one would see of a fine suit of armor or a magnificent gilded mirror—at least in the East Wing.
The Queen thought it absurd that a castle should be completely bereft of all finery for the sake of a child, and so it became positively glittering with rearranged silver while Ronald grew up in the East Wing with only his Nursey and the tapestries for company.

Chapter Two
It was on a particularly fine Wednesday when Ronald, staring out his window and carefully avoiding his visage in the double glazed pane, made the most important discovery of his life.
A figure was running across the lawn from the cathedral and as it set foot on the castle steps Ronald noted with surprise that it was in fact his Nursey carrying a struggling bundle. He leapt up from the cushioned window seat and threw open the heavy wooden doors of his bedroom.
Ronald dashed through the hallway and met Nursey on the massive staircase. He realized suddenly that the bundle she carried was a bawling baby—he froze on the first step in shock.
“Nursey, what—" Ronald began but Nursey had already bustled past him, too preoccupied with the screaming babe to pay him any notice. She pulled on the polished brass handles of Ronald’s bedroom door with her left hand, and the baby cradled in the crook of her right arm gave forth a great wail with renewed vigor.
Confused, Ronald followed Nursey through the door and kept silent as she placed the screaming child on the dressing table. He recognized the look on Nursey’s face and knew better than to bother her when she was in one of her moods, if he wanted to avoid a severe tongue lashing that is.
He settled into a nearby rocking chair and held his tongue as Nursey unceremoniously stripped the child of his clothes, tossing the white gown, bonnet and socks in a pile on the floor.
The baby calmed as he was undressed. Once he was completely free of his burden he lay still, save for the wiggling of his tiny toes.
Nursey stood watching the baby with pursed lips, and Ronald was still certain that any interruption would be met with not a small amount of choice words, but the curiosity was unbearable. He took a breath to speak and Nursey thrust a delicate porcelain rattle into the baby’s line of vision. The ensuing scream drowned out any question Ronald might have asked.
Nursey held the thing in front of the screaming child until his breath gave out and he began to choke, pathetic rattling and high pitched phlegm. She tossed the rattle aside then, missing the pile of white garments. The finely wrought china splintered into pieces that sprayed out over the cold marble floor.
“Really,” Ronald gasped in protest, staring at the mess, but Nursey was intent upon the baby that was now laughing wildly as it clutched a small stuffed fox to its chest.
“Right.” Suddenly businesslike, Nursey retrieved a handsome blue swaddling gown from the dresser’s highest drawer and had the baby dressed again in a trice
“Nursey, what on Earth is all this about?” Ronald cried—very nearly shouted—but Nursey had already scooped up the babbling baby and bustled out into the hallway. Ronald ran after her, angry now, how rude she was, not even an apologetic sigh or nod in his direction to acknowledge her abhorrent behavior! Normally he allowed his Nursey the occasional lapse in propriety—she was after all his only real companion—but something about this whole affair had set him on edge.
By the time he reached the top of the staircase Nursey was already out of sight. As quickly as the heat of anger had flared up within him it dissipated, leaving Ronald feeling only slightly put out and no longer overwhelmingly curious. He would rather not venture down the staircase and into the heart of the castle where he would have to keep his eyes trained on the brilliantly woven carpet that marked his only safe path through the polished silver and other highly reflective materials that were crammed stylishly into every corner. Even the marble floors were waxed to a glossy shine.
Instead he turned slowly on his heel and headed back toward his bedroom, pulling the doors shut behind him. The cool wrought iron of the handle touched his hand and Ronald’s eyes widened. They raked over the carpeted floor, but the pile of white clothes and the sparkling shards of the rattle were nowhere in sight. The mere memory of the pristine linen made him sick, and the room began to shimmer and dance before him as he struggled to push the image from his mind. He turned to rest his forehead against the smooth grain of the door and closed his eyes.
When they opened he was staring at the dull door handle, still clutched firmly in his clammy grasp.

Chapter Three
Ronald let go slowly. The skin on his fingers stuck to the metal and it made a peeling sound. With his eyes on the floor he stumbled back over to the window and sat down hard. Assuming a position with which he was well acquainted, he held his head between his legs, the insides of his knees lining up with his temples. Sitting in such a position would relieve his frequent nausea, and it almost always afforded some small clarity.
With his head so low to the ground it was obvious to Ronald what had just occurred. He had, without a doubt, witnessed the day his peculiar affliction had been discovered. He sighed, and his breath stirred up dust from the carpet. The particles moved slowly in the sunlight, out of focus and too close to his face to be properly seen.
The bout of nausea passed, and he righted himself, turning again to the window. Ronald had never noticed how brightly the sun shone off the lake, nor how vivid the contrast between the greens and reds of the rose garden. A forest bordered the castle grounds and behind the towering trees Ronald could feel it teeming with life; twitching, agitated, and overstocked.
He had never participated in any of the royal hunts; even the brassy sound of the trumpets covered his pale skin in a thin sheen of sweat simply picturing their polished shine. How cowardly though, to avoid a forest. If ever there were a place for someone such as Ronald to seek solace it would be between the dull bark and spongy mould of a forest floor.
A cold pressure behind his eyes and they snapped to the edge of the trees where the shadow of the forest melted into sunlight. A quick flash of beady yellow and then red caught his gaze and bolted, the white tip of a tail visible briefly in the dark.
This was it, a perfect invitation. Bounding up from his window seat Ronald didn’t even bother to snatch his coat from the hook on the door of his armoire, where it had hung patiently waiting for the day it would be used. He threw open his bedroom doors once again, paying no attention to their color or reflectivity and ran down the staircase, his eyes shining in anticipation. No one in the dining hall noticed his clattering and slamming as they were all preoccupied with the bolts of silk the importer had come to show. The table linens needed refreshing.
In his hurry Ronald forgot to pull the heavy wooden doors of the castle shut behind him. He leapt down the steps and scanned the forest for the spot where the animal had vanished, found it and ran for it. He was still so small that he didn’t need to duck beneath low hanging branches. The cold air of the forest enveloped him immediately, it was harsher than he expected but it didn’t slow him down. He would find that fox if he could, all by himself and without the aid of hound or horn. He imagined the look on the Court’s collective face when he returned with the rich pelt set at an angle around his shoulders, the fox biting its own tail in an attempt to hold on.
What he didn’t think about was the technical aspect of killing and skinning a living thing, nor how to preserve an animal’s fluid beauty or the finer points of detangling rusty fur made dark and matted with blood.
Not even when he was stopped short, was nearly decapitated by an intertwining of branches hung at the level of his collar bones, was face to face with the gleaming yellow eyes of the fox did he remove himself from his triumphant fantasy and face the face before him.

Chapter Four
Reality always seeps in slowly. The faces in his mind were blurred and they left arcs of light suspended in the wake of their slow movements. They were smiling though, and Ronald could look up and see the sky. The shining point of the sun shone white and it waved back and forth, it grew. Ronald felt nauseous as the world around him spun but he did not look away. His head followed from side to side, flicking, agitated, his shoulders seizing up and twitching down, one after the other. And everyone was muttering in approval, his rattle shattered on the floor and the heavy weight around his neck laughed through its teeth, the hollow hacking muffled by a mouthful of white fur.
Ronald felt the pressure from behind his eyes. They wrapped their sight around the point of light and it was white bobbing in the darkness, the waving tail of a fox, and his fantasy broke and Ronald stood rigid and still, staring into the eyes two inches from his face.
His clothing clung to his skin, damp, and in his shocked state with the acquisition of his desire so near at hand he could only think of the forest as a barricade of trees and was glad for the stillness in the air.
Ronald raised his right arm with the slow confidence of a child who passes time in isolation and knows himself too well, heavy but not hesitant. His fingers worked their way into the thick fur and felt the loose skin at the back of the neck. He gathered it up with a rolling motion in his knuckles and tightened his hand. He plucked the fox from the intertwining of branches and held it at arm’s length where it dangled, acquiescent.
And it was like this that Ronald carried the fox through the forest with his gaze trained not on the ground before him but on the white tail of the fox hanging at eye level, unmoving. Time didn’t hold over Ronald any sway, the forest was dark and his feet found their way without him.
But gradually his arm grew tired and the strain in his locked elbow throbbed for relief. His steps became lopsided and his body leaned to the left; the dark of the forest was lifting and his eyes stung and watered staring at the color growing clearer before him.
When his feet found grass and sunlight the rest of his body was broken, aching but he was staring still, determined not to look away.

Chapter Five
If their attention had been trained on the dusty velvet hanging from the mullioned widows and not on the draper’s silken tablecloths, the eyes of the Court would have strayed from the fabric and traveled outside. As it was, they didn’t see the miniscule figure emerge from the forest and limp its way toward the castle. They didn’t see the way it shuffled its feet with its knees hardly bent or the way its right arm trembled violently. They didn’t see that the arm was held high and rigid, that a fox was hanging from its fist, alive but without fight. And of course they didn’t see that it was Ronald who had caught this prize with its shining coat, this thing that had eluded casual hunters despite their cavalry and wealth.
Slowly Ronald moved toward the castle. His feet dragged along the ground and they left trenches of flattened grass behind him. He staggered up the steps, staring, and entered through the open door. The ceiling was high above him and sunlight poured through the clerestory windows in shafts. It looked like so many arrows pointing at an angle to the dining hall and Ronald followed.
Distracted as they were the Court didn’t hear Ronald’s slow footsteps echoing behind them, rhythmic and constant. It wasn’t until they were muffled by the carpet that ran the length of the hall did the Court notice anything, and then it was just a strange absence, something they didn’t care to put their fingers on. The draper continued with his presentation. Ronald reached the foot of the table and stopped.
He stood. The tail of the fox brushed the table and was mirrored in the polish of the wood. Slowly, lazily, it swung back and forth as if tickling its own reflection. Ronald stood with his arm outstretched for a moment longer before he lowered it, and gently the fox crumpled, folded, and lay in a pile on the table.
With one eye still trained on the twitching tail of the fox Ronald took in his surroundings. No one was looking at him. The fox’s eyes were yellow, shining and alert. Its ears twitched periodically, out of time with the swishing of his tail. The fox’s nose was wet and Ronald could see small bumps like tiny black cobblestones. Ronald bent down to kiss it.
Too engrossed and well at ease the Court didn’t hear the sound of bones breaking. It was a hollow sound, cavernous in a small way, the fox’s muzzle caving in to Ronald’s lower jaw.
Like pearls the fox’s teeth slid easily down Ronald’s throat. He plucked them out of their root beds with a flick of his tongue and titled his head back for each one, swallowing. Snapping its neck was unnecessary, vulgar, so he treated each vertebrae the same; a small sucking sound and the tilt of his head.
It was a slow process, though the animal was small. Ronald disliked the way the fox’s skin stretched and snapped, the sticky peeling sound when sinew separated from muscle and bone. So he kept his head close to the body and he kept his jaws working slowly, cutting with teeth that were used to softer meats and breads and cakes as best he could.
If at any point during Ronald’s consumption of the fox the Court had turned around and watched it is unsure if they would have been disgusted or fascinated. More likely they would have been at least appreciative of the laborious way in which he ate, the tidiness and the art of it. But it’s true too that Ronald lacked a certain artifice, and though his way was slow and careful it wasn’t practiced and he made no use of silverware or table linens.
He kept eating. He was only halfway connected to the small sounds he was making, to the warm reds and purples that crossed over his tongue and remained in the gaps between his teeth. In between mouthfuls he was smiling and his jaws hurt.
The fur was the most difficult part. It never came off in pieces or chunks, but the individual russet hairs all seemed to separate and float around his head before falling to the ground. Ronald never let them reach the floor though, and half of his time was spent with his tongue out, catching the falling hairs like snowflakes.
He reached the ribcage with all the organs nestled comfortably inside, purple and swollen and glistening. They went down easy, slippery as they were. Ronald was thinking of the time he’d spent in his bedroom, looking out the window. He was thinking of the forest and the way he used to watch the hunters enter it with all their fanfare and the barking of their dogs, and how they left it again with the dead animals dragged on pieces of oilcloth. Huge ones too with antlers that must have put up a fight. And yet they had carried with them an air of dejection and Ronald realized now without surprise that the elk and deer, despite their heads being mounted on the wall in hundreds, had been incidental shots, had been in the way as the hunters followed the hounds in search of the fox.
He contemplated this and only halfway heard the delicate snapping of the fox’s thin legs. It was a distracted chewing. He thought of the way that the hunters and the processions were the only things he’d ever seen outside his window until today and he thought of how he’d seen himself as a baby cry. He didn’t resent the Court and his parents, not really, but he wished halfheartedly that they would turn around and pay attention.
The tail of the fox moved slowly upward as Ronald chewed it absently. The thick fur muffled the sound of bones breaking and instead only a small crunching could be heard. Of course it wasn’t heard, not in any real sense of the word. And then silence.
Ronald stood, staring at the Court’s back. He heard them murmuring in approval, could hear the swish of the cloth as they passed it through their fingers, could smell the acidic sweetness of the wine they drank floating miniscule in the air. He could see something out of the corner of his eye. He reached up and brushed his lips. A few white strands of fur were all that remained of the fox.
Ronald held them close to his face between his thumb and his forefinger. He looked at them for a moment with his head cocked to the side before shrugging. He turned on his heel and left the dining hall, the white strands of fur abandoned on the floor.

Rhizome

2008-12-15T01:09:00.000-08:00

When the patrol truck drove by with its red and its yellow white the tide had been out for at least an hour and the sand was crusty, baking in the sun and trading dark water for salt. Now only the pattern of the tread is left, thinner than sugar glass, and Felix Jones is stepping on it with his bare feet. He likes the feel of sand breaking beneath his toes so he smiles to himself and walks with deliberation.
This is a new beach for Felix, the nicest one he’s ever been to, but the dunes and the hotel bungalows remind him more of the east coast than southern California. He imagines sun bleached posts of wood propped up at an angle, buried beneath a thick drift of snow and he laughs. His sister, walking next to him on the concrete that leads from the lifeguard tower to the bathrooms, doesn’t bother looking. Felix is always doing that, laughing at something only he can see.
They rest their boards beneath showerheads and Felix watches the water make its way through the old wax, beading and then running in rivulets over the surface like an aerial photograph. He peels out of his wetsuit, hopping first on one leg and then the other, leaving the whole thing turned inside out, and shivers. The summer is over. A huge bank of clouds obscures the land that curves inwards, lining the bay. They are stiff and well formed, as if there’s no wind to change them, like they’re hovering over the peaks of mountains, waiting for the cooler air of night before they descend into a valley. Felix can make out streetlights through the mist.
The sound of flushing toilets echoes against the cinderblock walls and leaks through the gaps in the ceiling where the last light of the sky falls in. Sand makes a scuffling sound when it’s rolled between cement and sandals. And in the center of the crowded walkway a boy is standing with his arms folded across his chest and his left eye squeezed shut. He’s wearing a sweatshirt and shorts; his feet are dirty and bare. His back is to the restroom doors and his front is facing Felix, but his head is turned to the right and protruding from the corner of his mouth as if he doesn’t notice is a piece of beach grass—it must be longer than his arm.
It doesn’t hang or droop, it doesn’t move with the breeze, it doesn’t even quiver with his breathing or his heartbeat; his teeth are clenched too tight and little kids who stand like that have hearts that buzz like hummingbirds and their whole bodies vibrate imperceptibly. At least that’s what Felix thinks.
He remembers the boys when he was young, the ones who waited for him, leaning against the dust and the fence posts with their arms folded across their chests chewing stalks of wheat. Tough boys who waited against fence posts to hit Felix when he walked past. They had tried their hardest to look formidable and contemplative, to emulate an idea they’d heard of somewhere. Compared to this boy their posture now seemed comical, pathetic.
He stares.
The people move around the boy, parting without comment. No mother comes to claim him, and Felix keeps on walking. His head pivots as he goes though, smoothly like on castors. His eyes dart from the grass to the boy’s face. It’s solemn in the way only a child’s face can be; a soft furrow fills the space between his eyebrows and his gaze is trained on something that Felix can’t quite see. He tries. He looks from point A to point B but meets nothing in between or at the end. He can’t see it. He’s moving farther away and that stalk of beach grass is longer than his arm why isn’t he chewing it? If not to aid in contemplation what good is a stalk of anything?
He’s inside and he’s angry, looking up at the ceiling while he pees. It stings too hot and he has goose bumps. He shivers. He unzips the pocket of his shorts and feels inside for the car key. He holds it in his hands, twirls it around between two fingers and walks outside. The boy is gone.
Felix stands on the sidewalk and looks for the retreating back of a mother holding onto the boy’s arm, he imagines by the elbow. The boy would turn around and stare at Felix, a thoughtful glare, and the bushy end of the beach grass would remain perfectly still as he used his unfettered hand to point, to direct his attention. But this doesn’t happen and the people pass him by on either side without comment. His sister is waiting by the boards.
Did you see that? Felix asks and she responds No, what? with her thumbs hooked beneath her armpits.
That kid, standing there in the middle of everything.
No.
You must have done, he was standing there like some kind of cowboy with the biggest piece of grass between his teeth. It must have stuck out at least two feet in front of him.
I wasn’t paying attention. It’s cold, let’s go.
It was weird. The weirdest thing.
Yeah, ok, let’s go.
The boardwalk is cement lined with rocks piled high. Felix looks down and sees beach grass growing through the cracks. It’s brushing his knees as he walks past. He looks up across the sand and to the water, but the dunes are held together on one side with the tall feathery stalks and they sway in the light wind.
On the edges of the freeway giant clumps of beach grass grow. In the center divide they push out from the gaps where asphalt and concrete meet. He’s never seen them there before. He watches his reflection in the glass and the clumps are almost a blur; the dashed lines forming something semi solid when he pushes his foot down harder.
Off the freeway and onto slower roads the way is silent, broken only by the clicking of his turn signals and the sound of the steering wheel against his skin as he feeds it through his hands. He’s on autopilot through the dusk and his car turns onto his street sooner than he would have thought. He looks to the right for his driveway and sees instead a clump of beach grass framed by smaller shrubs and planted with purpose in the small strip between the sidewalk and the street.
How could he not have noticed it before? The white ends are huge and stand out against the darkening air.

Felix’s face is close to the speckled bathroom mirror and he can see his reflection doubled in his glasses. His fingers move swiftly and he knots his tie. He stares. He wonders what he would look like with a piece of beach grass stuck in between his teeth, and steps back immediately to allow the long stalk room. He narrows his eyes, looking. It’s not really the same. His arms are folded across his chest but he’s leaning back, posing against the air behind him. Disgusting. He shakes his head; he tries too hard. It may as well be wheat.
There’s a line on the carpet in the hallway of his office, worn masking tape that’s shiny all over and scuffed on one side. Pieces of it are torn away by shoes and it leaves the fibers glued together and colored black. Normally a nurse takes care of these preliminaries but she’s been on her lunch break for a little too long and there are too many patients waiting in the room behind the door.
Standing behind the line taped to the carpet a girl covers first one eye and then the other as she reads from the Snellen chart.
All right, now cover your left eye, good. Now the right eye, good.
He is screaming in tandem behind his speaking voice.
He watches her face as she goes down the lines, all confidence and speed, then falters when she realizes what she’s just read doesn’t have the same rhythm it did 30 seconds before. He can see her pupils shrink and he smiles at her and leads her into his office for further examination.
All right, that’s fine. If you’d follow me, please.
And then he sees the beach grass. His body tenses and stops without his consent. God they’re huge, and they brush the ceiling, waving next to the air conditioner like that. The girl shifts uncomfortably behind him, unsure of where to look; she didn’t think her sight was that bad. He hears her fidgeting and suddenly the stalks are gone, just macramé hanging baskets filled with wilting ferns. Felix shakes his head and moves forward.

He can see the beach grass now. It’s there in his front yard and it’s there peeking out from the side of the road, but he can see it through the windows of every store front—constant woven baskets feature sparse arrangements of the lifeless stalks. It annoys him and he walks faster, his shoulders migrating toward his ears, his fists swinging stiffly at his sides. He can feel something laying down its roots; someone is tying a yardstick to his spine. What did that boy see that Felix didn’t?
A waist high vase contains a display of peacock feathers in the foyer of his sister’s house and Felix nearly falls over stepping backwards off the threshold when in an instant he sees the beach grass waving. He apologizes and goes home early claiming sickness and his sister doesn’t argue.

He stands before his mirror every morning, but the Felix who looks back at him seems comical, pretending. That boy saw something Felix couldn’t, something he isn’t capable of. He chews in agitation and the stalk waves up and down. He doesn’t look the same. He wants to hit something.

He imagines stalks of beach grass protruding from the corners of the mouths he talks to. His patients sit in the examination chair and Felix’s eyes flit between their records and the space between the chin and the shoulder, where the bushy end of the grass should be. Since the beach grass appeared Felix has discovered that there are five types of people in this world. There are those who keep their distance and chew on their beach grass absently, silently. The bushy end waves up and down lazily with each mastication. There are those who stand too close to him, who ignore the stalk of beach grass in their mouths and gesticulate wildly, the beach grass hitting Felix’s face and making him twitch and close his eyes and back away. He passes people on the street, their jaws working furiously, the grass waving up and down, the feverish arc slowed and bent by uncooperative air. They’re looking for something too. And then there are most people, those who let the beach grass fall immediately. They keep on talking and there’s nothing for the stalk to hold on to and it slips limply from between their lips and remains on the ground. They never even noticed it.
His patients reach the end of the chart and shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other because Felix is staring at the space between their chin and their shoulder and he is silent. They leave their hand over one eye protectively and the other makes small jerky movements, studying his face and they make a mental note to look for another optometrist who doesn’t have a lazy eye and a staring problem.

Felix is exhausted.

He stands with his back against the corner of the elevator and closes his eyes to shut out the faint music seeping through hidden speakers. Breathing in he stretches his neck, resting the crown of his head in the space where two walls meet. Breathing out he opens his eyes and sees a reflection of himself in the mirrored ceiling and he’s staring up and down at once.
He’s descending into a mine shaft in his tired suit and his shiny shoes, watching the light grow small and to a point. He’s on his stomach peering over the edge, watching the chains and pulleys rattle, watching his own face grow dark and far away. His fingers grip the carved out corner; there is dirt beneath his fin gernails. He wishes this building had a basement, offices underground. Even a lower level parking garage would ease his mind, knowing something was down there for him, waiting.
With a shudder the elevator stops and opens its doors. The light from the lobby creeps in with sluggish steps and it has the aura of a chandelier, mood lighting. He imagines someone clapping twice and everything going dim. He tries to laugh a little but it echoes empty.
A floor burnisher is abandoned and silent, its long cord winding across the ground and pooling around the socket behind the reception desk. The janitor is leaning back in his chair, napping with his arms crossed over his gut and his mouth agape, a piece of beach grass dangling, holding on with everything it has.
Felix moves across the floor toward the desk. He stands there with his arms at his side, watching. The white feathered end of the stalk shivers and floats with each breath. He stares.
The janitor’s tongue catches on the roof of his mouth and a sudden snore escapes. It echoes through the dim lobby and his head shoots up, eyes half open. He sees Felix standing across the desk and his jaws clench protectively around his grass and it springs to horizontal attention. A cursory nod in Felix’s direction. He adjusts his belt and hurries over to the machine, keys jangling. Felix watches. The sound of the burnisher is loud and enveloping. The beach grass moves up and down as the janitor chews.
Felix leaves a handprint on the glass door when he leaves.
The air is gray and cold but nothing is visible when he breathes out.

The drive to his sister’s house is filled with streetlights that come from nowhere and spill their conical orange over sidewalks and spider webs and clump after clump of beach grass. He sees them.
She opens the door when he knocks.
They don’t have basements in California. They don’t have tornadoes; they have earthquakes and brush fires. They don’t know how to let fields lie fallow, they build houses above pockets of water underground and drain them and are surprised when they collapse and everything is hollow and broken. The garages come attached or semi attached and I can’t tell the difference. They named a city Cave City because it sits on top of the California Caverns, that’s all they could come up with. It’s true, look it up. Mark Twain went there, and John Muir wrote about them in a book about mountains. It’s true, look it up. They’re happy to eat fruit for breakfast.
But you eat fruit for breakfast.
I know.

He told off the nurse for taking too long. She showed up today with the smallest microwave Felix has ever seen and now she sits at her desk and eats, ignoring Felix, her stalk of beach grass abandoned at her feet. She takes care of the patients when they walk through the door and Felix waits behind his until he is needed.
He hears the nurse run through the motions in the hallway, right eye please Billy, left eye now, brilliant, and then the scuffle of feet and the opening of a door and the air leaving the plastic seat cushion as it’s sat on and the metallic pull of machinery and the door closing and the nurse walking back to where she sits. So he stands up and avoids the walls and puts his hands inside his pockets out of his pockets pulls his white coat down buttons it unbuttons it and opens his door and cracks his neck looks up walks reaches and grabs the chart from the plastic folder on the door glances at it knocks with the second knuckle of two fingers then enters.
Billy Marram looks like a fly with his face covered by the phoropter. The machine extends absurdly on either side of his head, three lenses for each eye. The rounded triangle of his visible face allows for a freckled nose and a small empty mouth. Felix glances down; the beach grass is balanced, caught almost purposely on the shoelace of the boy’s sneaker. His body is small and his feet dangle inches above the ground, knees scraped and bony and pink.
Felix goes through the motions, twisting dials and asking questions that Billy answers with single words.
His vision is fine.
It’s perfect, no leads or lags, no phorias or vergences. Felix frowns and looks down at the chart again. No, the boy had read two different sequences out loud to the nurse; his right eye had seen something else in the diminishing lines. Felix wishes parents would impress upon their children the importance of telling the truth and not wasting a doctor’s time. He wants to hit something.
He breathes in, annoyed, and turns toward the empty chair to the right of the machine where a mother should be sitting.
He breathes out, slowly, and turns back to face Billy.
Six eyes stare back at him, and in between he watches as a soft furrow takes shape.
He reaches out his hand and stands up. He reaches out both hands and he takes hold of the machine on either side. He moves it away from the boy’s face.
Without looking at Felix the boy reaches down for the piece of beach grass that is waiting on top of his sneaker. He hops down from the chair and places it in his mouth.

Some more papers from all over the place

2008-12-10T21:25:00.000-08:00

Notes from when I was still taking a Greek tragedy class.

At the air condition lounge the bar is an orange plastic with lights shining through.

Something silly over coffee.

The only time I've had nice handwriting.

the moral of the story:

2008-12-02T23:44:00.001-08:00

please light my head on fire.

I want to do more

2008-11-19T10:37:00.000-08:00

because most of the pages are blank and spidery words lend themselves to crap drawings and a trash can full of them, them and tissues and things that should be recycled or saved, fished up and smoothed out folded and locked in an airtight container with no label so I can't remember which and in the process of something else the things leak out and spread from beneath my bed on top of my shelves and that thing that hangs from the ceiling with its spikes it could fall and lodge itself in my head I wish it would and I would wear it like a pompadour and my hair is hot in the sun the wood would catch and there would be the burning smell I love for just a while.

Some Papers

2008-09-10T01:32:00.000-07:00

Although now I think I'd prefer "and drivers will clutch their wheels in horror".

Is this supposed to be a written blog?

2008-09-07T01:49:00.000-07:00

'Cause lately I can't tell.

Our Specialty

2008-09-03T02:01:00.001-07:00

Evening to Mid-Day

2008-09-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

It took about three minutes to fill the rest of the tank. Me in the passenger seat and he leaning against the window with his arms folded across his chest. Denim pressed into folds and flattened, I looked at it through the glass like something in a museum. Three taps against the rim to shake off any grasping drops and then the clicking noise of the gas cap as he screwed it back into place, with maybe a little more force than needed. And then close air pressing against eardrums when the door shut, the silence of a space encapsulated.
We didn't speak as we drove past the links of straw wrapped in netting that lined the edges of the hills, staked down to keep water and dirt from running slippery into the road. Me in the passenger seat looking through the glass at the clash of charcoal and chlorophyll, he behind the wheel looking forward, unconcerned.
The silence of the radio as it drifted between stations.

Yeah!

2008-09-01T23:39:00.000-07:00

Summer

2008-08-25T00:12:00.000-07:00

I haven't really written anything of consequence recently, but I have been messing around a lot with my (relatively) new typewriter and have acquired a hankering for hand sewn notebooks and my handwriting if I'm going slow. I've mainly been doodling/writing before bed/right after I try to sleep and it doesn't work. Here are a few of the things I've done (just so I can feel like I haven't completely wasted my summer, an empty blog?? For shame)in reverse chronological order.

The text on this one is blurred because it's less important than my cool doodle.

I went to Michael's and bought a lot of wooden things to burn with my baby soldering iron. This is the design on the box I'm using to keep hold of paper.

My second hand sewn (and then ductaped) notebook. I have a ton of paper that I've saved from old school notebooks; I've been practicing making little ones before making full sized ones for classes.

Here's the inside:

(If I could only think of things to say within an appropriate time frame, I might be considered a wit)

I write about neuroses that may or may not exist.

I woke up in the middle of the night (kind of) to write this, and it's riddled with typos and omissions. Anthropophobia!

(note: it should have been "here's the problem")

An empty comic! Fill it in?

Wondering about the lyrics of a song a friend gave me.

Figure it out:

And that's all for now!

2008-07-25T02:40:00.000-07:00

little green men can be explained by natural phenomena
they're just the reflection of st. elmo's fire in the spoon of your
mid afternoon cereal
in your bathrobe and socks on the middle of the water
the ocean or a lake, as long as it's
salt that stings when it fills up the empty holes where
your fine hair used to be
whatever makes you happy man,
me i'm happy just to go blind in one eye

2008-07-25T01:34:00.001-07:00

taptaptaptaptap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tsp tap rpase
dammit.

This is What I listen to to Make Me Happy

2008-06-09T23:32:00.000-07:00

Bright Eyes--Another Travelin' Song

(open link in new tab and read the lyrics as you go!)

Well I'm changing all my strings
I'm gonna write another travelin' song
about all the billion highways
and the cities at the break of dawn
I guess the best that I can do now
is to pretend that I've done nothing wrong
and to dream about a train
that's gonna take me back where I belong

Well now the ocean speaks and spits
and I can hear it from the interstate
and I'm screamin' at my brother on a cellphone
he is far away
And I'm saying nothing in the past or future
ever will feel like today
until we're parking in an alley
just hoping that our shit is safe

So I go back and forth forever
All my thoughts they come in pairs
Oh I will, I won't, I doubt, I don't,
I'm not surprised but I never feel quite prepared

Now I'm hunched over a typewriter
I guess you call that paintin' in a cave
And there's a word I can't remember
and a feeling I cannot escape
And now my ashtray's overflowing
I'm still staring at a clean white page
Oh and morning's at my window
she is sending me to bed again

Well I dream the dark on the horizon
I dream the desert where the dead lay down
I dream a prostituted child touching an old man in a fast food crown
Oh yeah, I dreamt this ship was sinkin' there was people screaming all around
And I awoke to my alarm clock it was a pop song it was playin' loud

So I will find my fears and face them
or I will cower like a dog
I will kick and scream or kneel and plead
I'll fight like hell to hide that I've given up

--------

It's amazing!
Just walking down the street I have to step in time. I have to dance up the stairs, and it gives me idealistic visions of myself as a tortured artist with that full ashtray and unmarked typewriter page.

'Cept I don't smoke and I only ever stare at a blank computer screen, which is really depressing and not as promising.

La la la.
Happy Finals.

Apathy

2008-05-30T01:23:00.000-07:00

I haven't been writing a lot lately, or at least writing well. That's not true I guess--I've just been doing a lot of revisions and when that happens I get stuck in a downward spiral of (for lack of a better word) suckyness. Reading the same things over and over again and finding new problems every time is a little disheartening. Also finals are coming and I'm feeling overwhelmed by the amount of 'good' pieces that are due so soon.

I've got a few things to put up here though, but for now I'm sticking to whining.

Dictee Sound Art

2008-05-25T15:00:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a group presentation on Teresa Cha's Dictee for my experimental writing class. We're opening the presentation with a puppet show. The lights will be off and everyone has to sit on the floor on blankets, and our puppets are just our hands with some eyes on top, kind of like these. The projector screen will be down and we'll be projecting just a long long transition between white and red and black, some prominent colors in the book.

We'll be behind an overturned desk, and the puppets will just be staring at the audience, and then a piece of sound art I made will play.

It's a paragraph from the beginning of the book, read in English, French and Korean.
First it's just English, then it's a combination of an English computer speaking English, a French computer speaking English, and a Korean computer speaking English. The same thing happens twice more, English, Korean and French speaking French, English French and Korean speaking Korean, and then it switches to a combination of each voice speaking their own language, followed by a combination of the voices speaking a language not their own with an accent. It should be pretty cool!

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Dime Stories at the Grove

2008-05-13T15:52:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago my friend Andrew convinced me to come along with him to a fiction open mic in South Park--his teacher had offered extra credit points. He didn't end up reading, but I did FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!

My leg was shaking so hard that when I sat down afterwards the muscle cramped, but it was ok as it didn't carry over into my voice too much.

So here it is, the opening scene of "A Transcription of Catharsis", a short story I'm working on for sci-fi. Click on the link in the middle that says Jenny Alton. :D

http://www.dimestories.org/

The Water

2008-04-24T15:54:00.001-07:00

I'll never get used to this course sand, I refuse. They tell me it's best not to think about it, but I think that's cowardice. Sand is rocks and stones and earth battered unceasingly by the sea for an eternity. This is fresh and--it's not jagged anymore but pale and porous. It makes me sick to think that someday these shards of bone will be just as crushed and no one will remember them.
---------------
An explanation:
We were given a prompt at the end of class; there was a picture of a bay surrounded by mountains with a light sining down from the sky. it said "A community of 1200 people once lived here. Only 15-20 remain. What happened? what does the light shining through the clouds signify? Of those residents remaining, pick one character and write a story that shows how those events affected him or her."

Again, I didn't really follow the prompt! I really should try harder...I didn't answer any of the questions! Oh well.

A Carryover from the Past

2008-04-24T15:30:00.000-07:00

Marazzo, some would say it's the most beautiful place in all Sicilia, and I would have to agree. How could I not? The white sand, acqua azzura and Etna in the distance.
No one is paying attention to us, it's a gorgeous day and the sun bathers are face down on the plush hotel lounge chairs. It's not unusual for a group of children to play with the sand.
First we dug a hole. Not with gaudy plastic but but with our hands, the way it should be. It took most of the morning; we started as soon as the tide went out. The handfuls of sand wet and heavy, our fingernails are black around the edges.
No one payed any particular attention as I climbed into the hole, as we started filling it in. As we worked the wet sand grew heavy on my crossed legs. Finally I had to stop helping and fold my hands together, resting them on the bed of sand that was now at my chest.
We timed it perfectly, they're almost at my neck--it won't be long now.
I can see the water coming back to me, no foam, no hurry, just the ocean. I can taste the salt in my mouth, and I leave my eyes open. I can see the blue expanse before me. Soon I know the black spots will appear across my vision and I will have arrived.
---------------
An explanation:
Today in Sci-fi we each chose a book on which to base a short story. Lots of them were world building guides, information on the old west or what things were like in the 1930s. I got a tourist's guide on Italy. We'd just read Chiang's "Hell is the Absence of God" (which I thought was brilliant but profoundly disturbing) and so we were discussing how to include religion in Science fiction/fantasy/irrealism/whatever. We were supposed to write a little scene that incorporated religion in whatever world we chose/made up, focusing on positive energy and emotion etc. Obviously I didn't really achieve that, haha.
Anyway, I was flipping through the book and found this picture of a really beautiful beach inside a small bay where there was this huge and really elegant hotel. The beach was covered in really ordered blue squishy lounge chairs. It mentions that Mt. Etna is close by, and I thought it would be interesting to juxtapose some kind of ancient Roman religion with this really modern location. Obviously I don't know a lot about ancient roman religions, but I figured that if anyone carried it into the modern day there'd really be a cult mentality. And ritual sacrifice. So there you go.

A Conversation

2008-04-18T11:48:00.001-07:00

If you can remember, it’s dark in the room because there are no windows and it must be night outside because the narrow strip of light that normally shines through the crack of a doorframe isn’t there; either that or they’ve stuffed the gaps with towels to distort our perception of time.

I saw it on the TV; a pad of foam contoured to fit perfectly beneath a doorframe, it’s meant to block up the crack and prevent drafts. What’s great about it is that it’s light enough so that when you open the door it moves in an arc and follows it back fitting snugly again into the crack. They showed how it could be custom made for any door size, all you’d need to do was take a pair of scissors and cut it and voi-la!

So maybe they called the number on the television screen and got whatever it was it’s called to stop up the crack and stop the draft from getting to us here in this room. That must be it. It must be night outside and they must have worried about us getting cold because they took the trouble to deal with telemarketers in order to make sure that we weren’t cold. They wouldn’t take the trouble to block all the cracks all over the whole frame and not just beneath the door. But maybe they did, I mean I don’t know we could be in Alaska or something; it’s nice that they’re taking these kinds of precautions.

I saw it on the TV, there was a man and one day he walked into a cave that was way deep under the ground and he brought a tent with him and a radio and all his scientific equipment but he didn’t bring a clock because he wanted to see if we really are governed by some kind of internal clock that lets us know when it’s time to sleep because the light has gone away and it’s night outside. Well, we don’t. He lost track of days and I changed the channel.

I think it’s probably because we don’t really need all the sleep that we’re getting, we can function on a shorter amount of time than we think we can. It’s all in your head, when you wake up in the morning and you haven’t gotten enough sleep, you only think that because the sound of your alarm clock is jarring and it’s one of the most hated sounds in my life; let me tell you that right now.

What time do you think it is right now? Normally I can hear crickets or birds or something and I can just tell by the way they sound, the sounds I was used to while growing up—I heard the frogs in the silence just before I went to sleep and I would imagine all the frogs the millions of thousands of frogs that had to be there just outside my window in order for them to produce such an almighty racket and I would hold the thought at bay and try to sleep because the thought of thousands upon millions of frogs all croaking at each other would otherwise reach a crescendo in my mind and if I let it I think my eyes would bleed beneath their lids.

What time do you think it is because normally I can tell by the crickets and the frogs and the sounds that animals make but I don’t really know what kinds of sounds the animals make in Alaska when it’s night time or day time or the time in between when we’re supposed to be getting ready to sleep and most definitely not thinking about hundreds of millions of frogs, so I wouldn’t be a good judge about that anyway, and I wouldn’t listen to anything I said because I don’t have all the facts. I could have sworn that I was wearing a watch today or yesterday.

I remember because I don’t usually wear a watch I usually just look at my cell phone but I can’t feel the strap on my wrist because I think that if it was there I would feel it because it’s kind of a foreign feeling to me because the last time I wore a watch in earnest I think was in elementary school and it was a new watch and it was called a Gizmo because the pattern on the strap was different lines in different colors and I guess that was supposed to evoke the image of some kind of gizmo, I don’t really know. But I wore this watch to school one day and it was a new watch and I was pretty proud of it because I felt grown up now that I was wearing a watch and Katherine noticed it and she said Whoa cool gizmo where’d you get it? And I was just so shocked because I really don’t think that things like that are coincidences, I really don’t I mean I don’t like to think that anyone besides myself has some kind of premonition but I also think that maybe things like that rub off on other people.

So, what time do you think it is anyway? I think my watch must have fallen off sometime ago, I don’t know when, hahaha, I don’t have a watch, what time do you think it is? I’m not sure anymore.

This is boring, I feel like I’m having a one sided conversation here. You’re making me do all the work and I don’t like it because it makes me feel self conscious and when I feel like that I just keep talking and talking, and the more I talk the more obnoxious I feel and it really does pain me because I’d hate to think that you thought that I was some kind of obnoxious person who never let anyone get a word in edgewise.

If you remember I said something earlier about being jealous of people who had psychic powers and I was talking about sleep, and you have dreams when you sleep and I hold stock stock stock stock in them. I’ve had prophetic dreams. I dreamed that Santa Claus was flying away from my window when the light in the sky was pink from the dawn as I looked out at him from my bedroom window, he said goodbye to me and that day I learned that there was no Santa.

And I used to have this recurring dream when I was little where I’d be in my bed and my room would be dark but I was able to make things out in the faint faint light that came in through the trees from the moon, but then my bedroom door would burst open and there would be light light light behind it and smoke or something it seemed like from a fog machine, and a man would be standing there, he’d just thrown the door open. Oh it terrifies me now to think of it because I know he got closer, he came right up to me and I don’t want to think about his face if he even had one. There was something about playing cards but that’s not the important part the important part was that I was sleeping in the bottom of a bunk bed opposite from the door on the left side of the room right next to the window. And I dreamt this in my old old house, and then I moved to my old house and I had the same dream and I woke up, oh my god was I scared because I was having déjà vu because the way my room was set up was just the way it was set up in my dream, I mean perfectly exactly the same. I don’t know what to make of that. There’ve been others, but I can’t remember them right now.

The other day I was riding the bus to school when I felt my phone vibrate in my backpack and I took it out and I read the text message, it was a text message from my friend from high school, he goes here now but he’s in Hawaii right now because he’s training for his work, they sent him there for free and everything! Well, it was a text message from him and it was about nine thirty in the morning and it said Hey I just had a weird dream about you that really worried me, is everything all right? And it was really weird so I wrote back and told him that I was fine, but I couldn’t help but wander about all day waiting for something to happen to me; luckily nothing ever did.

What Else is There?

2008-04-18T11:47:00.000-07:00

The Women’s War is not something that I’ve actively fought. I’ve stayed away from the cosmetic injections and the state sanctioned getaways, but so have most of the women I know. Stuff like that costs money and I don’t have enough to throw away, though I can’t count how many times I’ve been lectured by a passing Activist who’s told me otherwise. How else can we escape the pressures of the modern world and the confines of societal roles if we can’t just let our hair down? she says, eyeing the tight bun at the nape of my neck.

I try not to notice their stares when I’m out in public with him, but he’s not as good at hiding his discomfort and we usually end up going back to my apartment early. I have to leave him in the morning because I work early, and on the drive into the city I’m always a little nervous, thinking about how he’s walking alone back to his place, how he’s probably bowing his head and avoiding their eyes, quickening his pace as they shout at him. We’d both rather that I didn’t know these things, but then he plugs into me and I see everything. It’s supposed to be a deterrent—and it is when I see things like that—but I can also see that he loves me. I don’t think I could’ve trusted a man if the prenatal implant didn’t exist; it’s ironic.

I like to laugh when I pass them preaching on the street corners, playing through their megaphones what they say are truths taken forcibly from a man. They shout that ignorance is bliss, and the young girls gather and listen and are horrified and they can’t fathom anyone’s desire to delve inside the two brains, they’d rather never hear. It’s a sick kind of laughter.

I hear that they’re working on something that breaks the link between men’s two brains—but don’t tell anyone that you heard it from me. See, what I’ve heard is that there’s this pill that they can take the morning after a connection is made that erodes the link while the memory is still fresh and pulsing in their minds. The good thing about it is that it’s supposed to emit a synthetic hormone that tricks the sensors and they’re still registered when they walk past checkpoints, so the guards won’t get suspicious. They say that it’s a derivative of Vice. I hear that there’s a group of women unsympathetic to the cause who’ve used their access codes to steal the Vice that men who’re elected to power take that allows them to bypass a normal life and breaks the connection between the two brains and lets them go around unregistered like a woman.

I’ve always laughed at the idea of Vice because I can just imagine the reasoning behind it. I can just imagine the women in power sitting there looking at their second in command and wanting what they preach against. Ignorance is bliss to them, but not the kind they sell on the street corners. It makes me laugh because I know that they’d rather not see anything at all than realize that what they believe in most might not be true. It’s a sick laughter.

He doesn’t like it when I laugh like that, he says that my eyes change and I can’t deny that my face twists into something almost unrecognizable, as if I’ve had injections myself. I’ve seen it, and I don’t like it either. But not for the same reasons. I don’t like it because I think that when my face twists like that something like the truth is coming out, the mask that I carefully apply breaks for a second and I’m embodying something ingrained within me that I can’t help but I try to deny, a cynicism that is taken for granted that I want no part of. The utter contempt I have for this system, for all the assumptions and standards that they say is the natural way, the way it’s always been…. I don’t like it because it makes me wonder. If the situation were reversed, if it was me who was the open book and not him, would he see what they’re afraid of? Would he love me the same way? It’s unnerving.

They say that this is the way that things have always been, but there must have been a time when the link didn’t exist and men and women walked around unregistered and safe in their own minds.

I’m sure of it. There must have been a time before the prenatal implant. They were careful and precise when they rewrote history but I can see past the words and into the meanings, and I can see where a malevolent had has warped them. They don’t take people like me into account. They can’t imagine why someone would refuse the getaways and be undeterred by the ultimate deterrent. They’ve become complacent and unquestioning, their ideals are warped and they’re not accomplishing what they meant to—and they can’t see that. They don’t see the possibility of change, the certainty of difference, that someday our ideas will take hold. They can’t imagine the world we’re hoping for, people like me.

I take it back; I am most definitely fighting the women’s war.

Withholding Information

2008-04-17T23:14:00.000-07:00

Leaving was never easy for her. There were too many things to do beforehand, too many things to think about, too many scenarios to run through. She never summoned up the courage, as it were. So she stayed, and thought. A constant parade in front of the mirror until it was too late. The door opened and the outside world was gone, replaced by something else--but she didn't know that. So with a light heart and an untroubled mind she walked in rags and talked with bones, dried leaves braided in her still shimmering hair.

A Place Called Change

2008-04-17T23:11:00.000-07:00

And then the doors closed. She took two steps. And two more. And two more. Staggered, practiced, awkward. And two more. And two more. The ground beneath her feet was hard, cold, ordered. It was not a path. And two more. The ground beneath her feet raised, she stepped. No more--the last steps. She stood.
The doors were closed behind her, she could feel their pressure on her back. She didn't turn to look. Facing a wall. No more steps to think about, only if she were to retrace them, take them back. She wouldnt.

4/15/08 (finished at 10:04 pm)

2008-04-17T23:08:00.000-07:00

So this is what I think, and don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those people who are so stuck in their ways that they can’t be swayed by a good argument, some logic, some passion—whatever. No, I consider myself a reasonable person, and I’m always willing to listen to what you have to say. It’s not that I’m easily swayed either, no, it’s more like I’m a sensible person and I’m just one of those people that you’d probably enjoy having a conversation with, you know? None of that point counter point, I mean its not a debate. A conversation, you say something, I say something mildly related but not necessarily, maybe it pertains to your life, maybe not. Most of the time it pertains to my life but I think that’s the beauty of a great conversation, I mean it’s the human experience isn’t it? I mean, take, for example, something that happened to me the other day. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, join in if you have something to add, I mean I’m one of those people that doesn’t get mad when someone has something to add to something I have to say, I mean it’s not like you’d interject if it wasn’t vitally important or relevant to the point I’m making, right? I’m not one of those people who’ll steer the conversation back to me subtly, with all that repressed resentment so that you know that I’m angry and I need to be heard, no, I’m not one of those people, thank you very much. No I’ll just keep talking because I mean why pretend? No facades or anything here!

So what I was saying, something that happened to me today, it’s a funny story actually because well, sometimes do you just feel like you’re in a movie or something? I totally feel like that most of the time, I mean I’m not one of those people who walk about with a personal soundtrack, I mean, not if you don’t count an iPod I mean who doesn’t if you think like that? What I mean is that it’s just too funny the things that happen to me, you just wouldn’t believe it! But don’t worry, I’ve been told that my expository skills are something to be envied, so I’m sure you’ll enjoy this! I mean one time I was at this party, right? And I had had a few drinks, you know how it goes, and I saw this group of people talking and laughing and I was just like oh my god, they look like my kind of people! So I wandered over to their circle and cut in, and began with this story and as I was telling it I could see their knowing glances and they laughed at all the right places and when I finished they all laughed and this guy, oh you should have seen him he was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen, he told me that I had great expository skills, and then he winked and I was just over the moon. I winked back and asked him if he wanted to go get another drink, but he said he’d had enough which was strange because don’t you think that you can’t ever have enough? Well that’s what I think and I said as much, and walked over to the bar, well it wasn’t a bar but a party at someone’s house, I don’t know whose, it was a friend of a friend’s or something, I never met them and I didn’t really know anyone there, but I walked over to the bar and I got myself another gin an tonic, which was fine because by that point I couldn’t taste the gin or the tonic, I hate that stuff don’t you? So I walked over to the bar and on the way I grabbed his ass, you know how they do it in the movies, all flirty like and I laughed because he spun around all sudden like and it was just like the movies only this time he was playing the shy and abashed girl character and I was the guy that turns her from this kind of wallflower who doesn’t see her own potential and I was the handsome guy with the great insight and wonderful expository skills who made everything happen and gave everyone the ending they deserved; the wall flower her happy ending and the bitchy characters some kind of humiliating resolution in front of a huge crowd of all their friends and it’s just what everyone deserves. So I headed over to the bar and grabbed his ass all sassy like and he turned around all shocked and shy and beautiful and I walked over to the bar, thinking that he’d follow me like in the movies, you know like when they refuse at first but they can’t resist t your charm and your great expository skills and they refuse at first but they just can’t resist so I was thinking he’d follow me over to the bar but he didn’t which was strange because that’s not how it goes I mean I know the roles were reversed, so I was waiting as I made myself a gin and tonic, and I was waiting and I turned and leaned on my hip to wait some more and look sexy but he stayed with his group of friends but it didn’t matter anyway cause as I was leaning on my hip I saw someone else leaning on their hip surveying the party and leaning on their hip and waiting for someone like me someone just like me to come up to them and splash a gin a tonic in their face and say something sassy like hey I heard you like gin and tonic huh great party huh I just grabbed that guys ass over there because he was flirting with me and he told me that I have great expository skills because I told him a story and everybody thinks that and I think If you took a chance you’d like me too I think that if you took a chance you’d like me too I think I have great expository skills, just give me a chance this is my last drink I swear to god can you just take me home with you? I promise I’ll go I’ve never gone before and although I’d love for you to be there in the morning I know you won’t and I swear that I wont ever let you know that I wrapped myself in your sheets and wandered through your apartment and looked through your photo albums and made myself some coffee and reveled in the fact that finally someone loved me. Finally I’d stand up and let the sheets fall and walk naked to the window and look at your neighbors as they washed the dishes from their breakfast and wait for them to notice and engrave me in their fantasies. Because I’ll never see them again and I know I’ll never see you again so I’ll sigh and collect my thoughts and collect my clothes and slip back into them without taking a shower because the walk of shame back to my apartment is something that I need to remember, something I need to engrave in my fantasies. When I get there I promise I won’t let you know that I stared out the window and waited for my neighbor’s naked lover to approach the window but they never do so I’ll stand there and feel the burn the burn in my dry eyes, and my body doesn’t show anything but inside I’m hyperventilating and all I can think about is nothing nothing nothing, the void that you left when you weren’t there in the morning and the other voids that will be there that were there and I’ll think about it and wonder if the things they tell me are true and if they apply to me because I don’t think they do and I think I’ll die before then.

As yet untitled

2008-04-17T23:07:00.000-07:00

What do I desire for myself in this language of culture? Language of culture…culture of language. What do I desire for myself in this culture of language?

A. To be accepted.

B. Is there anything else? If I’m being honest, yes. So:

C. To speak the lingo

a. To understand it

b. To mean it

c. To speak with others who

i. Understand it

ii. Mean it

Or not.

If I’m being honest I don’t know. I’m looking for something to pass the time. Look! Here comes something now!

It was the middle of the day and someone was walking somewhere with the express intention of doing something. Something that nags and whines somewhere in a corner, demanding attention at the most inappropriate times like when someone is sitting on a bus going home staring out the window and avoiding everyone’s eyes but their own and it’s the movement of the bus as the driver slams down hard on the big bus brakes as some idiot decides that it would shave five seconds off if they cut in front of the bus they would otherwise be caught behind of, or rather the movement of the people inside the bus as the driver slams down hard on the big bus brakes because there’s not that many people on the bus an no one’s hanging on down the center aisle so everyone’s relaxed before the driver slams down hard on the big bus breaks and they don’t smash into each other but instead they awkwardly lean unable to sway the force of gravity that is steadily holding them there as their hearts jump forward and take their place in another’s body and shoulders touch and press together through coats and layers of clothing and as soon as the bus kicks back the people straighten and tense and hold themselves together tight as if the bus were suddenly crowded. If you’d keep your shoulder touching mine would I eventually meet your eyes and smile?

So those are my interests. I’m incapable of being deeply honest armed with the knowledge that I’ll have to own up to something in front of several people who

Speak the lingo and
Understand it

so I write one long sentence and read it back to myself only to find some meaning after all that scares me and I hope doesn’t show.

There was a girl

2008-02-21T23:25:00.000-08:00

I've made the PHYSICAL book for my graphic texts class, but I have yet to find the words that fit inside. It's nice to reverse the process. This is something I came up with while brainstorming;I'm not sure what--if any--part of this will make it in, but I liked where it went.
I'm writing a lot about doors recently, I wonder if I can find some kind of theme and make it HUGE for the final project. Incidentally I sliced my right ring finger open last night when I tried to catch my laptop as it fell from my lap. All I did was break the apostrophe key (the side of which sliced my finger) which I use a lot. So now every time I use a contraction I have to try really hard to make it work--I wonder if that will change how often I use them. Hmm...
----------------------

It was a team bonding experience at the local Marriott hotel. We reserved a conference room for our sleeping bags and nail polish and tried to swim in the pool. I'd learned how to use a tampon that day and I sat uncomfortably in the passenger seat of my mom's Suburban. From the bathroom stall a girl called out to turn the faucet on because without the sound she couldn't go, and everybody laughed a good laugh.
In movies the girls are strange and broken but their quirks are alluring and the best men find them and love them.
But in LA I couldn't pee because the girls I didn't know from Orange County were waiting in the hallway of the Kodak theater and the faucet was running but people were washing their hands and the shoes on either side were high and changing quickly and I'd been in a car for hours but still nothing.
So I play tetris or hum to myself and my roomate refuses to look up from her computer as I jump to conceal the book in my pocket but one time at a party she let it slip that you can hear everything that goes on inside so now I read slowly and try not to run my fingers over the pages. But I need a distraction and she closes her door. So I make sure to slip away unnoticed.
Ive reached a roadblock.
sound= embarassing/bad
time=bad
running water=necessary
and all because of what I know is some psychological desire to be the one who gets the good laughs but it backfired cause I sat there waiting and thinking and I never stopped.
The fish in the pond is angry with me; he made a movie and jumped to my sink and my overhanging toothbrush and told me to stop. And sometimes I disappear because we have a clock in our head that we know but we don't sit there with a stopwatch but I do because I thought that I should and I can't get past it.
It is an excruciating pain that is most acutely felt upon reflection and I close my eyes and wish with all sincerity that I had wings or I think with confusion about undoing and my incapability does not make sense.
A fissure in my brain doesn't explode but was never there for a second, still I register the red light as I reach down, one hand on the wheel. The wet ground beneath my feet I mean.
So I buy a sponge because they don't carry tea towels and I wring it out in the yellow-cast parking lot. My door is obscuring the view of the man left behind in his red SUV while someone else is inside.
When I leave there is a rivulet of foaming liquid and I think it's funny because in this context you're thinking that I peed in my car and soaked it up with a sponge and emptied it in the Von's midnight parking lot but what really happened was I made a sharp right turn and my soda spilled from my useless cupholder on my way to the park to eat a hamburger alone with the light on because I couldn't bring myself to eat it at the table in my apartment with someone behind their door.
Oh, it infuriates me.

Mother Hubbard

2008-02-04T21:16:00.000-08:00

I'm trying hard not to imagine the banging I'm hearing is the sound of cabinets slamming shut. Or rather
I'm trying hard not to jump from my seat and to look through the door because my imagination is wandering. More likely
All I need to do is turn around and see the blackness beyond the frame because
this time I'm the one behind those closed doors
and it's my light that is seeping through
and I'm doubly offended
because I vowed never to do this
again
and I know the price of electricity is high
but I need some semblance of a home
because a bed and a desk and an overstuffed bookcase
is not enough though it should be.
I look outside and all I can see is myself
but my features are blurry so I look better than I am.

My First Word Presents Humiliation

2008-01-25T11:10:00.001-08:00

by Jenny Alton

http://www.slide.com/r/AMRBYRnutT9VaBpohgfWSMZJKtqw-5zF?previous_view=mscd_embedded_url&view=original

New Year's Resolutions

2008-01-03T12:17:00.000-08:00

One of my resolutions was to write something everyday, but of course I've forgotten. I think I've made this resolution every year but I always get discouraged when I miss a few days so I give up. But I've decided that's ok.
I say it's a new year's resolution but I'm trying to avoid the title as well because it puts such a strain on everything; I'm not bound to do something, I'm just trying to.
So another thing I'm trying to do this year (and have succeeded so far) is to carry my notebook around with me everywhere, as well as a book to read. The notebook hasn't gotten much use yet (see the neglect of resolution 1) but the book has come in handy. It's nice to be able to pull a book out when you need something to do, and it's nice to tote a companion with me so I'll never be alone.
One other thing I'm going to try to do is to leave my ipod at home. I've constantly got those earphones in, not only because I like music but so that I can avoid people and be ignored. It's easy to pretend I don't see someone if I'm zoned out but it's not the healthiest way to live.
Plus I miss the sound of birds. I'm home right now and there are so many birds chirping away that it made me realize that I hardly hear any of that at school. The first two years when I lived on campus wildlife was everywhere, but now my apartment is situated in a concrete jungle, hardy har har. The only birds I hear are the seagulls when they have their seagull orgies at three in the morning, and let me tell you, that does not sound at all like birds.

I've forgotten my train of thought. New year's resolutions? Whatever.

Because

2007-12-13T10:20:00.000-08:00

It’s funny because even though the scar isn’t there anymore, I can remember where it was. The heel of my hand was slightly red, but a small flap of skin had opened up and a few fine grains of dirt had been trapped underneath. I remember how it happened as a still photograph and my hand takes up nearly the entire frame. There’s my hand, small, slightly dusty and a little red from the impact, and the flap of skin—a circle—it wasn’t even bleeding. There were three grains, and I was fascinated by how blue they looked through the thick layer. Blue, not brown. Maybe that’s why my memory is still and not moving. Because I know I stood there, looking.

There is a pain in my ankles; a sudden sharp twinge and I can’t do anything except shut my eyes and wait for the millisecond to pass. While my eyes are closed I imagine myself crouched down on my toes, my arms straight forward, trying to balance. The pain is there too; my eyes are still squeezed tight. I’m in my elementary schoolyard, and I’ve just jumped from the crook of a pepper tree. In half a second I am face down in the dirt and the pain moves to my knees as well as my ankles.

It’s almost like a recurring dream, but instead it’s a memory. I can’t remember if I made it up anymore. I was such a liar as a little girl. I would tell stories to my classmates that were so elaborate they had no reason to doubt my candor. As great a storyteller as I was, it became a problem when I could no longer remember if my childhood was real or a figment of my once ripe imagination. I’m not a good liar anymore. I’m sure things would be better if I was.

It happened on a weekend. Sandra and I could cross the street to the school, and we did. We were playing in the—how do I describe it—it was a field, but it was filled with tall trees; some were massive pines, and other old oaks, but our favorites were the pepper trees that bore little clusters of red berries. We would place the wrinkled things still attached to their spindly branches on the ground, and when we crushed them with our shoes their oil spread in a filmy rainbow over the surface of puddles. The girls would gather the clumps of berries still on their sticks and place them carefully in the small holes that lines the rim of a hollowed out tree stump. We regarded the tree stump as a natural phenomenon, a playhouse that nature had created just for us—we ignored the jagged edges left by the chainsaw, they were worn down by countless little hands.

There had been a book fair some weeks earlier, and I had added a book on cats to my collection. I spent hours on the lounge chair in the backyard stretching my back an yawning, mimicking the pictures of lions doing the same. And so it was that Sandra and I were playing by the pepper tree stump. She was using a broom brought from home to sweep out the inside of the tree stump playhouse, and I was in the crook of a pepper tree, mimicking the pictures I saw in my cat book. I excelled at lying and I took any opportunity to show off. Contrary to popular belief cats don’t always land on their feet.

But when they do, it is because every joint in their body absorbs the shock, and softens, elasticizes, bends, and they spring back up from their crouched position. I was in the crook of a pepper tree, and Sandra was sweeping the floor of the tree stump playhouse. I was stood in the crook of the pepper tree, rattling on to Sandra about cats and how they land, about the difference between jaguars and leopards, and how good I was at jumping out of the crooks of trees. She’d heard it all before I’m sure, and she was uninterested.

I focused, focused, and then I jumped. I was the leopard jumping from the top of a tree I’d seen on the Discovery Channel, and my flailing arms were the waving tail, balancing my small body in the air as I fell. And I fell. I hit the ground with my feet first and the pain that I remember didn’t explode, but rather it lingered, and I couldn’t do anything but close my eyes and wait. My knees scraped the hard dirt and my arms shot forward, the heel of my palm digging into the ground. I lay there, and I shut my eyes. Just for a second though, because I had a reputation to uphold, and I wasn’t a crybaby. I knew al about cats, and I jumped from trees and monkey bars alike. On those occasions, my dad would have to carry me home, crying with my chin torn away, but I would be at school the next day with a scab and a story to tell. Not so this time. This time I knew that I wouldn’t regale my classmates with my daring feat, because there was an unavoidable pain in my ankles and three bits of blue dirt were stuck in my palm. It filled my vision, and they were blue beneath my skin, not brown.

So it is with a mixture of pain (real, remembered and imagined) and honest confusion I feel when I land on my weak ankles. Everyone has every reason to doubt my candor now, and they do. I close my eyes for that unbearable millisecond and before me is my hand, filling nearly the entire frame, slightly red, and the flap of skin trapping three pieces of blue.

It closed up after a few days, but the grains of dirt remained there on the heel of my palm. And I looked at them, and I wondered when the blue would leave. I can’t remember when it was that I looked down and realized that it had gone. It didn’t make much difference though, because I can still remember.

Escapologist: R and R

2007-12-13T10:19:00.000-08:00

Two o’clock in the morning and Jay Thomas still couldn’t get to sleep. The light of his bedside clock shone faintly green and in the darkness it cast the shadow of his face against the wall. The wall was bare and his face restless, his eyes twitching back and forth as they traced the bumps in the plaster of the ceiling, trying in vain to make sense of them. Frustrating work, on the verge of a breakthrough the pieces nearly fit—he would blink and meaning would escape him. Holding his eyes open left them raw and dry and itchy, exhausting work.

Three o’clock in the morning and Jay Thomas was asleep and his breathing was labored, the shadow of his chest moved up and down on the bare wall and perspiration was forming on his forehead. Beneath their lids his eyes were twitching as before, but his vision was black and empty and without dreams.

Clothes and papers littered the carpeted floor, crumpled and cast aside and left to become brittle and creased until they were rediscovered and made smooth by a careful hand, creases still remaining though they’ve been folded and filed away.

Orange light from the streetlamp outside filters in through slatted blinds and casts its shadow on the bare wall, the soft green glow fills in where the orange doesn’t. The blinds themselves are partly shut, in the morning enough sun will shine through to lighten the room but the plastic slats prevent a beam from falling on Jay’s face opening his eyes.

And in the darkness the shapes of furniture can be made out, a desk, a bookcase, a chest of drawers stands at the foot of a bed frame and a mattress, the sheets are colorless and bland in the faint light and his eyes are open.

The sweat on his forehead has gone and his breathing is no longer heavy. His eyes are still and calm, staring upwards as if through the ceiling to the night itself. He blinks. In the darkness his pupils are wide and black, he turns his head to the side and the green numbers of his clock are reflected there. It is 3:52 and he’s swinging his feet out of bed.

Over the clothes, carefully stepping, bare spots where the worn carpet shows through. Tiptoed, barefoot, quiet save for the occasional crack in his ankles. The door wasn’t closed all the way and it creaked quietly as it was moved to the side. Linoleum now, the balls of his feet make peeling sounds as his skin lifts up from the floor.

There’s a mirror right there, above the bathroom sink and the bottom is speckled with hard water stains. He leans on the counter, his arms locked and his shoulders jutting forward as his stares into his reflection. The image is murky but he waits and is still and his eyes have adjusted, he can make out his pupils in the dark. His right hand moves up the wall, slowly, crawling almost, and comes to rest on the light switch, waiting.

His hand moves quickly upwards and light doesn’t flood the room but rather it appears fluorescent and lurid and seeks every surface and particle within its reach. It stretches and casts a faint patch through Jay’s open doorway. It is instantaneous and in the mirror Jay’s pupils contract, the blue veins of the iris pushing and closing the gap, his eyebrows shoot upwards and he steps back in surprise, then it’s silent and still.

Jay shakes his head and runs the tap; he splashes cold water in his face. Avoiding his gaze in the mirror he flicks the light off and heads back to bed. It’s three fifty five in the morning and Jay Thomas will not get any sleep.

Teresa

2007-12-13T10:18:00.000-08:00

The dragon lives in Santa Teresa Park. His home is a rock, or more accurately, a sheer cliff face strewn with beer bottles and fading graffiti. At the bottom are bushes or trees; the foliage is too dense to gauge the distance between canopy and ground. When the dragon (who has a name) isn’t there he’s here. He’s the blue fire behind the closet door and the whispers of my little sister are incinerated and kept secret before I can hear them. She stands on the cliff face at five years old because our parents humor her. I am jealous but she is innocent. I can’t remember if he lives inside it like a cave or whether the dragon is the rock. I spend years looking for the shape of a tail or the sleepy curl of smoke as the three of them share an animated conversation. I spend years looking for the rock that seems a cliff and I find two or three along the trail, but I can never remember. The guarding door has long since been lost.

There are frogs that cry at night in a chorus, and I can only hear them when I close my eyes. They can’t hide in the tall dry grass because that’s where ticks live. We check our socks when we get home and always make sure to wear long pants, even in the summer. In the fall we leave while our mother cooks dinner in the morning and we give our thanks to the lingering mist and the warble of turkeys. My daddy lets me walk up the carpet of round and pointed oak leaves but it’s difficult so I slip.

Santa Teresa Boulevard begins as a goldenrod tentacle of the Guadalupe Parkway and turns a shade lighter as it finds its own name. It runs south and crosses the West Valley Freeway, Thornwood Drive and Blossom Hill Road. It meets Steinbeck, Summerbrook and Furlong before it can turn into Coleman Road. Instead it veers horizontal then continues south. It passes Santa Teresa Park and until she’s out of earshot it meets with no other road but Bailey before sharing a name with Hale. South and South and South it runs, now parallel with the South Valley Freeway which the locals call 101. Hale takes over, then Peak, DeWitt and Sunnyside before the road is free of Morgan Hill, meets Watsonville and becomes, once again, Santa Teresa. She ends at Gavilan Golf Course and merges with the South Valley Freeway.

I am late to church of all things and it is the first rain of the season. My grip is steady as I drive over pot holed slick and slippery roads but my mind is not because I’m forgetting where I am. I make a right turn here when it should have been there and my short cut’s gone awry. The sign says stop so I try but no amount of pressure can force the tires to grip. Time is an odd mixture of too fast and too slow and the railway tracks should have knocked my head against the ceiling. The back of the car slides in an arc and I’m parallel to Santa Teresa.

Daybreak

2007-12-07T11:20:00.000-08:00

Characters:

EMILY Jones-15 years old, American. Nothing out of the ordinary, except she has a hard time getting to sleep, and increasingly vivid dreams (or nightmares) about a mysterious tree stump on the school grounds.

BEATRICE Branston- 15 years old, English. She is a little stuck up—mostly towards her roommate EMILY. She isn’t altogether evil, and she feels bad about her behavior.

Barnaby (BAINES) Jones- 20 years old, English. BAINES is dead and he can’t remember anything about his life. When he speaks it is with effort—he’s trying to remain in the present though it’s like a dream.

The play is set at the Dara Academy, a boarding school in the English countryside, specifically the bedroom shared by EMILY and BEATRICE, located at the top of the East tower. The stage is bare, save two twin sized beds. In the bed on the right is EMILY. In the bed on the left is BEATRICE. They are both sleeping.

Slowly a pale light grows in the room and the outlines of the beds can be seen. EMILY stirs. A spotlight comes up on the head of EMILY’s bed. She opens one eye and looks backwards over her shoulder at the window facing the lawn.

She looks concerned for a second, and then settles herself deeper into bed. The spotlight grows, and we see a young man sitting at the foot of her bed. His elbows are resting on his knees and his forehead on his interlocked fists. EMILY sits up suddenly. BAINES looks up at her.

EMILY

(Surprised)

Hello.

BAINES

(Absently)

Good morning.

EMILY

(Sternly)

It’s almost five.

BAINES

The sun will be up soon.

Emily looks out of the window, looking concerned. She turns back to BAINES.

EMILY

I’m Emily. Emily Jones.

BAINES

Emily Jones? I—

Baines hesitates, frowning.

EMILY

(Prompting)

Who are you?

BAINES

I’m called Baines..

Beatrice sighs and moves around in her bed. BAINES and EMILY look at her.

EMILY

That’s my roommate Beatrice.

BAINES

She is asleep.

EMILY

(Tired)

It’s five in the morning.

BAINES

The sun will be up soon.

EMILY

(Annoyed)

You’ve said that already.

BAINES

Have I?

EMILY

Don’t you remember?

BAINES

Oh, yes.

At this emily frowns. There is a pause, she’s thinking.

EMILY

Who are you?

BAINES

Who am I? Well I am—unsure.

EMILY

But you said your name was BAINES, just a second ago.

BAINES

Did I? Ah,. Yes. They did call me Baines.

There is a silence as EMILY looks intently at Baines, and he begins to fiddle with his jacket, smoothing it, crossing and uncrossing his legs, looking around—particularly out of the window.

EMILY

Why are you here?

BAINES

(Matter of factly)

Because you are.

EMILY

What does that mean?

BAINES

That you’ve been watching me.

Emily is dumbstruck. Beatrice stirs in her sleep again, and begins to mumble.

BEATRICE

(Almost a whisper)

Nought's had, all's spent…

BAINES

(Confused)

I thought she was sleeping.

EMILY

(Distracted)

She is—she talks in her sleep a lot. I don’t think she realizes though.

BAINES

You haven’t told her?

EMILY

No. We don’t talk a lot. Really the only time she speaks to me with any amount of civility is when she’s asleep.

BAINES

Why is that?

EMILY

(Uncomfortable)

I’m not sure. She’s just always ridiculing me for one thing or another.

BAINES

Ridiculing you for what?

EMILY

For nothing really, and that’s why I don’t understand.

She pauses here, looking sidelong at Baines.

The other morning when she woke up I was looking out of the window, and she just had a fit.

BAINES

You were looking out of that window?

He points to the one facing the lawn and the tree stump.

EMILY

(Frowning)

Yes. I had a dream.

BEATRICE moves around in bed again, mumbling

BEATRICE

Where our desire is got without content…

BAINES

(Looking at Beatrice)

Well that is quite odd.

EMILY

You’re strange.

BAINES

Why? I don’t talk in my sleep.

EMILY

Maybe not.

BAINES

What then?

EMILY

You look familiar.

BAINES

I should think so.

EMILY

(Startled)

I’m sorry?

BAINES

You are why I am here, I’m fairly certain of that.

They are both silent for a moment, Emily looks scared, but Baines seems quite at ease. Beatrice moves around in her bed.

BAINES

What were you looking at?

EMILY

When?

BAINES

When you had a dream, and Beatrice found you at the window?

EMILY

I--Iwas looking at the tree stump across the lawn, that one right next to the road leading up to school.

BAINES

(confused, no longer at ease)

The tree stump?

BEATRICE

Tis safer to be that which we destroy…

Baines and Emily are now too wrapped up to pay much attention to Beatrice.

EMILY

Yeah. In my dream the tree was whole and alive, like it would have been before it was cut down.

BAINES

What are you talking about? I only see the ancient oak by the road.

EMILY

That one, yes, but it’s been cut down.

BAINES is puzzled. He is craning his neck, trying to see what EMILY is describing.

BAINES

I cannot see any stump.

EMILY

Just there.

BAINES

(Unconvinced)

Ah, yes…

EMILY looks at BAINES for a moment, as if she’s had a realization of some sort.

BAINES

And you dream about this tree?

EMILY

Constantly. It started as soon as I came here, now that I think about it, but I didn’t realize at first.

BAINES

What didn’t you realize?

EMILY

That I was dreaming almost the same dream, over and over.

BAINES looks confused.

BEATRICE

Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy…

EMILY

They’re almost like a story being told from different angles, different perspectives. I mean, the nature of dreams is fleeting right?

BAINES

They’re not the only things.

He holds his head in his hands again.

EMILY

You’re supposed to dream it, and you wake up, and it’s gone. But they happened so often that I began to remember—not everything though.

BAINES

What is it that you do remember?

EMILY

That there’s a pattern. It’s almost like I’m dreaming in real time.

BAINES

(Suddenly angry)

What on earth do you mean?

EMILY

(Stammering)

Well, nearly every morning I wake up at exactly the same time, and I look out of the window, and fall back asleep. I didn’t even realize I was doing it until BEATRICE complained about it.

BEATRICE

Should be without regard…

BAINES

(To himself)

Every day the same over and over again, and I can feel it. No—go on, I’m sorry.

EMILY

Well, one day I woke up and she was sitting on her bed staring at me; she was furious—she said that she couldn’t take it any more.

BAINES

I know. No—I’m sorry. What could she not take?

EMILY

Me waking up at five AM on the dot. She said it was annoying and detrimental to her health. And after that I kind of paid attention you know?

BAINES

No.

They are missing each other, focusing on their own stories—they are both troubled.

EMILY

I woke up because the first rays of the rising sun would shine on my face, but only for a second. And I would fall back asleep but into these really vivid dreams, the real time dreams.

BAINES

I don’t understand. There was something important, and I had to tell you.

EMILY

I’d dream of the sun rising as it happened. And I’d see it from my window, the light slowly growing across the lawn, and it would reach that old tree stump.

BAINES frowns and looks confused. He’s paying attention to her now.

BAINES

The light through the window…

EMILY continues.

EMILY

But it wasn’t a stump, it was whole, and alive. And sometimes it was as if I was sitting beneath it, looking up at the sun as it shone through the windows of my bedroom.

As EMILY is describing her dreams BAINES reaches inside his coat pocket and pulls out an old and battered clothbound book without a title. He flips through it with a frown on his face. EMILY doesn’t notice, she’s looking over her shoulder out of the window.

EMILY

And I would feel as though I was waiting for something to happen, but I would always wake up before the sun finally climbed above the tower. It was always the same.

BAINES

(Absently in the beginning, almost to himself, then he is snapped back to reality, the change in his tone of voice is perceptible)

There was something that I had to say; I never did. But--you speak as if something changed.

EMILY

Yesterday the dream was different. That’s when Bea found me standing at the window.

BAINES

There was mercury in those pills, and I had to tell someone. What happened?

EMILY

I saw my window as if I was sitting beneath the old oak stump—but it was whole and full. It was the morning, and I saw the sun shine through my window, my bedroom in the East Tower, and then it disappeared again as it rose. The dew on the grass of the lawn was frosted, and there were footprints coming from the school to where I sat, I think they were my footprints, but…I wasn’t me. Even though I couldn’t see it the sun was melting the frost on the grass. And then as it burst above the tower my head was jerked back and I was looking up at the canopy and then my vision kind of rushed across the lawn and up to my window and I saw the oak tree with nothing beneath it but a book, the fading path, and a new one—bigger—leading to the road and disappearing.

BAINES looks up at EMILY

BEATRICE

What’s done is done…

BAINES

A book?

EMILY is still looking out of the window

EMILY

Yes, there was a book lying there, and it didn’t seem out of place, almost like I’d seen it there before. And I woke up in a cold sweat; the feeling was so real and I was scared. And I got up and stood at the window and I was certain then that what I’d dreamed was real. That’s when BEATRICE woke up and started yelling at me, as if it were a crime to look out a window at a tree.

EMILY turns away from the window now, and looks hard at BAINES. She sees the book in his hands and her eyes widen in shock, but she says nothing.

BAINES

She sounds as if she were scared.

EMILY

What has she got to be scared of?

As BAINES flips through his book we can see that the pages are blank but their edges are filled with handwritten scribbles. He stops on a certain page, concentrating. He doesn’t notice the way EMILY is looking at him.

BEATRICE

What’s done is done…

EMILY

BAINES, what is that?

BAINES

It’s what you just said.

EMILY

What do you mean?

BAINES

Listen:

As he starts to read, EMILY reaches beneath her bed and rummages.

BAINES

“Between the lead mullion is an almost spark, an almost—

EMILY sits up, there is something in her hands but it is hidden by her bedclothes.

BAINES

I don’t know what, but the sun rises and the dew on the grass is beginning to defrost.

EMILY lifts her hands; she is holding a book even more battered than the one BAINES is reading from.

BAINES

The path I’ve made is nearly erased, as it is each morning and I feel—“

BAINES stops.

EMILY

What do you feel?

BEATRICE

What's done is done…

BAINES

Nothing. I feel nothing. Everything ends there. No, it didn’t. I—I felt you watching me.

EMILY

BAINES. BAINES, look.

She holds out the book towards him. BAINES looks at it apprehensively.

EMILY

My grandmother gave it to me. It was her brother Barnaby’s. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before, Baines, this is the book in my dreams.

BAINES

He holds the books up next to each other.

It’s Macbeth.

Baines opens Emily’s book and begins to read.

BAINES

“But how to go about it I wonder, tact and tact again is needed or the consequences might be worse than what they would have been otherwise—but what are you saying, you have to do it. Between the lead mullion is an almost spark, an almost, I don’t know what…”

EMILY, this is the same as what I have written in here.

He holds up the blank book he read from earlier.

BAINES

This is the same—this is the same that’s written in here, Emily I wrote this and the text, the text is…

EMILY

(Awestruck)

They told me his name was Barnaby, and that he was bad—he’d done something terrible and had run away, leaving his family in ruin. That’s what the story is…

BAINES

(thoughtfully)

Yes, yes, Baines was just a nickname—you’ve been dreaming about me Emily, and you have my book. What’s done is done…

Bea begins to toss and turn more violently in her sleep and her breathing becomes heavy. BAINES and EMILY look at her.

BAINES

What’s done is done…all’s spent…destruction…Emily, she’s quoting.

EMILY

She’s what?

BAINES

Lady Macbeth! EMILY, she’s reciting lines! Look here:

He hurriedly shuffles the pages in EMILY’s copy of Macbeth, and points. EMILY reads.

EMILY

But why?

BAINES

She sounds as if she were scared.

EMILY

But what does she have to be scared of?

All of a sudden BEATRICE sits up in bed. Her eyes are wide open and unseeing; her fists are clutching her bedclothes.

BEATRICE

(Shouting)

Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!

Her hands fly to her mouth, stifling a scream as she sees BAINES and EMILY across the room.

EMILY

Bea! What’s wrong?

BEATRICE

He’s here! You know!

She begins sobbing hysterically. BAINES and EMILY are too shocked and confused to say anything.

BEATRICE

I knew it! I knew it! You were always staring at that stupid tree as if you knew! And you’d wake up every morning just to taunt me! Well it’s not my fault! Some cruel trick of fate I ended up here with you, Jones and Branston here again—it’s not my fault!

A look of recognition dawns on BAINES’ face.

BAINES

Branston…Beatrice, your last name is Branston?

EMILY

Bea, what are you talking about? What’s not your fault?

BEATRICE

(Hysterically)

Great-Granddad said he was no good, poking into business that was no concern of his! He said he had it coming; the nosy little rat, but I wouldn’t have done it!

EMILY

Who did what? Bea what are you talking about?

BEATRICE

I was his favorite and I always loved great granddad and then he told me everything! And he was laughing as he said it. But he was a good doctor and he helped people and I believed him! How could he tell me something like that when I was only young!

EMILY

What did he tell you?

BEATRICE

But you know, you know, you know that he killed him!

EMILY

What?

BEATRICE

He killed him and everyone thought he’d abandoned his family and ran off with a whore from the village! He killed him because he was a sneaky little rat and he found out about the pills and his poor sick mother, and he threatened to tell everyone! And great granddad could have stopped, he should have stopped, I would have stopped, but he didn’t and he gained a fortune! He told me on his deathbed! And now you’re here and I’m here but it’s not my fault!

BAINES

(Slowly, thoughtfully)

The path I’ve made is nearly erased, as it is each morning and I feel—nothing. I felt nothing. The last thing I saw was the canopy of that old oak tree. Now I see. Doctor Branston got to me before I could expose him for the fraud he was—he kept my mother sick, now I understand.

EMILY

Grandmother told me that she never believed her brother had abandoned them. Baines, she told me she believed in you. That’s why she kept your book, when they threw the rest of your things out.

BEATRICE

(Weakly)

It’s not my fault…

BAINES

She’s scared.

EMILY

Of what?

BEATRICE

You found out and now you’ll tell everyone and they’ll think it’s my fault!

EMILY

This is why you hate me?

BEATRICE

I don’t hate you.

BAINES

She’s scared.

BEATRICE continues to sob.

BAINES

But you don’t have to be scared. What’s done is done. You’re right; it’s not your fault. I don’t blame you. Now I remember, now it’s over. Emily, the dreams will stop, you won’t be watching me every morning.

BEATRICE

EMILY, I’m sorry.

EMILY

For what?

BEATRICE

For the way I’ve treated you. All along I knew I was making things worse, that I was wrong, but I couldn’t help myself. I’m sorry.

EMILY

It’s all right Bea, I’m sorry that you’ve been torn up for so long—how terrible that must’ve been. But it’s ok now, BAINES says it’s ok.

BAINES?

Both girls look around, BAINES isn’t there.

BEATRICE

Where’d he go?

EMILY

Look!

She points to the window.

BEATRICE

The tree!

EMILY

It’s grown!

Bright light floods the stage, day has come. Both girls look at each other and smile.

End

I can't sleep

2007-11-21T03:27:00.000-08:00

Today I said (with the utmost confidence) that I would never write a novel, and I wonder if that's true. And I wonder why. Is it because I'm afraid of failure, that I know it won't work before I start, or is it because I've found some kind of niche outside the "great American novel". When asked I bring up David Mitchell and the new fabulists ( I doubt he considers himself one) and broken time lines and a general sense of confusion, but what does that really mean? I'm not avant garde. I need training. But I'm not giving up yet.

I want Baine's lines to be a shadow of a conversation; he's a shadow of himself. I want them to be ambiguous in a way that they make sense if you force them. but ultimately he's talking to himself through a veil. Does that makes sense? I think so, but how can I convey that to an audience? I'll think of it. I do most of my brainstorming in the poetry class.

Here's something I wrote last time, like most of the stuff I write it's a fusion of lines from actual poems, bits of conversation, and stuff I did myself...kind of train of thought?:
___________

Korean Mums
Meaning? Go elsewhere, I'll take a three word answer
an owl dies
I can't forget
I sat in the driveway for an hour
Is it narrative
maybe not
because despite an assertion to the contrary
I beat around the bush
unintentionally though
I suppose
because I'll try to say something else
but it always comes out anyway
there are people in that house
but they don't talk
and I never really thought about it.

Korean mums
beside me in this garden
are huge and daisy like
(and why not)
my face is heavy with the sight
and I can feel my eye breaking
more than half gone over
running with my eyes turned
toward the west
my eyes aren't blue but grey
and I could never understand why they didn't include that
I thought it was important

There's a sense of something more
all that white space
that mirror blue
there's something different that happens with that break
we're seven miles from shore

one of the dogs killed a barn owl
it's a fact.
A mouse's head crunches
when charlie eats it
Peggie lies buried beneath a birdbath,
an apple tree
That I ran into with a riding mower
and broke it
But I left anyway
and I think my shirt was white
and they were gathered
the first one ever seen here
they told me they had a secret for me
with a smile
but i guessed it so I frowned
too hot in a heavy shirt in the mid October sun
sometimes I wish I had a cigarette because I think
I'd be more credible

Can you tell I'm waiting to come around the bush, but rather I wait for it to come to me

and It's not
You yawn, but my arm hurts
and
I am dissatisfied.

____________________
I wish I could take the I out of my writing!
I think I'm very vain. I need to learn to edit more. Here we go again!

Tuesday

2007-11-10T17:40:00.000-08:00

There's a certain cadence a voice carries when you've got your poetry hat on. A word on the tip of every tongue. It invalidates the art form. Brows together and hands move up and down.
Self righteous.
Obscene is obscene and it always has been <-- THAT'S obscene if I know it at all.

There are lawyers and the threat is too high. The harpies bear down and we close our eyes because Red Bull is an energy drink and primary colors are reserved for toddlers and brown and gray and black are scary She'll blush and tell you the truth and primary colors are good for children and my ankle broke amid brown and green and black the rainbow I saw was oil in the puddle on the blacktop and I'm nothing in the face.

I feel like I've heard this before.

The difference between guiding with the tips of your fingers and pressing against the bone of my thumb.
_____________________

I wrote this while listening to the lecture in the poetry class I tutor for. There was a conversation about obscenity, and I thought one of the answers was pretty pompous. I like the disintegration--I've edited it a bit, but I'm not sure if I want to completely remove the first part, because I like the second part better.

Scenario: Untitled

2007-11-07T11:04:00.000-08:00

1. Setting and Period

The play is set in the present, at the Lobelia Academy, in the English countryside. Specifically, the play is set in the bedroom of Emily Jones and her roommate Beatrice Branston. It is 4:45 in the morning, still dark outside. At 5:00 the sun will begin to rise, and a slow, cool light will slowly fill the stage. On the stage are two twin beds with plain dressings. In the bed on the right is Emily, and in the bed on the left is Bea. At the foot of Emily’s bed is a young man, Barbanby Jones.

2. Characters

Emily Jones:

Emily is 15 years old. Her parents are American, what some would call “nouveau riche”. They are good people and for the most part her status does not bring her any ill fortune within the school. This isn’t to say that she doesn’t have her rivals, all 15 year old girls have a mortal enemy. In Emily’s case this comes in the form of her room mate Beatrice, Bea for short. Emily has some trouble sleeping; it takes her nearly an hour to fall asleep every night. She wakes up every morning at five, when the sun rises, and looks out of the window at an old oak tree across the lawn. She then falls back to sleep and has very vivid dreams, and she is almost always able to remember them. She has a recurring dream, or rather, a recurring character in her dreams, which seem like the same story being told in different ways. The recurring character is a boy named Baines, Barnaby Jones.

Beatrice Branston:

Despite Emily’s best efforts Bea has not warmed up to her at all, in fact she’s quite rude to her. Bea is fairly popular at the school but her influence is not unlimited, nor is she wholly evil. Most people can see past Bea’s manner and at times can enjoy her company. It isn’t really apparent why Bea has a problem with Emily but it turns out that their two families have had some interaction in the past. Bea is English.

Barnaby (Baines) Jones:

Baines means bones. It was his nickname while he was at school, because he is so tall and lanky. Baines attended the Lobelia academy (under a different name of course) when he was alive. That was in the 1930s. Baines was twenty years old when he died. Before he did, he was a bit of a trouble maker, although he was smart and a decent student when he put his mind to it. Baines kept a small book inside his jacket pocket, and he would take it out to read. Nearly every sunrise would find him beneath an old oak tree reading one of his books, and making notes in it. Now that he’s dead, the book has no printed words but it retains his marginal notes. He knows that he wrote them because they are the kind of things that only and author would understand. That’s how he knows his name was Baines, because it’s written in the same hand on the inside of the front cover. He can’t remember how he died, but he knows that Emily knows something about him, because he can feel her eye on his tree nearly every morning. He was killed by his mother’s fraudulent physician (Dr. Branston) after he threatened to expose him and thus ruin his reputation. Baines can only remember the things about his life that he wrote down in his book.

3. Major Dramatic Question

Will Baines find out why he was killed?

Less important one à Will Baines and Emily find out why they are somehow connected, and why Bea dislikes Emily so much?

4. Linear Narrative

The stage is set with two beds, Emily is on the right and Bea is on the left. The stage is dark. Slowly, a pale light grows in the room, so that the outlines of the beds are able to be seen. Emily stirs. A spotlight begins to come up, only on Emily’s bed. She opens one eye, and looks backwards over her shoulder, arching her back, and looks concerned for a second, then settles herself deeper into her bed. The spotlight grows, and we see a young man is sitting at the foot of her bed. His elbows are resting on his knees and his forehead on his interlocked fists. Emily sits up suddenly. Baines looks up at her. They say nothing.

Their dialogue begins with simple introductions, as if this was an everyday occurrence. From these we learn the names of the characters. Bea stirs and mumbles something in her sleep. They both pause to look at her.

Then the questioning begins. Emily hints that Baines looks familiar, and Baines draws the conversation to the tree outside. Emily mentions her dreams. Bea stirs and says something in her sleep again. They both pause to look.

Emily continues talking about her dreams, and Baines takes out his book, and flips through it idly. Emily recognizes the binding of the old book, and pulls the same book out from underneath her bed. She says that it belonged to a relative on her mother’s side, a long time ago. Baines is amazed. He takes the book and opens it, his name is on the front page! The book is ____________________ (help me!) It dawns on them. They begin to piece things together, and Baines presses Emily about the relative. They find out that Baines is the brother of Emily’s grandmother. From Emily’s dreams and clues in the book (both printed and written) they find out how Baines was killed, and by whom. As the light gets brighter in the room, Emily promises to tell her family about their long lost relative (they presumed he’d eloped and the family had to move to America because Emily’s grandmother was disgraced and no suitor would marry her in England) She debates whether or not she should tell Bea that her Grandfather killed her great uncle. Bea knows though, and she’s afraid Emily will find out, the things she mutters throughout the play insinuate this, the audience picks it up but Emily doesn’t. Baines leaves. Emily goes back to sleep. Is it another one of her dreams? She has the book in her hand.

Escapologist

2007-06-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to simply watch. If you think about it, the viewer has a much worse time of it. Sit on the second seat of a tandem bike and pedal, lean into the turns but keep yourself stiff as a board otherwise. Don’t wobble, and don’t try to turn the handlebars. They don’t work; you will tip the whole thing over.

In the front there’s the obvious comfort that comes from control, but you still have to take the person behind you into account. You don’t and the effects are disastrous.

It’s hard to remember when I started thinking about all of this, when I realized that I could. There were moments, glimpses, little clues that told me I existed, and a sudden realization that there was someone else. But imagine—if you will—attempting consciousness and finding the world only dark and small; how could I know there was anything else? I had only a suspicion. Glimpses, glimmers of light gave me hope and a goal. They were hazy, always hazy and distant but there was light and suddenly I realized I was on my back. Later came the realization that the world wasn’t a static and unchanging white, not merely a ceiling. I learned perspective.

Slowly—painstakingly so—I learned perspective. I felt the cold ground on my back, and I realized the music clapped onto my ears was just that. I turned my head to one side and looked around; I saw the wire leading from my head to a box on a table surrounded by thick pieces of cardboard. It seemed like an altar but I knew it was a record player, and I removed the headphones. I heard a silence different from any silence I’d heard before. It was pregnant with possibility. And then I stood up.

* * *

Dear Jay,

This is a letter to yourself, as pathetic as it sounds. It’s not. Remember how the sun glinted off of the windows of those buildings. We sat, I sat, on the roof, remember, and threw the tiny stones. They made the faintest noise when they hit the ground. I was wearing sneakers and you’d repaired them with duct tape. You wrote something on the underside, the sticky side, before you stuck them on. Do you remember what it was? I don’t.

Thanks.

The cement was white and new and we were on par with the mountains in the distance, houses creeping up the sides in paths etched by water, remember. It was strange because the haze…it didn’t seem right. But the sun was setting.

* * *

The sharp edge of an envelope sliced the side of his middle finger and he drew his hand away with a sharp inhale. Shit, he thought as he stuck the finger in his mouth. The lights turned green and Jay Thomas placed his hand back onto the wheel, the cut finger smarting as the air conditioner breezed past. Jay’s nails were shot and bitten but the white half moons at their base were well defined. There was no dirt beneath them and they were fairly clean but every time he brought his hand up to his mouth in the familiar gesture his mother would slap it away again saying “Don’t be disgusting!” A girl in middle school had once said that biting your nails would give you worms, “They’ll have to lure them out with an onion, Jay.” She didn’t say from where, but he knew and it still didn’t stop him.

Yet Jay had never gotten worms, and he’d snapped at his girlfriend once, saying “I’ve been told to stop all my life, do you honestly think you can change me?” She’d regarded him coolly for a full thirty seconds before gathered her sweatshirt and bag from Jay’s couch and left. He was still kicking himself for that; he’d seen enough chick flicks by then to know he should have been more tactful.

* * *

Dusk on a Thursday in October, a little warmer than usual but the leaves were crunchy underfoot and the dead patches in the grass were more of a golden color than the usual brittle brown. There was a cinderblock wall, whitewashed and traced with the same thick ivy that covered the ground. There was a bush, at least two feet taller than me. And round the back where the leaves brushed against the wall there was an opening and it was the perfect spot to hide. The foliage was thick and dense and I had only noticed the opening because a monarch butterfly, odd and orange against the green, had caught my eye. But it had flown away when I approached and I sat crouched within the well trimmed shrub, calming my breath and avoiding branches like the plague. Night came quickly and easily and I was quite content to hold my ankles and watch the trail of ants that marched over the ivy back home. I’d easily forgotten the game I was supposed to play, and when the playful voices turned shrill and desperate and eventually died I didn’t notice.

* * *

Jay turned the wheel and waited until it was straight again to shake his hair out of his eyes. The habitual twitch wasn’t enough to budge it; he ran his fingers through the unwashed hair, pulling it up and away from his face. A rogue lock broke away from the grip of natural oils that result from three days without shampoo. It fell in front of his right eye and the dark brown contrasted sharply with the intense blue. Throw in his pale freckled face and scrawny frame and you’ve got the perfect image of MTV that fourteen year old girls swoon over. He had been secretly proud of his good looks until the age of the starving pseudo-rock star came along, the celebration of isolation that was fodder for nicknames and in jokes.

Lying on the floor with his eyes closed he would listen to his dad’s old vinyl records. The feeling of hypnosis was the same when he lay on his back and listened to the quiet whir of air conditioners in yoga classrooms. God forbid anyone found out about that. His college roommates thought he went to the gym twice a week to lift weights, but instead he was performing vinyasas and practicing his ujjayi breath. He didn’t own a yoga mat; it was too much of a giveaway. Instead he used the ones they kept in the storage room between classrooms. They smelled like feet when his nose touched the mat in chaturanga. But it was that five minutes in savasana that he looked forward to the most. The English name is corpse pose—it sounds more reassuring in the original form.

Savasana is the only pose he still performs, lying on his back in his small apartment, listening to the sounds of the city and forgetting.

* * *

What you see in the movies is surprisingly accurate. It’s cliché, but the first thing I did was look at my hand, turning it over and around beneath my gaze, flexing my fingers and finding out how far it could go before the pain set in. And pain! I recognized it instantly and also knew it was nothing, relatively speaking. Then came walking, no hesitance, just steps, instinctive and familiar because they’d been walked a thousand times. Past the old record player and through the corridor, headed for the bathroom. I needed a mirror.

Instantly I recognized myself behind the blue eyes that stared back. I was the black—deep—and I knew I’d never looked quite like this before.

* * *

His car bounced its way over the curb of another nameless fast food restaurant. He hesitated for a second before deciding to skip the drive through and have some human contact, however meager. He parked between two fading while lines and yanked on the parking brake. He leaned over to open the glove compartment, but it was overflowing with unpaid parking tickets, receipts, napkins and scraps of paper where chicken scratch was briefly visible in all shades of black and blue. He forced it closed again, and decided to hide the bundle of envelopes beneath the seat instead. He pressed the lock down and shut the door, slapping the side of his pants to make sure his wallet was there.

He made a strange picture standing in line. He was dressed to sharply for the garish colors around him, and the cashier seemed almost intimidated taking his order of a cheeseburger with bacon, curly fries and a coke. Jay wished she wouldn’t avert her eyes like that as she handed him his number plaque. He wanted to tell her that the suit was his only one, and it only looked so nice because it was so rarely used. He didn’t have an assistant take it to the dry cleaners; he had stood at the ironing board in his boxers last night, sweating from the steam. For god’s sake this isn’t boutique wax on my head—I’m stewing in my own filth! Extra greasy suits the occasion, you know?

Instead he thanked her, and found a table by the window on which to place his number. He stared at the empty seat across from him until his food arrived on a plastic tray. He knew this stuff could kill you, but he didn’t care, not really.

He kicked himself beneath the table anyway.

* * *

Dear Jay,

I pulled the tape off yesterday and the fabric came with it, so that’s why I asked. I couldn’t read the words because the fabric stuck to them.

Weird though.

* * *

And there were no footsteps and there was no warning because despite their density or maybe because of it the leaves were quiet underfoot so my eyes were closed as the bush was pushed aside so no dappled pattern fell on my face but the bright light of a halogen lamp landed with full force and behind my lidded eyes the world burned bright red into my dream and I woke up screaming before I realized the voice was my own and nothing I could do would calm my breath, there was a strange face peering at me waiting that I didn’t want because the ants had all gone home.

* * *

After that first time it didn’t take long for me to realize that it was far easier to achieve consciousness when he wasn’t. I was there, watching the light and the haze and listening, thinking. And then without warning the world would clear and I looked through eyes at the ceiling. It was dark, it was night, but sometimes the light shone and I was on my back on the floor. But it didn’t seem strange. I would turn my head to one side to see if there was anyone else and I could see people spread out on the hardwood floor. I learned to recognize the yoga classrooms from their tiled ceilings, and I was content tracing their patterns and forming constellations out of their holes until the instructor’s voice broke the silence and with a whooshing sound the world was hazy again.

At night Jay was on the verge of sleep, and until he went completely under I was content tracing the patterns on his ceiling and forming constellations out of the bumps in the plaster. Clothes and papers littered the carpeted floor, crumpled and cast aside and left to become brittle and creased until they were rediscovered and made smooth by a careful hand, creases still remaining though they’d been folded and filed away.

Orange light from the streetlamp outside filtered in through slatted blinds and cast its shadow on the bare wall; the soft green glow of the bedside clock filled in where the orange didn’t. The blinds themselves were partly shut, in the morning enough sun would shine through to lighten the room but the plastic slats prevent a beam from falling on Jay’s face and opening his eyes. I threw off the covers and tiptoed quietly to the bathroom—I needed a mirror. If I were him I would keep one in the bedroom.

I leaned on the counter, my arms locked and my shoulders jutting forward as I stared into my reflection. The image is murky but I wait and am still and my eyes have adjusted, I can make out my pupils in the dark. With my face as close to the mirror as possible without losing focus I would stare into my eyes, past the blue and into the black, trying to figure it out. In the dark the pupil is huge and dominates most of the eye, but if I flicked the light switch it would immediately shrink.

The first time I did this Jay woke up and found himself staring at himself in the bathroom mirror with no idea how he got there. My hand moved quickly upwards and light didn’t flood the room but rather it appeared fluorescent and lurid and seeking every surface and particle within its reach. But bless him, he figured he’d just been sleep walking and after throwing some cold water on his face he turned off the light and went back to bed. It was only then, beneath the covers that I realized I’d seen the whole thing.

It had been instantaneous and in the mirror I had seen Jay’s pupils contract, the blue veins of the iris pushing and closing the gap, his eyebrows had shot upwards and he had stepped back in surprise. The world had not gone hazy and no whooshing sound had inexorably pulled me back to wherever I’d come from. I was still here, looking out through our eyes.

And yet Jay was here too, and he was too troubled to close his eyes and sleep.

* * *

Dear Jay,

It’s not creepy.

I do remember what you do when I’m not around, most of the time. Why can’t you remember? You do, only sometimes. I wonder why that is.

Stop biting your nails.

* * *

It was gradual at first, and that was my justification for what was really feigned ignorance. I would close my eyes and think and I would see my thoughts and acknowledge them but I let them slide away from me until I was thinking of nothing and I wasn’t there.

I liked it, and that’s the real reason why I tried to rationalize it.

And it was fine, and it was good, and it was easy. At the end of the day to come home and disappear was the only thing I wanted.

* * *

On the floor with arms spread wide. Thoughts finally, hesitatingly, quiet. I sat up and took the pad of paper and the pencil that lay next to the phone and for the first time I wrote.

* * *

I stared at the empty plastic seat across from me as I ate. The bundle of letters was beneath the passenger seat of my car in the parking lot. I didn’t have to do this, and I was still debating. It crossed my mind briefly that I could close my eyes forever and it would be ok. I wondered if I was the only human being who could avoid the gradual pull of death and maybe I could just leave. A baby laughed behind me and I shook myself. Was that his suggestion? I can’t even distinguish which thoughts are my own.

* * *

Jay—

You probably know, but I’m going to see them today. I’m bringing these letters with me because I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to say. I wonder if you’ll read this.

Thanks.

* * *

Jay could do nothing but hand him the bundle and watch as they were unfolded and read slowly, carefully. There was silence in the rustle of paper and it was expectant. I nudged Jay politely, and took the handle bars firmly in my hands.

“It’s hard to simply watch.” I began.

2007-04-22T00:47:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wish I could projectile vomit at will.
Is the act of vomiting the ultimate form of rejection, dispelling something without giving it the time of day?
A form of rejection that doesn't leave you shaky with a vague ache in the jaw, but refreshed.

Ashley and I used to look up pictures of people vomiting on the internet, I have no idea why.

I would hear the key forced into the lock, and I'd vomit on the bathroom tile. Your heels wouldn't make that awful clacking sound and I would finally get some rest.

Spring Cleaning

2007-04-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

The Lady of the House opened the fridge, and after a pause said, “If you leave chocolate in the refrigerator for too long—never mind that it’s baking—it’ll taste like refrigerator when you bite it weeks later.” Her roommate was sitting on the couch in front of the television. She casually brushed away a few crumbs from her sweatshirt with a paper towel.

“Who would replace baking soda with chocolate?”

The Lady bored holes through the back of Roomate’s head. Roomate stayed stiff and her head faced the television. The Lady sighed.

“Imagine pouring baking soda, chock full of weeks and weeks, into cake batter. Would it taste like life?”

Roomate rolled her eyes. She wouldn’t play this game.

“Who would use weeks old baking soda for a cake?”

“For a wake?” said The Lady, laser eyes turned once again to the inside of the fridge.

Roomate was confused. She had felt the pressure release and guessed it was safe to hazard a quick look behind her. “Maybe.”

“It’s the Greek pot thrown on a wheel,” said The Lady, as she lifted the lid of the trash can, “and when you press a turntable needle in the groove and let it spin you can hear the sound of coughing Greeks, and fires burning in an ancient kiln.”

Roomate replied, “You’d hear the sound of pottery falling. Rome hadn’t fallen yet.” She scrolled through the channels.

“Rome didn’t exist yet.” Said The Lady, making sure her smile didn’t reach her voice. “Would you hear it forming?”

“You might hear the cries of a boy being woken up by wolves.” She didn’t take notice of the crackling and slamming because The Lady was always crackling and slamming in the kitchen.

“They tested that on Myth Busters you know,” said The Lady, tying the trash bag into a knot.

“And?”

The Lady had opened the sliding glass door to the balcony, and she laid the stuffed trash bag next to two others.

“The graduate students they use now were sufficiently creeped out, but I didn’t finish the episode. The girl had red hair and she pissed me off.” It was Roomate’s turn to stare daggers at The Lady, but her highness didn’t notice because she was already halfway up the stairs.

Stroking her hair, Roomate sighed and stood up. She removed a cube of baking chocolate from beneath a pillow, and walked toward the kitchen. She opened the fridge, paused, and stared daggers up through the ceiling.

First draft

2007-04-18T15:38:00.001-07:00

“If you leave chocolate in the refrigerator for too long—never mind that it’s baking—it’ll taste like refrigerator when you bite it weeks later.”

“Who would replace baking soda with chocolate?”

“Imagine pouring baking soda, chock full of weeks and weeks, into cake batter. Would it taste like life?”

“Who would use weeks old baking soda for a cake?”

“For a wake?”

“Maybe.”

“It’s the Greek pot thrown on a wheel, and when you press a turntable needle in the groove and let it spin you can hear the sound of coughing Greeks, and fires burning in an ancient kiln.”

“You’d hear the sound of pottery falling. Rome hadn’t fallen yet.”

“Rome didn’t exist yet. Would you hear it forming?”

“You might hear the cries of a boy being woken up by wolves.”

“They tested this on Myth Busters you know.”

“And?”

“The graduate students they use now were sufficiently creeped out, but I didn’t finish the episode. The girl had red hair and she pissed me off.”