they added "meh" to the dictionary

blog is dead.
not in general, just this one.

i don't think i'm cut out for blogging. i think bloggers are supposed to be opinionated or something.

a brief disjointed return.

a news story:
now that i am having schooling in writing again, i will have more to write and put in here.
the bad part, requiring discipline in order to write is probably a good sign for my imminent failure as a writer.

i would like to take a moment and chat about some super books i read recently, as well as a couple of the mediocre ones i picked up for some reason and decided to finish.

first, my favorite of recent days and the reason i feel inspired all month:
We Love Glenda So Much, a short story collection by Julio Cortazar.
part of my joy for this collection is that i have been trying to know Cortazar for a good 6 months or so and after feeling stupid trying his novels and losing my brain, i'm glad to have finally hit upon his work in my favorite medium, short story. Cortazar has such a crazy mind, i wish i could live in it, but being that i can't, i consider it a joy to read such lovely passages as this:

"The dogs howled again intermittently, from one of the shacks in the dell the shouts of a woman suddenly cut off at their highest point, the silence next door let a murmer of confused alarm pass in the dozing of tourist women too fatigued and out of it to be really interested in what surrounded them. We stayed listening, far removed from sleep. After all, what's the use of sleeping if later on it could be the roar of a cloudburst on the roof or the shrill lovemaking of cats, the preludes to nightmares, dawn, when heads finally flatten pillows and then nothing can get in them until the sun climbs up the palm trees and you have to go back to living."
--Story With Spiders

doesn't it make you want to sigh? i read it and want my own beach cabin or else make myself lie awake in bed to hear my own neighborhood's sounds, the next-door air conditioner and a bird with a very close nest. i realize that real criticism is beyond me, that reading for me is either loving or confusion or boredom or amusement. i usually can't be bothered thinking of where an author failed or what he must have been thinking. what i read is mostly enough.

other highlighted stories include the title story, We Love Glenda So Much, a tale of fan clubs gone awry but told in a sense of the highest glory and ancient quest for perfection; Clone, a confusing fugue or choir of sorts where i can't even get angry that the concept is greater than the plot; and Stories I Tell Myself, which i of course love because dream and daydream and love and adventure roll all together and come out in a dinner party.

ok, end of good book round 1. good book round 2 will be shorter because allison is borrowing my copy and i desperately want it back for comfort.

like so many of my college brethren, i have caught the kerouac bug. however unlike most i have known, it was not On The Road that made me realize my inner beat (or rather name my inner beat as 'beat' because i feel like i'm insulting myself to say i needed a book to tell me what i am. at any rate). so, my book of choice: Desolation Angels.

those of you who feel like scrolling down a bit will find a post where i basically rhapsodize about a passage from this book, and i guess not a lot more needs to be said. there is a blurb on the cover of my copy that talks about how Desolation Angels best captures the place of God in the beat mystique, and i like that. i worry and wonder about God a lot and its easier to think about when presented in such a poetic and honest way as this. i think maybe its too late, too much writing has happened since then to make it acceptable for me to write the way i do, but kerouac tells me its okay to do stream of consciousness if i want even if its not a stream but a lot of blood squirting out instead.

i guess rather than move on to the mediocre books i should just give a rest, i'm getting crazy and i'm not all that deep anyway. there is only so long i can ramble along in my own head without making you all hate me, probably. and i do still care, somewhat, about that.

good night.

i don't really feel like writing much lately (not in a happy or sad way).

on mental lenses

1. Lying on my right side in the grass when it is quite sunny. I think about how a man-made camera would duplicate the effect of each eye’s lens crossing the other so I see my arm, but I can see the grass through my arm tho it is behind it, actually. I blink each eye separately and the picture shifts from my arm to the flower garden five yards away. The sun is so goddamn warm and bright in my left eye and that is definitely something a movie lens would not get in the right way, in fact I think I’ve never seen a film with crossed-eye impressions of grass and sunburned arms and visions of eyelashes flirting with tiny bugs, tiny bugs crawling ten-story blades of grass in july. I like to smile about this because it is distracting.
2. In a hired black taxi skimming down the FDR drive past Queens and Brooklyn and the glowing Pepsi sign and the water is just as black, too. It’s night, so lights are on and the telescope in my eye can see dry fingers flicking on switches and either standing at the window like mirrors to me or ignoring the same old city night again. We don’t see stars except on deck chairs, and at the pier there is a real telescope. For two quarters you can spy-scan the other side, the other island that is practically a mainland poking into the ocean. The spy-scan is no better than the eye telescope tho because the scan is just that, it is a cursory view and difficult to focus and can’t see hands in pockets or coin jars.

speling!

National Spelling Bee Brings Out Protesters Who R Thru With Through

I just finished reading this article in the Wall Street Journal regarding spelling reform, and I am flabbergasted! However, not for the reasons you may expect. My shock is not due to the fact that there are people in the world trying to change spelling, but because I have been well-acquainted with the spelling reform movement nearly all of my life, but never expected its efforts to make the front page of a national newspaper!

Let me explain. My dad is a member of The Spelling Society (formerly the Simplified Spelling Society). I remember one time he brought home a prototype version of The Wizard Of Oz written in simplified spelling for me to read. Though I understand the intentions behind it, to ask an 11-year-old bookworm to unlearn her understanding of her native language is quite a challenge. The Tin Woodman became the "Tin Wuudman" and the yellow brick road was a "yelo brik rode" instead. It was near impossible to remember to connect these foreign phrases to the meanings I knew they were supposed to represent. I read it stubbornly and judged it rather harshly, but the truth was that I got the story all the same.

Simplified spelling has been in my life for such a long time that it is difficult for me to take a stance on it. I love studying etymology, doing crossword puzzles, and writing or reading poetry that is as visually interesting as it is aurally. But plenty of intelligent people simply have a block against spelling rules. This doesn't make their thoughts any less valid, yet their intelligence is often questioned unfairly as a result.

I intended to make a post of substance regarding the issue of spelling, but if I'm going to be honest here, the real reason I got excited about this article is because it describes a world that I am a part of. My dad has been a protester at the national spelling bee, which I find hilarious and awesome. The article has a section (and a cool trademark Wall Street Journal ink pen face) about 102-year-old Ed Rondthaler and his house in New York State. Well, kids, call this my brush with fame, because I have eaten lunch at the Rondthaler house on a drive back from New York City with my dad. Mr. Rondthaler showed me a flashcard show about the inanity of English spelling--how "comb" should rhyme with "tomb" but "tomb" rhymes with "boom" and "comb" rhymes with "roam" and "home" instead. Other names mentioned in the print version of the article--Alan Mole, Joe Little are names that have appeared in our mailbox for years.

Maybe the reason I'm excited is because this little constant of my life that has always seemed pretty hopeless is at least being recognized. Spelling reformers face the fact that they are not likely to achieve the success they want, but stay determined in spite of it all.
Next up: my life with Esperanto, worm compost, carnivorous plants and historic canals. Ok, not really.

i may have a dream obsession

Seriously, I can't get over my dreams sometimes. Nights I don't dream I think are wasted. Last night had all the best elements of the subconscious all together. I dreamed I had a brother named Joseph who was either 7 or 10 years younger than me, but for some reason I always just forgot about his existence. Then all of a sudden I would remember and say something like, "Oh yeah! Joseph. Does he still live with us? When was he born again?" and then they'd have to remind me where his bedroom was.

So that was part one, which was far surpassed in awesome wish-it-was-realness by part two. In part two, I believe I was aimlessly wandering around some town with my good friend Katie, looking for kicks and then realizing we were standing in front of the Tom Waits mansion/estate. So of course, we decide to go in...never really figured out if it was just a big home or a museum tour type thing. At any rate, Katie goes first but doesn't have much to say; I just build up butterflies waiting to meet the man. When I get in, I'm not sure what to say, but ol' Tom is waiting in a wooden chair and everything is old and rusty-silky like him. I maybe call him "Mr. Waits." When we get to conversing, the talk moves to recipes for things and Mr. Waits decides that he'd like to give me some old recipe cards that I might like. He looks around in some closets and cupboards but all he can scrounge up are some old family photos, not necessarily his family, but all sepia and solemn. I scoop them up in a big pile and thank him and go out to meet Katie again.

Part three: there was this cat, a small hairy tabby that was just ALL OVER ME. I used a lint brush after.

night thinks about morning

I’m up at two thirty in the morning simply because I can. I have no obligations early tomorrow, but the internet and lukewarm pop cans are the food of insomniac boredom, even as I realize that I will miss the enjoyment of my favorite part of the day—morning. I inhabit a curious niche as a college-age morning person, but it’s not without reason. Morning is sort of the braided part of the day that is elegantly routine before it gets unraveled down through the hours into night where everything is spread out and wanton like Eve’s hair, beautiful in its way as well but more heartbreaking. In the morning, I know a pleasant song will play on my alarm clock, I will lower the volume but hear the song through unless my eyes are too weighty to process it. I put my feet on the floor quickly, the same how my body aches when it is vertical too long, I can only stay lying down for certain hours before my organs need to shift and situate inside me. So I step out and reacquaint myself with the feeling of my soles on the floor, cold winter wood or summer clutter I stumble over on my way to the shower/kitchen, which one comes first is a coin toss of impulse.

Say today it is the shower, I explore the perspective of barely waking and thought before language and language without interpretation, strings of words follow each other aimlessly until concrete thoughts formulate and remember the history of my brain and body. Showering is the other side of nakedness, the private soaps and shampoos, permission to touch oneself everywhere and breathe warm fragrant awakening. Sometimes it involves music, sometimes just the clicks of bottles and beating water. After the process is done, there is the stepping out into soft towels and steam clouds and examining my dark wet hair and white-green eyeballs against flushed skin. Combing, or not, the lowest layers of clothing, bathmats, planning how to decorate my canvas, pressing my stomach in and rubbing my scars, feeling gratefully hungry.

Next, the kitchen, home of breakfast, grandest meal of meditation. A book or the comics page, and so many tastes to tempt me—cold cereal and banana slices, poached egg on toast with black pepper, coffee black or tan sweet and strong, juices, maybe mom is around with a bowl of blueberries that are really too tart for my first meal but I try to be earnest. The spoon sounds tinkling on the bowl and I moosh milky banana around my mouth as I read the old lame comics or the new clever ones, animals in people-world or animal-worlds or boys with imagination, moms that have wrier souls than their cornflake husbands and what will those darn kids do next? It’s most funny when I actually laugh and then laugh because I laughed at the comics page and then I grin at my sister because my face wakes up much, much faster and she squints groggy when she tries to return the smile. Away from home, the routine is quieter but I still make plans or fend off worries until after coffee or a short post-shower nap that leaves my pillow wet but fresh.

But for all the effort spent enjoying sunrise slowly, it ends hastily when I realize time has a place on a clock that is growing slimmer. Earrings go on if I remember, chapstick, the rapid mental checklist phonekeysIDbagbooksmoneyshoesnecklace and I end up stumbling out the door at the last minute.

shoot the lights out

Clearly we both knew it wasn't a forever deal, or even an all-year deal, maybe a coupla-months deal, if that. He was too cool, in the deliberate scrutinizing indifferent way, while I was bouncing around the kitchen offering him jello and telling him to pick out my clothes for the party. At first he was amused because I seemed so married to the idea of fun and I guess it brought him down from the mountain he was looking at everyone from, for a little while he was kissing and dancing with an ant. When he was through with me, I cried about two tears and then listened to Nina Simone and laughed a bit. At the Halloween party, I stood outside carelessly smoking cigarettes in my bright red wig with the new girls and had the girly, "I don't need him anyway," conversation and the new girls said, "I don't get him," "You don't need him anyway," "He's really weird," and yeah, they were right but not quite.

The only pang is remembering how taken aback I was when he laughed because I thought I wasn't pretty, as if it was a given, how he kissed me on the street outside the doctor's, where anyone could see and I told him that was the first time anyone had kissed me out-of-doors (those words, also made him laugh). Being so delighted and feeling so undeserving when he brought me a dry sweater when I was shivering and wet and realizing that people who go through boyfriends like tissues actually expect this kind of stuff from them. Other times he rolled me careful little filtered joints that I smoked down 3rd avenue or browsed the pulp noir section of the library with me, cooked black olive omlets and I considered myself a happy lucky girl.

Once, after the hundredth time I begged him to speak Chinese to me, he said in a jokey-serious voice, "I'm not a novelty!" and I felt bad, but he sort of was, and I was a novelty to him, too. I remember one time being drowsy and half-napped, asking him what he saw in me (I really didn't, don't know) and he thought a moment and said my innocence, which was sweet but really no different, but fine. So when we were together, I only played music that I liked, never music that I loved because I knew that I couldn't reserve those songs in my heart for a coupla-months kind of guy, knowing that any sanctity of my body is worth less than the sanctity of a song.

I let him keep one song, even though he wasn't around to hear it with me. He went outside for a cigarette and I put on thin white clothes and my headphones until he came back up. The lyrics ran: "i'm not the mystery that you hope to find, but i'm here now and i'm willing to play the part anyway," and I was aware and resigned to the bittersweet, even at the sweetest part of it all. I expect self-fooling romance and low expectations, indifference and novelty, never trying to hold on too hard to anything I don't want for keeps.

fictionnonfiction

I'm falling in love with ink on bound paper, as usual. Print is proof and I believe every word even when I frown my disagreement. Hungrily, I read and believe myself to know; I come to bed at night and gather the books I'm reading and toss them on my bed because I never know what mood will hit when I am under the covers and sliding my eyelids up and down. As I step off the floor and into my sea of books I feel loved, what a lucky girl to lay down with Kerouac and Julio Cortazar and Toni Morrison at night. They ache their love through their words and show me how their eyes are special and they see to their characters' cores, so maybe they will see to mine.

My dictionary is a constant part of the pile, filled with post-its and highlighting of no importance except to myself. The tiny pen line illustrations are amusing and entrancing, I contemplate a tattoo of the radius picture, complete with definition and pronunciation guide. The bookbed has been part of my life since I can remember. I pretended to be afraid of the dark so I could leave the hall light on and my bedroom door open and sneak read in bed, other kids used flashlights but reading takes both hands. Now, if I can't sleep, I pull any old thin paperback off a shelf and hold it in my hand with my fingers between the pages, as if to mark my spot, but the book falls out of my hand anyway and in the morning I do book searches under the covers and around the bed until I find them and open the pages again.

When these writers write, I read and yearn for them and wish to hold their words in a form more tangible than text, as if I could. I want Jack Kerouac in the flesh, telling me I am an angel, not like some pickup line but that he can see the wings I never realized I had. I want this passage to be for me:
"she says, 'You don't look like you need a haircut' and appraises me, and I know she loves me, and I love her, and I know tonight I can walk hand in hand with her to the starlit banks of the Skagit and she wont care what I do, sweet--she'll let me violate her everywhichway, that's what she wants, the women of America need mates and lovers, they stand in marble banks all day and deal with paper and paper they're served at the Drive-In after Paper Movies, they want kissing lips and rivers and grass, as of old--"

I am selfish and I know, but so are they all and you all, we want things and convince ourselves we don't deserve them and so give them to other people. I give, but I take, too, and tonight I will fall gratefully asleep again with stories all around, alone for all intensive purposes, and roll around on the pages and make small contented sounds until the sun rises.

Kyle

Kyle worked at a toll booth on the Ohio Turnpike in the far outskirts of Toledo. Most other kids did toll work as a summer job, older high school kids or college kids home for the summer. Kyle worked all year though, and since he really had no other major commitments, they liked to put him on the night shift, which wasn't really so bad except that he didn't get much time to see Megan, his girlfriend. She worked down the road at the Cinnabon in the service station, usually weekend shifts, as she was also going to school for nursing at the University of Toldeo. Kyle had decided not to go to college. He had done fine in high school, played on the hockey team, had a weekly column in the school paper, his counselors considered him a promising case. Something about the idea of college didn't suit Kyle, though. He was more content than most people thought to just sit alone all night, taking tolls, making jokes on the walkie-talkie to the other toll takers and writing stories.
Kyle was in the middle of one of these stories, around 2:15 in the morning, when Megan called. Strictly speaking, he wasn't supposed to spend a lot of time on the phone when he was on the job, but the liklihood of the authorities checking up on him at this hour was slim, and either way, he had mastered the art of swiveling his chair away from the security camera to make it look like he was just resting his hand on his temple and muttering to himself. Kyle turned away and answered the phone.
"Hiiiiiii, baaaby," Megan said loudly.
"Are you drunk or something?" Kyle said teasingly.
"Wellllll," she said, "Maybe a little. But I just wanted to call and see how you are, y'know....I love you sweeeeeetie! What are you up to?"
Kyle twiddled his pen thoughtfully. "Just writing a love poem for--"
"OhmyGod, Jessie! Sorry, my friend Jessie just showed up, hang on one second--okay, sorry, what?" Megan said absentmindedly.
"Just writing a love poem for you. Hey, I think someone is coming up the road, so I'm going to let you go. Take care babe, I'll call you tomorrow."
Kyle turned back toward the window. He hadn't been lying, a car was coming. After two years of toll booth work, Kyle could start to recognize some types of people driving out from Toledo in the middle of the night. The car revealed itself to be a Fiat driven by a frazzled-looking woman in a navy power suit. She rolled down the window.
"Hi...how much is the toll again?" she asked, her eyes darting around for the fare poster.
"Three dollars, ma'am," he said before she could find it.
"Oh, right. I see now." She fumbled in her pocketbook for singles. “Do you have change for a five?”
Kyle handed two dollars through the window in exchange for her five, and she drove off again.
Kyle decided she couldn’t have been a native Ohioan, or she would have known the toll. But she was in a power suit, so she was there for business. He couldn’t make himself curious enough to wonder more, so he turned back to the page he was writing.
He had been lying about the love poem, however. The story he was writing now had love in it, it was true, but the handsome lead was a Colombian drug lord who was usually more concerned about whose heads were flying in his backyard than about the dainty flamenco dancer who begged for his cold heart. Kyle knew it was ridiculous. He had spent the first year writing careful observations and drawing meaningful conclusions from the drivers who passed robotically along his window. He had a whole wealth of notes and dialogues and poems about the crying girl in the scarf, the teenagers with pot smoke rolling out their open windows, the man with the american flag tattoo and the rottweiler in the passenger seat, and the woman playing sexy in designer sunglasses. He’d seen so many, and now he knew that they could only be caricatures, no matter how important their lives seemed to them. So he tucked away his thoughts and notebooks and starting writing lurid, awful stories about characters who knew they were characters and stories where everybody dies for love.
Kyle’s walkie talkie fuzzed on and he heard Fiona’s voice from the one other open toll booth.
“Some lady just asked to borrow my chapstick. Do you think that’s weird?” she asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s kind of weird,” Kyle replied after a pause. “Did you let her?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. Kind of weird,” Kyle said. “I’d throw it out if I were you.”
Fiona sighed. “You’re probably right. Damn.” The walkie talkie clicked off.
Fiona was all right, Kyle thought, as another car pulled up, an old gray Volvo in need of a new muffler. The driver cranked down the window by hand and extended a handful of coins and one dollar bill.
As Kyle counted out the coins, the man in the car smoothed back a head of grizzled, greasy hair.
“I bet you see a lot of strange people driving through here around this time, huh?” he said, chuckling.
“Sometimes, yeah,” Kyle said, as though he hadn’t heard it before.
“If I had your job, I bet I could write a book about all the characters you must run in to. Must be fascinating work,” he mused.
“It’s alright.”
The man seemed put off by Kyle’s lack of enthusiasm for the subject and started cranking his window back up, but stopped midway for one last comment.
“You know, you’re young though. You still have time to go and make something of yourself. You should think about going back to school.”
Kyle clenched his teeth briefly, then relaxed.
“Actually, I think I’m fine. Thanks though.”
The man drove off, and Kyle picked up his walkie talkie.
“Hey Fiona, some guy just told me I should make something of myself.”
“Fuckin’ asshole,” said Fiona.
“Yeah. Damn.”

years after wendy

peter, you don't know love
but i know you.
i can sew you pockets and iron out your shadow
and pretend you never cried;
you will give me wings for yourself
and smile your tiny teeth for the pirates.
you silly ass, you bird, you bliss:
the spires of london could prick your foot
while the stars scorch your feathered cap,
you won't know what's beneath.
in the cupboard you forgot
a part of adventure
not a mother you need, but me
to thimble your amnesia with the window always wide
and speak slow and breezy, telling the same story from now
until spring cleaning.

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

(i wrote this paper for a class, so references to authors which aren't credited are due to that fact) (also, all is true!!!)

nine o’clock in the morning and I’m taking an inventory check on the subway bench to distract from the pair of middle-aged sweatshirt men doing “the nod” at me and refusing to stop staring and grinning from across the track, also the one who walked past and did the up-down look and murmured, “nice, whatchu got on there.” and so this leads to the obvious question, why did I choose to wear a short lace dress and gold embroidered boots on a long train ride to a beach town, long island, montauk? the first of the WHY questions I ask myself and others ask me and I fail to answer. the best I can do is say that I always dress warm and sensible for the journeys and tend to fall asleep in my headphones, which does not lend itself to writing or observing. so I wear the dress to keep alert, but the real effect is that I feel idiotic and idiotically enraptured with my reflection across the train window and get the haughty mentality of a girl who is not taking the train to wander, but to go to her home in the hamptons and feed her purebred a nice carrot.

the feeling of digression comes naturally with the rhythm of the train; I am facing backwards and when I sink in my seat it gives the impression of the ground pulling out from under me. my thoughts are scattered and my notebook page is limited to one-line observations such as, “’Harold’ on the side of a building—why?” and “mounds and mounds of grey gravel in rows,” or “feeling of stuck, all these people trapped by the bottleneck of NYC.” I’m simultaneously trapped by the obligation to work and the real reason I enjoy long train rides: the feeling of being enclosed in the non-location of motion, and with the lack of location I feel a lack of responsibility.

in planning, I decided I was going to be like theroux: I was going to take a train as far as it would take me, through towns with exotic names (jamaica, babylon and SPEONK(!!!)), I was going to read books, drink liquor and talk to strange people. and maybe that’s the second answer to the WHY of the dress, if I’m busy being hannah in sweatpants or a shapeless t-shirt, it also means I am hannah who doesn’t know what to say to strangers and fears the law, and that would not do. I bring with me the food and pens I will need to sustain the journey, as well as a library copy of antonio skármeta’s novel, the postman, which serves to entertain as well as fire my loins embarrassingly and leaves its cloud hanging over the remainder of the day. also, gulliver’s travels, which I thought would be fun since, hey, we’re both travelling!, sadly, it was not.

getting back to (or beginning) the action, I leave my room at 8:45 a.m. feeling like christmas morning, grapple with subways for too long, and narrowly catch the 9:46 to montauk (transfer in jamaica). I note the constant alternating of the industry with idyllic stretches of lake, neatly mowed hampton lawns and fields of rusty beams. I glimpse people out the window and am thankful that I only see the pair of sweet nine-year-olds holding hands for 3 seconds because now they can stay that way forever; I never need to see them eating corn dogs or screaming at their mothers for buying the wrong kind of fruit snacks. I note what actually IS by the waters of babylon (a high school, several trees, a parking lot, the railroad station) and don’t really feel like weeping much.

three stops before montauk, two things happen: one—a group of noisy children board what was almost a silent train, two—I look between the gap of seat and window and see a hand (male, about my age) holding a camcorder. the kids shout about snacks and fishing, the hand puts the camera away and I observe that the hand belongs to a body with a head of thick black hair. I am instantly curious about the face behind the seat. I like to think I know better than to believe in train romance, but one too many times watching before sunrise has ruined me, and the skármeta I am digesting isn’t helping anything either. the kids are unbelievably annoying, and I stop trying to inwardly apologize for hating them. defiantly, I take my first swig of rum and coke, despite my intended rule to not start drinking before noon. it’s the difference between these kids and the couple out the window that makes me more aware of the elusive beauty of travel—it is far easier to love things briefly and ignorantly than to have them so close as to know all their faults.

montauk draws near with the necessary pomp; I watch out the window as the land gets narrower and ocean and bay are on both sides. this development is loudly documented by the children and it reminds me of the thornberry character on theroux’s journey (“aha! another connection to class,” I think). the pull into the station is slower and more deliberate than any of the other stations, as if to tell us that this is truly the end. I find satisfaction in stepping over the actual end of the track that began so long ago.

and then I finally see the face of the black haired camcorder boy and decide it is good. we realize we are the only former passengers eschewing the taxI services, so we walk the mile road into town together. he (paul) also has no answer to the WHY of montauk, and his camcorder, like my notebook, is probably just an excuse to be a stranger in a distant place. this story doesn’t end in a crazy makeout scene or the exchange of numbers, but instead in a quiet lunch in a circular diner, followed by a friendly parting. I realize with relief that my great adventure is not destined to become a romance that would no doubt be the product of people feeling the need to fall in love on a train because movies have told us that is how it goes. so we part, and I change my shoes.

in flip-flops, I go to the montauk chamber of commerce and meet a petite woman who is a fount of energy and enthusiasm for montauk tourism. pamphlets are thrust into my arms, she wails concern that such a beautiful girl is here ALL ALONE! and she’s from MICHIGAN! and ohhhhh, those are such LOVELY boots! and so, with my maps and sailing information, I excuse myself from her aunt-like fluttering. “to the beach,” I think. at the beach there is the mandatory toe-dip in the ocean, the pacing around and feeling poetic, the sipping of my drink. I sit down on the sand even though i’m shivering and read and write until I notice I have nothing to say, so I get up and walk. I look at the tourist map and see that just a short jog down the montauk highway is a lighthouse, and at the lighthouse, The End. my mind is made up: to the lighthouse.

incidentally, “to the lighthouse” is not only a virginia woolf novel I have never read, it is a song by patrick wolf that I happened to listen to while putting on my dress and anticipating montauk around 8:15 that morning. as I walk down the shoulder of the road, I sing the refrain in the loopy voice I use when nobody is around. I mark landmarks on the map, but they seem farther apart than they look. after a mile of walking, I see in the corner, “map not drawn to scale.” but patrick wolf is telling me to go to the lighthouse, there cannot even be a question, to the lighthouse my friend, we must go, we must go! with this and my rum and coke as the beat of my steps, I decide: I can’t go back now, but to go forward could take hours. my solution is hitchhiking.

yes, hitchhiking. my boots strung over my shoulder and goosebumps on my bare legs, I hold out my thumb tentatively (never having done this before) and worry that someone will stop. eventually, someone does, a man in a pickup truck with a shovel in the back. fantastic! so of course I hop inside, his name is dennis and he has a daughter about my age. he thinks i’m stupid, with good reason, and kind of crazy, but of course he means hannah of the dress is crazy, not me. he tells of his own hitching days and actually uses the phrase “walkabout,” to which I want to yell, “CHATWIN, son!” but wisely don’t. his friendliness compels him to not only take me to the lighthouse, but take my picture and drive me back into town. ah, eastern hospitality.

the winding down of montauk day is progressively less glorious, with the exception of some fried shrimp which I eat because montauk is a seaside town and it seems proper. I miss the train out and make two more trips in and out of downtown to get ticket money. three hours of train riding turn to four, the fourth hour due to the possibility that the train may have hit somebody. the darkness outside the window inhibits my outdoor observation, and left with no desireable reading, the last 4 hours of my trip are vainly spent observing how nice my legs look in reflection across the aisle. the hannah in dress clothes persona has become a veritable narcissus, and the last pages of my notebook are a wasteland of sexual energy the day-to-day me would never have dared to write.

I forgot to mention that rain was predicted for this day. in the one show of proper preparation, I brought an umbrella, which of course guaranteed clear skies until finally, 1:25 in the morning, as I am walking the last block before home, it starts to sprinkle. this insignificant fact somehow justified my WHYs of the day—the umbrella was there to match the dress, to keep me awake, to make me ready for adventure, to hitchhike, to cover my legs in cold sand, and the best train ride moment where I look across and instead of seeing my full reflection, the darkness of my dress fades into the shadow and all I see are my head and legs which seem to be perched in a white floral bush. I am wearing white flowers, motionless, and the new me of the dress is now another new me of the bush. I realize that these versions of me can keep duplicating forever, as long as I am a stranger.

greyhound: a love ode

this tendency to misunderstand the bus
its need for so many wheels
and the forbidding cargo hold of sardine suitcases
happens to the people who think planes are normal
that feeling of anti-motion
of air pressed around like fingers in the ear and throat chewing gum
totally unbirdlike, stale where it ought to soar.
a bus sunrise is unmatched in welcomeness
the old hour where you can no longer bear to see your face
layered in reflections on top of the trees too hard to see at night.
the switching on and off of the reading spotlight ceases
as pink to yellow to blue to unnamed colors sharpen the window dust into shards.
and if its not a wailing baby
usually someone is drunk, uncomfortably by the mennonites and grandmothers.
in this way, stories become tied to seat space
steinbeck seeming so relevant to the stiff knees,
hardy to the soldier doing the disappearing egg magic trick
a page is a turn of the wheel and the story is
the feeling of the pod casing falling open
and peas, rolling into the dawn on wheels that know the way home.

BSD and The Magic Word

So I don't know what I did to deserve this, but I am now newly listed as an allied blog on Blast Shields Down (a blog with actual substance that real people read). Maybe I'm just a fortunate casualty in some fight/war/jokefight/jokewar that I have no idea about, or maybe those two noble gents, Matt and Caleb, deemed my blog worthy of its own merit. Either way, I think I need to write something legit now, even though I still feel like an alien in this crazy land of BLOG. But the world is watching, so without further ado:
PASSWORDS.

Passwords then:
When young, passwords were part of games. Bedrooms would have passwords (sometimes known under the alternate name of "Magic Words," a moniker that sends chills up your spine if you think about it too much...Magic!), "treehouses" had passwords, basically anything you could enclose a space around could have a password. Our house even had a password. Afternoons I might come back from the pool or a friend's house and park my bike in the driveway with the kickstand (I was that type of kid) and run up the porch, open the mail slot and yell "Open Sesame!" maybe a less imaginative password than I would choose today, but serviceable. Now I like to imagine my parents, doing whatever adult things they did that young me never noticed or cared about and suddenly hearing this little squealy voice come through the door, summoning them to open the garage for me. Also, I imagine a really cunning burglar, perhaps hoping to steal our lawnmower, masking his voice to sound like mine and shouting the Magic Word though the door, and my parents instinctively welcoming him in, here, have some orange juice and cinnamon-sugar toast. These days, Open Sesame is a family joke and a thing my dad likes to recall when he plays "you kids used to be so cute," with us, not that I can blame him, parents' hearts are made to break, I think.

Passwords now:
Passwords are for websites and security and meant for typing, not saying. I don't think it's fair that this should mean they stop being a game, however. My college email makes me change my password yearly, and choosing a new one is the game I play now. Dictionaries are toys to me anyway, and so I play the game where I close my eyes and open to any page and point to a word. I make a list of words and pick the best one as my word-of-honor. This year's runners up include: corniche, spelunk and oblique--all very fine words, but if I could tell you the winner, I'm sure you'd have to approve. And there's the trap of a really fun password: not telling. For this past year, I've been typing the word "medulla" nearly every day and the only person who knows it is my sister. I remember one time at a sit-down Chinese restaurant with friends, we started talking about passwords. It's so strange to hear somebody tell you what their password is, like they're telling you something meant to be truly secret but so trivial a word. So over egg drop soup in quiet solemnity, a friend told me her password was "froggy," and I had to laugh because the idea of froggy having secret meaning and possibly unlocking bank accounts and private emails is completely crazy. So medulla2!, I say goodbye, and welcome in the new year of *******0!

urchin

: sea urchin on a dark sea street
a coral colored cup for sand dollars
the still sub-sheen of ocean
reflecting things we have names for :

I Hum For You

thrumming of life
oh heartbeat of urban earth
oh dictation of vibrant breath
your rhythm is the synchronization of footsteps
in spots of hereness and thereness
your manmadeness makes long lines
exact change and perfect thirds
revolving doors on a revolving planet
and my manufactured jeans are a lizard skin
i shed at night
and boots are for puddles
and pendulums are for clocks
and cuckoos are for fairy tale forests.
i feel like hatching
cracking and peeling me
hard-boiled or bubbly and strong
put in a mug at sunrise
and drained at taps.

see, its easier to look out
to take with my eyes and expel with my lips
and carry joy on the surface of my skin
of a non-porous variety
oh world, you belong to me as certainly as i to you.

dream life

In my dream, I am on a quest. I am always on a quest, filled with puzzling clues and ever-increasing tasks. I need to make it to the basement, but my car crashes into a convenience store and I need to put all the hostess cupcakes and boxes of ritz crackers back on the shelves before I can move on. I’m looking for clues scrawled on bits of lined paper rolled up and hidden in a grandfather clock with the president’s son, but the mystery stays tightly wound while I try to stay asleep. The worst is the dream where I am soaring down train tunnels, not part of the train but moving at the speed and rhythm of one and I end up in a chocolate store where you kiss me on the hand and I wake up before I can ask you why you are there.

For a fitful restless sleeper, it is agonizing to try to stay in my dreams. I hear a faucet running somewhere and my eyes shoot open. I look at the clock, 3:22 a.m. and try to go back into my dream because they need me there! I need to make it to the bottom of the slide, I need to go to the store for a jar of salted macadamias, I need to teach the class how to talk about farm animals in German. I am a better person in my dreams. I know how to say the right things and make sweet-faced boys want to hold my hand as we walk through a tent of green and yellow lights. The self of my dreams has goals and methods and a purpose and the morning sun in my eyes is always a dreary reminder that my waking self is weak and fickle.

Is it any wonder that I am eager to sleep at night? I can’t stand the uppers my friends try to share with me because they trap me in my consciousness where my fingers are fidgety and my mind has plenty of time to think about where things have gone wrong. My brain needs a rest, I tell them. I put on pajamas, an old camp shirt and a pair of shorts and mask my worries in the pages of a familiar book, maybe The Phantom Tollbooth, where everything is a directionless quest in a colorful baffling world. I read until my head is heavy and I think about a place I want to be, a place that only exists in watercolor and ink lines, and I slip into sleep again.

Frank Green

Here is Frank Green. He is 53, proud father of two and loving husband to Rebecca Green. Eleven months out of the year, he plays the family man. He takes Emily to the mall and she picks out clothes from the Limited Too and gets sparkly earrings from Claire's. Ryan is autistic. Frank doesn't see this as a problem, he loves Ryan for who he is. He is impressed when Ryan can name all 42 American presidents in under a minute at the age of seven, a feat that might have made a nice party trick for an adult, but garners little respect from a class of second graders. When Ryan is twelve, Frank and Rebecca switch him to a school across town where he will get a little more attention and have a little more time to work things through. Emily stays at the school down the block and runs home in the afternoons with her friend Anna to play with dolls and makeup.

Eleven months out of the year, Frank's job is a professional sandwich shop singer. He brings an acoustic guitar and a microphone and sets it up by a metal chair in the corner of Stuffer's. He plays old songs that he knows people like hearing: a little James Taylor, some Bob Dylan, the Beatles. He plays newer stuff too, 90's alt rock and recent soft rock radio hits. Sometimes he throws in a jingle to see if people are paying attention, and sometimes they are. If one a neighbor or friend walks in, Frank leans into the microphone and says "Hellllooo, Mr. Davison," or whatever the surprised person's name might be, in a low, radio announcer voice.

That is Frank Green, eleven months out of the year. For the month of October, however, he is Freaky Frank. Freaky Frank is a haunted house superstar, a hayride rocker and a costume party crooner. He dresses like a vampire and sings campy songs about werewolves through the lisp of his fangs; he dresses in a swirly moustache and a slick tuxedo and plays a film noir villain. His favorite persona is the hilbilly ghost. He paints his face white and streaks blood makeup on his cheeks and mouth, puts black caps over his front teeth, and wears a bright plaid shirt and overalls over his chubby body. This is his passion, Halloween. When he is busy being Frank Green, family man, sandwich shop singer, he secretly relaxes in the evenings by doodling picture postcards of monsters and ghouls.

When we encounter Frank Green, it is nearing the end of September. Frank is lining up gigs for the holiday season and shopping for costume materials. Stuffer's feels like a cage in which the Cheers theme song slides into "Mr. Jones" and then into "American Pie" in an endless loop. It is still warm outside, but the children are in school now and the air finally smells like a real midwestern autumn. Emily is a freshman now, and Ryan is 17 going on 18, but Frank has been avoiding the problem of what Ryan will do after high school until now. Frank finishes singing some Sinatra, and there is a smattering of applause. A wave of heat fills the room as the door of Stuffer's opens. He glances at the door and sees three girls come in from the parking lot, clearly enjoying themselves. He recognizes one and leans in to say, "Hellllooo, Miss Booth." His neighbor turns to look at the source of the greeting and waves a friendly hello in return. Frank smiles and starts idly strumming while thinking of a song to play. The girls focus the menu, and Frank thinks they are probably about Ryan's age. He thinks Miss Booth's two friends look familiar, maybe he'd seen them in the neighborhood, or maybe in a newspaper article about a school play or a track meet. He starts to play the 90s hit, "Closing Time," and the girls are obviously delighted. They start singing along as they bring their trays over to a table to sit. The Booth girl says to the others, "Did you know he's my neighbor?" Frank hears a note of pride in her voice, and though he can't tell if it is real or joking, he appreciates the recognition anyway.

A few songs later, the girls get up to leave and wave goodbye to Frank. In the parking lot, he sees them each light a cigarette, passing a pink lighter between them. In the same moment, a blue Jeep pulls up with Rebecca and Ryan in the front seats. They are there to pick up a sandwich and to drive Frank home from work. The Booth girl gives a small embarassed wave of recognition to Ryan and he nods awkwardly in return. Frank sighs and remembers that he has other things to do and wishes that he didn't. He winds up the set by playing "Wild World" and brightens with the knowledge that ghoul season is only a few weeks away.

Jared, or Hannah has a messed up mind

Jared often fantasized about kicking dogs as he passed them on the street. He hoped it wasn't a sign of a deep perversion, but he was pretty certain of his sanity. Jared had managed to convince himself that he wasn't serious, that he wouldn't actually get any enjoyment from punting a daschund like a football, but he couldn't shake the thought. It actually kind of sickened him, the process he went through when encountering a dog. He watched the dog and watched the owner and tried to imagine. What sort of noise would the dog make? Could it land on its feet? He grinned as he imagined the shock on the owners face; he considered the possibility that they might let go of the leash and let the dog scamper off. One time he had passed a girl with a tiny chihuahua and accidentally laughed out loud thinking about the chihuahua soaring through the air on the arc of his kick.
He didn't dislike dogs. He had owned one once, actually. A terrier-type black and gray mutt named Henry who was already 8 years old when Jared was born, so by the time Jared reached age 10, Henry was already a very old dog and he died. But Jared remembered a few idyllic fall afternoons, jumping around with Henry in muddy leaf piles. They had been good friends and Jared hated to imagine anyone doing any harm to Henry, even 15 years later.
Jared was sure that he could not actually go through with his daydream. He didn't know what kinds of animal cruelty laws he would be breaking, let alone how to deal with a conscience or react to the insults he would expect to be hurled at him by angry pet lovers. He didn't even know if he could kick hard enough to do anything worth noticing. He had always been terrible at sports, his coordination was off and he had no idea what level of force it would take to boot a howling puppy to the curb. His best reference point was the one year he had spent playing soccer in middle school. The coach was constantly yelling commands at him, "Connect, Miller! Run it down, come ON, keep up with the rest of the team, don't just stand there! Aim when you kick!" He had tried, but he didn't care for the running around and keeping score and falling down all the time.
While Jared was out walking one day, the weather was pleasant and he felt stronger than ever that he wanted to go through with his dream. He found himself stopped at a crosswalk with a squat middle-aged woman holding a brown schnauzer on a nylon leash. He stood to her right; she was looking to the left at the traffic coming on. He stuck out his left foot, clad in a dirty white Nike sneaker and positioned it against the dog's warm underbelly to mark where he wanted to aim. The dog twitched, and the woman felt the leash tug and stared at Jared, his foot still pressed against the schnauzer's stomach. He blushed. "Sorry. I...don't know what I was thinking." She kept staring, suspicious. The light changed and Jared rushed out into the street, mortified. He was oblivious to the too-fast bicycle coming from his right until it hit his foot and sent a sharp pain up his leg. He cursed and watched as the bike tried to brake but slammed into the dog anyway, rubber wheels meeting matted fur with a screech and howl.
Jared gawked. He gagged at the blood and hair on the bike tires and listened to the biker stammer apologies to the woman, whose hands were fluttering around the thrashing body of her dog as she began to cry. Jared gagged again at the dog's body and then turned and ran into the McDonald's on the corner. He went into a bathroom stall and retched into the toilet, holding onto the bowl for a few moments and thinking of Henry and how he hated himself. After he was done, he sat on the grimy floor of the stall and was silent. Then he began to chuckle. Jared thought about the dog and the woman and the blood on the bike and had a good, long laugh.

St. Michael and the Little Match Girl

(work in progress, revision suggestions and anything that doesn't work is helpful to me, thanks)
(also if you know me, i apologize for being corny and obvious. i can't help it.)


The Little Match Girl met St. Michael the day after Michaelmas, walking outside the high school.
"I saw you in the newspaper," she said with unusual boldness. "You were wearing a robe and crown. It seemed pretty important."
St. Michael looked down from under a thick mane of orange hair and smiled at her with his eyes. They walked together, kicking through autumn leaves, delighting in new conversation.

=

The sweet summer air came in through the open window; it was the last day of June and she was going to have a picnic with St. Michael. She stood barefoot in the kitchen, making two salami sandwiches and wrapping them in wax paper. She wore a t-shirt with a skirt that she had made from her father's old work shirts. Her feet had scars and blisters from breaking in her rubber sandals. A black cat stepped around her legs as she finished the sandwiches.
"Okay, cat. Wish me luck and don't wreck the house while I'm out."
The cat responded with a blank look that made The Little Match Girl smile.

=

They sat together during a school assembly, and St. Michael told The Little Match Girl that he liked her ears. She told him he had a nice nose. He put his hand on the thigh of her red tights. She crossed her legs, catching his hand like a Venus fly trap and laughed when he blushed.
"You should wear skirts more often," he said, touching the hem of her denim skirt. "You look cute as hell."
"I have a new white one from Goodwill, I just don't have the nerve to wear it," she said.
"Wear it on Monday," he suggested. "Then I can come up to your chemistry class and throw you on Mr. Turner's desk and make love to you in front of the class. It'll be great."
"All right then, let's do it." She laughed again and a teacher shot them a warning glance.
The Little Match Girl wore the skirt on Monday; a white slip showed sloppily from underneath. St. Michael came to her class and smiled when he saw the skirt, but of course they never made love: he was a saint and she was just a child.

=

The Little Match Girl put the sandwiches in a bag and drove to St. Michael's house. The car was an oven and she gripped the steering wheel until she was used to the burning. A lock of short brown hair stuck to her forehead, glossy with sweat. At St. Michael's house she stood on the doormat and rang the bell. He opened it, wearing a white T-shirt that was loose at the collar and showed his pale skin beneath it. They drove to the park and she drummed on the streering wheel while St. Michael did the air guitar solo.

=

In the early spring they went shopping together. They took St. Michael's car, a white sedan with a checkerboard roof and teeth painted around the wheels and a broken odometer. They went to the comic book store and rummaged through the box of used action figures. St. Michael talked about heroes and how all boys want to be one.
"Boys are more likely to think it's cool to get hit by a car because they were saving somebody's life," he said.
"That's a bullshit statistic," said the girl. "I think it's dramatic and romantic, and I'm not a boy."
"Yeah, he said,"But you're manic depressive, that doesn't count."
The Little Match Girl frowned and bit her lip but didn't reply.
Later, in the pet store, they looked at rows of fish tanks and tarantulas and ferrets. They talked about Tom Waits and fingerprints and whether it is a sin to love your mother more than you love God.

=

At the park, they walked across a covered bridge over a small polluted river, down a path and sat down at a picnic table, avoiding the mulberry stains and spots of bird shit. Far on the other end of the park, they could hear the faint happy voices of a group of kids playing frisbee.
"Do you ever wonder," said The Little Match Girl through a mouthful of salami sandwich, "If Homer had a bunch of wannabe epic poets following him around? Maybe he was the most mainstream epic poet and there was a whole counterculture of epic poetry, they just didn't care about posterity as much as Homer and his people."
"I can't say that I've ever wondered that," he said, bemused. He thought for a moment. "Posterity and posteriors, I bet. All poets are just trying to get some."

=

The next Michaelmas was unseasonably cold. After class, they walked quickly toward the school doors. The Little Match Girl tried to hide the fact that she was about to cry. St. Michael held open the middle door for her, but she went through the left. He looked like he had been slapped.
"Have fun this weekend," she said in a choked voice as she approached her car. "Don't worry about me, just pretend I don't exist. You're pretty good at that." She got in and turned on the engine, but St. Michael stood at the side of the car, hoping she wasn't upset enough to run over his foot. He motioned for her to roll down the window which she did, reluctantly. There was no point in hiding the tears now; The Little Match Girl sat and cried pathetically while St. Michael knelt outside her window. He leaned his head into the car and lightly kissed her neck below the ear. She shrugged him away, rolled up the window and drove off.

=

St. Michael and The Little Match Girl ate their sandwiches in the shade of several trees.
"I can't believe your parents had you learn to play the fucking lyre when you were a kid. The Biblical lyre. That's absolutely ridiculous," she said to him.
"It's not like I can remember how. I had to learn the trumpet and how to speak German, too, and I don't remember a thing. By the way, do you want some cheese?" he asked. "I brought it for dessert."
"No offense," she said, looking at the squishy hot cheese," but it looks kind of gross after sitting in the heat so long. We could feed it to those geese over there."
They unwrapped the cheeses and pulled off warm sticky pieces and tossed them to a nearby group of Canadian geese. The geese waddled closer, honking aggresively and crowding all around them. Then The Little Match Girl noticed a brown spider descending onto her arm. She jumped, shaking it off. Then there was another on St. Michael's shoulder and three more scurrying across the table. The whole place suddenly seemed overrun with spiders and angry geese.
"Can we go? This is kind of insane," said The Little Match Girl. St. Michael agreed. As they left, they talked about what a shame it was that such a nice picnic had to end so soon.