my iron lung

As a somewhat ossified young man, despite my clean-cut with smoking which leaves me with more nervous tics than I have worries to justify them, the habits and interests that I have that I take as natural, the sort of venn diagram-like intersection of love, vice and knowledge that any normal person in their early 20's has buried under their right rib, are actually the result of very acute and distinct experiences in my young, young years that could not be replicated under any sterile experiments not administered by the tender, sharp fingers of memory. One of these particular interests is both specific and I can, in fact, link it back to one experience, or rather one of many successive, same experiences:

When I was very young, say about 4 or 6 or cinco or seminal, I was the surrogate son of one of my aunts while my mother still had her stage manager career at a large local repertory theatre. I loved my mother very much, but I was raised by this aunt and, given the largely osmotic nature of our early years, took more of her into myself than my dear matronly madre. She would take me in her small, sporty car along the windswept coastal highways of sainted San Diego and her stereo would careen around in my head and her affectionate smiles and the bright, yellow sun glazed my brain. She lived a few places when I was her charge, but, the place I remember most of all is a small, broken-down white clapboard bungalow on an island off the coast of San Diego, mainly known for it's navy base and property taxes. It was sandwiched between two large homes and looked almost like a guest house for one or the either, with it's large grass lawn and creeping iceplants. However, the focus of this particular experience, which I've been dancing around like a reluctant debutante, was a small, crowded and what I recall as a "stylish" apartment above a "cool" nightclub in downtown San Diego.

My memory is vague as to whether she lived here or simply took me here often, but..no, she lived here. We would often go back to her place after a long day of beach-going, ice-cream eating, music-listening-and-freeway-cruising because a show was going on long for my mother and my dad, who did not really exist for me before the age of 12 or so, was somewhere patrician. She would sit me down on the couch and then go into the other room and ask or yell, with the click of a dial-tone reverberating behind her words, what I wanted for dinner. Mesmerized by The Simpsons(this was pre-Seinfeld, if you can believe it), I would, of course, revert to pepperoni pizza, the only food that I consistently loved at that age. However, tonight as happened from time to time, she would clap her hands together after she sat me down and would say with a note of what I interpreted as insanity in her voice "Tim is bringing us dinner tonight!". Tim, as it would be explained to me years later under the loving but condescending tutelage of my now-retired mother, was an incredibly successful night club owner that my aunt was dating, and then later engaged to, who eventually ended up becoming too enamored with the image of his own lifestyle and had to be left at the wayside of youthful behavior and expanding age. In any event, I would wait instead in joyful anticipation rather than hungry distraction because Tim was just so FUCKING COOL. He would always bring me a gameboy with a copy of Super Mario Land, with my progress untouched, so every time he came over, I could start where I was and didn't have to deal with the inevitable adult "well I didn't know you were in the middle of something" that plagued any nintendo-addicted youth of my generation. Needless to say, I worshipped him as a god. He would climb the wooden, rickety steps that spanned the distance between the nightclub and her apartment and our nervous giggles would bounce off each other, raising to a near-hysterical pitch as he walked through the door. Of course, as soon as he crossed the portal, an infantile simalcrum of manly distance from emotion would spring up in me, presumably the imprint of my soi-distant father, and I would simply smile and ask him what he brought to eat. Inevitably, it was either mexican or chinese, which for them meant burritos and orange chicken and for me quesadillas and white rice and pork. Then, with me plenty soporified with heavy food and bright lights, they would sneak off into the bedroom, which was off the kitchen and therefore safely removed from the living room and it's encased innocence, and then they would return, dazed or wide-eyed, depending on the particular drug that was indulged in, and then Tim would sit with us and I would feel a part of something that, today, I still look for. A threesome, bound up in something that is both obvious and subtle.

Eventually, he would leave and we, my aunt and I, would trundle off to bed. I think I packed pajamas. I would then wake to sunlight and usually a comatose mass of drugged nerve-endings and expended adrenaline to my left. I learned to make coffee, something I learned on a roadtrip with my grandfather, and would proceed to tap the coffee pot with an index finger and stare out at the beautifully blossoming San Diego morning. She would stumble in, often in a long t-shirt, and I would pour her a cup into a chipped porcelain mug and I would pour about half another cup full with milk and white sugar and top it off with just a dollop of the same coffee, a habit that would reverse itself under a cloud of alcoholism. Then, she would dress and I would pull on my cargo shorts and my "I belong in the zoo" shirt and we would often go downstairs together, the morning after for her and the day of for me, and she would drink a tall glass of what I interpreted as tomato juice while I sipped on orange juice and kicked my legs against the bar, the man behind the counter smiling indulgently and the blissfully ignorant liquor board doing the same. Then we would do it all over again or she would drop me off at my grandparents, where my grandmother gingerly hugged me and my grandfather taught me how to play poker until my dad came home and hugged me tight and dissapeared once more behind a t.v. and a glass of bourbon


Older now. I met Tim once more, at a show I attended at his still-very-hip nightclub the Casbah and he smiled and remembered me, told me I still looked so goddamn young. My aunt and I eventually parted ways and she has her own boy now, who resembles me in so many ways I wonder if it's Fate's way of making a comment. I would say what this experience did to me, and how it made me the man I am today, but if it doesn't make sense without extrapolation, I don't particularly care to tell.

and that's how i knew he was a special child

Listening to the Slack Album, probably the first time in over a couple'o'years, reminds me of driving around San Diego, buying expensive clothes for Camille and eating pastries. It's funny, when we're given a pure shot of memory into our veins from a particular song or smell or taste, it erases all the grim bitterness of repression and false polish of nostalgia and gives us unvarnished truth. When it's good, it floods your senses and brings tears to the inner canthus. When it's good, our brain yells and attempts to lock it away, pin it in back down into the depths where the distance and the haze can keep it locked away. It also takes away the sting of loss, because even if I wanted to go back there, go back there with her, I don't need to cause I have the memory, I've had that experience.



I may have a terrible recall, but, that's just so it can all come rushing back and give me the best high a man can ask for.

when i die, i hope to be a better man

blood is not blood. it's not made of oxygen and cells, it's composition is not what it appears to be. it's made of clover honey, thick and threatening, bringing toxins and love to your extremities, keeping you slow and sluggish but ready for a knockout blow or it's vinegar, thin and sour, keeping you limbs ready to move but slow on endurance and easily blown over. it carries ideas, some foolish some brilliant, into our minds and when our lips caress, it's the metallic honey i taste, and my lips remind you of summers on the coast, picnics with fish brining in special tins your father made for the occasion. he's dead now, and so are we, but, our blood pools around us and tells a story our love never could.

i finished the savage detectives.

You're good at talking shit. Let's see how good you are at backing it up.




Someone tried to take my photo at work today. I heard the fake "camera" noise from the phone but I think all they caught was my turned back and the fist-raised-with-the-middle-finger. I hope, if it makes it on the internet, I can make it my default picture.

this line is metaphysical

We danced. It was the last time I would see her, but, neither of us knew it, and, visions of gaudy, expensive rings and dresses ruined by salinity danced through my head. She clung close to me, her head resting on my protruding sternum and I moved more fluidly than I ever had or have. It was a song by Serge Gainesbourgh and, ocassionally, his daughter would chime in with lilting, etherial notes and in those moments, she would cling even closer, her small breasts crushed against my chest and the blood rushed to my head. The drinks we were using to bring us to this point were quickly discarded, our bar tab forgotten in the sweltering heat of the top floor of this old warehouse-turned-dance hall. I can't say we were in love, but, who knows? Maybe for those few moments, our legs intertwined, thigh against thigh, maybe we were. Maybe love is never a permanent feeling, maybe love is not a birth-right, maybe it is just a few fleeting moments that remind us that we really are fucked from birth to death and we might as well appreciate the few small blessings we're given and not try to manufacture something divine in nature.

I left the next day for the sweltering green and she stayed where she was and we never answered each other's phone calls.

a real revolutionary

According to List, who was personally familiar with the brothel, mi general liked to screw in the most out-of-the-way room, which wasn't very big but had the advantage of being at the back of the house, far from the noise, near this courtyard where there was a fountain. And after screwing, mi general liked to go out into the courtyard to smoke a cigarette and think about postcoital sadness, that vexing sadness of the flesh, and about all the books he hadn't read



Roberto Bolano, The Savage Detectives

Why can't I meet a girl who takes themselves as seriously and everything else as ridiculously as I do? other qualifications: she's a babe.



sorry world. i am still shallow.

did i make me up

This is gay. I mean, you know, slang gay. It sucked. I had a good time last night. I got dragged to a strip club. I turned down a threeway. I have my reasons. Happy 4th, fuckers.

before we all burn

I am too acutely aware of my own mortality. I've lived every day, since that awful hangover and text message, like I was dead the next. I've broken hearts, killed parts of myself and met people and seen things I never thought I would. I think it's time for me to gear it back just a bit, take a larger perspective. I don't wanna be broke, sick and sad before I leave for Scotland. I want Paige to see me at my smartest, quickest, best dressed, not the gambling, drinking, suicidial reprobate I've been. I wanna be a better man for her, for my mother, for my father, for my friends, for the world. I've so much to give and I've just been keeping it to myself, squandering it at bars and poker tables. It's time to give without sacrifice, receive without greed. I hope I can keep this attitude for 4 more months.

pretend all the good things are you and me too

Tap the ash out on the heel of your boot. The fog wraps around our outdoor table and I pull on the lapels of my jacket, the cold now alien to my thin, thin blood. A tall young man, blonde and handsome, comes up and asks if we need anything else. I quickly shake my head no, but, you take a moment longer to dismiss him and I can feel the jealously squirt into my mouth, like I bit into a lemon. Still, I choose to ignore it and I steal your cigarette from the ash try, my promise to quit now long forgotten but I'm still not sure where they sell cigarettes in this foreign land, where vice is peddled. You laugh and slap at my hand, but, I lightly grab your wrist as I take a theatrically long drag and then, with that same hand, slip the cigarette between your pointer and middle finger. You suggest we move indoors as a noticable shiver racks my thin frame and I shake my head no, that the delicious, green poison of the summer needs to be forced out of me by this alien cold. Of course, I don't say all of that, I just shake my head. You ask me why I've been so inarticulate since I came here, wondering where that famous volubility is.

"I think I lost it when they stamped my passport"

The cold has become too much, so, I pull a wad of strange colored money out of the pocket of my peacoat and throw it on the table and grab your hand. You look up from your book with a glint of shock but willingly stand up and walk quickly behind me as we go back to your apartment. I'm tired of being stoic and we will make love until my skin feels the warmth it so desperately needs.

the ink drips from a dancer's pen

I have a chest of drawers. It is taller, taller than I am and I need to stoop to hug my grandmother on Christmas. Each drawer is inlaid with ornate designs and whorls but each design is unique, each curve and inlay completely different than the others. The top few drawers are just simple things, socks, shirts, underwear color-coded for the days of the week(monday is blood-red). However, the further you go down, the less purpose each drawer seems to have. The middle drawer is filled with polka-dotted cloth and has a paper nurse's cap, with a big red cross in the middle of it's brow. It smells overwhelmingly of crushed almonds with a slight under-note of expensive perfume. The next drawer, if you were to explore it, is somehow suffused with a pale yellow light that streams out of it and fills the room with a feeling of warmth and, somehow, a slight breeze. The only other thing in this drawer is a small, dead bird.

Now, if you were to leave here, I'd understand. This chest of drawers is only for me and, as you look for something to wear for work, I imagine you realize this search might be somewhat fruitless, but, something must've gotten the better of you and there are only three more drawers and you got some time. So, you tenatively open the next drawer, but, here is dissapointment. As in the drawer is filled with nothing, but, it is a tangiable nothing. It feels like nothing that was created, that was shaped. It feels more like the drawer was scrubbed clean rather than left empty and, in fact, you see some blood streaks on the wood grain and, in places, the varnish came up, exposing the unpolished wood underneath. This drawer makes you the most uncomfortable and you slam it close. You decide to skip all the way to the bottom, which is good, because all the next drawer holds is a bottle of pills and something terrifying, something that was once alive but was killed, destroyed.

So, in a trance, you open that last drawer and it smells like the northeastern sea. You pull a beautiful sundress out of it, patterened with chevrons and made of crepe. You picture yourself on a tall beach, the wind whipping against your dress, the thin material crushing against your body. Work calls. You turn hesitantly away from the drawer and answer the phone. You're not needed today, it turns out, and so you put the phone down and reach for the dress and pull it over your naked form, feeling how well it fits and, as you pull open the blinds, the sunlight bursts down upon you and already you start to feel yourself sweat.

sit down, girl, i think i love you

Recently I can't seem to make the right choice, if I go left, it's clear I should've gone right, if I choose to go to the bar, it's clear I shoulda stayed in. The cosmic dispensation I have been experiencing for the past couple of weeks seems to have dried up and that's enough to shake any man. So Micheal Jackson died, right? "ABC 123" is probably the best pop song of it's era, so, that's something, though I imagine that's more the work of Quincy Jones and their tyrannical father, but, stilll. Thriller is also a killer album, but, I don't think that's a very controversial statement. MJ died back in '93 when he first got accused of molesting that kid, or at least, he became more and more of a sideshow than a bankable artist and, honestly, I think the "grieving" that seems to be going on seems more like a collective sigh of relief more than anything else. Kat Williams has lost some material, that's for sure.

I have a bad case of amnesia. I forget what it's like to be younger than I am now. I mean, I am hardly a pillar of stability, but, as I brought up in my previous post, I am starting to identify certain distinct characteristics and have a more or less defined "routine". However, as I sink my toes into the luke-warm water of Atlanta social pools, I have to remind myself that it wasn't always that way and that I have to be willing to give some dispensation and patience to those still hard-scrabbling up the sheer side of adult identity. After dating primarily older, or incredibly mature, women I have to remind myself that if I wanna date for looks, that has it's downsides, namely the ability to pin them down is similiar to Nabokov's complaints about butterfly hunting. However, I think a change of tactics rather than persistence is the key here. Also, the conversation isn't exactly sparkling. I sat next to a young woman last night at the bar who preceeded to wow me with her critical and unique insights on why Paris Hilton is not someone who should be recognized as a cultural icon. While I can't say I disagree, it was like talking to an episode of the Soup circa 2001. I mean, making out with her was fun, but, the accquired phone number now seems more like an albatross than an invitation. I groggily deleted it this morning. I think that's a good choice.

It's been said newly minted lovers might as well be ghosts on this earth, etherial creatures who lose, or abandon, ties to their friends and family. Phone calls will always end in a short sounding message machine, emails will go unreturned and even unexpected run-ins will end with a distracted hand running through hair and a "I gotta go, I told her I'd meet her". Andrew Quinto had somehow gotten a passport to love's null-earth, but, he was there alone and therefore belonged to no-one. He was a good student, his teachers said, responsive to discussion and quick with an incesive comment, but, he never talked to his fellow students and always seemed irritated when he was assigned to faciliate a study group. His friends saw him often and they would describe him as charming, cynical and perhaps a little judgemental, but, never really participating past the surface of the conversation, always just skating across it's mottled surface. He almost always had a new joke or story to tell about a girl he had met and fucked, but, he never remembered names so it was always "the girl". "Andrew has a new girl", they would say. "What's her name?" A shrug and a laugh always followed and this has had become ritual, because their was never a good answer.

The true of it, however, was that Andrew Quinto was desperately in love, but, not with any one person. This woman was an amalgamum of every girl that had ever yielded herself up to him, in beds, cars, indoor tennis courts. He loved them all and never let them go, even when he stopped calling and actively avoided the neighborhoods they lived in, riding his bike a few blocks south of the block they lived on. They would cling onto him long after he had simply added them to the huge, grotesque sculpture of his love and when they would, months or years later, try to contact him, their names and faces provoked nothing but a faint feeling of accomplished work, as when an archtiect looks at a building he designed in his early career that, while technically competent, lacked a certain flair or creativity he had recently discovered. Still, love flowed through every pore of his heart and so he had a permanent residence on the shores of this distant place, a wooden bungalow swollen with sea water and memory.

Andrew sat lanconically at the end of the pool, the sun slowly roasting his fish-white skin. He had been recently adopted by a friend of his mother's, an older woman named Sam who was married to a british jew who often gave him sidelong glances of curiousity and asceribc but friendly remarks. Andrew lit a cigarette and put it between his lips, his other hand holding the top half of a Big Chief notepad. Matt looked over. "Seems like we have a budding Rimbaud over here, huh, Sam?". She looked over and smiled warmly, her brown-and-grey curls framed by the white sun. "I don't know, I'd say he looks more like Hemmingway". This interchange temporarily made Sam lift his mind from love's grasp and he blushed lightly, taking a quick drag on his cigarette. "I prefer to think of myself as a male J.K. Rowlings". As he said this, the smoke blew out of his mouth in a huge blast, escaping from his mouth with the speed of embarassment. "Ah, the writer's escape" Matt said with genuine affection and they all laughed and the two children, Ethan and Maude, looked over at the two parents and the not-parent-but-adult figure and screwed their faces up in youthful imitations of wry irritation.


TBC

through recessions and addictions

I'm finally hitting the mineral stage of adulthood. The man I thought I was gonna be, was trying to be, was trying to pointlessly avoid, to flat out run from, is the man I have started to become. I drink my coffee black, once because I was trying to impress a 32 year old beauty, now because I like it. I drink whiskey, once because I thought it'd make me more like my father, now because it's burn is normal. I smoked cigarettes to hang out with a specific group of people on my friend's porch, now I am one of those people. It's more than that, though. The regretful way I roll out of bed in the mornings, the smile that crosses my lips when someone laughs at my jokes, the way my eyes always have a sad cast to them. Those affectations, those habits we so assiusdously cultivate or fruitlessly try to prune, those are what we become and make us the people we will be till old age. I am what I am and, while there is still some flexibility in these old bones, the calcification is starting and I find myself pretty okay with that.

a good woman is hard to find

She laughed, showing off-white teeth and a massive overbite.I smiled back and it was a mirror, one of the pieces of her she lent to me. "You just need a sweet girl to back you up", she laughed again and I smiled wider, drawing circles in the air with the lit end of my cigarette. "Aw, you're all the woman I need, Mom". She smiled, a little sadly, and held onto my shoulder with one hand while her other hand drew another cigarette from the pack we had decided, after a few hours, just to share. "I wish that was true, Ben, but, you're just like your dad. You might only need your mother, but, all the girls that have and will fall in love with you don't know that". I shrugged and felt oddly angry for a second, but, I just put my hand on hers and we stared out onto the sunset.

"You're just like your dad". I couldn't get it out of my head as Ashely and I walked through the H&M, her pulling down black lace skirts and white, button-up blouses and smiling at me with every purchase, as if my presence over her shoulder had guided her to such sartorial treasures. My nerves rattled with boredom and my jaw clenched and unclenched sporadically. My hand was clammy in hers and my eyes wandered across the many women on the floor, imagining myself in their beds and the backs of their roommate's sedan. I had already sexually mastered about 20 women before she finally turned to look at me for more than a second's grin and asked, in a self-aware and falsely cheery tone, "What's that look on your face for?". I love that the English language has a habit of absorbing words and sometimes even whole phrases from other languages and calling it ours when we don't have the proper word in our toolbox. So, from au revoior to modus operandi, why the fuck couldn't we have the french phrase for "I've already cheated on you 30 times today in my head and you asking me such an asinine question you know you won't get a straight answer for is annoying because the redhead behind you looks like she's going to go downstairs to menswear and I wanna get a good look at her face before I fuck her in her room while the dvd menu for The Life Aquatic plays ceaseslessly in the background". I'm sure it'd be something classy and sophisticated sounding, something that would allow her some dignity and perhaps, with a certain wry inevitability, move herself slightly to the left to afford me the view. Such as it is, I have to content myself with "What look?" and a barely masked sigh of disapointment.

hard to say

not talking to her makes my ventricles seize and my blood run sluggish. my eyes water and my hands shake and i feel cold. these days, i don't do too much. my body is active, i am locomotive, i don't see the inside of my new place too often, but, my mind is always with her and it'd probably be difficult to center myself, but, i rarely try. i guess you could say i was lonely, but, i'm not sure what that means honestly. i've almost always been alone and never seemed to have any trouble coping with it, but, this feeling of solitude is different, unwanted. i see her, from time to time, and it catches my breath, the oxygen halting in the back of my throat and making me choke on nothing. i've tried dating her lesser phantasams, what nabokov would call her "haidmaidens" but they either ignore me or my body rejects them as it would a rotten heart transplant.

all them beautiful guls

The general straightened his tie, ran a hand through his thinning hair. There was a press conference to attend, a public to assure.


He saddled up to the bar and ordered, a smile plastered.


He touched her hair and she smiled in the same way.

I guess it's all really the same.

if i could write this successfully every day, i'd never drink again.

Day three(day two may come later):

I just got in, in a surprisingly good mood. Happy I won against MARTA, submerged in a pond of nicotine. Been thinking about faith recently and what it means in the context of my life. I consider myself a fairly devout agnostic, inasmuch as I've dabbled in many religions and found none of them spiritually satisfying. I am not sure if I believe in the concept of a spirit or soul to begin with. I think we live in existentially terrifying times and the human mind is more than capable of finding "outs" or ways of coping outside the framework of visible life. That is not to say that I think God is a human created notion but, rather, the mythology and importance we attach to the notion of a creator is. A way to escape the seeming boredom and pointlessness of life. I too need such "outs" but I am not sure if I capable of such an act of self-deception as to believe blindly in a loving, giving creator.

a life unobserved is not worth living

I've taken to writing a page a day at work, usually on the back of a customer complaint card. Here they are, so far:


Day One:
This is the worst job I've ever had. I wonder if I can keep it long enough to not go broke, seems like it could go either way at this point. I feel okay about the work, it's just terrifically mind-numbing. I just stand here all day, saying the same thing over and over. I feel like i might never leave and, it will turn out, I am in hell. While this possibility seems unlikely, it is also very possible so I stay vigiliant. Perhaps that would be fitting punishment for my extended unemployment, endless unpaid overtime. Boss is gone. Hope drug test doesn't fuck me, cause it's not too bad to sit here, watch cars leave, smile and wave. Two young girls came in, flirted a little. Asked me if they could get free parking on their birthday. I was so inclined but wasn't sure of the logistics. By the time I had, they had gone and my chances for cheap sex fled with them. I suppose "parking attendant" is not the sexiest job title ever, but, one works with one what one has. Otherwise, life is ceaselessly frustrating, it is a life with little joy and no satisfaction. Not a life worth living in other words

i have to wonder

clean and well-lit

The clean, well-lit room is the barren, empty cave of the soul. Lord, save me from them. Give me ill-lit, give me smoke-filled, give me long-legged women not giving me the time of night, give me meager gambling wins to keep the Jamieson full, give me uncomfortable stools and high-backed chairs. Give me man's misery and alienation, give me a pen and a cheap legal pad. Give me a girl who loves me just enough to leave me alone, give me cheap sex that breaks me like straw. Give me a life that fits me like a secondhand suit, give me friends that barely tolerate me but still invite me to places I don't want to be. Give me weak lungs and strong legs, give me a weakness for whiskey and a hatred for vodka. Give me young girls who don't know well enough and old women that know far too well.

that was it all for the best?

She turns to him and he sighs and smiles, reaches for the camera at his hip. Whirrrrrr-click. The Nikon flashes in her face and her look of surprise is permanent now, a part of the record. He only sees the world after it's gone, after the camera has captured it. I guess he's just a few seconds behind the rest of us, like any good historian, and his entire persona captures it. He dresses stylishly, but, with a certain sense of dilation, like he bought all his clothes year ago, all on one day, so it's not out of date but just a bit faded. His smile and laughs and gestures all come half-a-second too late and are always preceded by the whirrrr-click. She pulls at a forelock and wonders what this must look like to him.


She in white, him in grey. A beautiful couple, they all said, even the bitter last-minute-invite, with his scuffed loafers and tried-to-quit-but-not-really cigarettes. The bride sat with this sad man for a few minutes outside of her tents, appropriating his bad habits. He smiled and tapped the cylinder against his slacks. They didn't say anything, but when he was done, he stood and extended his hand. She grabbed it and made as it to get up, but instead, he shook her hand and walked off towards the beach. She watched as he walked off and turned a corner and she only felt the urge to follow him a little bit. When people would tell stories later, they said he probably went to the bar at the end of the pier and probably got too drunk to even remember their was a ceremony, but, she imagined he took off his loafers. Stretched his calves. And dissolved into the sand.


Him in black, she in white. The man made his triumphant return from the earth and the husband looked tight and sad. They stood next to each other, before the casket, and the loss tied them together inextricably, feeling it like no-one else in the pavillion did, because they both lost her before their time. They had just picked out a nice place together, a dog. They were whispers of children even. For the man, they barely exchanged feelers. He was scared, then, and ran and ran. They called it a foolish prelude, when they called it anything. But the man and the husband knew different, because they could both stand there before her and feel equally in the right, that they both deserved their post to watch over her.


Him in dark red, the man in black. He slipped out of his seat, patting his mother slightly on the shoulder. He died in a car crash, coming back from Connecticut. His brother was being ordained in the Church and they were both driving back to the ancestral home in New Hampshire when a semi-truck turned into them and killed him instantly. The brother survived, "miraculously" some would say afterward. The man just happened to be in New England at the time and heard of his death through a friend that knew them all, that even knew them when the man and she were briefly in the same picture. She told him to go, to show support. No-one there knew him, but, he knew the person he was supporting was lone gone anyway. She died from a fall. The top of a cliff in Argentine, she lost her footing and tumbled. Her body was found floating, hair astray, in a clear pool of snow runoff basin, 2000 feet below. The man was in Boston at the time, but, heard the news almost immediately. When his friends would talk about that night, because he never told them, they would say he left abruptly. The strangers that knew him briefly after that would say he came abruptly and was a sturdy drinker, a lover of people and a genuinely hearty spirit. No man would ever say that about the man again.

if this is his domain

I've been looking at pictures of dinosaurs for hours and listening to Imogen Heap and I think my brain has developed a new neural channel that links pictures of t-rexes to an intimate but alien fear of the divine. I won't be able to look at their retarded little claws ever again without feeling an existential pang.

The days build on top of each other, I feel like they are building a path to the thing I've been feeling scraping out the inside of my chest, making a nest in my collapsed sternum, like a squatter in a tenement. Each day it rips at me more and more, demanding to be let out. I've been fighting equally hard to keep it contained, to keep my life the same humdrum mess of love and tradition it has been my whole life, but, I don't feel like I keep it up. Whether or not, I feel like my potential is taking over the reigns and no amount of push-back will keep it contained. Maybe this is just the sugary-sweet deception of springtime, but, I feel like it's more.


I wonder if she knows how much I miss her. Probably best to keep her in the dark, I feel like I've worn out my welcome. She seems distant now, cold, maybe even uncaring. That could be just a front, of course, I've hurt her many times but when I turn to her, I feel like she turns back. She talks about him alot, but, he's distant and I feel like she feels tricked and is looking for something that doesn't really exist. I can only hope I will not be banned from her life for my mistakes, prolific as they are. I've come to love her, maybe have loved her for longer than I knew, and I can't lose it.

"the dickensian aspect"

portland has been nothing but good to me ever since i said i'd leave her for sunnier pastures. i've seen her a parties that i always was peering in from behind thick glass, like a dickenisan non-situation. i've become introduced to her friends, her hangouts, her corners that i've only begun to inhabit. it's like the threat of leaving is what finally made her realize what she was missing out on.


it's been a good deal for the both of us though and i'll be sad to leave all the fun stupidity and less-fun-but-monumentally-more-important PCC behind. it's either the palm trees of san diego or the hamsterdam of the northwest, tacoma. either way, i'll be happy, but, i'd really rather stick around, so, if you know something, pass that on.

anyway, saturday was fun. i spent the first half with ashley and the second half with boyd, ending at around 5 am after-hours at angelo's. today will possibly be more of the same, but, emily, what are you doing for your birthday? lemme know.

i hope i'm not gonna leave, but if i do, the city is giving me one hell of a send-off. let's keep it going