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"The cat's out of the bag and looking for a sofa to scratch."
Jul. 8th, 2009
08:54 pm - I lit a cigarette on a parking meter and walked on down the road/it was a normal day...
At work this morning, while moving some inactive patient files, I unearthed a jar of "Bone & Sinew Poultice."
Why are there ground-up bones in the filing cabinet?!
Oh wait, I remember, because my life is a dark comedy...
08:03 pm - summer evening playlist
Chris has been in Boston yesterday and today and isn't coming home until late tomorrow night, so I've had a lot of sad-bastard time to myself spent writing, reading, studying, and listening to sad-bastard/folk music.
Below, a genius playlist I cannot take total credit for but am wholly enjoying:
Hold On—Tom Waits
Not Dark Yet—Bob Dylan
Let It Ride—Ryan Adams and the Cardinals
Love Minus Zero/No Limit—Bob Dylan
XO (Waltz #2)—Elliott Smith
Star Witness—Neko Case
Highway Patrolman—Bruce Springsteen
Pale Blue Eyes—the Velvet Underground
She's A Jar—Wilco
Start A War—the National
Autumn Sweater—Yo La Tengo
Salt of the Earth—the Rolling Stones
Downtown Train—Tom Waits
Most of the Time—Bob Dylan
Maybe Not—Cat Power
Sweet Illusions—Ryan Adams and the Cardinals
Still—Elvis Costello
What Light—Wilco
Into My Arms—Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Chelsea Hotel No. 2—RUfus Wainwright
I Hope that I Don't Fall in Love With You—Tom Waits
Secret Meeting—the National
Visions of Johanna—Bob Dylan
Isis-Bob Dylan
Jul. 3rd, 2009
06:01 pm
"So I've decided to give the coal to your sister," my father informs Julia.
Her "Um, okay," clearly shows how disappointed she is not to be receiving the fifty-dollar piece of coal recovered from the RMS Titanic.
As he hands over his credit card, he talks about how much this half-inch rock will be worth one day when he's dead.
I try not to make eye contact with the cashier and instead focus on the girl a few feet away offering to buy her sheepish boyfriend a fifteen-dollar bracelet with an even smaller piece of coal from 1912. They have necklaces too—this is Times Square after all, and a lost ocean liner exhibit requires souvenirs.
"Do you want to take it now?" my dad asks me. "Promise you'll take care of it?"
"Sure," I say, wondering if it's haunted, but something in his face tells me I am better off just saying thank you. It makes me sad, how much this means to him.
Jun. 28th, 2009
10:44 pm - new pet
We just bought a big plant for the living room. Is it dorky that I'm really excited? We were both grinning and giggling on the way home from the store as we decided what to name it—Herbert. Herb, for short, of course.
11:18 am - settling in
We're moved into the new place that looks out on a Papaya Dog and a sketchy hotel. It's a charming scene, really, and the hang-arounds outside the halfway house lend some color, I suppose.
I sound sarcastic, but actually, this place is beautiful—clean and spacious, and there's a free gym and a roof deck and it's quite a lot less than our old place.
It feels good. We've still got quite a bit of unpacking to do, but so far so good.
Jun. 7th, 2009
04:30 pm - today's soundtrack
13—the Brian Jonestown Massacre
Cruel to be Kind—Nick Lowe
Sister Jack—Spoon
Watching the Detectives–Elvis Costello
I'm Waiting for the Man—the Velvet Underground
She's A Rainbow—the Rolling Stones
Heroes and Villains—the Beach Boys
And Your Bird Can Sing—the Beatles
Into the Mystic—Van Morrison
The Weight—the Band
Helplessly Hoping—Crosby, Stills and Nash
Love Minus Zero/No Limit—Bob Dylan (and the Rolling Thunder Revue)
Jun. 5th, 2009
04:10 pm - today's 365/365 poem
I just wanted to be the shadow
reaching for another shadow's
hand against the brick wall of circumstance,
laced fingers in the land-locked haze
of a summer afternoon.
I have always been too thirsty, choking
for a drink in the middle of a storm.
Jun. 1st, 2009
11:19 pm - little things
Even though I get frustrated and busy sometimes, I like having a job where my boss asks me to send along the guided imagery tapes I use to help me sleep in hopes they might help her husband.
Sleep has been somewhat of a challenge recently, but I deal with the four a.m. wake-ups better than I used to. Sometimes Chris and I are both lying next to each other wearing headphones.
We're signing the lease for our new place tomorrow. Pretty exciting stuff. And the second year begins...
May. 30th, 2009
07:41 pm - typical
Apparently, the universe is now checking my facebook status updates.
A little while ago, I posted that I wanted to be at a house near the beach, drinking wine and doing a jigsaw puzzle.
Literally two minutes later, I went down to collect the laundry Chris had put in the dryer a little earlier, and there was a puzzle piece in front of the machine.
May. 29th, 2009
01:24 pm - out of my hands
I was writing for class yesterday about how I think the idea that the food industry has a moral obligation to lower trans fats and label everything and state calories on menus belies a deeper imbalance. That we look to the industry to determine what and how much we eat seems to demonstrate a lack of willingness to take responsibility for our health. I think it's more important to focus on educating people and teaching them what the various nutrients listed on these labels are and how they affect our bodies. Teaching people how much they need or how much they should have of these nutrients (not to mention total calories) every day would help too. But no, people just want to point their fingers at The Food Industry and say it's their job to monitor our country's intake.
One thing that is kind of funny to me, though—I wrote last week that I'm trying to gain back the few pounds I've lost in the past however many months. Some days it's easier to remind myself to add a little more than other days, but since I was on my own for lunch today, I figured I'd get myself a tossed salad while I was out running errands. I sort of figured it would be easier to just let the guy behind the deli counter throw in lots of feta and use too much dressing rather than try to convince myself to do it at home. I know that's lazy and is pretty much a flip-side example of putting responsibility for what I eat into the hands of someone else, but hey...
May. 24th, 2009
05:17 pm - today's 365/365 poem: Cosmic Colander Blues
He is greener than his dead mother's eyes, knees
giving way on the grassy hill behind the church.
This is the second time—how easy to slip
into the curves of a familiar fact, the small gathering
in his arms, lips grazing a second pair of sharp
shoulders. We create our own haunting this way,
trying to understand the precariousness of breath
and the handling of broken things.
He has never met a girl like this, who can fake inspiration
and tell the blunt truth with a straight face. She says
the only clock we should need is the sun, wonders
where we went wrong and if the moon is what draws us
towards the ocean. He tells her that sometimes
he feels like a pasta strainer in a downpour, could never
begin to know how to filter all the signals coming in.
“Honey,” she says, “it’s simple, really. What you need
is a butterfly net without holes.”
May. 23rd, 2009
11:06 pm - landlocked in Manhattan
sometimes I wish Chris and I would travel more. it seems like we're always seeing friends from other cities when they pass through town.
maybe I'm just longing for a little getaway, somewhere with sun and water and no work. I'd like to take hikes or walk on the beach, cook and write, not think about work so much. I'm not usually the "bed and breakfast" type, but right now, a little long weekend tucked into the woods somewhere or near the ocean sounds so nice.
We have eight days left until we have to let our landlord know whether we're going to renew. We've been seeing sooo many places. I saw one today I was ready to bite on but the guy who showed it was asking a 15-percent fee. I almost laughed when I heard that. We're going to see if we can talk him down. Meetings on Tuesday with a building we like. So much is still uncertain about what we're going to do. Goddamn Mercury retrograde lasting until the end of the month. I know you can't rush these things, but it's so strange not to be able to make plans.
I guess it's just as well. School is already consuming my life. I'm excited about it, though. I'm in the right place. But wow, so much new stuff to learn. I feel electrified, though, energized.
Big things are going to be happening soon. There is something up in the universe today, though, I can feel it. Oh my goodness yes...
May. 20th, 2009
10:28 am - Dear Photographer:
Given your taste for kiddie porn, I can understand
your shock upon seeing that someone under five-feet tall
actually has room for hips and an ass on her 90-pound frame.
No wonder you suggested the plaid skirt as camouflage. Perhaps
you’d never seen a Greek without her clothes before?
I am especially surprised—even amused—that
you went through the trouble of telling me
I do not have a perfect body. Seriously, man? Clearly,
sir, you do not have a daughter.
It’s men like you, peering at us
through your wire-rimmed glasses and your long camera lenses
sharpening the teeth of the machine. Your paying me
doesn’t give you a reason to finger the blade and grin like that.
Find me a woman who does think her body is picture-perfect, and
I’ll ask her what she drug she’s on and how it affects her sleep.
So when you make love to your rail-thin New England wife
in your narrow bed, I hope your own voice haunts you, hope you fumble
over your belt-buckle and all your own shortcomings.
And oh yeah—Thanks for telling me I have weird nipples. Now
that’s a hang-up I never thought I’d have.
May. 17th, 2009
08:21 pm - so New Jersey
I wasn't there for this, but last week, at my cousin's communion, the children's choir sang a medley of Bruce Springsteen songs during the service.
My grandfather was deeply offended, and decided he needed to talk to the Monsignor about promoting the music of "that abortionist." Oh, brother.
May. 14th, 2009
05:02 pm - Mercury's got another joke
he’s been dying to tell me.
Of course I’m the source
of my own pacing shadow—don’t know
how I ever could have thought
otherwise. It’s chilling, how accustomed
I’ve become to the swift tug of
carpet underfoot, this
strange dance of slit-eyed shock.
I should know by now
how to take myself out
any open door. I can’t prepare
any better, any more
than I already have.
May. 12th, 2009
08:27 pm - today's 365/365 poem: The One that Holds Everything
I’m glad now I didn’t sell my story—I never would have gotten out then—but the cool indifference of the world and its disinterested typists does something to you. You can feel the blinking lights that used to direct your triggers turn off.
I understand that there were just too many broken, gaping mouths like mine. We’d been failed by our system and its ever-changing codes, all just looking for a place to stow the blame and the knives and the tapes. We wanted an address all future inquiries could safely be forwarded to. We wanted someone to sit us down and tell us it wasn’t our fault and then hand us a check for our troubles—a little something to hold us over when the hush money ran out.
Am I angry? Of course I’m angry, but it’s easier to take it out on the mess on the kitchen counter. It’s a better way to clear a surface than any of the other things I tried. Whiskey, for example, did little to quell the hysterical blue in the back of my throat. The empty Saturday acquaintances and the morning-after finger-pointing were just symptomatic, attempts at sex as rebellion, rebellion as sex. Living a fever, though, you realize there are few things worth wanting more than three times. I burned clear through before I lost my patience.
I learned fast what no one wants to hear. They sucked the novel out of me before they showed me the door, but I will not be turned over so easily.
May. 3rd, 2009
04:12 pm - today's 365/365 poem
On May 3rd’s “Freedom from Self-Seeking”
You know which songs to avoid on days like this,
the ritual-less Sunday mornings
when you wake up to a cool rain, thinking
of Frank O’Hara’s poems about the sun.
You grip a cappuccino in a lidded cup and walk
across the broadest part of the island.
This is second city you chose yourself. When
your lover speaks every day of the opposite coast,
the “not yet” in your throat cuts sharp. Does he
understand the need to stay long enough to learn
what you are leaving?
The cards say, “You’re not giving reign to your—”
and your horoscope says to just carry out orders
as usual, drink green tea with mint and lemon.
The neighbors’ baby sounds like tight machinery
when she cries, cutting into your dream about
getting reacquainted with a bicycle, and the alarms
are going off again at the fire station downstairs.
Does New York ever stop burning?
Your paper trail shows plenty:
—a newspaper and a deck of tarot cards
—lavender oil on the wrist, behind the ear
—the moon and your right hand
— the spider’s web and the knife
—those nights you fell asleep next to half-strangers
breathing, “the name of this thing
is not love.”
Getting angry doesn’t work the way it did
back when you still felt entitled to rage at the
yawning world behind you and the unseen
agents of the unspoken.
You have forgotten less than you think you have, but
these things pass. Every day you get farther
from the cold hurt, except for when you get this close.
It can seem like a phone number you could
almost remember, if it weren’t
for the scarf about your neck and the careful rhythm
of your fingertips over blank buttons.
Apr. 30th, 2009
08:33 pm - today's poem: Couldn't Call It Unexpected
The morning after
we broke up for the last time
he gave me two
conversation hearts wrapped
in high school bathroom
paper towels.
One said
SMILE
and the other shouted
HUG ME.
I looked at them
there in my cold palm
and could only think
far enough to realize
that both were
commanding me to
do more things
I didn't want to do.
"You don't feel anything
anymore," he said.
I shrugged, not wanting
to divulge the ecstasy
of escape.
Apr. 26th, 2009
01:33 pm - gem of the day
Chris: Listen to this, Jess—the heir to the Astor fortune lived to be a hundred-and-five. And now she's dead. Let the legal battles begin!
Jess: Goddamn.
Chris: Imagine your grandfather lives to be that old.
Jess: Don't even joke about that!
Apr. 21st, 2009
02:49 pm - today's 365/365 poem: Why I Never Ask You to Explain
There are many ways to chase down
a tiger, but you have to be willing
to follow it to hell and note
the way it kills only when it needs
to eat—As people, we are so caught up
in want, in familiarity.
*(I’ve watched a man’s morning made over
the jar of grape jelly
he could never find in Berlin.)
We are simpler than we allow ourselves
to believe, so unbalanced
in our handling of destiny, with no clear
guide, no clue how to evenly
distribute the weight of an idea.
I have forgotten three times over nearly
every name I have ever learned
on purpose. I never know what to say
in the face of loss, finding the
necessity of words unfair.
We are creatures born
with instincts, but look at us
now: standing beside empty guitar cases,
singing for the world to define
Honesty so we don’t have to.
When did simply knowing cease
to be enough? Why do we ask each
other to explain what we pretend
we do not already understand?
*this stanza may or may not get the ax. Any suggestions?
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