everywhere but my own bed

I seem to enjoy existing outside of the space I have, the bed that is mine, the soothing space of colors and sights that I created for myself, and another night passes where I will find unsavory rest in a different bed, spend another day in yesterday's clothes, wonder what it is, why it is, that my bed is fine for naps, my apartment well enough for a shower and its closet, but that is all, that is all I can stand.

for sure, it is the loneliness.

once you get a taste of how it could be, it's very hard to return to that empty bed, that soft spot you've made for yourself, that hole in the wall that is solely yours; at least, I find it very hard.

but possibly it is something else, a something I haven't figured out yet that has crawled into my heart and died there,

[the scream-a-pillar is a good analogy for this.]

that sounds so melodramatic, but that is what it feels like, like there is something rotting inside me and it will be revealed eventually, and everything I thought I knew will turn out to be a lie.

and maybe, I am trying to hold on to anything tangible, anything outside myself that wants me, that desires me, that compells me, that wants to hold me back.

where have I left myself?

"...all I have for the moment is a song to pass the time..."

the lowest of the low

the hardwood floor, the open window, and me: splayed out, cell phone trembling in my hand, fully clothed and bundled in wintry wear, leaning against a stuffed ottoman, dizzy with drink, leaden limbs and weak will force me to lie there, just lay there, propped up, but splayed out,

and in this state for an hour or more, I exchanged text messages with the lover I don't have to love, and in between, I text him, the real love of my life, the man who makes me feel complete even though I know better than that, that I don't need a man to make me feel complete, but time stops and the world glows and I feel content in a way that is beyond me,

but it's what we don't have that I am sharing with the lover I don't have to love. it's what we lack that I need. it's the part that we've already covered and moved past, and like anyone who's in love with being in love, I want that new heady rush of pursuit and attention, I crave it, and like a monster, I was splayed out on the floor of my friend's bedroom, unable to move, but unable to stop receiving and feeding that exchange.

some time passed where I relinquished my control and leaned over and curled into the fetal position on the floor. I awoke with a groan and climbed into my friend's bed, fully clothed, fully winter proofed, my cell phone clutched. my friend had long since gone to sleep, and her face was just under the light she'd turned on and the television flickers cast shadows across her face, and I was glad she'd let me stay there, for I knew the next day was going to be a terrible experience, but it would have been worse if I'd had to trek all the way home and trek all the way back to work.

the morning came and with it, my three alarms to wake up and go to work, and I left her place in a stumble and swayed down the street until I reached the door of the coffeeshop. I worked through the throb of what had been.

and I want to laugh at how I was, splayed out, unable to move, drunk, drunk, drunk,

but really, how do I reconcile my words?

I simply pretend they don't matter anyway.

groan

yet again, I have decided not to go to Prague. I don't know what it is about this trip, why I feel such urgency to attend the summer session the fiction department runs there. why I keep deciding it is much too extravagant and far beyond my means at the moment.

Maybe this is the part of being an adult I haven't come to terms with: having dreams, watching them wither and go away.

as my mother--who tends to be far more practical at a moment's notice--pointed out, I could spend that money better in grad school.

of course, there's no way of knowing what six weeks in prague would have done for me. the only thing for certain is that it would have made me really, really broke. and even though there's a million reasons to go, I'm simply not going.

if you have any ideas on how I can make 5,500 bucks magically appear, I'm open.

it used to be easy

we would fall into each other, and the world would follow,

the circumstances fell into line behind us, and there was nothing we couldn't do,

even though we know what's for the best, we're still trying to meet up,

and there's something in that, that makes me know for sure,

why it had to take the cracking of the earth, the destruction of all we knew, the exploration of things that were never any good for us, but seemed to make us feel better, in the moment, always in the moment--what is it we're searching for, and the truth is, we could never really admit that we might actually have found it, at least, I never could.

now the circumstances dictate, and we follow.

the world seems to shine on us less.

who would give up their seat on the bus for us to sit together? we don't even look like we want to be together. our cautiousness is emitted above all else.

here's to ya.

for the first time in a while I'm part of a group of friends that fall into each other without much coaxing, where each interaction is easy and pleasant and we always pick off where we left off because we care about what is going on with the other people and there's nothing we can't say around each other while being together and there's nothing we have to do and nowhere we have to go and the time we spend together is complete, even if it doesn't look the way you and your group looks together, we are interchangable and grand and we make the time pass together, because that's what life is all about is making the time pass together, without being alone, we are all people who never want to spend time alone, even while sleeping, so we gather and we revel in each other and we spend the time waiting until we can see each other again and whenever there is a moment, even a stolen one from a doorway, we will spend it well, and there is always everything between us; including, but not limited to: forgiveness, love and joy, and the thing is, we've had this with other people but not with everyone, not with all of us and it is good and it is nice, and we are part of a thing that is constantly rolling toward something that is not clear, but whatever it is it is pleasant and we get each other's jokes and know each others movtives and appreciate the words we speak out loud and the ones we haven't said and there is nothing that we cannot say and nothing we cannot do and there is nowhere we cannot enjoy...together. cheers.

the human interest

for those interested parties:

marilyn and I still have not resolved the moment of cruelty that has had me slam the door shut. we've tried, but I am on it. I am deep in the hole of anger. I cannot seem to get out. I don't seem to mind the darkness. At least I can do anything in here that I like, without being told how to do it the "right" way.

I've decided to wait a year to go to grad school. And I'm going to apply to the Iowa School of Writing first and foremost. In the meantime, I'm going to take the GRE, organize my writing, submit my short stories, and finish my novel.

My goal of printing my writing out: done. Finished it on Thursday. The universe conspired to make it less difficult than it was going to be--after all, I have no printer, for starters. diane insisted I print it at her place, which was really excellent of her. and it is a glorious thing. it is thick, all of its edges line up perfectly like as a stack it's one unit of measurement. It needed one of those black clips with the metal clamps. it was almost sexy. I went out that night and showed it off to everyone at the bar who would listen to me. people tried to read it. I said, no, no, just look at it, don't read it... it's just a pile of papers, but it's all the words I've ever written about this story, and look how many pages it is [65, single spaced].

I am going to Prague. hell or highwater, or whatever. I'm there.

I get it now, all there is to do about things is to fucking do something.

I don't have a date for Valentine's day for the first time in thirteen years and I'm actually happy. I don't even have plans that day. I usually babysit, but they are going out of town. I might do whatever I like. I might read. I might knit. I might make myself a new pair of earrings. I might go to bed early and have a long restful sleep. it is all too exciting to contemplate.

every day at siena seems to get more tolerable, and I'm not sure if it's because I've given up on getting mad anymore, or because I've been so hungover most of these last few days that I am less likely to get easily angered. also, I have a regularly rotating cast of regulars who come to keep me company and they make the day after day syndrome not only palatable but pleasureable.

at this point, no news is good news in the boys department.

there are many times when I feel like everything is perfect right now, this way, and that thought has been happening more and more lately. It's funny, when there's no one to answer to but yourself, it's amazing what you can do. there's no one else to blame for why my shit isn't getting done, there's just me.

randomness with boys abounds

the thrill of them consumes me, it is a never ending array of them, and they are everywhere;

he is perfect for me in many ways, but still in love with his ex, so he is not perfect for me in the most obvious way...still, his flustered visit at the coffeeshop makes me feel like the radio is turned up too loud and my peripheral vision goes blurry like I'm on a carousel.

standing in front of a window full of cats peering out, a figure across the street catches my eye and I see him, the him of legend, the him I have only spoken to once, the him who I swear lives down the street from me. he is smoking. he is absolutely dreamy.

in the grocery store, I encounter the boy next door, whose smile still widens at my arrival.

my phone rings and interrupts our fragmented conversation, it is the burnham, calling to make plans with me.

the blonde one with the moustache and death metal leanings races toward me with a smile and a cart of potatoes. I am surprised at his delight of my arrival.

I exit, only to see the man of legends still there, still smoking, face in my direction, and I know he sees me and I wonder if he remembers who I am,

I am waiting to jaywalk and a man in a big truck holds up traffic and waves me across. I smile and wave happily and race across, giddy.

but it is the ones I haven't seen or spoken to that will not leave my thoughts:

was my last email to him too strong? too bold? too much? of course, I know I am overwhelming, but it is just difficult for me to fathom how I occur to him, how his world shakes when he encounters me, what his mind does with my words.

and him, the lover I don't have to love, with his indifference and selfishness, and his wandering eyes; he in the present is mostly appealling, but him as a portfolio is too hard to deny. I wonder what I will say the next time, for there will be a next time, and if I'll be able to refuse him.

most of all, I have been waiting to see him for weeks and he came looking for me today. and I wasn't there. and I wondered if when I was thinking of him, lamenting that he'd been back in town since last week and hadn't come to see me, he was there, coming to see me.

just let them fall

the cold keeps my eyes open. it keeps my body rigid. the idea of settling into sleep seems impossible. I should be sleeping right now, but all I can do is think, and survive the cold.

the snow falling outside is a billion soft flakes that look like glitter in the light of the streetlamps and the building anticipation of what it will look like in the morning--just a few hours away, when everyone is still asleep and I wrench myself from sleep and my bed--keeps my eyes open.

for the first time in my life, I have read every single word of a book. being a fast reader has turned me into someone who skims past chunks of stuff looking for the interaction between characters, the story, the stakes, the pull between what is right and what is wrong, and I usually find it in the dialogue, but in this book the use of quotation marks was abandoned, which left every word a mystery, and my eyes open.

searching, always searching, there is something to find and my eyes open will find it, I am sure, but I wonder if I really knew what I was looking for, or if it has always been looking for me and I just leap on what falls into my scope, never weighing against what I know about myself.

that snow makes me love Chicago. that book will haunt me for days. that searching will ruin me.

the entry I couldn't post [friday]

it is a small thing, and even though there were bigger things, delights, stories told, time shared, an eye staring out at me from a tumble of pillows and blankets, the thing that sends a thrill of joy through me is almost so ridiculous that it seems wrong somehow to be so pleased.

it: a beaded curtain from--say it with me--Urban Outfitters, of course. and at a bargain [$2.49 marked down from $30], of course. and perfect for me in every way, of course.

perhaps it is because I am revelling in living alone. perhaps it is because I bought a different color and style of beaded curtain (which was also from urban and a steal at $5) and realized it wasn't me and bought another one instead of living with the mistake and cursing myself over and over (because even when I bought it, I knew it wasn't right, but the one that is here now that seems so perfect looked so weird in the store, it looked so not perfect), or maybe, perhaps, it is just the thrill of knowing myself and having a developed personal aesthetic,

whatever the case may be, it makes me glad. and I am happy to have things around me that make me glad.

this is the moment I live for

as I shuffled through a mix of gray, stomped down snow and sparkly white flakes, staring at the dusting left on trees and iron gates,

there, bubbling, in the [surprising] stillness of my mind, a sentence formed. my body kept moving along the sidewalks, but my brain went on a mental tangent. the sentence was spat out fully formed, followed by a viscous strand of continuing sentences and the background of the subject. it has been so long I feared my writing process had changed somehow. a sense of great relief rushed through me and I stopped in my tracks, like a moose frozen by a sound in the distance.

since school has taken over the reigns of my writing style, my ability to cull the grit of my life into pearls of prose seemed to have expired, either due to the efforts of the more rigorous procedure of homework [five pages a week?! impossible!] or the complete occupation of my mind to angst.

it remains intact, an oyster still, and the last two months of rest and lack of crafting fiction have not been a waste, for the mulling and turning over of material is still going on [always going on] and to my great delight, it has produced the next thing, the next step, beginning with that sentence.

I rejoiced that I knew I had a pen, struggled with my bag to search for some scrap of paper, even a receipt would do, and wrote down the sentence. I also wrote down what was left of its trail, which was slowly dissapating, and the little of it I got will do well to give me more ideas to consider.

I continued on my walk, dragging my feet through new snow that no one had walked through yet. and I was glad.

the power of magnetism

aches so deep they're wrapped around my joints, rather than throbbing through my muscles, and I can only feel them when I extend my legs, so I do, I raced up the stairs two at a time to feel those aches, that reminder that there are consequences for who I was,

for my own sake, and that of modesty, and my propensity to avoid embarrassments, I think to myself, I won't tell anyone, but as soon as they saw my face and heard my voice, they knew, and my inability to keep myself a secret from anyone fell and I blurted it out in the worst way possible. of course.

all I can see when I close my eyes are his, staring at me, soft and kind, his smile bemused, his head sideways on the pillow, but up enough so that he can see me with both his eyes. when I think about all the pain we've shared, I am amazed that there is still so much love in those eyes for me. and even though a lot must change for love to grow between us again, I see its tendrils curling around me and it is a beautiful thing to recognize.

I distract myself with things purchased: a fuchsia slip that I will wear alone. a sweater I might wear for my birthday. a knit hat to replace the one I've lost somewhere [the cab, the apartment filled with everything but books, the apocalyptic streets]. I distract myself with food, but nothing fills me up: a chocolate doughnut, a soy mocha, a crack sandwich, a plate of pineapple fried rice, spinach rangoons, thai iced coffee, and still there is room for more, for me. I distract myself with the Pan-like time fritterings of the internet, and though I feel a slight sense of satisfaction, I know it will quickly rot into paranoia and fear, for I will wonder if my ways of speaking went too far, as they seem to usually do, and once again I will have to stand by and defend my actions, as ludicrous as they might be.

I try not to stare at my phone, as if the instant I glance away he will call, but I know he won't, for I am synonymous with the things in his life that cause him problems. things that force him to spin out of control, and he must not engage in me; he even has a note on his fridge that says, "stop thinking about her."

though I long to be part of what's good for him, to present him with the best of myself, when I get near him, my facade crumbles and my mean parts seem pulled magnetically forward by a force stronger than myself, and I even suffered a strike of nausea so strong and so concentrated that I had to double over to stifle it in order to hold back from simply being mean.

tonight I will be reminded that being a great person has something to do with the company you keep, and dustin's is magnanimous, shiny, keen and brilliant, and in his glow there is room for anything to show up, but especially the things he favors, and his favor is strong. he has no magnetism for negativity, and it shows.

I cannot hate myself for being human, for having these hard knots of hate, and I cannot hate him for not knowing the difference between spite and confusion, for it has sounded like one and the same for a long time. and there may not be a difference really, in fact it may just be my defense.

profound lassitude...

seized by a boredom so pure, it threatens to undo me. It has been a long time since I felt like doing something bad simply because it would make me less bored. I contemplate the million things I could be doing and wonder why I ought to bother doing them at all. Why knit myself a pillow? Why photomontage? Why make my apartment look less like someone just moved in and more like someone lives here? all the plans I make with friends eventually give way to my cancellations. If all the variables are not in place, I say fuck it, why bother?

half of it that I don't suffer through things anymore. if I don't feel like it, I won't do it. This seems very childish and backwards, but for someone who never used to stand up for herself and always look for opportunities to be the victim, it's actually a triumph. the other half of it is just pure abject boredom.

maybe this is just part of some stage I'm supposed to reach before I get to enlightenment, before I realize that everything is actually a bore, but it's who I am about it that makes it good or bad.

as one of those liberal minded free thinking types who doesn't own a television (and refuses offers of free ones, thanks), I've often been disgusted when I hear people remark on how bored they are. Usually though, they meant it in a present tense that applied only to that moment in particular. And usually they are boring people. It is a rare thing for me to be bored in a moment, for there is always something to do. The kind of boredom I face everyday is why bother? Sure I could wake up a half hour early and take a shower before work, but I'm just gonna get dirty at work. And I could brush and floss my teeth, but I'll probably be having coffee and a pastry soon after. And I could dye my hair but it's just going to grow out again.

The weird thing is part of me--the part that cares about my physical appearance--really wants to do these things, but the lazy procrastinator in me is like ah, whatever, just do it later. And it's like this with everything I consider doing. I consider it, and then I think what's the point?

anyway, I think this is beginning to pass because I am able to talk about it, and I am resolved to do these things. Yesterday I spent six hours getting my apartment into some kind of tolerable order, and today I am going to spend a long time grooming in the shower.

some book talking

my goal for the month of february: print out the three short stories that are part of my novel.

sounds easy, no? but just getting the damn things into one file was hard enough. they were a series of bits and pieces, five pages here, three there, and some parts are still missing.

but I figure if I can get it printed out, I can start editing. I can look at it in a way that I can't see things on the computer. I can look at it without flipping over to myspace or google from time to time for an "eye break,"

from time to time people ask me about how it (the novel they say, with emphasis) is going. I don't think anyone realized that last semester, I didn't have to take a writing class, but I knew it would be better for me if I did, that it would force me to write, and so I produced a good portion of the Tower story last semester.

I wrote the Tower part around an event, a birthday party. Then I realized the coffeeshop part is written around an event too. The liquor store stuff isn't, but I wonder if it should be.

I need a good reader, someone who doesn't know me or clark street, someone who has good feedback. I want it to be someone who doesn't know me because then I'll be more likely to take what they have to say as simply what they have to say.

I gave some of my liquor store stuff to my co-worker val and more than anything I wanted her to say it made her laugh. maybe I'm still too attached to my stuff, like it's some personal affront if the person doesn't get it immediately.

the interesting thing is, the more I talk about it (the novel) the more realistic it becomes, the more plausible it seems, and somehow, this excites me, that it is less of a thing that is in my head and more of a thing that actually exists in reality. maybe that's why printing it out in one big chunk is so important to me, because then it'll have a physical-ness that it lacks now...

the taming of the hair

my hair has reached my saturation point. it is about as long as I can tolerate it, and as big as I can stand it, and if I can only wait another six months, it'll be amazing [sleek and long, flowing down my back in waves],

but until then I must survive the seemingly endless errant hairs that have escaped and lingered on my coat, on my gloves, hat, scarf, etc; the other day I pulled several hairs from the waistband of my pants. of course, winter's friend static cling is partly to blame,

but also, it is amazing how many hairs depart my scalp each day and shocking that I am not bald by now.

in order to tame it somehow, to keep the strands from taking their lives into someone's coffeecup, I've been doing braided pigtails, which make me look like an old lady trying to look younger than her years, but then again, there is something appealing about braided pigtails. they're so tightly bound. they make me look like someone who's in control, since I managed to wrangle all that hair into those two compact spaces. they distract the eyes away from my big ears, and the brown and black patterns of the highlights in my botched hair dye jobs look amazing.

the funny thing is even though my hair is contained in these braids, there are still hairs all over, floating up around my feet on the floor, draped over dressers and sinks, puddled into corners and I am beginning to wonder how come I never seemed to notice all these hairs before.

the paranoid part of me wants to believe that something is different with me, that maybe it is winter and my scalp is dry, or that I've somehow contracted some horrible disease and the first clue is hair loss.

but the truth is, I hardly ever spent time in my old apartment and I rarely cleaned and the most horrifying hair thing I remember from those days is pulling a foot and a half long rope of my hair from the drain in the shower that was overly blackened with hair dye so that it didn't seem like it really could belong to me and literally looked liked a drowned and deflated pet ferret.

yeah. horrifying. and absurd; I kept pulling and pulled for what seemed like way too long.

perspective whispers that it hasn't gotten that bad.