i also did not mean to type ham hock
gardyloo. anyone?
exam tomorrow
and i'm supposed to be preparing
instead i keep jacking around
messing with photo programs, checking email, and blog hopping
i made one of those picture puzzle things, even
yeah! games.
might put a link to it, if i feel so inclined
but more serious stuff looms --
off for that. bah.
in case you were wondering
this is what happens when you search dictionary.com for glamhock
what does google say?
not much
no, i was not trying to type glam rock.
dare to scream
the great thing about photo albums is that rather than replacing the older pictures with newer ones -- you can just add more pages.
and even when the people we miss can be held only in the mind or exist solely as two dimensional representations -- images, words, mere textual evidence -- of their previously held tangible positions, we still savor the memory. let the idea of momentarily mixing our lives roll around like a lemon drop on the tongue. knowing that even as we fade away, we are never faithfully gone.
i should spend more time telling people how special they are to me.
(com)pressed for time
wednesday on the way to afternoon coffee i noticed him across the commons walking with friends, but pretended i didn’t. he waved for attention, and i smiled in his direction. raised my hand as if to indicate stop rather than anything more salutary. he immediately started bouncing in my direction. closing the gap with where are you off to, then? my explanation about coffee felt more pretentious than i’d considered. he kept slipping his right foot in and out of his sandals while he continued asking me awkward questions. i thought more about it being too cold for sandals than i did about the words spilling onto the red brick courtyard – bouncing around like empty aluminum cans. he eventually invited himself along, which struck at me oddly. he doesn’t drink coffee. we sat across from each other at a small square table. mauve, purple, beige faux marbled top. cheep peeling imitation wood grain edges. i commented that i don’t like faux finishes. and he sipped water and made a noncommittal face. i thought i might like to look into his eyes and that being there was a bad idea, while he told stories about camping trips and other matters. i laughed at all the appropriate times. started thinking it strange that he invited himself along. and wondered if all the men i know talk about literary theory when they are nervous. i told him if he referenced derrida one more time that i’d lose all faith in developing a friendship. we laughed. later he brushed his knee against mine. on the return walk, i said something that he called endearing while placing his hand momentarily at the small of my back. and i thought more intently about this being a bad idea.
friday evening. ready for my regular night of phone calls and too many drinks. already decked out in my pajamas. brrring. brrring. i answered. he asked if i was interested in getting together, and i felt shocked to hear his voice over the line. a party. coming by in 45 minutes. last minute get together. only if i’m interested. i thought to myself – no doubt i’ll be ready. sure, i said, sounds like fun.
hidden messages?
just realized that if the recimo button at right doesn't load properly -- half of the title shows up instead -- so that it says:
get you
where i would like to be if i wasn't where i am
the weather is turning
i wear a sweater this morning on my way to an appointment
and let the cool crisp air take me places i'd rather be
walking distance from an ocean filled with memories
still lulling under sheets on the west coast
falling into an embrace
waiting at waterloo station
discovering something impossible that's been recently left behind
and there’s another issue about fumbling through something unpredictable and oddly placed, but that too will have to wait. no time for the words now.
from my office earlier today
paul and i exchanged harried cell phone messages in between our normal lives
about jak
i’m worried for his safety as an american in africa
the last we heard he’d been living in ghana
and that’s close enough
paul had been leaving urgent notes with someone at the last known address
so far to no avail
and there’s the issue of times zones between us all that i’ve not bothered to consider
he may have moved on by now, paul would say when it was his turn
and i’d reply without any consideration to honesty, I’m sure everything’s fine.
but i’m positive this sick feeling in my stomach isn’t going to stop until i know for sure
the more pathetic version (brief edition)
[no need for kleenex folks]
wait for the bus
no bus
look at schedule
no bus for another hour and a half
very important meeting begins in approximately 45 minutes
curse unreliable public transportation
begin the 5-mile walk (that usually takes about an hour, no problem, in tennis shoes) to meeting place wearing black dress shoes with stacked heel
humidity arouses perspiration
wind wrecks hair
pink nicely pressed oxford shirt damp and crumpled
no doubt will certainly be late and disheveled for very important meeting
hot spots forming on delicate parts of the feet
start thinking of all the people who’ve been forced to march against their will in the snow or hot sand without shoes and in fear and/or starving children in africa and anything that won’t allow me to feel sorry for myself
decide i’m too old to cry over something as minor as this
halfway there
stop at an intersection
feet aching and wishing for the light to turn
wonder if i’d be better off carrying my shoes
a car with a group of boys in it turns the corner coming closer
the passenger leans out and barks
laughs from the gut
no hesitation lock dead on his eyes
barks just like a dog
momentarily consider hurling myself under the passing traffic
or firing back
walk flashes and i drag myself forward
carrying the weight of the history of words
alone means too much fear to respond
that’s how women get themselves killed
and i’m too old and self-confident to cry over something as minor as this
still halfway to go
arrive feeling sub-human
slip sweater over unkempt shirt
try not to visibly limp into meeting while apologizing for own existence
the super-duper-boiled down version of my day
[maybe the longer more pathetic version on the morrow]
i don't need some jack-assed stupid boy to tell me that i'm not a pretty girl.
believe me, i've had it figured out for some time now.
grrrrrrr.
things that made me smile
or
there’s nothing like self-aggrandizement
received the following from a dear friend in an email message today*:
A baked potato [imogen]? Not really. You never even come off as half-baked. Most times anyway. Baked potatoes are bland, no matter how you spice them up, which certainly doesn't fit you. And M.F.K. Fisher says potatoes are underappreciated. Once again, that's not the case with you, at least from my perspective. When I do think tuberally of you, it's as Sweet Potato. Remember? Sweet but not too sweet and a little tough at times. ;)
* I do not have permission to reproduce this text. (I mean, wouldn't that interfere with the self-aggrandizement?) And all names have been changed or eliminated to protect the innocent.
things to ponder
where do you place the stress on the word:
hegemony?
i'm sure the decision says something deep about your soul
probably, anyway
things that don't work
decided that my unlimited access to the internet was the barrier to getting anything accomplished
so i saved the requisite files to disk
carried files and lap top to the living room
plunked down on the couch and tried to work there
ended up just substituting tv for the previous distraction
thinking of taking the blasted computer outside
but i’d probably waste a few hours staring into the grass.
you would think that a simple task like –
summarize your own work
could be done easily, since it is something i’m quite familiar with.
sheesh
things to feel stupid about
i've come to terms with the fact that at some point in my years of study i've confused the genders of George Eliot and Ezra Pound. [okay, okay, sometimes i still do.]
but this, well, it's just plain embarrassing.
[at least it was an internal meltdown during conversation.]
me: dude, i think he just called him a man.
me: is he a man? certainly not. he wrote that thing about a bride's head.
me: wait. how does that work again? all men are mortal. socrates is a man. therefore socrates is mortal?
me: syllogisms are too slippery.
me: this is like that time you realized that Byron's "Don Juan" is pronounced differently than the legendary 14th-century Spanish nobleman and libertine guy.
me: hmm. yes. that sure was humbling.
me: i wonder if i should put out more chips. looks like the boys could use another drink . . .
door bells and other things that go bump in the night
I’m not really here, he says
and it’s the tone of conspiracy that settles me.
stuck like coffee grounds after the last sip.
I wonder why his voice always feels like stolen currency.
like a light I was never suppose to read by.
we aren’t really anywhere, i hear myself reply
now, he cries, now I think you might finally be getting it
I ask a bunch of questions to which I already know the answers, and he tells a story about a beautiful girl he’s just met. Until I say I have to go, I listen to Maxwell and draw circles on a piece of lavender scratch paper next to the phone.
it's sunday
and that really from yesterday has become a really.
since i've run out of formatting options -- guess that means i've got to get down to it.
things i've done instead of work:
blog reading/commenting
grocery shopping
laundry
house cleaning
cooked chili
made black bean salsa
read poetry
went for lattes (3 times)
slept
wrote
watched tv
talked on the phone
walked
so now i'm going to work. but i'm feeling a bit sleepy . . .
i'm clearly not going to get anything done today
why is it that when i'm really [is bold and italics overkill?] supposed to be working
i end up blog stalking instead?
or dancing in my living room to this and this?*
note to self: write the stupid abstract.
[* only to realize that with my door open -- the neighbors were outside watching me from the parking strip. hi boys! guh.]
for future manipulation
beating out the answer to these wonderings
creating a logbook to record dvd-tea-disasters (for statistical analysis of course)
pondering this point: comovedy as a form of victimization?
quicker than you can say “candy”
logic becomes blurred, sometimes. so that even my body betrays me. and i wake up the next morning aching all over. bruised. fragile. thinking that the things I do to myself in the name of love shouldn’t be allowed.
issues
I’ve just realized that in choosing a time zone for my blog that isn’t honestly my own, it appears that by 9:30 last night I was already effectively mad-capped. It was actually quite a bit later. Ah, well. A lush is a lush at any time of the day.
catch phrases o’ the night that have to be preserved before they’re forgotten
on getting off the phone too soon and damned time zones and unexpected visitors –
the house is a mess and I ain’t got no booze
gotta get to the lick-er-store, then, ennit?
and other things that sting on the way down
can’t you just put my bird on your box?
sometimes jay is unimagined laughter and too much joy for words.
off to enjoy a shower and other blissful pre-sheet activities*
*that could be taken the wrong way, i suppose
exiting, stage left
currently chatting
jules and I decide we need to hear some nelly
we love us some nelly
he attempts an acoustic version of “hot in herre”
(Uh) I was like, good gracious ass is bodacious
which cracks us both up
he’s priceless in a middle class white boy kind of way
into answering machines soaked with vodka
Chorus on the Origins of His Lust
because some things are too lovely to keep to yourself
options
decided not to go out tonight. (hence, no outfit choosing. just a quick run to the store to stock up on much needed items – like stoli vanilla.) because jay and i figured we needed one of our reckless conversations in which we talk about nothing and everything. and i needed something to fill in the silences that are currently making my bones ache. so when the phone rang, i was pleased. but it wasn’t jules’ black and white tones on the other end.
i need to see you, he declared in pink honeysuckle showers. if i don’t see you soon, i’m going to lose my mind.
and even though i pretend not to care. i want to scream out when. where. i want to say anytime at any price. but i don’t. unlike stoli – he’s a luxury i cannot afford to drink down. he’s a dream that has to remain in the buried but ever present past. i have to believe that he’s been undiscovered. but it’s the goddamned memories that make the words of negation so hard to produce. the faulty idea that his hands might unlock the mysteries of some universe i didn’t even know existed.
it’s a terrible conversation, because i’m fighting myself. and him. the contradiction of wanting to be convinced of something that could never ever be possible. it’s too much i shout. this is all too much. and we eventually cut the other loose. this one time only. but not before he admonishes, i wonder when you will ever figure out that what you want and what you need are nothing close to what you have. and when you finally decide that you’ve had enough of a give that never leads to take, i might not be here – waiting.
but he isn’t waiting. and that’s the element that he never likes to acknowledge. that he’s in just as deep and that if anything the ways in which he loves me are only a fantasy he allows himself to believe in. something to make himself feel better about the deficit he too won’t ever release.
we’re too much the same, i say. without worry of damage or hurt feelings. and I hope that he knows that if ever and always i want the things i can’t have in a world that is far removed from this one.
brain washings
haven’t there been a suspicious amount of comovedy references lately?
world domination has to start somewhere I suppose.
[plus, there’s not much else to post these days except, possibly, incoherent diatribes about my lack of sleep]
Had to laugh when I responded to some essays with marginalia phrases that included the following:
. . . but what about the boys?
and
i think you’ll find . . .
[i’m not sure whether the humor i found in that connection is really funny or if it’s really just pathetic.]
[discuss]
that isn't a link, by the way. click it. you'll see. it won't take you anywhere. annoying, ennit?
question(s) o' the day
should RI adopt the ever popular comment system?
is there a need for such an element here?
would such a system only foster my feelings of inadequacy?
[discuss]
unnecessary clarifications
contrary to previously posted photographic evidence
i do have a quite substantial and proportionatly adequate upper lip
[but i don't have identity issues, or anything. seriously. no. really. i'm serious.]
head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes
or
all the better to crop you with my pretty
hey, man. i like your crop. 
thanks.
just at the start of something
Yesterday, after passing a note announcing a birthday written in chalk in some stranger’s driveway, I started thinking about the concept of (written) private conversation in public spaces. I thought about this place (these places), which adds the extra element of the anonymous.
This morning, I noticed dvd’s comment to mrtn @ comovedy.com about the evolution of comment systems standing in for previously held email conversation. private public discourse.
Just happened to be reading Bartholomae’s “Inventing the University” this morning and noted the following:
“Barthes (1974), for example, has argued that the moment of writing where private goals and plans become subject to public language, is the moment when the writer becomes subject to a language he can neither command nor control.”
I call to say
I remember sitting on your concrete basement floor. Salty. Of seaweeds. Sand in our hair as we pulled off one shoe at a time. It was before I asked you why you lived alone. After my flight to Canada. My respect grew simply with each moment that you didn’t require answers. We had been at the beach. Skipping rocks. And you taught me how to yell at the ocean without making any sound. We peeled out of our wet clothes. Letting them fall in dark musty pools onto the floor. Our opaque bodies took turns under the steaming showerhead. Attempting to rub out the dead like the rough minute pebbles caught under our nails. Afterward we sipped hot chocolate from heavy green mugs on the faded deck in your backyard. And you draped me under the weight of the quilt taken from the end of your bed. The world went heavy with my eyelids. the blanket. water. motion. ceramic cups. language. Color became out of step with time. Unmoving we waited through the silence for night and for things in the sky we could not name.
maybe i should stop holding on to you so hard
like directions to the wrong house
in the wrong town
without change for a phone call
you are most often frustration
delay
but i still keep hanging on
waiting for you to
open your eyes
send me word
decide that all you ever needed might just reside somewhere deep beneath my skin
hidden somewhere you'd forgotten to look
in the bend of my knee
under foot
came here to delete those last two posts
and on the way
ran across this site
five idiots, one blog
by chance and mistake
enjoyed browsing
who cares, anyhow, about those last two posts?
i don't.
yes, i do.
break even and spin
remind me
he says
just who you think might ever put up with this petty no good bull shit
all you ever do is talk talk talk
i'm sick of listening to you
stupid ass mother fucker
slam
yelling is for imbeciles
nobody
that's who
there's nobody who's gonna want to deal with your shit all the time
stupidfuckedupidiot
this is what i get
this is what i get for trying to love you all this time
you're so difficult
so goddamed fucking difficult
if my heart beats any faster it might explode
i go outdoors
lean against the garage door
he won't yell where the neighbors can hear
not getting it
i can't do this any more
god fucking hell
i'm not going to do this any more
i don't get it
even when i try to help
i just make things worse
and worse
even writing this down is a bad idea
i'm full up of those
about to choke on all my stupid choices
what does it mean
if you're so drunk you can't [insert verb here]
but you're still aware enough to correct people's grammar?
[self command: go to bed]
took a walk in the rain
and thought about all the things I do with my life to make it unbearable
as usual, I didn’t produce any resolutions
came home to 17 messages on the machine
hang ups mixed with his voice reciting random lines from 1984 and Ulysses
makes me wonder just what exactly is going on
received a postcard from him the other day
he’d drawn a bowl of cherries
on fire
labeled it, cherry bomb
it said something like –
I’m in AZ
for some mind-silence
if you were here I’d speak the word amazing
but the postmark and postage came from BC
I’m going back out, even though it’s stopped raining.
the worst thing I've said in the past 24 hours
in response to, "I love you."
Maybe that isn't enough.
wearing silver turquoise rings
at least it wasn’t a bunch of abuse narratives, she says of the current batch of essays under review.
right, I affirm too quickly and shift my weight. Pull my arms up. Tight against my chest.
She continues, and her voice steadily loses all relation to inhabitable space. I nod slowly. Light a cigarette and drag hard. Seeking the hot gritty smoke against the back of my throat.
We’re standing outside a monolithic building of brick on a slab of concrete, and I long to be in my office with the door closed. I realize I’ve yet to find a safe place here. The heavy metal doors crash into themselves. I jump. Stare at the building with spite. Georgia red, I think, as I smile and pretend to be listening. Shift weight. Slowly pop my right hip joint out of its socket and lean. Pull my arms in closer. Across the stomach. The other reaching up to the neck.
I ride the bus home. Later. Head nodding with the shocks -- from sleep deprivation and the inability to ingest food. That’s what my story has become. I can see the word behind my eyelids. cliché.
what a fucking joke.
walking home
It’s sort of unavoidable to think about violence today. And I sometimes hate the ways in which that word places itself at the forefront of who I am and what I do. There’s no shaking it, though. Sometimes even concepts can work their way into the very seams that hold us together. Ripping them out only serves to tear ourselves into pieces. I can’t afford falling into bits. Especially at my own hands.
Yesterday between 42nd street and here, I tried intently to bring things back. There’s so much of me that’s been lost forever. So many images silenced by repeated trauma to the head. There’s nothing left of my life before about age 14. A demarcation that feels arbitrary at best. Even afterwards there is little left out of which to construct a life. An identity. Disconnected memories that span a few short years. Mostly of me at the end of a fist. Like the requisite period at the end of a sentence. My current capacity for memory also feels diminished. I often forget what I’ve told people shortly thereafter. I suppose I’d make a horrible liar. It makes studying difficult. All of this equals something I don’t admit. I tell stories about my childhood only in the ways they were told to me. From my mother’s voice over the phone. Through picture albums on laps over holiday weekends. The few home movies transferred from Super-8 to the now almost as outdated VHS. They become stories about someone else. Somebody who often looks like me in pictures. Who almost didn’t make it. Sometimes I’m not sure who did.
It’s so important for me to write things down. To describe in words the way something sounds – how an emotion might have played on my senses. I never know when it might disappear. When that moment might forget me altogether. So I play at chasing memory and satisfying the desire for stories. About anyone. Anywhere. I want to fill myself up with your stories to cover those never-ending blank spaces of my own.
future titles
Who Moved the Doritos?
-- a drama; perhaps even in film noir style
These Are Not My Pants
-- an experimental poem written entirely in binary
a false sense of entertainment?
i've just titled my latest essay:
If Cartoons Can’t Be Texts Then I’m in a Whole Lot of Trouble
at this rate, seems like i'm gonna be in a heap o' trouble no matter what
[note to self: get smarter.]
today i feel
ridiculous and
wild
counterintuitive
unpredictable
mischievous
no. wait. maybe.
devious
alarming and
alarmed
[unarmed] but
ready
rapid
unornamented. still
severe
impenetrable
fragile
gathering
all eyes
memory
[deleted]
conceit
full of words that don’t seem to go anywhere
when I think of you
memory reduces to a handful of representative stills
caught moments like snags in an old blanket
it’s of you dancing
arms outstretched
face tilted upward
mouth open
laughing
without sound
an ark
turning
calling
turning
it’s of you cycling at full speed
muscles tense
lips pressed and determined
smelling of hard fought dreams
and precise movement
hurtling forward
like a scream
a way spinning away
it’s of you across a clamoring room
watching me between measures of scotch
confident and immaterial
running fingers through your hair
a wicked smile
on your approach
lips against my ear
our voices softly speaking names
look what i got!
i received the the graphic to the right from dimmie earlier today
and was wowed
still am
me like
upon doing research for a themed party i'm attending tonight, i ran across this
punk rock girl
[shout out: stv -- this one's got tabs. ; )]
other places
just realized that mrtn over at pink shirt, yellow tie called me an honorary comovedienne
well i'll be
thanks man
[do we get, like, t-shirts and stuff for that?]
writing things that go against the grain
just finished typing up a document that ends:
4. Bringing the discussion full circle
Bogus. I don’t like presentations. Or, maybe I don’t like to bring things full circle.
Um. Might have to think about that one more later.
Received several email messages from people today that I love, respect, miss, saying – are you still alive? and if you don’t write to us soon we’re going to think you don’t care.
Erk. I have been neglecting people lately. So I sent off some words. Even some that were unsolicited.
Sometimes it’s hard to reconcile the two dimensional world with the three dimensional variety.
if I could write poetry
today I walked home in a fog
thinking about concepts like real and imagined and the constructions in between that keep us from spinning into the atmosphere. gravity. gravity. wondered if you’re right. if love isn’t mostly about meeting a necessary and specific level of narcissism. if my own personal version has been skewed to encompass the ego rather than the soul. how much of life is a fiction that we create in order to avoid going crazy?
maybe i’ve forgotten how to believe in things that are real.
when i passed a woman watching from her yard, I spread my arms out to the side, threw back my head, looked at the sky, and walked straight through her sprinkler as it made it’s raining arc across the sidewalk. her laugh rang in my ears for miles.
trends on the back side or breaking it down for the slow folks
wait first there was the mole thing
then the eye thing
and pictures, lots o’ those
which is all-good
but I think I may have crossed a critical mark with the last post
have I now created an irreversible scenario in which we are all going to start posting pictures of our behinds?
[dvd excluded, of course, having already unknowingly set the phenomenon into motion.]
until something human comes
what’s going on? he says
and i say nothing
are you all right? he says
and i say, naw, just can’t sleep
we’re silent
and i want to say that i’m alone and so tired i can’t think or see straight
that i’m strung out on caffeine, nicotine, and the muted glowing pictures coming off the tv
i want to say that i know i can be a better person than this
that i’m not afraid of myself
instead i turn out all the lights and listen to his breathing
you’re the one true thing in my life, he says
i don’t think i know what that means
i’m just tired, i say
i’m just really tired.
