The dreams are back

just in time for Christmas! Funny, it wasn't Christmas in this one. We were inside doing the things we used to. You had a scruffy face, not at all like the real one. It's so strange to me that I'm always trying to work things out with you in my dreams. Don't you miss me? I asked. Aren't we friends? No and no, you said, We were never friends. I wish my dreams were more dreamlike and less truthful, what's new.

In another dream I met an unhatched egg who looked like an old cartoon pirate and had an orange beard like Matty2Fatty's. A sign of things to come?

Love is a volcano is a pilgrim and when it goes down, it does not come back up

Exactly. ha ha

Age and I are hitting the Lent slopes

That's right, Lent in the fall! Oslo in the summertime. Breakfast for dinner. I'm at the top of the mountain and the ride down isn't looking so bad. It's easier when you have a sponsor, like in AA. It'll be interesting to see how long I can last, but I know I'll eventually break down and give in. Curiosity is natural, isn't it? If I'm stalking people I don't even care about, am I really going to stop stalking the ones I (foolishly) do care about? Or maybe I can. I don't know. The real question here is... can I give up Gossip Girl and The Hills? Oh man. I may be in too deep right there, past the point of recovery. Who can resist Chuck Bass's permanent sinister gaze or Serena's slight speech impediment, or Blaire's round peasant-like face? See, that's exactly what I'm talking about. (Not the TV show.) But how can you erase things from your memory, and is remembering the same as missing something? Who knows. I will, I'm sure, but not for awhile.

I have to stop dreaming in metaphors. No I don't.

In a half-dream, sleep was a foreign language document that wouldn't fit in the box I needed it to. I would push it down, and the box would move up. We went back and forth like this a few more times before my dream self got fed up with it all and told myself, "Sleep is not a foreign language!" and I really went to sleep. I don't need a sign like a dream to tell me my job is miserable.

I miss Philly, too.

I think I'm glad to be home? I don't know why I thought it would be easy to live without my dear friend nearby, I did it for three years after all. Everything feels different now, not that I expected things to be just as they were when I left, but I don't know what it's supposed to be now. Sometimes I wish I had stayed on the east coast, but I think about how miserable I was there and wonder if location makes any difference at all, if I'll feel like this wherever I go, whoever is there or not...

"I wonder if you're mythologizing me like I do you."

In my dreams it's always Christmas time and you're telling me what I already know, but shouldn't it be different in dreams? We were driving through Nic's neighborhood and every house was on fire. You put your arm around me like in a song, and at home I found a note with our names on it together, as if we'd always received things addressed to the both of us. No, I know you must not be mythologizing me like I do you, and when I think of what you probably are doing I have to laugh to myself. I'd rather remember things the way I wanted them to be and not what they actually were, but it's hard when you keep ending things in dreams.

on writing and being home.

I haven't felt inspired to write anything in awhile, and I'm almost tired of talking about my book, or explaining what prose poetry is. It's a wonderful feeling when someone tells me how much they enjoyed the book, or what their favorite poems were (usually Lemonade or the long one about nights in IV), but some of those poems have been with me for three years. I'm tired of them and I want new ones, but nothing comes. And all of a sudden I feel like whatever I write, people will be reading and judging, like I have to come up with an instant hit. Maybe I'll go back to my paper journals for awhile.

There probably won't be anymore lovely photos from out at sea since someone crashed the boat into the breakwater (not me!), but I've been swimming at the pool with giggly little girls who are thrilled at the prospect of Hello Kitty goggles, building IKEA furniture, reorganizing my bedroom and trying to make my clothes fit in it somehow, working off my east coast paleness at the beach with Michael, rocking the bells with Age, watching the Olympics and wondering why I was never concerned with actually swimming fast when I was on the swim team in high school.

I hope someone will want to go to UG tomorrow night.

home, finally.

nothing new.

I wonder what I have inside me that makes me optimistic in the face of inevitable doom and makes me believe the impossible can happen. Actually, I think I know.

another one.

Staples is trying to ruin my life, or just my literary career. I'm sorry if you get a book and the cover is a bit too small. Hand making 40 books is fun! waaah...

The dreams are still coming. Last night you were in my sister's old room, the one that used to be the "den." (Why are you always renting out rooms from my mom in my dreams?) You told me you missed me and we watched Family Matters together. It was a Christmas episode, everyone was in sweaters and it was snowing outside. In real life, the weather is disgusting and the dream has been with me all day.

old things

It feels good to get rid of old things. I'd been driving around with a PC and a dozen lit mags in the trunk of my car for almost three years. Also gone now are tons of old clothes, like fleece footed PJs an ex's mom gave me and winter scarves I never wore and HK purses and bags (not that I don't like HK anymore, whoa who whoa, I definitely am still in love, just look at my bathroom for crying out loud), and jeans I am just too fat for now. In figuring out how I'll move back home, I've been tempted to sell or give away most of my things and fill two suitcases with the things I really want to keep. One of them would be this guy, of course:

Last night in a dream my apartment was on fire so I grabbed him and ran out. I wish that was the only thing I had to pack, but I'm bringing back so much more.

I don't think you have them, too.

I can't say for sure why I've gone back to almost normal within the past week. These days I don't know what comes from what, but I won't spend too much time thinking about this one. All I know is things are rolling right off me when before they clung to me like barnacles. Standing around at work listening to the lyrics in Littlest Things I was fine, I went back to reconfiguring the whole room after a second. But in my latest dream, you were in my brothers' bedroom in our old house across from the island, lying in bed with the covers pulled over your head as usual. I sneaked in and sat next to you and told you I was moving back to California and you said that you didn't care, that we weren't even friends. I cried retelling it to Meg, but it was nothing like weeks before when I found the little things I wasn't looking for. Someone asked me to look forward to something better, and I think my whole problem while living here has been that I could never see anything better. It always seemed that even as I was scraping the bottom of the barrel, this was as good as it was going to get. I know that when I'm home I'll be better, and maybe that'll mean less sad poems and more poems about dolphins that talk or other things that aren't supposed to happen, like Steve said.

my favorite right now. "Bag of Hammers" by Thao and the Get Down, Stay Down

the valleys, they keep growing.

Stephen Dobyns, you're my only hope.

"we're both so mean and it's our favorite scene."

Things I learned today:
-wearing new sneakers to walk to work in will give you blisters
-wearing new ballet flats AT work will give you blisters
-taking off your shoes and walking around barefoot at work is dangerous and you will step on a SENSOR
-getting too close to a candle will melt your mascara and cause your eyelashes to stick together
-ghosts like to lurk along Baltimore Street and maybe you should stop trying to push buttons
-music from my college days still racks

Silvia's college mix
1) Brick - Ben Folds Five
2) Catch My Disease - Ben Lee
3) Commerce, TX - Ben Kweller
4) Falling - Ben Kweller
5) Just Pretend - The Bens
6) Bitte Ein Kuss - Jonah's Onelinedrawing
7) Manana - Desaparecidos
8) Man and Wife, The Latter (Damaged Goods) - Desaparecidos
9) You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will - Bright Eyes
10) Nothing Gets Crossed Out - Bright Eyes
11) My Slumbering Heart - Rilo Kiley
12) The Execution of All Things - Rilo Kiley
13) Oh! - Sleater-Kinney
14) Seeing Other People - Belle & Sebastian
15) Me and the Major - Belle & Sebastian
16) Person, Person - Mirah
17) Sweepstakes Prize - Mirah
18) Don't Hate Me - The Get Up Kids
19) Close to Home - The Get Up Kids
20) Nothing Better - The Postal Service

done and done.

I'll be sad when I can't go to readings at school anymore. Tonight was the Welter reading and I regretted not submitting this year. There weren't enough seats so Pantea shared hers with me because she is motherly and the whole time I smelled something grape flavored, and incense, I think. It was like being in a hippie store sucking on a grape blowpop, but with rose petals strewn across the floor! I didn't know whether to think about being friends with the earth, or twee things like jumping rope and holding hands, or a romantic bedroom surprise in a movie. At the end of the reading someone brought out a huge birthday cake, chocolate with raspberries and strawberries piled on top, can you imagine? I wanted to eat the whole thing myself, but I didn't even know the birthday girl, so I just thought about it after and in the car Steve said You know, it probably wasn't very good anyway.
It hasn't been very long since I finished making the book but I feel like I'm going to have a lot of free time on my hands from here until August. So on my way home from work I stopped at the library and picked up "Special Topics in Calamity Physics," poems by Stephen Dobyns, Sylvia Plath's journals (abridged because the last time I checked out the unabridged, the pages would fall out and I would find them randomly in my bed), and that Audrey Hepburn book of secret treasures and trinkets that they sell at Anthropologie. If anyone else has a good book recommendation, I'm all ears.
I'm hoping the books and sunshine will help because the last few days, or maybe more, I've been feeling resentful of certain people who don't have to work hard for anything and are handed things on a silver platter and are lucky in love and happy, while I am thinking about how much I hate my job as I walk to work in the morning when most people are just waking up, am not lucky in love, and am definitely not happy. It's a little immature I guess. Maybe I just need a new job, or a benefactor.

almost done

I feel like Jenn is the only person who reads this. So, Jenn, here are my own book making pictures and what I've been listening to.

Other Things

It’s spring again. Thoughts of jungle hunters and mythical sea people and what makes them better than a well-intentioned barnacle have been keeping me up at night, and playing in the background are songs about boomerangs and other things that come back to you. When I wasn't waiting for sleep, I was waiting for these other things to come back. And now I’m told they won’t, and you can’t get rid of ghosts, but there are things you can do to take your mind somewhere else for awhile and things you can take to fall asleep sooner, but they are all waiting for me in my dreams. I don’t think the other things will come back, but they never leave, either.

our new books drop in 2.5 weeks, holler.

and happening again.

This is my favorite band, Camera Obscura, doing an ABBA cover. Just ignore the obnoxious audience member in the beginning.

or is this asking too much?

I'm hoping that tomorrow someone will tell me how it is possible to try new pills and fly on planes again, and maybe even how to get rid of ghosts.

hee hee

S: I'm always worried that people know secrets about me. Or that someone who doesn't like me has gotten to them and told them bad things about me.

L: You might be developing a persecution syndrome.

S: What are the symptoms?

L: Sweaty palms, unreasonable giggling, paranoia, blogging.

oh, there you are again!

I've never been stalked before... it's kinda fun!

homesick part II

I talked to Mom today as she and Elisa and Chris were sitting down to breakfast on the deck at Lulu's overlooking Waikiki, "Wish you were heeeere!" and then a call from the Sanrio store in Honolulu asking if I wanted a Hello Kitty toilet seat cover. I wish I was there, too, and not here in Gotham City with steaming manholes and construction and no parking tow away zones.


Look, you can see my belly button through my top! haha

The Invisible Hand

The invisible hand on your back tenderly shoves you out of bed, into the shower, and out the door. And like a child pushed forward by parents to meet someone she does not want to, the hand on your back guides you down the street past the store fronts and restaurants you don’t want to pass and the people you don’t want to see. Your shoulders slump forward, your spine like a string of spaghetti curves into a question mark asking Why and Do I have to and For how long, which the hand replies to with Because you have to and Yes and For slightly longer. Day after day the hand becomes fainter and smaller, until one day it is only an and, and on these days it is hardest to do anything more than lie still and pretend to be still asleep, and anything else you can’t bring yourself to do is all right with the and because it just adds it to the list: waking and walking and waiting to cross and watching and smiling and small talk and

I couldn't help myself.

Nostalgia got the best of me and I wrote back. I'm surprised I haven't turned into a pillar of salt by now.

Happy Palm Sunday.

on being ill

In a half dream last night, sleep was a volleyball that Cristen and her father were tossing to each other back and forth over my head. I just wanted sleep, I reached up every time it went over my head, but I couldn't get my hands on it. What woke me up was a shooting pain in my lower abdomen that would not go away for forty minutes. I felt like I was dying. I was lying on the floor in the bathroom in a ball holding my stomach sweating wanting to vomit crying, all the things my doctor in California told me not to do when I get pains like these. "Try not to be so dramatic about it," she said. (She's really sensitive, that Dr. Pickering.) I felt like a baby for calling my friends and my mom, but it hurt so bad I didn't know what to do. It finally stopped when the Tylenol started working, but what will I do if it ever happens to me in public? I've had lots of tests done, even an ultrasound, and there seems to be nothing wrong with me. But then why does this happen?

homesick

I have four replies written out in my head, but I won't send them.

Lent has become much easier, thanks to my wish for sea hags and clam shells being born into fruition on Saturday night, and a random text message yesterday. I think this separation is helping me to see things more clearly - what is really there and what will never be there. It's in my nature to constantly seek out the good in people, sometimes even making excuses for them and giving second, third, fourth chances. I forget all the hurtful words and the crying, oh the crying!

Marisa wondered if he meant it as a joke, but I see now why he thinks I'm "crazy." Such a little thing for him means everything to me, and what's funny to him is cruel to me. What he probably considers "being dramatic" is, to me, the only honest and natural reaction. I see the difference now, the imbalance, better than I could before, but I think it's still happening - the shadow moving over my insides.

something that makes me feel better, sometimes.

"How To Like It" by Stephen Dobyns

These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let's tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let's pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let's dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn't been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff
people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he'll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let's just go back inside.
Let's not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing. The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept-
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.

spring dreams

Oh Spring, is that you trying to get here early? :D I'm excited to wear skirts and dresses again, sans boots and tights and sweaters. I'm also excited for something more, because you remember last spring, don't you? If Spring is around the corner, then so is another kind of season. This year I'm hoping for something better, as impossible as that seems. (What could be better than regular fights, public humiliation, etc etc etc?)

Come on, be a friend.

for Marisa!

All-Girl Post-Punk Electro-Pop vs. Screamo

Then you knew what to expect on a Friday night – everyone dancing in the living room, some on the coffee table singing Daft Punk in Spanish, other short girls in silvery skirts and kitten heels, the string of Hello Kitty lights striking everyone as normal, Cynthia falling asleep in the bathroom and pushing Jessica in through the window to wake her, Jorge and Nicole lying laughing atop the broken wood slats of what was once the aqua colored patio bench, a fight at the stereo over the next song because the girl with the neck tattoo doesn’t like Le Tigre, the neighbor’s pit bull breaking its chain and tearing through the party, falling asleep on the floor in rows with the music still playing, and in the morning walking home between rows of palm trees, the sun on the water, everyone on skateboards or beach cruisers and five barefooted boys balancing an inflatable canoe in the air running towards the beach as you are on your way to a breakfast burrito and a long nap so by nighttime, you are ready to do it all again.

Now it could be anything - wearing a coat over a dress over a shirt over leggings over wool socks over more, a party in a neighborhood with no street lights and boarded up apartments, a screaming band, latch key kids and the smell of day old vegetable soup, rickety elevators covered in graffiti like the old warehouse, a broken locket found resting on the keys of a broken piano someone begins to play and tells you, “I know Moonlight Sonata,” but it sounds more like Dracula’s theme song, a mile long line for the bathroom that has no ceiling and is missing a wall, and during your turn a girl in line with neon fishnet stalkings yells, “Hey, are you pissing on the floor in there?” because your roommate’s date from the internet is puking loudly nearby, a girl with a plastic knife pretends to slit everyone’s throats, and when you come home the boy from the internet pukes some more in your downstairs toilet while you fall asleep on the couch watching your favorite show about the dramatic lives of teenagers living on the beach in California.

you have a piece of Lent on your sweater.

Growing up Baptist, I never really "did" Lent. I always thought it was something only meant for Catholics. Now that I live in Baltimore and all the Baptist churches I've been to here seem to be southern Baptist and much too conservative (and loud) for me, I now attend a Methodist church, and they do Lent! So.. even though the 40 days have already started and I am late, I've decided to give Lent a try. My first thought was to give up alcohol, like Anita. But I was going to give that up anyway, so that isn't really much of a sacrifice. What would be a greater sacrifice is... 

ONLINE STALKING.

Yes, I do a lot of it, and I mean a LOT. It's hard when you want information about someone and it's all laid out there for you online. Actually, it's not hard, it's very easy! One click and you know who that person's hanging out with, where they've been going, what they've been doing, etc. I've never felt bad about stalking people online because my thinking is, If they didn't want people to know these things about them, they wouldn't put them on the internet for everyone to see. My problem lies in the people I stalk. It doesn't do me any good to learn anything new about them. In fact, it just makes me feel bad about myself and ask questions I'll never know the answers to, and that aren't even worth thinking about, really. So I'm not going to stalk either of those people or their affiliates for -40 days and see what happens. I think it's going to be really hard, but if Jesus could resist SATAN for 40 days, I can resist stalking, right?

And After

Not here, not still. Believing after a record number of good days that it had all left me, that I'd never feel it again, there it was. In the necklace dangling from the display next to me, in the girl standing in line, in the smokey army jacket of a man walking by, in the traffic lines painted on the street, in the water boiling on the stove, in the moments before sleep and upon waking. Would I always start and end my days this way? And wondering why me and not you, as if I knew what yours were like anymore.