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?)