obfuscated girl

the lovers, the dreamers and me

i'm back.
this was a more therapeutic thanksgiving than usual. the car ride home to madison (yet another ding to add to my What I Have Accomplished In My Life chart--i can't drive) was spent agonizing aloud to my father about what i should do, exactly as far as telling my family that i am on government cheddar. (or actually, considering what i'm going to get, government generic plastic cheese slices.) the plan was, shamefully, to lie as much as possible and pretend that everything was okay...and beyond that i wasn't sure. but it got to a point where my dad took me aside and said "the longer you keep this a secret the worse it's going to be." and so. i told.
cried. a lot.
made my brother cry.
and beyond that nothing bad happened.
i think that i overestimate what people's reactions are going to be much of the time, especially my family's. we have a long dysfunctional turbulent history, but i suspect that it is no less long, dysfunctional, or turbulent than yours. and i think that over the past two days i have had the best opportunity ever to hone my worst-case-scenario imagining skills so i just easily translate that into my imagined parental reaction.
and so.
this doesn't mean that i'm any less scared. especially by a line on my unemployment materials saying that i have a Pending Issue With My Claim and will be contacted about it. what the fuck? what is pending? there is no issue! i need help, you fucks! but people keep telling me that it's only the second day. and if i continue to imagine myself in a cloth sack offering to wash your window on wisconsin avenue i will be so terrified i will lose the ability to get up in the morning.
and so.
maybe i should start a website like that asshole chick who got her credit card debt paid off.
maybe i should become an exotic dancer.
maybe i should write a novel.
maybe i should shut the fuck up.

soundtrack: blink-182, "all of this" (seriously. robert smith sings on it. ROBERT SMITH.)
(out.)

i was fired yesterday. after having worked like a dog for five years for $8.50 an hour at a company that rhymes with darns & coble and pretty much arbitrarily denied a raise the last time we had performance reviews, i was told to come into the office "before i started my day" by my fucking fucktastic fuck of a manager and told to go home. i will not get into the reasons why, exactly, but she is a new manager in a long line of them and she is the most passive-aggressive non-management material manager i have ever encountered. and has had it in for me and pretty much all of the existing staff that doesn't fit the kiss-her-ass-tremble-before-her mold ever since she started there. yeah. so i'm feeling fucking great today.
two days before thanksgiving. and the first time that she openly threatened my job was a day before my birthday, which she POINTED OUT when she called me in the office.
i have no idea what happens next. i don't really think that it's even hit me yet; i tend to measure situations like this in whether or not i have cried. and i cried a little last night. but mostly i drank. did the stupid thing and spent my last feasible cash on johnnie walker black. this morning i called unemployment and now have an application in process. i also have one more check coming and people whose couches i could crash on/shoulders i could cry on or pummel, and i have my ass that i could sell on street corners, i guess.
but goddamn.
what the fuck happens now?
soundtrack: cex, "my head"
(out.)
i am so afraid.

i want to stop and thank you baby

because i cannot think of an intro to this, which is unlike me (being at a loss for words? she who cannot be quiet ever? evar??? jeez.) i am going to express the sentiment as non-maudlinly as possible that i hope everyone has a happy thanksgiving, wherever you find yourself, and i'll see you next time, metaphorically speaking, because of the fact that i am going home to madison and will be awol for a while.
because once again, i do not wish to run any sort of risk of my family members finding out that i cryptically refer to Very Personal Things on the Internet, where Someone Could Track me Down And Stalk And Dismember Me. and so i am going to get to the list of thankfulness. which is highly unrehearsed and in no order of importance:

1. my family
2. my (relative) independence
3. matthew
4. white wine at midnight
5. dancing
6. the journey
7. passenger seats
8. conversations that last for more than an hour
9. books and my ability to get lost in them
10. my friends
11. hope
12. wonder
13. cheesy tomato sandwiches from comet
14. good black coffee
15. love in every form that i have found it in my life
16. bad diner coffee where you have to put 5 containers of cream and half a pound of sugar in to make it palatable
17. microwave popcorn out of the bag
18. road trips
19. day trips
20. day dreams
21. the fact that when i daydream now it's mostly about things that are in my recent past rather than making up stories about someone i'm never going to be
22. swimming
23. angst
24. my body
25. my mind.

soundtrack: marvin gaye, "what's going on"
(out.)

my huckleberry friend

today's "you idiot!" observation lies with finally realizing that there are problems with the fact that i have no edible groceries in my house. the exceptions are: coffee, which doesn't count (although black coffee on an empty stomach is an excellent decisive/weight loss weapon in that it makes you kind of sick), a can of vegetarian baked beans, a can of tomato soup, a can of tomato RICE soup (woo) and a package of instant cheddar and garlic mashed potatoes which i can't make because i have no milk. all these foodstuffs (heh), incidentally, fall under the category of "are you kidding? it's 10:30 in the fucking morning."
i get into these moods where i cannot rest until i have had Breakfast Food For Breakfast. other times i am perfectly happy eating peanut butter sandwiches or cold leftover pizza, but my stomach has the temperament of mariah carey. whatever lola wants, lola gets. and so i am trying to decide at what point of physical hunger i am going to let myself slide into before i leave the house, even though it's 23 degrees outside. this is when i wish anorexia were actually an appealing prospect. or that i had that asian houseboy and he came bearing french toast.
grrr. argh.
this weekend was spent hearing "baby got back" and "rump shaker" back to back in two separate locations on two consecutive nights and having a good time anyway. as much as i am sick of "baby got back," every time i hear it, even though it's about 20 years old and hardly gets play anymore--or DOES IT???--i find sir mix-a-lot actually quite articulate. there was a really amusing onion interview where he described going to college campuses and being picketed by feminists and eventually getting them all on his side because it's a very female-positive song. whoever did "rump shaker" can suck my dick, though.
also components/flashes of this weekend:
wearing the Skirt (you haven't met the Skirt? oh you must lead a sorry existence) on both out-being occassions and feeling both smug and generally dissatisfied because while the Skirt is my secret weapon, there are many more secret weapons i could introduce and, like, have a whole arsenal of them and, like, none of y'all would know what hit y'all if only i could afford them. but, oh, that's right, i can't. (santa, may i please have bling for christmas and then unravel a whole new ball of insecurities about how i am obsessed with capitalism and materialism and all the wrong things whilst there are people DYING IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES? thanks.) and i have no patience for thrift stores even though conventional wisdom and personal experience have it that you can find some amazing shit if you are only patient,
realizing that i cry at the exact same moment in "breakfast at tiffany's" every.single.time i watch it ("cat? cat?? CAAAAAAT?!?!?"), and that i am probably extremely pathetic because of this,
and speaking of which, sphinx has not showed himself but he now has a file with the milwaukee area domestic animal control. also i have stopped apologizing to bishop (the cat which has now become the Good Cat by default) and coming close to tears every time he cries for his brother...oh christ,
and i'm pretty sure that's all i have to report.
next time: an Extremely Predictable List of things i'm thankful for! because i haven't done one since i was twelve and because fuck you, this is my show!

soundtrack: sleater-kinney, "little mouth"
addiction: somafm internet radio on winamp. it's like they're inside my BRAIN! except my brain actually has meow mix and swiffer commercials!
(out.)

sphinx, come home

it is 8:00 a.m. i have been crying for the past half hour. i spent the night at matthew's although we said a while ago that we were going to sleep at my house on weekdays because it's easier than him having to haul my ass across town and then go to work in the morning, for a couple reasons; first and foremost being that he has been getting parking tickets (the whole fucking city is against me) and secondarily because my bed, while big enough for me, tends to make his feet stick off the end and his back hurt. so. we were at his house last night and we woke up to one of his two cats crying, and matthew went to investigate and sphinx, the other cat, was nowhere to be found and the front door was open. and it's MY FAULT. and i am terrified that he is not going to come back and something awful is going to happen.
so i spent the whole ride home crying and apologizing generally being more dramatic than the situation called for. i have spent a good deal of this relationship terrified that i was going to fuck something up, and now i have. matt is not actually angry at me. to some degree i wish he were. mostly i am angry at myself because i have this perception of myself that i am scatterbrained and forgetful and ditzy and this is just confirming that. we have woken up a couple of times now and discovered that i left a door open, and i have been told that i need to close it, and i was making a POINT of making sure the thing was closed because i was AFRAID something like this would HAPPEN, and GODDAMNIT, i MESSED UP. i will quote myself from earlier this morning: "how hard is it to close a fucking DOOR?"
and sphinx? he is not the smartest of cats. and while matthew bitches about his cats constantly i know they mean a great deal to him. and i may as well have stood in front of him and stabbed him in the chest.
see? again with the drama.
so sphinx--if you are actually smarter than we all realized and are in some cigar bar someplace with internet access and surfing the internet while waiting for the strippers to get out of the bathroom, please come home. we are very worried about you. and the cristal will give you an awful hangover anyway.

quote: "i'm tired of living alone, i'm hoping that it shows/all over, it's all over and so it goes."--hey mercedes, "stay six"
soundtrack: suicide machines, "i never promised you a rose garden."
(out.)

woke up on the floor, time for another one

do you ever have days where you find yourself someplace and you look up at the ceiling/your surroundings/the person in bed next to you and you have NO IDEA how you got there? that is the type of day that i have been having. i went to my local foodstuffs store (i am liking the word "foodstuffs" although it is admittedly rather awkward and think more people should use it) about a half hour ago having the vague idea that i wanted noodles in a bag. mind you, i picked up and consumed dinner on the way home from work already--an overwhelmingly large vegetarian jimmy john's sub without tomatoes when i told them to make it without sprouts--i'm just curious, in which language does"sprouts" sound like tomatoes? but whatever-- and if i had purchased noodles and made and consumed them i would have most likely felt sick. very sick. so i kind of floated around the aisles and my eye twiched and i felt like a twit and like i was on some sort of amnesia drug.
work is nothing to report about. i put up a new endcap. woo. and i got verbally bitchslapped by satan-the-manager because when i asked her a question about something towards the end of the night i glanced at the computer screen that she was hunched over typing little evil satan decrees and happened to see something that made me think she was writing about me, and so i asked her point blank thinking "this is a new approach," it was not the right question to be asking/approach to be taking. i will not go into details. it is not worth it.
also there is an extremely stupid anonymous person who has started a fight on crime & judy's message board. it's interesting because this type of assholishness usually never finds its way into the sunny world of indie rock. even if you are reading this and you don't know who the fuck crime & judy are, go look at it. this is the type of stupidity that deserves many verbal or cyber asswhuppings.
the last thing that i have to report is that my meeting with the department of vocational rehabilitation, the one that is going to get me a new job, has postponed my meeting. i just got the message tonight--apparently the first message got erased the night of the power outage, cause i never got it. grrrrrr.
below is the highly relevant say anything quote of the day.
"i don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. i don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. you know, as a career, i don't want to do that."

soundtrack: stone temple pilots, "days of the week." on repeat.
(out.)

bitch, i'm a kill you

there are so many things that i could yell about today. first and foremost, the first time in six months that i try to cook/heat my oven my smoke alarm starts going off, and there IS NO FIRE, and as i am very small (5'1 & 3/4") i cannot reach it to turn it off even when standing on a chair, and after paging my slum landlords repeatedly nothing happens. until an annoyed neighbor knocks on my door and gets a ladder and helps me shut it off. i want an apartment where i can cook without everything falling down around my ears. and where i don't have to squeeze past the sink in the bathroom to pee. is that too much to ask?
but mostly i want to kill my manager. i made the honest mistake of thinking that i was working a closing shift today and did online things all morning and treated it like a regular day and arrange to get coffee with la angelique, yadda yadda, and upon coming back and checking my messages i am informed by the cafe manager, not even my manager, on my machine that i am a no call/no show. apparently i was supposed to be in at ten. after apologizing profusely and asking if there was any way i could come in for a closing shift the response was a flat "no." i asked if i could add a shift later in the week. "no. we need to watch payroll this week." in my almost-five years at my fucking job i have never been treated like such shit. after pointing out that i kind of need the hours, she says "well, i kind of needed you this morning."
this woman knows that i am looking for a new job and have been for a while. she knows through supposedly civil conversations we've had that i can barely make ends meet. because of the salary that she pays me. she knows also, because she is the manager, that she has been encouraging the part-time employees to add shifts wherever possible. and suddenly i can't add a shift? that makes no sense.
so when that paycheck period rolls around i am going to basically have to ask my parents for money again. which i hate. i hate the fact that i am 25 and still don't have my shit together.
mostly i hate that i am trying to get past all this pettiness and being angered by stupid people and stupid things and shit like this happens and i feel like i can't.
soundtrack to evil ranting mood: beastie boys, paul's boutique
(out.)

so i am sitting in matthew's computer chair on a very boring sunday writing what will probably be a very boring post. the day is gray and uncompromising in its refusal to yield anything to do at all. when 3:40 rolls around i am excercising my right as a Token Weepy Girl to go see hugh grant bumble and bat his eyes all over the scenery in "love actually." i maintain that i have read good reviews of it but he refuses to believe me. the store meeting yesterday was pretty awful, but not as awful as it could have been. as matthew is back in the room now i feel that it would be rude to continue writing. therefore i will express my hope to the two people who are reading this that you have someone to curl up with too and go see movies of questionable cinematic value with.
soundtrack: silence.
(out.)

"now i'm exhausted, there's no time to sleep."--braid

grr. argh. hello. today i am preparing for my abbreviated shift at work which will still make me work until midnight and then be back at 7:00 the next morning for the Annual Holiday Fucktastic Fuckticle of a Meeting. but fear not, citizens, this will surely prepare myself and my coworkers to meet every! last! one! of your holiday shopping needs. up to and including a muppets chess set and a muppets magic 8 ball, both of which are extremely useful and necessary gifts. bork.
and to add insult to injury i have the rest of the weekend off, which happens about as many times as george w bush uses correct sentence structure in a press conference. and i couldn't get back to sleep after i woke up this morning. saw that matthew had left his cell phone on my window sill (if you wanna call him and chastize him for his absentmindedness, the number is (414)...just kidding.) and immediately got up to inform him of this via email and just didn't look back, i guess. and i should not be this tired. but i am. and will continue to be. unless i can force myself to sleep for another hour. which is contingent on a lot. fuck's sake.
shoutouts today go to: pizza shuttle, for providing me with food other than dried wasabi peas and peanut butter, which is all i had in my house and which, in fact, i ate out of desperation before i called them (not all the peanut butter. just a spoonful. note to dietitians/food pyramid putter-together-people: dried wasabi peas? NOT an acceptable breakfast food. do not recommend it to the fda).
the weather, for not being freezing.
my sister, for informing me via email that my new fish oliver is actually an endangered species in the wild--it's prey in the nile for a type of pike that is not native to the nile that was introduced specifcally for human consumption purposes and is close to being extinct in its natural habitat. poor oliver. but damn, i feel like an environmentalist or something.
the onion, for subtly and quite amusingly mocking all those who have weblogs in print and making me feel like a dick. which brings to mind a new feature of this blog, the Random Out-Of-Context-Quote-From-Say-Anything of the day:
lloyd: "i feel like a dick."
diane: "you're not a dick! we shared the most intimate thing two people could possibly share!"
lloyd: "you shared it with a...dick."

matthew, for just because. he knows why. this is my world and in it i am god and i can do these things.

soundtrack: death cab for cutie, "song for kelly huckaby"
(out.)

obscurity is not a fucking badge

tired tired tired. today was strange in that i had the rare false impression that the job i work is Real, because i worked an 8-4:30 shift today. like people with Real Jobs. fucked around after work and came home to an apartment complex devoid of electricity. burned some candles and read "the coldest winter ever" whilst hoping it would come back on. it did not. freaked out because my candles were expiring and my source of light was going to run out very soon and it was cold and it all felt very primitive. went around the block to comet and called matthew and freaked out some more; waited an hour and killed as much time with one coffee, one water, one book and three newspapers that i could, and came back and the lights were back on and my fish don't appear to be emotionally traumatized. all is copacetic.
today was a bunch of nothing balled up and surrounded by little bits of random anger eating away at the sorry organ that is my heart. even when my manager praises me at work it sounds like she's spitting gleefully on my firstborn. which she has stolen from me. whilst surrounded by bodyguards. who are actually baboons.
the only good thing that has come out of the past 48 hours is that i have discovered contrary to my previous opinion of myself that i can be sort of photogenic.
...
and my apartment smells better already.
now i am going to sleep, very self-satisfied.
soundtrack: mclusky, mclusky do dallas
who are responsible for the following lyrical stylings: "secret fuhrer's got your tongue and bitches got your car." "all of your friends are cunts, your mother was a ballpoint pen thief/notoriety follows you like beatings follow rain." also responsible for the following song title: "the world loves us and is our bitch."
and are therefore the best band ever.
(out.)

good morning. buenos tardes. bien sur. est-ce que vous etes mon papa?
it is really too early in the morning for me to have accomplished anything or to have coherent thoughts to write about. but that has never stopped me before. wherefore i sucked yesterday, lo, today i rule. i made myself put on pants and go outside to smoke about a half hour after i woke up. of course it's easy to say that it's easy (????) on days like today when it is rainy but with an expected high in the mid fifties.
here are my annoyances of the day:
the fact that my refrigerator door is so busted that i have to slam it shut minimum seven or eight times before it sticks, and i'm still too...something about it to call my landlord. afraid of getting blamed? afraid of the type of person who comes in and fixes my shit (i've seen them before, they're scary)? perhaps. i don't know.
the fact that i work an 8-4:30 shift tomorrow with my manager, satan. let me explain: i answer to a wide and vast and multifaceted variety of people at my place of employment, ranging from the dotty-and-deaf but slightly tolerable to the gleefully passive-agressive sadistic fuckwit. and the sadist is the head store manager. and i get to open with the sadist. grrr. argh.
and now i go back to my reading material, which is
true notebooks by mark salzman. it's pretty fascinating--a nonfiction book--this writer, salzman, who apparently was nominated for a pulitzer (for his other books) but whom i've never heard of--starts teaching a class for at-risk boys in the correctional system, most of whom are looking at life sentences for things like murder.

soundtrack: travis, 12 songs
(out.)

a confession, a mark, a scar

i hope that the two people who may be reading this had a good weekend. i had to work both days, but it was better than it could have been. got to see matthew both days--on saturday i was so exhausted i could barely move, due to being awake for two hours after the closing shift the night before and being on the precipice of sleep several times but then getting songs by the strokes in my head. it was one of those brain-won't-shut-the-hell-DOWN nights. i am contemplating suing the strokes for interfering with work performance. seriously. i would be trying to count backwards and feel all the various parts of my body sink into the bed and all the things you're supposed to do when you can't sleep that my mommy told me to do and suddenly it (my brain) would holler "I SAY THE RIGHT THING BUT ACT THE WRONG WAY I LIKE IT RIGHT HERE BUT I CANNOT STAY I'M WATCHING TV FORGET WHAT I'M TOLD OH I AM TOO YOUNG AND THEY ARE TOO OLD THE JOKE IS ON YOU THIS PLACE IS A ZOO YOU'RE RIGHT, IT'S TRUE." jesus fucking christ. this led to i remember saying to matthew after he picked me up the following day "i want to go to mantra" and then falling asleep practically on top of him. i am not a fun person when i am overtired. i tend to cry at random and ramble nonsensically. so that was saturday, shot to hell.
so i have a new link up, to matthew's friend eriq's webpage. eriq is lovely. we like him. (the annoying royal we.) go check it out. it is like a world unto itself and much more interesting than mine if for no other reason than he has some really good pictures & if i were to try to put up pictures here i would have to join some blogger service and pay a fee or something. and fuck that. fuck that with the dirty stick. i have no clue what that means, but it sounds awful and is therefore good.
so on to this confession:
i made a promise to both matthew and to a larger extent myself that as of today i was going to stop smoking in my house. i know that he can't stand the smell and he makes no pretense about being okay with it. my mom keeps telling me that my little sister won't stay over at my house because i smoke inside and it's smelly. (she also said that you limit the type of people who hang around you when you smoke and i could have met all these wonderful PEople and i just have no IDEA...) well, i am chainsmoking as i type this. i fail. i suck.
this does not mean that it's never going to happen. i don't have any intentions of decieving anyone--there would be very little point in just not smoking when matt is around and going "look, i did it." it's still insanely detrimental and i know it. i just am amazed by my lack of willpower and wonder what would happen if, say, i tried to quit altogether.
so this is the game plan, and the apology for the failure:
after today, sometime before i go to work, i am going to get rid of all the ashtrays i keep in the house. that was part of the reason i did it this morning, i think. it's easy to say all this when i have a cigarette burning in the ashtray. and there are those who would say you don't need to apologize to anyone, that i'm the one suffering the consequences, but i don't feel that way at all. you know those stories of two people in a relationship and the nonsmoker gets cancer from the secondhand smoke? that is my latest irrational fear.
but i need to get over myself. i need to say i'm going to change and then just fucking DO it.
"lord, i can't change." -"freebird"
that's all i have for today.
soundtrack: modest mouse, "talking shit about a pretty sunset."
(out)

today feels like deja vu. i was woken up by a phone call at about the same time i was yesterday morning only this time i picked up the phone mid-message-being-left only to tell my friend nicole that i cannot go see maritime with owen and william elliott whitmore at the cactus club tonight because i am working at my thankless goddamn job until midnight. maritime, o music geeks, was called in english two weeks ago, which is a new anagram of what was formerly the promise ring. trivia! yay!
saw "matrix revolutions" two nights ago and my head is still to the best of my knowledge scattered in little bits upon the cineplex floor. in my insomnia last night i hunted around for reviews on the internet and i officially have a thing to add of the list of things i hate:
how as soon as i read a negative review of something that i like i instantly feel bad for liking it and for some reason am not secure in my own opinion and feel less smart for liking something that the bbc hated.
and granted, there were questions that rose, and some things in the film were a little heavy-handed (the everything's-happy-now-rainbow-in-the-sky crap at the very end, why the hell neo was flying in the matrix during the climactic smith battle scene, some of the dialogue made me want to smack all involved...) but it absolutely made me feel like a different person. but somebody tell me why it's acceptable to go into a film with such a critical eye that all you are doing is bitching about how it lifted things from every film that ever existed, including itself? please. i suppose that is what critics are there for, but if they couldn't find anything to enjoy AT ALL it reeks of being critical because i guess it's trendy to hate on it. also according to the bbc think tank it's dumb and american. and i take sooooo much offense to that i don't know where to begin.
i think it was a beautiful film. and it made me want to learn about things i have very little knowledge about. i want to become a buddhist scholar, and a computer hacker, AND wear vinyl, AND kick your ass.
soundtrack: my chemical romance, "honey, this mirror isn't big enough," the used, "alone this holiday" (which inexplicably makes me cry).
quote: "for beauty is nothing/but the beginning of terror, which we can barely endure,/and we stand in awe of it as it coolly disdains/to destroy us./every angel is terrifying." -rainer maria rilke, "the first elegy."
(out.)

ladies & gentlemen, it's POETRY DAY!
as promised!
all poems are written by me and are at least 5 months old except the fourth one, which is by nancy ellis, who wrote it about/for me in november of 2002 when i was going through an extremely dark period. thus fitting nicely into the self-loving/aggrandizing part of this whole deal. i mean, how many of you have had poems written about you? i didn't think so.

1. "a month of thursdays"
(for matthew)

i wanted to write a poem about you
because the light in this room in this city at 2 a.m.
clutching phone to ear
breaks my heart.
staring out my window, trees bare-boned
& as empty & aching as i am
i am left breathing under a sky that knows me too well
to allow me to keep any of this.

i wanted to write a poem about you
because hope has grown to the size of a
tumor crushing my glass-fragile lungs,
rising to overtake my throat when i breathe, i thought
you should know this.
this dance performed across wires, synapses,
electrolytes skittering across computer screens,
right click ctrl-alt-delete,
things i could never say aloud
wrapped in ironic metaphors,
defense mechanism,
weapon of choice.

i wanted to write a poem about you
cigarette ash drifting into
black coffee grown cold, habit builds off habit,
because i cannot picture you
ever waking in the same world i do,
your body is a blur of elbows,
arms folded in some defense, crooked grin for some
unseen photographer. because i want to capture that
in the back of the back of
my mind.

i wanted to write a poem about you
because
i don't know how to tell you any of this
that yours is the last voice i want to hear at night
before falling into some fitful dreamless sleep
punctuated by cries
bookmarked by fear
that i fear breathing a
word of this to you, to anyone,
that i fear that i'm crazy and wild and hurt,
my head aches with the what could be and the what is
not and that which remains:
i am almost terrified and i fear that i've said too
much
anyway.

2. "happy new year"

words collide
like car crashes in the air.
you wait
sensing there is something wrong
here.
you wait
with piercing eyes that can't quite see past
what you know you are.
can't quite see past
the you who stands there
half-smile mocking, teeth showing,
unphotogenic like
always,
the sunlight that you tried to harness
to keep yourself alive.
you can't see
what you have become
what is taking place, what you can't
control.
these days
have passed with nothing really to speak of
these days should have made you strong
they did you no good.
you are still so alone.
you release these words from your tenuous
aching grasp
let them fly, watch them spin, disintegrate,
and no one is here to see.

3. "dream"
exhalation of smoke
up into december stars
and the pulsing bleeding thoughts stay with me
whose numbers i still can't quite count
change me he's pleading
only i'm not sure if i just misheard the question
the sky is gray misleading
i want to change you,
i reply,
but i don't know how to change myself
nothing ever changes
the sky will remain twenty degrees forever
and i am trapped in this heavy human flesh
with crooked feet and awful hair (you
are obviously trying too hard)
the sky crumbles with my breath
and i'll let my eyes fill
and pretend that i don't care when you forget me.

4. "november 22, 2002"
november
a horrific month
owls feed on yearling crows
below branches
huge feathers
freeze in snow

wet patches wither

gather as ye may
there are patches of want
skirts gathered

where women freeze
anew armed
by prisoned fires

brown circled spheres
unsure
of rounding earth edges

zither anger
stringed whips
contain

like a tight
necked instrument
like ring
on swollen finger

hurt
makes it huge

displaced
out of time
entombed

without a language
pattern, a nose
in search

Do Not Move
from your mosaic
your knowing

it is centered
and moves
toward you

afraid to touch
warns and wafes

(out.)

so today is the one day that i have off this week until next tuesday and what happens? i wake up way too early. grr. argh. couldn't sleep until 2 last night and woke up at 8 for some godforsaken reason. grrr. argh. so spent time reading nancy friday's "my secret garden" and reacting appropriately--but i will reveal no details as to exactly what that means, pbbbth, ask me sometime--and then getting coffee with angelique, my Token Rockstar Friend. who is not actually a token friend and who is very very dear to me, but who is, in fact, a rockstar. if my html coding skills are right (that's a sizeable if, people) there should be a link to her band's website, crime & judy. they will rock your damn underpants off. yes, i meant to say underpants. they are both mad skilled and with the sexy.
so shoutouts go to them today, and comet the coffeehouse for providing me with coffee that did nothing at first but then hit me a half hour later as i was walking down the block, and if anyone is actually reading this in the mke area LISTEN TO 91.7 FM TOMORROW, NOVEMBER 5, BETWEEN 8 AND 10 PM, because crime & judy are doing an in studio session sometime between those hours (they're not sure yet). shoutouts also to miss angelique for promising me a tape of this session because i do not think i will be near the radio at that time.
it is a-thunderstorming outside.
also? do me a favor. just because i'm curious if anyone actually does read this. if you are indeed reading this and holding your breath for the poetry corner or can tell me anything about marxism or gnosticism (i have not the energy to ruminate on this topic now, so i lied to you--twice--but i think you will find things here )write me.
girlnobody@hotmail.com
today's soundtrack: "the strokes, "i can't win." "failing can be quite a breezy, you told me these girls were easy." fucking genius.
out.

guess who's back.

i have not been vigilant about writing because through craftiness and sheer luck i was able to get three days in a row off of work, and spend them all with matthew, who is the aforementioned Boy who(m) i Love. one of which, halloween, was spent dressed like a witch/whore and reveling in the fact that i was wearing something completely seethrough, pictures of which you may or may not be able to see on matthew's website, which is linked both here and in the upper right hand corner. invited a bunch of my friends who had never seen me dress like that before. one of the overheard comments as told to me was "i can't believe she's wearing a THONG." which was spoken by one of my managers. at work. oh yes.
you would have to know me personally to understand the Issues that i have with the way that i look. the past four months--much of which has been inspired by matthew and my undying love and encouragement of him and vice versa--have felt like a breakthrough. an epiphany. i am 5'2" and fluctuate between 115 and 120 pounds and the only time i really talk excessively about my weight image problems is when i am close to, um, aunt flo. i think it's stupid and limiting and playing into preconcieved notions of What Females Should Look Like to bitch about your weight routinely. i am sick to death of obsessing over it. but that doesn't stop me from being hypersensitive about it. being in love makes you feel beautiful. it both helps and exacerbates, if that makes any sense at all.
so i ran around on halloween in this dress and did general party social things and went to bed and threw up the next morning because of this vile-the-second-time-around punch we had made which involved ice cream, vodka, ginger ale and dry ice and because i hadn't eaten. and the next two days were spent just being with each other. and it was lovely beyond description. and now i am back writing this and wishing that i had a remote control for time.
soundtrack for today: radio 4 "gotham!"
color for today: white, for my fingernails & toenails
flavor of the day: chocolate, for the fact that i have been eating it nonstop since yesterday both because it is around and because i am in a certain stage of my existence where i become extremely predictable and stereotypical
(nudge)(wink)(ahem)
word of the day: gnosticism, which has become pertinent because part of the time spent with matthew was watching two of the matrix films in preparation for the third (this is his thing; i am not nearly as fanboyish-or-girlish about them but am intrigued by them just the same especially because not one but two people showed up as neo at his party); we spent a great deal of time admitting that we don't know exactly what it means
NEXT TIME: a poetry corner!
also possibly a mini dissertation on gnosticism!
(out.)