not too much.

I had to check the date on my computer. More than a month.

Time and things.

Lacks of worthwhile words?

A knocking at doors.

Met someone. I hope she's worth it.

a word from our sponsors.

Remember dreams and things. 11pm and nothing. Good boring day. Roadside Frisbee. Let loose and torrenting down streams of streets. Closer to something.

Or nothing at all. Wake up thinking dreams and horror show scenes. Beat to the metronome. Thinking.

One two three one two three one two three one two three clack.

The sound of staplers upon slides upon tables surrounded by giggles.

Another punch through the seams.

nothing but an update.

Moments like these remind me of childhood and the aggravation of mid-Saturday afternoon whinings of "what should I do" to my mother. Invariably her response was to suggest that I clean my room which always drove me outdoors or into books or anywhere other than towards the process of cleaning. These days, with cleaning my room and the apartment and doing typical chores being the types of things that I do not mind doing so much anymore, I find myself starved for things to rally myself against.

Perhaps it has been too loud in this house lately and the sudden silence is more than a little overwhelming. I have bought some gym clothes and finished a book and fixed some dinner-lunch and for some reason I find myself at a loss for what to do. Perhaps this is the answer. Perhaps writing is the solution these dull hours and I have just been wasting away avoiding it.

Everything feels rather plain right now. No particular miseries or joys. A simple sense of being. Some floating thing held up by its own buoyancy in a placid lake.

There is a sky above us and it is a welcome grey after too many days of ultra-light. The cold wind blowing into the room in our night time hours and the lamp posts acting as the stars I can't see past the clouds. In the morning through my open windows the constant whirrrrrr of automobiles and the scarcely audible conversations of passersby. The dogs clacking their nails down the sidewalk and the skateboard kids falling down again. A cold wind ushering in our open eyes. Reminding us of something we can hardly touch anymore.

The book? Oh, it wasn't that great.

rock songs from a distant past.

The walk happened like this:

Maybe a rushed need to get out of this house and into the streets. A silent fury building up too quickly in the area of my lungs, my larynx. Places where wind and sound accumulate and blast out not asking questions but demanding answers anyway. Whatever it was I thought I was sitting contentedly reading and then something clicked and I felt my muscles pushing me out of the chair and then leashing the dog and gone.

Into a quickly pooling avenue of dark. Up and down cracked sidewalks whose sides do not meet evenly and threaten tripping and have more than once followed through on that threat. Through the dark Epsilon and myself made our steady way forward one foot or paw at a time. And the neighborhoods only echoed the faint sound of far away places and cars on pavement that had no idea of our existence but only a somewhat dimly aware idea that certainly something must exist past themselves. Some things are simply not worth considering. Epsilon ran after cats he would never catch and I followed the ghosts of the bodies who had walked these streets thousands of times before us and considered the faint residue of self I left in my wake.

After a while when the dark was more than dark and there was no future to be seen in the sidewalk we carried ourselves along I found myself welcoming the idea of this endless corridor of thick plant life surrounding us. I fell into a pattern of steps not knowing where or if they would land at all but taking them anyway.

But the darkness faded. And in its place I found myself sitting in the parking lot beneath a bowling alley. I listened to the rolling fervor of 14lb balls careening down slick wooden alleyways and the loud smash of pins. Separated by a ceiling and whatever else was up there a person loses the distinct sounds of the alley, individual pins dropping like a cascade are lost and instead it is just like a loud muffled explosion. The sound of the ball rolling is as if it is from very far away, and sitting where I was, it sounded as if it kept growing treacherously closer. Only the sounds of explosions making my safety feel more ensured.

I wondered how at even so late a time of night I could not seem to run in to more than 4 people in this large city on my walk. I wondered where there rest of us are and understood then that perhaps I am not a pack animal. I am not one for large groups and never will be. I miss the comfort of small, trustworthy comradarie and feel as if a bit of that was chipped away tonight. Perhaps I am being overly sensitive. Ah but to the off hour walkers of this city I wish we didn't miss each other so often. That our paths crossed every now and then and we could all realize we are not so lonely or alone as we may believe ourselves to be.

a request for dreaming.

Today happened with little to note. I spent time reading old blog entries from older journals and missed certain aspects of the way I once wrote. Something now feels cold and sterile and the old writing, while in no way taken seriously, at least felt as if there was some sort of passion to it. The trouble here is isolating incidents and figuring out what it is that has closed that small part of me off. I feel as if it has been tucked away for some time now.

I find myself focusing on songs in my head these days. A refusal to consider perhaps, or a refusal simply to look. My dreams take on the image of foreign objects and when I touch them, rather than disintegrating into vapor they instead feel uncomfortable and make my body ache. I dreamed my father was a writer too; a better one. I walked into walls when they should have not been there or my dreamstate should easily have been able to penetrate through them. I consider creating a secondary journal, something private, just to take on dreams and collect them. Something that perhaps might help my memory more.

Just anything at this point.

no answer to a query.

Work is fine and I feel happy to be around more people at all times but now and then it gets to me. For instance someone trying to haggle a dollar off an already used book because a cover is lightly bent or someone not understanding that sometimes a book appreciates in value and that this worth is dictated by demand, much like they are demanding it then. And that when this is explained to them via the baseball card or comic book parallel they look hurt and angered as if their intelligence has been insulted in some way. Well, don't ask the question then.

But even though this problem is unique to the book scene and a few other industries that deal in used merchandise, it has its parallels in the problems of other stores that are just as irritating and also fleeting. They by no means ruin a day but certainly they make me sit back and wonder at just what point some of us got to be so tired of acting congenial to one another.

Taking the dog out I find myself dismayed at an inability to really walk anywhere barefoot. Perhaps I should have done this more as a kid, felt soft grass underfoot, or cold streams or anything really. Or perhaps I did as much as I should have but now the consequences and risks have grown apparent and my feet no longer as brave against the rigors of ant bites and stone pricks. Perhaps cowardice takes strange shapes.

I feel very transitory right now. And this is probably because in less than two weeks time I will be moving once more and I am having a hard time feeling settled. I find myself feeling jealous of happy couples and of happy people in general and today I felt the depression sweep over a number of times and i had to go to pains to remind myself of what it was. It went away reluctantly, but not without leaving the marks of its cold tendrils up my spine.

Need to start really writing.

just some small details.

Been moving around. New digs and new roomates. Better ones. People I care about.

Things worth mentioning:

Tried to shave the dog. Maybe got him halfway through before I gave up and realized I am no good at this. He looks awful. Pictures soon?

I have a few people at work I consider myself grateful for. I'm not sure they realize this and that's fine. That's quite alright. I like having them there not knowing they're people that I entrust my day to. It makes them a lot less conscious about it, that's for sure.

Been reading but not really. Back to Mexico history. Not been writing a lick. Not to say I haven't thought about it, just been looking for the right spots in the day. Haven't found'em.

There's a dog on the bed, he's waggin his tail. Won't be in a moment have to give him that ear medicine. Not so happy about that.

Need to be more settled but just moving again in 15 days. What are you gonna do?

no new sensations at all.

Nothing to speak of today.

Just a lot of "don't want to be here"'s. Spoke up. Spoke down.

Didn't expect much and got it.

Oh well.

a partial admission.

Thought of a new story idea today. This makes three in queue.

Just need to take the time to write them.

You're just somewhere, blotting up time in alcoholic collapse syndromes and falling to floors.

(I think in "we's")

another day actively being active.

Tonight a family of opossums.

Epsilon and I walk up the same always street under the same always vague orange light. There is the sound of car traffic streets away from us. The chatter of occasional dog bark and then nothing. The wind in the trees. The kinds of things that make sound but you never register them in your brain after making a permanent place for them somewhere to be forgotten about.

Crossing the street looking down it in the dull orange spotlight a large opossum stands up with its muzzle facing me. Three smaller tykes surround it, eager for a show perhaps. A spectacle. I stand in the street facing them watching their deep black silhouettes keeping still against the light and Epsilon, impatiently, is trotting up the sidewalk. He is smelling grass and I look at him and wonders why he hasn't seen the family and look back just in time to see the leader of this pack, a mother perhaps, a father; lowering itself and the children at this motion moving on out of the light. Fellow travelers of the night disappearing between moments of fading electricity.

I consider safety in numbers. Pack mentality. Wonder if I've ever had it or ever would. The security of knowing we all look after one another. That loving is synonymous with survival and that to be loved one must love. Be willing to. Able.

The most significant things that happen to me during the day often seem to be the most recent ones. Must stretch this memory machine and make it work for me again. In a habit of missing too many things between cracks and synapses. Storm clouds of electrical pops zapping all the important thoughts in here. Forcible eviction.

an attempt to pinpoint something.

This is what it is like:

I am at the hot dog place. There is no food but there is water and I am waiting and on the television the sports channel is on. But like every time I come in here it is extreme sports and today in particular it is skateboarding. I watch the screen as a camera pans out and it is a solitary figure on a skateboard skating circles up and down a dried up pool. I am transfixed and hypnotized watching his smooth movements. The wide arcs and rise and fall from bottom of the pool to the lip. As if the water were still there and he were surfing the invisible tides it brought forth. Everything is fine.

Within two hours I am at work and suddenly, with no real catalyst. Or perhaps none that I am willing to admit to, it is all over. It is like a deep nothing has been bred inside of me. Like a balloon or a tumor that is made of something cold without having to feel it. Pressure without form. I feel my insides pressed against my skin like something trying to escape and the chill of loneliness sweeps through me like some emp. I feel it all and suddenly I feel nothing. There is a heavy weight dragging me down. An understanding that no matter how close I am to someone I am not close enough. Not to love or be loved. It is irrational perhaps but it carves up my spine and I have never felt so distant from anyone as these moments. In the midst of friends or strangers. It doesn't matter. It doesn't care.

In the newly isolated afternoon glow of a bookstore it is as if I can see all my emotions tumbling down my skin and shattering on the hard tile below. Abused and forgotten. Mostly by myself. I cannot remember a warm day or anyone's warm touch or pleasant words once whispered in my ear. Just this pressure building somewhere in my guts and I would fear exploding if I didn't fear imploding even more.

I feel faint and heavy and light and nowhere and stretched too thin and stressed and lazy and ultimately just so very unhappy with myself. And I start to think that perhaps writing about it, narrowing down these feelings. Trapping them in electricity to be observed like something wild will tame it. As if putting it on display will dull the edges of the beast; make it less ferocious.

Perhaps. I think I get closer to the state of things at times. But for right now it doesn't make anything feel any more right.

any number of items from random days.

The lady bug was not there the following morning. To no surprise.

Yesterday was largely a failure. How does one not find a marsh? We drove around it for half an hour, unable to find a place to drive into and park and perhaps somehow manage to walk into the marsh from. I have theories but they have not been put into practice. Largely I found a decent if awful place to swim this summer, but this was too late.

A park snowed in with pollen. It drifted down from the trees into two foot piles and we (or John anyway) made pollen balls to throw and I suggested a pollen man but we forgot by the time we made it back to the car. A secret path that led to nowhere worthwhile at all. The industrial side of riverbeds and tankers moving trade one island to another. Your dog jumped into the river after sticks endlessly and all we could think of was how awful that river must be how awful for your dog and the tedium of it all.

And then nothing but slow, moderate drinking for eight hours. I was perhaps unenthusiastic but not surprised.

Today was not a failure per se but in no way a story of success. Son of Rambow was an excellent film. Today the house went up on craigslist and the result has been a nonstop cacophony of phones ringing and doors knocking. I sat on the stoop and you walked down after checking out the room. You sat next to me and for no reason really, you knew I was leaving, and we chatted for about fifteen minutes. I thought you were very cute but very young perhaps. Very innocent maybe. You said you would be back later in 2-3 hours to drop off a check. It didn't matter to me. How does it involve me? Regardless I made sure I was still on the stoop by the time you came back and you did but with company and this company was also your boyfriend. Perhaps you really are just a decent person that likes meeting new people.

Certainly I am not.

I spent a lot of time doing nothing at all. Maybe thinking about the things I ought to be doing. Wondering about certain mistakes I may have made or whether or not I could have changed things somehow. But these are largely worthless wanderings of the brain. This chemical factory popping off one too many 0's and not enough 1's.

Less Than Zero? I should have read this in high school. Somehow it has evaded me until now. Perhaps it is bad that I still can relate to this overwhelming sense of disconnectedness.

Then again, perhaps it is all too entirley natural.

I thought of a few story ideas. Maybe we'll share them with each other.

a bashful look, I guess.

And that is why you don't post after drinking.

some of it.

i escape and
none of it none of it
all of it all of it
none of it none nonen none none nonenon neononeoneoneoneoneononeone


none noen noen none none of it

all of it?

all of none of it.

none of anything.

say hello to the missus.

be missin ya.

s.

temporary friends.

Certain objects, times, events, people sometimes though no as often, invade my writing. During these times they make their way into many more of my paragraphs than perhaps they otherwise would have a right to belong in. Lately it has been the green sheer of the blinds that cut me off from the world outside. They obscure my view and give a sullen sickly pallor to everything. I find sometimes when outside of this room I imagine the things I see in that same sick coating.

This evening is much the same but instead of concentrating on what is beyond those curtains; instead of what is just past that thin layered obstruction, my attention focuses on my side of the curtain. For the past few weeks of heat I have left my window partially open in order to encourage some sort of coolness to make its way into my room, suggesting a truce between myself and the outdoors. Some intermediary location where perhaps we can negotiate the terms of my release (and really I feel they are going well).

In the midst of this green sea a solitary lady bug perches. It clings to fabric and does not move except with the ebb and flow of the sheet itself in the summer night wind. The light bulb gives it a shadow that lengthens and shortens in its flapping vehicle and I cannot help but imagine it (in my montana and mexico dreams) as some insectoid cowboy riding against the violent buckings of fred meyer cheap sheets.

I can't imagine how it got there. Aside from the obvious open window anyway. This curtain must have looked like the most extraordinary bonanza of green leafery every contemplated and what utter disappoint that it is not nourishing at all. What potential for feast something to go back to the lady bug (again I have problems with multiples here) pack? colony? and be proud of something to bring back in conquest or shared love or consideration. But instead nothing.

What a long trip. It has been an hour since I have noticed it and aside from moving away from a gentle prodding of my finger it has not moved at all. Does it consider going back now a shame? Would it make up a story to save face? Struggled to get to a point where everything would seem good and once there, just to realize it was fake. Made up. The product of someone elses whimsy.

At some point I will fall asleep tonight and perhaps for once I will not wake up at 7am unable to return to sleep. When I wake up I imagine you will be gone. Neither of us knowing what happens to the other. Histories incomplete except the small conjectures we have no basis for.

Then again, you are a lady bug so really I suppose it will only be me wondering.

tags for bags.

Things that make me happy:

Women in green dresses. Or really green in just some form or fashion.

The dog when he stands at the top of the stairs and watches me walk in from work and wags his tail and is excited.

Flirting at the register (though this at times is also nerve wracking)

Watching films in the company of others.

Writing. Sort of. Sometimes this is more a source for frustration than it is anything else but this is just my needing to put some more practice in. Get back to where I once was. Become better.

Burritos.

Being alone but also being in love. Companionship. Not a need for someone, but the desire to do things for someone. I, like most people, find myself wondering about this whole love thing from time to time. Whether a sham or not. Having someone to share things with.

I suppose routine makes me happy but so does spontaneity and so does walking and walking purposelessly but doing it for some cathartic sake and nothing else, but I guess this is purpose.

There are other things. There are a countless number of people who have made me happy over the course of my life. Some of them no longer do. Perhaps some won't in the future. I hope I make them happy, and think that I do. And am equally sorry for the wretched things I have done to people that have been dear to me.

This became a strange list.

I guess advice for myself.

when the only response available is to scream. when there isn't a place here to scream. everything so close so near so open. when freeways don't offer solace and the cars nearby don't have answers and neither do the bars. there are physical cancers and there are more abstract ones.

just breathe.
breathe.

not exactly a post about the zoo.

I did some walking tonight. This (assuming I have this whole image thing down) is a map of where I walked:



I started at about 830 and made it home by 1130ish. The sky was dusking over as I left. Two boys in a park beside a school smoked a joint while sitting on a bench and occasionally leaning backwards to watch even smaller kids playing basketball beneath a rooftop court. Like somehow in their pot haze they found time to stop and consider what it meant to be as young as that, something they would never return to and maybe didn't wish to, but something evasive nevertheless. A slippery feeling that only happened yesterday yet now still won't come to mind. And of course I played my own voyeuristic role in this pondering their yesterday as my own and an even further yesterday through their considerations. A tireless loop of back treading.

I walked over the train tracks seperating the residential north from the industrial north and considered walking to the river but by that time it was already dark and between myself and water stood the airport and it did not seem terribly appealing. Along Columbia Blvd there is no sidewalk just a path eked out in the dirt and rock by a numberless amount of past travelers. I left my own tracks as semitrucks bouldered past me only 6 inches away and the shining constant lights striking my eyes left me in a half blind daze.

I thought about nothing. For a long time. Then I thought about women. Past and present. I considered for a moment the time you (and this you is my attempt towards anonymity and may be you or you or, well quite frankly, even you) and I sat in the car outside my house for over an hour. We were talking, or anyway you were talking, arguing more, just with yourself and the light in the lamp post kept fading in and out of electric life. It started as nothing then just the faint hint of light like heated metal and then the filament caught I guess and the street started becoming filled with its dull orange luminescence but it just kept getting more and more bright until it became just pure white light and then collapsed in itself. It was a three minute cycle and I know this because instead of listening to what you were saying I timed it. A number of times to make sure. And then, in an effort to make bad metaphors I considered (internally) how our relationship was much like that light and that here we were at yet another of those much too bright moments. They were starting to come too quickly now and it was as if we were collapsing daily.

I walked past the cemetary and tried to remember the last funeral I had attended and realized it had been Jim's. I wanted to think on this but really there was nowhere new to go with this thought and so instead I thought about how I hadn't really been to many funerals and that, aside from that most recent one, I couldn't really say that any of the ones I had been to had bothered me much. No, maybe one other. But that is what happens when you are young and someone you think you are or could be close to dies at such a young age. All this and I don't even remember your name. I drew you a picture I think. I have no idea your name.

I walked past restaurants and bars and shops and homes and spots where it seemed as if there was nothing at all.

I guess really not a lot happened. I am going nowhere but circles in my walking but I feel as if my destination is not so much the concern as is the motion. I find myself wondering how long I will need to walk to get past whatever it is I have been feeling so much of lately.

Tomorrow the zoo, perhaps.

a dog sleeping on my bed.

At something like 430 am I awoke (yeah I guess I can't get past it, sorry) to the cacophonous screeching of crow caws. What do crows come in, packs? murders? It seems unfortunate to be labeled as the latter but I guess when you sweep down on glossed black wings people can't help but associate you with death. Anyhow it was 430am and the sun was starting its early rise and was poking up out over the tops of the shingled roof across from my house the sky was still dark except for the lightened blemish starting to expand and take over like some disease the doctors weren't able to amputate quickly enough.

I watched this through the dull green sheen of my curtains, afraid somehow that if I moved them aside crows would all turn their oblong headbeakcombos towards me and understand that I was awake and imposing myself upon them by listening to their little town hall meeting. It was loud and ridiculous but one deep call of all of them stood out and perhaps this is simply because it was the closer of them and maybe they weren't all just perched in my tree the way i like to imagine it but i was groggy and the whole thing had an otherwordly feel to it and quite frankly i couldn't entirely deal with it. so this leader of the murderpack would make up some inhuman noise and then the squabbling would start amongst the rest of them until order was restored for some short period of time. I found myself wondering whether they were considering the path they might take away from the tree, where they wanted to be next or where the next good source of food might be but honestly i think mostly that any sort of squabling like that is only the result of grumpiness and a general disdain for being up at 430 in the morning. It was hard not to stick my own head out the window and make some sort of similar sound from my own gullet and perhaps if it weren't for the curtain i may have.

four hours later i woke up again and they were all gone. one crow stood in the street below like some keeper of gates or monuments. a lonesome doorman awaiting the next meeting. making sure rituals stay the same. i am moving soon from this house. i will probably miss the next meeting. i would not have had new business anyhow and last comments would have still been summed up by the simple slur of loneliness, inebriation, and lack of sleep. They can do without ths.

Then again. I walked to the zoo last week and perhaps at some point there will be pictures but it seems that over the years my ability to manipulate the internet and its faithful html have diminished to a point where picture hosting sites confound me so maybe in no time soon but however. walking to the zoo in its 3 hour glory gave me a feeling of clearmindedness. i walked it alone but felt good about being that way and realized that somewhere in all of this is just some drive that i am missing. i am going to break records by saying that i will try to start writing again and remain a loyal lover to it but my infidelous(i wonder if i am not using an entirely incorrect word here) nature may lead me to stray.

anyhow. i suppose i need to think of things to really write about. life just doesn't seem enough.

just a few things. Not much on the whole. I mean it's late, seriously.

I can't help but find myself wondering whether or not Betsy's question didn't have some form of validity to it.

I need to find other things to occupy my time with.

I used to be pretty concerned with waking. I feel like I've missed a lot pondering where or when or if my eyes would open at all.

What a time for reassessment.

Raccoons.

In the midst of boiling up some pasta this morning I looked out the front window to watch a large form on four legs amble past. This neighborhood, full of currently blooming pink and white trees has made me grow accustomed to the constant sneaking of the feline variety but the size variance of these sneaking kittens has never struck me as so large. And so I watched the brown shape move forward, towards my tree, noticed its multi-ringed tail and thought: Oh.

It stopped at the trunk and looked up as if deciding on future prospects and then lumbered up the bark. Half way up it stopped, considered I suppose, and then turned itself around and made slow progress back to earth. I suppose there are worse things than dirt. Inside the homestead I watched its progress through a number of windows, tracking it as it moved from the tree and into my backyard where it met yet another large member of its family. They walked side by side and disappeared into the brush that constitutes the boundary of my backyard. On to other trash cans and other backyards. Nowhere to be but anywhere.

On Monday, bored into depression and staring aimlessly out my window, I watched a squirrel perch itself on the flower box that sits on the other side of my warped glass. It stared at me and I sat on my bed and watched as it picked out helicopter leaves and ate the small morsel of seed contained within. I guess after a while Epsilon figured out something was up and sat up from his always-nap and stared long and hard at the squirrel. It would eat and then finish and then stand up on its hind legs and stare us down and I felt a certain amount of embarassment or maybe-shame that I was invading the privacy of the creature. I thought about families of rodents watching in through my window as I ate my meagerblandpasta and couldn't decide if that would make me more nervous or entertained. Probably the former. This squirrel picked out seeds for twenty minutes, my dog and I rapt with attention and whiled away a gloomy monday.

There are many things here. The trees, as I've mentioned, are in bloom and small petals of pink and white are carried off in invisible oceans that careen through tree limbs, depositing its flotsam into the street in thick multi-colored carpets. In the sometimes still bright afternoons after work I sit on the stoop of my home and watch everything fly by.

People wave here and say hello and pet Epsilon and aren't angry or worried or if they are I suppose it finds release in the fresh air. It is always cold here it seems and though there have been days when I have been able to escape the trappings of my coat I largely find myself still wearing one almost daily. But this is something I have grown more and more used to and on the sudden warm days I find myself invigorated and ready to do anything.

I can't say I'm ready for a lot yet, and part of me wonders if I ever will be. These are manic self imposed worries and I acknowledge that but knowing the problem rarely seems to remedy it.

You know you know you know.

something not my own.

Forgive this slight departure. Perhaps my two most favorite paragraphs in literature at the moment.

John Grady Cole (the he in this scene) has just proposed to Alejandra (the she)

"When they got to the room the maid was cleaning and she left and they closed the curtains and made love and slept in each other's arms. When they woke it was evening. She came from the shower wrapped in a towel and she sat on the bed and took his hand and looked down at him. I cannot do what you ask, she said. I love you. But I cannot.
He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave. When she came out of the bathroom again she was dressed and he made her sit on the bed and he held her hands both of them and talked to her but she only shook her head and she turned away her tearstained face and told him that it was time to go and that she could not miss the train."

-Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses, pg 254.

benders in my fender.

I started writing a story.

I started writing it for you, or at any rate what you represent to me because I will never meet you and you will never read it. I mean at least this time you're real and that makes this a little less "all in the head" sort of crazy but only marginally. I started writing it because you are the type of person I want to meet and I will never meet you by letting my eyes get bloodshot while staring at a computer. Although the ironic twist of this is that my eyes still get bloodshot by staring at the computer anyway but instead of doing dumb things that amount to nothing I write dumb things that will never be printed out.

Or at any rate I was going to. I had this whole story mapped out, even wrote a full page of it but then lost all my confidence. I mean where are you? Hell, where am I? Sitting behind this screen with its electric rays of light soaking into my skin and all I have to show for it is about 600 words that don't quite work with one another correctly and a world outside that I know nothing about. I feel desperate and overwhelmed. I keep thinking about escaping and then I think that writing is the solution for that and why else do most of the writers I love write. Yeah yeah to get some sort of point across maybe at times but maybe also just to put the blinders down and say fuck you to the world, I'll be somewhere else. Perhaps this works.

It's never quiet in this house. I walked in one day and they were shooting porn and I walk in at night and it's people rehearsing plays or at 4am people coming home and no one has ever heard of indoor voices here. Most of this wouldn't bother me if I could land a job that started me at 1pm again but it's all early jobs here.

Creditors are chasing me and I'm just not answering my phone. It's the same bullshit it always is. Pay this and this and this and this and this won't even make minimum but pay it anyway and later we'll just say you didn't so I guess this negotiation is null and void.

Yeah I guess I'll go work on that story now, thanks.

a new job.

I am now a used book buyer for Powell's. This is exciting but overshadowed by the fact that, despite the pay increase, I still need to find a second job. At the moment it's looking like I need a job that pays at least $11.50 /hr and gives 37.5 hours a week. On top of the 37.5 hour I work per week already. If I can manage to find this I would only need to do it for 4 months. So around July I'd be done. Just in time, I suppose, for people to come visit and for me to make my way to visit Arizona for a bit.

I am afraid of becoming burnt out and overwhelmed. I am prone to depression and this sort of feat would either exacerbate that or manage to keep me so focused that I would lose sight of the things around me. Neither prospect seems terribly appealing. But it seems as though it is either the prospect of four months of nonstop work or nonstop years of stress about what I'm going to do financially. This doesn't even factor in student loans.

I am not so worried about being able to find a job, but it will be difficult to find a job that has just the right hours, that lets me work ten hour days on my weekends from the bookstore and six hour days on the other three.

I did this in Arizona for a little over a month and felt like shooting myself at the end of it. But to be fair I factor that more due to the type of work I was doing for my second job rather than the amount of time invested. Though admittedly it was less time.

Oh well. I have an idea for a story. It's a little light hearted compared to most of the things I write. I just need to will up the drive to put it down.

It may a bit.

a bit of heartache.

I need to get a second job.

vegetables.

I will admit. Crazy man at the meat aisle, you really managed to frighten me into not eating meat tonight. No no, not in some "meat is wrong, give meat back to cows!" kind of way, but rather in the "perhaps one day, standing in the meat section, running the tips of my fingers over each and every cellophane wrapped package I will catch in the polished chrome display surface the hungry glint in my eyes and realize oh no, I am you." You, crazy meat man, are somewhere in your fifties and your hair is long and strawlike. It greys at random intervals and in between these periods seems to retain some sort of brownish hue. You wear a vest that I have never been able to describe the type of but I can only say you see it and it looks like it has puffy segmented pillows that one day sat down and said "Guys, let's get this shit done" and all formed together to create a vest of bright orange so that you would be noticeable when you rummaged through the steaks. You have cargo jeans and your head is shaking in very strong no motions as you mutter under your breath and it took me a while to realize you just kept saying three dollar steak over and over and over again. You flipped through the steak like dewey decimal system index cards with your steak clawed hand and it shook

and it shook

and it shook

but there was no three dollar steak. your head started shaking more and more savagely and your chanting grew just a bit louder but not so much louder as to bring more attention to yourself than your colony vest and rapid shaking were already doing. I hung back a bit, then motioned forward still, at this point, intent on having some sort of raw dripping meat inside this salivating maw of contempt but then just as I was looking (really content with a 5 dollar steak at this point, I wasn't about to cut in on his territory) you turned your head and it stopped shaking, instead fixing its positioning directly on me. Our ten hour stare down probably only lasted a good 3 seconds but I retracted my arm and walked to the frozen vegetable aisle.

I guess they steam in their own bags these days.

one less person to kiss.

I wrote about three sentences, and then let my finger press down gently while my eyes watched a blinking cursor erase whatever it was I thought was worth thinking about. It wasn't. Or, perhaps more accurately, it certainly wasn't worth writing about. It's 1030 and I haven't been sleeping much lately. I took a nap earlier but I'm still pretty tired. I guess this is it.

I remember once I blogged every day, years ago. Afterwards I felt relieved, like I'd outsourced my entire anything to the internet and to hell with it, let the 1's and 0's carry the burden of my problems. These days. Lost appeal perhaps.

But really, more likely, I am just out of practice.

Motivation. No laziness. a something something something.

no title

ugh.

i mean it's just not as if.

is it?

wrong time right person.

I don't know, a machete I guess.

Okay I got the job this time. Yay great. I don't think it is paying anymore but it is a step in the right direction, if a longer step. But these things take time, yadda yadda.

More importantly, let's talk about a genuine concern I am having right now. A concern that manifests itself directly outside of my home. But first, there is the trouble of the home itself. Demonstrated:

We have no heat. Well, I guess last night that was fixed supposedly and our radiator should be working fine but aside from a strange dull glow of warmth as I place my hand firmly upon the metal, nothing really seems to be happening. The heaters in our room are very ornate and beautiful (though in need of a good polishing, how do you "re-finish" metal anyway?), but of absolutely no practical use. Thus, it is constantly cold everywhere. I have a space heater (which for the first two months I thought was a radio. haha whatever), but turning it on runs the risk of problem number two.

Our power goes out constantly. You cannot have many things plugged in and functioning on the second floor at once. If you do the wire cuts or the breaker goes off or the electricity plummets or whatever god damned term you use when too many things drain power and all of a sudden it feels like you have entered the very real set of some horror film (except it happens all the time so it loses its allure very quickly). There was a three week period when an additional party was staying in our abode that the power went out six times in one hour. This is ridiculous. In order to turn the power back on you have to deal a part of problem number three.

Murder stairs. Yes. The stairs that shoot down into the basement lack the secure feeling of knowing no one is going to reach their hands through the slits and pull your legs out from under you causing you to smash your face into the edge of a wooden stairs, not only knocking you out but also getting small splinters into your face and if you think about this and lets face it i think we all are at this point splinters in a palm hurts enough i don't want any fucking splinters in my face. From that point on its up to your imagination really. Does the person in your basement at this point kill you or just steal your things or do other unspeakable acts to your unconscious body. really, you fill in the blanks. Also in the basement is a small furnace that opens up like you would put a miniature witch into, as well as a series of pipes that sound on the brink of bursting at all times of the day.

Also there is a door from the kitchen that leads to a three or four foot drop directly into the backyard. I want this to be a problem but actually it's pretty secure in that I can hardly open the door anyway, much less fall out of it. Plus there's a lock. Or something.

However, and the real issue at hand only seems to be an issue in the winter but this makes it no less real, the actual issue here is dangling from the trees outside of my home.

Icicles.

Today, still groggy from waking up at all and sad and angered by having to walk out into the chill frosted air that is Portland I chanced and looked up at the sky to shake my fist but met with the icy glare of icicles dangling precariously above me. As an Ohio bred child I don't understand why this was never a scary thing for me before, but as the wind picked up and the branches swayed I suddenly thought of the possibility of these cold knives slipping from branches and aiming their pointed glacial revenge straight for my ill equipped noggin. Global warming is no myth and I have no doubts that mother nature is a cruel cruel force indeed. For the rest of the walk to the bus stop I considered the fowl mess of blood and gore and bits of skull spent violently against the grey cracked sidewalks and feared for my life.

Over dramatic? Sure. But what's the harm in preparation.

Getting over it, I reached up and grabbed an icicle down and held it in my hand the rest of the way to the bus stop. As it melted in my hand I considered what a different place I find myself in now. That not only does water fall from the sky at all, it even hangs out for a while in a useful shiv format. Then, feeling a sudden rush of clue-like guilt I threw it to the street below and watched it crack into four distinct pieces. Already melting into non-existence.

There's a lot in a day guys.

A lot.

a wet dog

Today.

Woke up to the MLK day thinkin nothin except how to get to work. Opted out of figuring on anything and creaked open the rusted hinges of my car door and just polluted my way to work instead. Honestly so cold here anyway, maybe global warming isn't always a bad thing? Maybe I just need a scarf and a hat. Or a scarf hat. Hatscarf. Is there no market yet? Who could say.

At work it was boring and I was hungry but excited from too much coffee on too empty a stomach. People keep telling me lies telling me coffee is an appetite suppressant but it's just like apples; just a bit makes me crazy in hunger and i can't stop thinking about putting somethinganything in this stomach of mine.

New books day and on sale tomorrow so I spent a lot of time flipping through pages. Read about 15 pages of Beautiful Children and can't decide if this one is worth the time or not. Interesting maybe but I don't know. Too much in queue anyhow. Anyhow.

Well the sun shone down all day today in through the halfway miraged windows of our warehouse and mostly over the screen of my computer making it unreadable except when I held invoices briefly over it in order to make my work work. Yeah the blinds go down but it's so rarely sunny here. You start to pine for it and when it happens you're almost willing to pay someone. Just make it stay a little bit longer just a bit brighter just make it another day. Maybe a day when I don't work for once.

This is an opposite feeling from the GOOD OLD DAYS OF PHOENIX. I capitalized that to make a statement.

So anyway today it was the sun right. All bright up there, annoying but in a little kid way; you kind of want to slap it and make it hurt or cry or just leave but at the same time you can't stop loving it anyway. Makes you smile for all it hurts. Now it's just the reverse. The moon is hanging up there unnaturally watching through a sky surprisingly absent of clouds. I can almost see it sitting regularly from my bedroom but for an overhang or i suppose the roof coming down, angling off the one bright spectator of the night. I thought I'd see more stars living in Portland; I hardly see any. Just a drive away. Yeah yeah.

Back on track. Work was 8ish hours. Drove back home.

My dog. Well I don't know what happened but he shit his fur and I guess I didn't notice it because I am a bad owner of dogs but when I called for him to come back inside everything smelled terribly and I checked my shoes in a panic thinking I had somehow stepped in something INSIDE MY OWN HOUSE which of course would mean that my dog had in fact shit in the house and he doesn't do that really so I wasn't concerned which is when I looked down and said OH MAN and epsilon is trotting around with deep black stains streaking up and down his fur and i said OH MAN again and had him follow me upstairs and locked him in the bathroom while i looked for some sort of shampoo and mindy had some because mine like other things i own(ed) is in ARIZONA and I took this and the skull shaped cup that everytime i drink from things spill down the sides of my lips and i only drink red things from it so i feel like a vampire and i washed him right in the tub, unclogging the drain afterwards of coarse white hair that he is all too well known for really you should see the floor of my house sometime.

I really hope you read that as it is punctuated.

pause.

So now anyway I guess we're up to speed. Oh maybe not.

I got home and aside from the dog situation everything was if not great pretty okay and then I am checking my emails and go from high to low within ten minutes and now I guess i'm sittin in the middle somewhere. If you're there too, hi!

that's it i guess. it's only 630. more things may happen.

a busy schedule.

so i didn't get that job and ok. old news. but right now my job.

it's easy to fall into that "well at least i get a check" response and at least money is coming in and at least it's a step in the right direction. i don't know. today i spent 8 hours pulling labels off of books so we could return them to publishers. two days ago i spent 8 hours putting labels onto books to place in our stores. don't get me wrong. it's an easy job, i'm not restricted by much of a schedule; i can take breaks and lunch whenever. i have a quota to meet but a monkey missing an arm could meet the quota. it's just too brainless (forgive me, monkeys. i don't mean to imply you're not smart). i feel as if i am reasonably intelligent but any hope for this being developed by means of constant use and challenging projects is quickly evaporating.

i interviewed for a new position in the same company but i don't feel like it went well. my confidence was a little shot by the fact that my last interview went so well and i didn't get the job, and on top of this after emailing the people about what i could do to improve myself so that i'd have a better chance next time, i never got a response. this after they ended our conversation with "we really encourage you to apply again next time" right. making matters worse is the room we were sitting in for the interview. they sat facing the sun and, understandably, squinting as a result of this. it's hard to read a squinting person. in a panic i told some ridiculous anecdote about book buying and then afterwards felt like an asshole. i normally feel like i interview well. i am a bit awkward and sometimes some question will just throw me off for no real reason.

i interpret things abstractly and that's an issue for me. it always has been. i hear a sentence and the meaning i take from whatever is being said is so far removed from what the point is, but somehow it feels justified to me thinking i have the real meaning. so sometimes when i hear a question i think one thing is being asked when it's not being asked at all. maybe i just try to rush through my answers.

and i'm spending too much money. and this next job if i even get it, i assume isn't a pay raise. lateral moves are nice but don't do much in terms of income. maybe i need to start a second job.

maybe i just need to start really writing. doing something with that. something is starting to yearn for that creative outlet again, and it's about time.

contrary to this post, things are actually really good right now. i'm a bit panicked about a few things, but i'm always panicked about a few things. this is just the life i lead.

more about good things some other time. this is my vent.

a quick list

Monday:

Work. Russell's bar. Drunk.

Tuesday:

Work. Fred Meyer's. Nachos. Margarita. Just one drink then we'll leave. Drunk.

Wednesday (thus far)

Work. Sushi sale. Russian man going to bus. Wrong directions. Woman waiting for bus. Conversation. Off to see a band.

Priscilla, you gave your name but sadly I just don't recall it.

But I remember most everything else.

What may or may not have been a wig in deep black curls hat extended in a halo that felt like lifted for miles vertically around your face. A five inch gap of black which turned into a faux-aged white. Where is this fashion grabbing from?

Priscilla you had chest hair creeping defiantly up your cleavage. I watched a woman poke at your tits with one slender finger in the mirror and saw the lump move to the side, as if parting for something more real.

In a way of sorts you were up against the most gigantic and invisible piece of glass in the world; your whole body stopped abruptly 4 inches away from your face. Your lips stopped in some sudden shudder of red outline in black pressed flat. Your not-breasts stopping slender and square and your beer(vodka?) belly compressed into one thick block of non-care.

You were delightful and nice in your leopard print dress which outlined your non-shaved armpits. You had a tongue red enough to have been lipsticked upon that drew out I can only imagine what. But it was so fake as to be glamorous and spiteful all at once. Like some demon having escaped from hell desperate to win someone over to its side without knowing how. It curved and twirled and was repulsive but interesting.

You and your band of "we just don't know"s sat in the corner drinking whiskey cokes and chatting up the entire bar in a tirade of loud sounds. I didn't listen much.

I sat at the bar and watched in the long mirror admiring all of you. You are all such stories and people and amazement. You are beautiful and terrible all at once and I can't wrap my head around it.

I guess it's a new year. Time for resolutions. I abandoned a long time ago that aspect of jolly drunkenness, but I suppose I do want to at least try to start writing more this year. It isn't so much I lost a lot of feeling. It is all there and on the skin and in it. I just never feel settled. I feel like driving North forever. Until the road stops or until I stop or anything at all stops.

It must end somewhere.