Job-hunting

Perhaps you are already tired of hearing me complain about looking for a job. Perhaps you are tired of hearing me joke about giving blow-jobs on the street for crack, coffee, and turkey sandwiches in the event of not finding a job. (Incidentally, I pick these commodities because, to my way of thinking, they will be essential for life on the street.) Perhaps you are tired of hearing me worry about whether or not I'll be able to find a shopping cart to keep my life's possessions in, and hoping that I'll be able to find a sturdy plastic shopping cart as opposed to a completely metal one to minimize rust in the damp, cool San Francisco weather.

Well, that's just too goddamned bad.

It's too bad, in part, because if I think about relationships for ONE MORE SECOND at the moment I will implode and end up a pile of swingy black pants, chipped toenail polish, diamond grandma rings, internal organs, and probably some other really disgusting things.

Anyway, I can barely recall the last time I had a resume. When you go into academia, you have a curriculum vitae (or "CV"). It's basically like a resume, except that it has information about courses you've taught, chapters and articles you've published, conferences you've attended, etc., that most private sector jobs couldn't care less about. Embarrassingly, my CV is easily accessible online to anyone who wants to see it--a downfall of working at a government-funded institution. (My home address and phone number really do need to come off there.)

Anyway, I'm working on adapting my experience to fit a resume format. This necessitates weird decisions that I haven't considered for a long time: Do I put my first job at McDonald's on there? (Probably not.) Do I put all the summer/youth camps I worked at in college on there? (Probably so.) Do I put my part-time pole-dancing job on there? (Um, doubtful.)

And then there are the cover letters. My "selling myself" on what valuable skills and experience I could bring to any given organization. The beginning of the "pick me! pick me!" pleading that I fear I will be reduced to. Cover letters suck. I have a bad short-term memory, so I'm creating a file of all the ones I send out and the names/addressed to whom I'm sending them to help me remember which jobs I apply for.

So that's what I'm doing. If anyone would like to hire me--or know someone who would--please get in touch with my people. When I figure out who "my people" are, I'll let you know.

Multifaceted

Funny conversation via text message

This text conversation is regarding S's question as to whether I would, in fact, attend a concert to see Beirut. He was going to the show both Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and I was only scheduled to attend the second day. A word of warning: we speak offensively and there are a couple of inside jokes in here...

A: Do not be alarmed. I am going to Beirut.

S: Tonight?

A: No, fool. Quit yer jibba jabba. Tomorrow.

S: Well, I’m going tonight, so suck it, donkey ass cock bitch.

A: Tonight is the night all the homos are going.

S: Then I guess you should try and trade yer ticket. Wouldn’t wanna miss out on all your people.

A: That was weak.

S: ‘Cause your “tonight’s homo night at Beirut” jibe was downright Oscar Wilde-esque. Your legendary sartorial wit strikes again!

A: I knew I needed to dumb it down for you. Now leave me be…I gotta buy ass meat. Have fun tonight.

* * * * * * *

Update on my convenience store friend

On my regular trip to the convenience store today, my Indian man (whose name I still have not asked) kissed by hand and exclaimed, "Beautiful! I have not seen you for two months now!"

I laughed and said, "No, no. It's only been two weeks."

"But it seems like two months because that is how much I miss you. What are you doing these days?"

I sighed and said, "Well, I'm applying for jobs."

"You will find one?" he asked.

"Well, I hope so. Or I won't be able to afford to shop here anymore!"

He leaned toward me conspiratorially and assured me, "You don't find job, I will take care of you. I will always take care of you."

I rolled my eyes and said, "Thank you, but I've heard that before."

He took my hand earnestly and said, "I am not like the boys you know. I will take care of you."

The Sunshine Princess

I walked down the street today, blinded by the dazzling sun. I felt clenched up and pinched, and yet aimless and directionless. I saw an adolescent boy walking down the sidewalk who looked so sure of himself—-so idiotically confident of his place in this world. I saw a man on the bus who looked like he could stare piercingly into my innermost thoughts. So I brushed the crumbs off the seat, took my place by the window, and waited to be seen into.

For most of my childhood I was certain that others could see my thoughts like speech balloons bulging above me. I felt guilty about the thoughts that went through my head, and I spent a great deal of time trying to hide them from others.

As an adolescent I found someone who could understand my thoughts when I explained them to him, and that was a first for me—-a glorious thing. It ended when we could no longer understand each others’ thoughts even upon explanation.

When I was an adult I found someone who not only understood my thoughts when I explained them, but anticipated them-—didn’t need to have them explained. How unspeakably wonderful to be understood without saying a word. I think, perhaps, there was too much understanding.

I spend a lot of time nowadays wondering if there is a happy in-between. Wondering if you can ever really know another person, and wondering what the limits are to how much you should know about someone. Maybe there are things that should be censored because there’s only so much honesty and openness that someone can take. Maybe I have always gone beyond this and that's where my downfall has been.

medicated dull, your attention
dry winter miles, diamonds and glass
mink eyed, marble eyed
in the gauze, in the weeds
by the drain, red on pale
there’s a nail by the vent
sweet for your heel, in the gauze marble eyed, waiting there
kiss your mouth to shut you up
crossed and lowered
cheaters fine, wings on fire
the stars are out
whisper stung in the wires
all you steal, you never take care

Email remix

I'm trying to write.
The first time I tried I forgot to separate the eggs.
I'm mostly staring.
I made tacos for dinner.
I'm really in the mood to read fortune cookie fortunes.
Maybe I should work for a pharmaceutical company.
They tasted delicious.
I may make another stab at chocolate mousse.
It is worn and shabby and stained and dirty.
I think I would like to get a new area rug for my living room.
My stomach kind of aches.
Goddamn tacos.
I have about five songs that are the only songs I want to hear in the world right now.
One of my favorite fortunes recently was, "One day it won't hurt anymore."
My friend said, "I really admire your strength. I would probably go anyway."
Cricket got annoyed and snapped at me tonight.
(I was drinking champagne and talking on the phone, you see.)
Many of the stains come from the spills of friends.
I am so tired of not having much money.
I wanted to go desperately, but I couldn’t bear the thought of not sharing it with someone.
I put her back in her cage.
It would be nice to make a good salary.
I just sneezed hot pepper flakes.
Goddamn tacos.
And, really, they’re the best kind of stains.

Out of one's ordinary

Last night my book club, the best book club in the world, went camping at Lake Chabot. Every time I get away for even just a night or two, I am reminded all over again of how wonderful (and absolutely necessary) it is to break out of one's routine periodically.

I crashed for a couple of hours when I got home because laying on the ground is not too conducive to sleep. But I had a lovely time and it was good to get away, albeit briefly. Before dropping my stuff in the living room and climbing into bed, I put on clean socks to protect my bed from my dirty feet because I was just too tired to take a shower at that particular moment. But afterwards I scrubbed the dirt and campfire smoke off as thoroughly as I could. I can still smell traces of campfire in my hair.

I really do love the smell of wood smoke. My clothes and my sleeping bag are still in a pile on my living room floor waiting to be washed. Whenever I walk through the living room I pause to sniff the smell unfamiliar to my current environs before I remember the source. I associate the smell of wood smoke with fall in West Virginia. I can remember the smell of bonfires and fireplaces that would start up in October and November at home. All I had to do was walk around Maple Lake and the scent would be all around as my feet crunched dry leaves under my feet.

While I was laying in the tent in the dark I listened to an owl hooting in the distance most of the night; it was lovely. We saw wild turkeys and deer, too, which I don't get to see so often these days.

On a tangentially related note, I was just communicating with a friend about the symbolism of the telephone. He just sent his phone number to the person he really, really likes for the first time. Even though they haven't spoken yet, we were contemplating the new meaning and significance your phone suddenly takes on when a person that you are genuinely excited about now has the capacity to call you. The phone can no longer ring without your heart thumping a little faster, even if you're not actually expecting them to call yet. And the longer the phone goes without ringing, the more torturous it is.

Ahhh...butterflies.

"In a wagon with no wheels and no place to go."

I always find it interesting to look back on various periods of my life when I have enough perspective to see them in hindsight, to characterize them, and to reflect on them. I frequently wonder what this particular period of my life will look like when I look back on it in the future.

It feels like a brief intermission. It feels like a transition. It feels like an interim between the old and the new. And just when I think I get a glimpse of what the "new" will look like, it seems to morph, pull back, or disappear all together.

It's always bothered me that I have such a hard time living in the moment. I've always been fixed on the past and the future. I don't want to be that way. I've been trying to focus all evening on the good things in my life right now. My friends are what most easily rise to the top. I get a little choked up thinking about just how much they let me lean on them. Occasionally they lean on me, too, but it always feels disproportionate to me.

I feel like I could give a thousand examples of how grateful I am right now, but it would probably be overkill. For now I'll just focus on a recent one. I missed the last couple of calls from a dear friend and he sent me a message saying:

Let me know when would be a good time to call. I'm in kind of a weird place and in dire need of something wonderful involving birds, champagne, cigarettes and miscellaneous baked goods.

I feel both privileged and humbled.

You haven't lived until...

...your mom has called to tell you about all the great sex she's having.

Requiem for a kitty

I have this memory box where I keep old stuff, like letters, notes and doodles my sister and I made while we were bored in church, bad poetry, angsty ramblings, band and football programs, etc. Every once in awhile I dig through it a pull out a couple of things. Last night after some champagne, I had the courage to read some of the bad poetry. It makes me cringe to realize how melodramatic and earnest and emotional and serious I was.

In other words, not much has changed.

I found this poem I wrote when I was 14 and my cat died. It was written on a scrap of paper in orange marker. There are words crossed out and written over; there is even one place when I ran out of room on the line I was on and the words take a sudden southward arc down the right side of the paper. I believe there are even some teary smudges in the marker. Jesus.

To fully appreciate this poem, you have to know the story behind this cat. Her name was Kelly, and she had long, silky fur and a little gray “beauty mark” on her cheek. When she was a kitten she had an inner ear infection that left her deaf and her balance off, so when she’d try to run to you she ran diagonally. Since she couldn’t hear herself, when she meowed it came out as sort of a strange, strangled sound.

For awhile we had an above ground pool, and one morning we woke to find that she had fallen into it and drowned. We had to fish her out with the net. I was devastated. So I wrote this poem.

God bless this little cat
Whom we love so much
Soothe her with your kindness
And heal her with your touch.

Blessed are your creations,
From the big down to the small
Better to have loved once
Than to have never loved at all.

Thank you for life
You give to everyone
Let us pray that we’ll meet some day
Under the rising sun.

Please take care of my little cat
For we have loved her well
Bless her whiskers and her fur
And even her little tail.

Please let us remember
That an end comes to everyone
That a finish comes to every life
Though it has just begun.

My little cat
Who will join you now
Please love her as I have
For I already miss her soft meow.

I miss her purrs and her scratches
Even the beauty mark on her cheek
Because she was as gentle
As well as she was sweet.

Dear Lord, I pray you’ll keep her warm and safe
Please protect her
Please guide her in the light
Please don’t let her be so cold
In the ground at night.

Some observations:

1. It surprises me not at all that those last two lines end on such a dark and somber note. I believe that after I wrote those I flung myself on the bed dramatically and wept.

2. It may seem surprising to some of you who met me as an adult, but I was (obviously) still praying quite a bit at the time this orange marker was put to paper.

3. It’s like The Waste Land of cat poetry. It just goes on and on and on.

On the day of my first best friend's birth

Today is Traci Renee’s birthday, and after sending her a piddly little MySpace birthday greeting I was thinking more about her. Quite some time ago, her mom Robin sent me a picture from what I believe was Traci’s sixth birthday. There was a party in her backyard, and Beau and I both attended.

Here we are below. Beau and I were watching as Traci opened her gifts. I am wearing an outfit that could have only been chosen by yours truly, and I was extremely jealous of both her party dress and the gift that she had just opened:



I’m not sure if she remembers it or not, but I can remember the day I first met Traci. I was five, and my mom and I had recently moved out of our roach-infested apartment and into a tiny little white house. I was happy because I could run through our neighbors’ backyards and get to my grandparents’ house. It was one such day in late summer when I was running home that I saw two little girls—Traci and her older sister Christel—in their backyard. Their family was obviously just moving in; it was just short of when Traci and I would both start kindergarten at Simpson Elementary.

I wanted to play with these new little girls terribly. I was an extremely shy and rather lonely little girl, so I hid behind a tree in their yard to watch them. They were eating McDonald’s Happy Meals on a table in the backyard. They called to me and invited me to come out and tell them my name, but I ducked further behind the tree. Embarrassingly, Christel lured me out by jiggling some French fries at me invitingly. (My God, that is a humbling thought.) We became fast friends after that.

I have so many memories of playing with them for the next few years, but I’ll just mention a few of my favorites.

I remember tormenting my cranky, elderly neighbor Lucille, and the dirty old man who lived across the street (“Horny Butt.” He had that name for a good reason.)

I remember their sweet Dukes of Hazzard swimming pool. It had pictures of Bo, Luke, Daisy, Uncle Jesse, Boss Hog—everyone—in it, and we would argue over who got to sit on Bo’s face. (We were dirty little girls; we fully realized the double entendre.)

We used to love to play “Witchy.” This basically involved gathering weird berries and anything else we considered fit to put into a magic potion and squishing it up into a paste and daring each other to eat it.

Traci and I invented a game that I always called the “Kill Your Family” game. We had a favorite red maple tree in Traci’s backyard. One of us would climb the tree and sit on the low branches, dropping leaves one by one; the other had to stand on the ground and catch the leaves. Each leaf represented a member of the person’s family. I’d cry, “This is your dad! This is your aunt Kathy!” If Traci didn’t catch the leaf for that person, they were dead. The winner was the one with the most “living” family members left.

I remember that Traci taught me to ride a bike. I desperately wanted to ditch my Cabbage Patch Bike with training wheels and a banana seat to be able to ride her BMX. It took me so long to learn. She showed me over and over again how to do it, and one day it clicked and I went sailing down Olive Street crying, “Do you see me!? I’m doing it! I’m doing it!”

I remember playing Barbies with Christel and Traci on their front porch, especially when it rained. They had a little pink Barbie nightie with a blonde-headed Barbie face on it that our Barbies liked to wear when they were going to be having sex that night. We always disputed whose Barbie’s turn it was to wear the nightie. The stakes were important: no nightie = no Barbie getting laid.

Obviously, everyone knows the story of me punching her for snatching the magic wand I was playing with out of my hand. (I still maintain that it was my turn.) And, uh, I’m sorry about that, Traci. In case I didn’t say that 24 years ago. But you deserved it.

I thought I’d throw in a couple more old pictures, just for fun.

Our elementary school:



My old house:



Traci’s old house:



Our favorite climbing tree that has since been cut down as Traci and Beau’s old houses have been merged into one giant monstrosity. This was also the site of the “Kill Your Family” game:



Anyway, to make a long story short: Happy, happy birthday, Traci Renee! Much love.

Birds

I loved you in the morning, before the sun would come
You were the dawn to me
I loved you in the evening, while the birds were still singing
You gave every song to me

I want to see you
More than anything
Babe I miss you
All day and everyday

It's not that I can't go on without you
Got a lot of things to do
I'm busy, busy all the time
Still I can't stop thinking about you

- Electrelane



It had never occurred to me that the latent content of the things I've made would serve as a visual record of my state of mind, more oblique and therefore more telling than any diary I might have kept.

- David Rakoff

Recuperation

I've spent today just holing up a bit and keeping to myself. I've been with people nearly nonstop the past three days and, although I'm much, much more social than I used to be, I forget just how much it can tax my reserves. It's funny that I feel a little lonely, though.

It was a really nice weekend overall. Lots of friends in the same place at the same time on multiple occasions. Scott's father took all of us out to dinner Sunday evening and, before we all parted, he went around and shook our (Scott's friends') hands and told us that, now that he'd met us, he could understand why Scott liked it here. I found that really touching.

After spending a fair amount of time cooking and helping with cooking this weekend, I find that I've been thinking about cooking and food more than usual. I am constantly reminded just how much food brings people together. I really enjoy cooking for people; I feel like it is a good way for me to show friends and other loved ones that I care about them.

Speaking of cooking, I have some recipes I'm aspiring to try in the near future:

1. Fresh corn, tomato, and basil salad with champagne vinaigrette
2. Calzones (not sure what all I want to put inside yet, but definitely cheese)
3. Roasted figs with goat cheese and serrano ham and drizzled with honey

I'm trying to write this evening. All I really want to do is make postcard secrets, though. And maybe finger-paint.

Restlessness

I can't sit still.
I can't stop thinking.
I can't stop wondering.
I can't stop arguing with myself
about even the smallest things.
I can't decide where to go
or what to do.
I want, want, want
and what I want is unclear.
I know that peace of mind
would be a great place to start.
At the moment there is no one to talk to
(and not a good way to put my thoughts into words anyway)
and I can't think of how to express myself
other than through this particular medium,
as all others seem closed to me at the moment.
When I dream lately, it is of transportation—
buses, cars, planes, trains
Any mechanism that will get me out and away
but from what it is unclear.
So, again, tonight I will drive.
I will wind my way down the coast
with my windows down and my hair dancing across my face
looking out at the ocean
and the moon reflecting off of it.
I will drive and I will sing and I will wonder.
I will try to see across to the other side and, again, I will fail.

[Fans self, spritzes face with water, and dabs delicately]

Today it is in the 90s in San Francisco. Heat records are being broken all over the Bay Area. It's been about three years since I felt heat like this. I am not very pleased.

I am reminded of the first summer I lived in Richmond. We had a couple of weeks of record-setting temperatures--one of them was the consecutive number of days it got over 100 degrees. I didn't know anyone in the city yet, school hadn't started, and I couldn't afford air conditioning. So I spent most of my days camped out in a bathtub full of cold water with a glass of ice water, the cordless phone, and a book. I would periodically call people to remind them of how hot I was, in case they had forgotten since I called them a half hour earlier. When I couldn't stand being in my house anymore I would go to Barnes and Noble and curl up with a book in an overstuffed chair and soak up the air conditioning. Or I would go see a movie. Any movie.

Sssshhhhhhh...can you hear that? It's the smallest violin in the world. And it's playing for me.

My momma has a date.

After several days of being without her cell phone, my mom got it turned on again and called and said, "I have news!" For whatever reason, I said the first thing that popped into my mind: "You're pregnant." She laughed and said, "That would definitely be news."

Turns out she met someone at the American Legion. (I didn't think that was possible!) He just moved to WV from Denver. They talked a fair amount and then he asked her to go to the ATM with him, at which time he promptly asked her out. As she struggled to adjust the seat in his car and ended up turning on the windshield wipers and high beams (I can't tell you how much I hate to say this: Like mother, like daughter), she agreed. It seems they are going on a weekend fishing trip and staying in a cabin at Stonewall Jackson Lake. I said, "It's your first date and you're spending the weekend together?!" Then it occurred to me that I should probably shut up and not pursue that line of questioning. She was kind enough (or possibly drunk and/or oblivious enough) not to point out my near-hypocrisy.

She's nervous and excited and happy and afraid. I'm happy for her, as that is an exciting combination of feelings when you're anticipating something. I was feeling rather doubtful about her dating prospects because, 1) I am familiar with the single men in my hometown, and, 2) I tried to help steer her through a brief stint with online dating during which she refused to put up her picture or consider anyone divorced or over age 40 (despite the fact that she is twice divorced and her 50th birthday is just around the corner).

In her excitement, she was eager to compare notes. "So...how's YOUR love life going?" she asked. I quickly changed the subject to her upcoming visits to both of my brothers. It was a rather masterful move on my part, as she loves that topic passionately and didn't even seem to notice the abrupt topic change.

But the rain washed us off.

We covered ourselves in mud and leaves
and pretended
we were the only people
in the world.

More tales from my neighborhood

On my way home from work today I made my regular round of errands. It was rather difficult today because I have been up nearly all night the past two nights and my butt was dragging.

I stopped at the convenience store where the older Indian man works. (I should probably ask his name sometime.) His latest thing is saying, "Where have you been!? I have not seen you for a month!" (He says this though I religiously stop in at least once a week.) I told him that when I was there on Friday he wasn't there--that someone else was working in his place.

"Ah, yes. That was my father partner," he said. "I was in Grass Valley that day." He recently opened another store in Grass Valley and he goes out periodically to check on it.

"How far away is Grass Valley, anyway?" I asked.

"Oh, it is far. One hour beyond Sacramento," he answered. (Sacramento is already about 90 miles from San Francisco.) "Maybe sometime you will go to Grass Valley with me."

I smiled noncommittally, picked up my purchases, and wished him a nice day. The man is very persistent, and I can't for the life of me imagine what would discuss in the car for 2 1/2 hours together.

Then I went to my regular pharmacy and took my place in line at the window. An elderly lady with a mustache and a cane shuffled up and stood behind me. She bemoaned that we had to wait, and said, "I'm not young anymore. It's hard to get around." I smiled sympathetically, and she continued: "Would you believe that most of the time I wish I were dead? Everyone I know is gone and I'm all alone. I can't wait to join them. It's not all over after this life, you know."

I was feeling emotionally fragile and exhausted anyway, and my eyes immediately welled up. I was grateful that they were hidden behind my sunglasses. "I sure hope you're right," I croaked.

"Oh, I am. I am," she said with certainty. "I've had many experiences with people who were already dead that have talked to me or helped me or comforted me. Why, once when I was asleep my mother woke me up to tell me a man was trying to get in the window. And she was dead. And you know what? There was a man trying to get in the window to rob me."

As she was finishing this sentence, my turn came and I excused myself to pick up my prescriptions. As I left I said goodbye to her. I would have loved to sit down with her and listen to her stories and tape record them. Maybe I should have asked. Instead, I slipped out of the fluorescent-lit Walgreen's and into the bright sunlight of a beautiful May day in San Francisco. I wish I had gone back.

Never have I ever...

...traveled to and stayed in another country completely alone. I always had someone to go with or to visit before. It should be interesting.

And a long-forgotten fairytale is in your eyes again
And I’m caught inside a dream world where the colors are too intense
and nothing is making sense

There’s a floating town of eiderdown in a mist of mystery
There’s an old enchanted castle and the princess there is me
decked out like a Christmas tree

Presentiment

Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
Indicative that suns go down.
The notice to the startled grass
That darkness is about to pass.

--Emily Dickinson

"Can you lend a nigga a pencil?"

This video made my day week.

My poem (with some revisions)

(There is no meter, so save yourself the trouble of looking for it!)

I like my body better when next to your body
I trace my lips across, inhale, press against
Familiarizing myself with your texture, scent
Your consistent warmth, so unlike my own
My fingers curl into your hair
Desperate and urgent for you to continue
To kiss me as if you always knew how.

It makes me happy that people take the time to do stuff like this.

Man, I need a good title.

I was just amusing myself by reading about former Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin. Apparently, from 1977-1979 he gave himself this title: "His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor[2] Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular."

Sweet.

"Know when to run, motherfucker!"

Two For One

Overheard on the bus (from a man with throw pillows fastened around his entire body):

"Back to Sarajevo, moron! I'm Chinese, motherfucker! Your ignorance is not my problem. Kiss my dirty white ass! You gotta know when to hold 'em. Know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away. And know when to run, motherfucker! You're an ignorant slut!"

Loveliness:

Tonight I saw a prescreening of one of the sweetest movies I've seen in quite sometime, Son of Rambow. I reccomend it highly.

Do you think you're sexy? And you work at the Olive Garden?

Well, then, this contest is for you...



(I suppose you have to be a lady, too, but whatevs.)

There are days...

...when it feels like the ground keeps shifting beneath your feet. You stumble and recover and try to keep putting one foot in front of the other, plodding along, only to find it shifting again and you don't know which way to brace yourself. On days like this, sanity is more relative than ever. It is really tempting to find something warm and cozy to wrap your arms around--something to love and protect that, in some small way, provides you with love and protection because of the very fact that it stayed in your arms for a few moments and accepted your love and protection before it dissolved through your fingers like fine, soft sand.

The evening redness in the west

I can see it coming from a mile away. And I'll be damned if I let it happen again.

On sexual proficiency

I found this hysterically funny. Jason Mulgrew describes his qualifications to be a sex advice columnist:

I have navigated successfully through the musty realm of lovemaking over six times. I am adapt at several sexual positions, including missionary, me just laying there, and "I’m too drunk to get this condom on, so I’m gonna go heat up some pizza." My Patented Foreplay Technique follows three simple rules: 1) Start kissing; 2) Count to twenty; 3) Stick it in. Critics in both the US and abroad have compared my lovemaking to "forty seconds of life-changing thrusting, then a noise that sounds like a bear falling down a flight of stairs, then a request for a high-five." References available upon request.

Inner dimples

I am feeling creative today; I don't know why. I think I was inspired by reading some lines I wrote months ago. I made my first attempt at writing song lyrics back in October/November. They were written from such raw, naked emotion that I have generally been unable to read them since then. But today I had the courage to go back and look at them and *gasp* I really like them. They helped inspire me to write a poem.

I honestly don't think I've written a poem since I was sixteen years old. I really like this one. It's not meant for public eyes, but I guess I wanted to write about writing it.

I do feel compelled to share some lines from those lyrics I wrote months ago. I hope I'm not repeating myself; as far as I can remember only one other person has ever read these.

I kept it in a private place
And took it out for my own viewing
I warmed it with my breath and polished it
All this is just barely enough to get by
Believe me, it’s barely enough

I feel suddenly shy.

My new mantra is:

Don't be a freak! Don't be a freak!

It's hard, because it comes naturally.

Funny conversation #7

Grocery store cashier to bagger in regard to the previous customer: "Did you see that guy? I wonder what it's like to be too gangsta to even go to the grocery store. He was too cool to even take his penny in change."

Bagger: "Don't you know? Pennies are for suckas."