the bubble

2008-02-06T13:21:00.001-08:00

check out ! ! !

El Taconazo

2007-08-05T14:52:00.000-07:00

I saw this spanish ice cream truck on my way there...

Stop para los ninos!

Good thing I stopped filming in Bourne Ultimatum, Alex might've gotten me kicked out!

Possum hunters!

Oh my gosh! The Indian man from Kicks!

2007-08-04T04:52:00.000-07:00

maybe his wife? Hm!

Kafka in a letter to Pollak

2007-05-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? ...we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

Original: Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher, die uns glücklich machen, könnten wir zur Not selber schreiben. Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder verstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns. Das glaube ich.

How I will not go on a run even though I will want to and also how my mom thinks our scale is wrong, although I am pretty sure it's right.

2007-04-24T19:22:00.000-07:00

I'm eating oatmeal raisin cookies... what more can I say. My stomach hurts and my legs are still touching.

E got a cookie cake from some guy who asked her to prom. It sitting next to me, it says "Vouley Nou attendez Soirie donsonie avec moi? John." Oh yeah, it's in French.

Prom. What a fucking joke.

Some strange man will probably ask me to prom over a text message. My life works that way.

My life works like this: it's 10:27 and I have 2-70even Math problems to do. Flipping Jesus, I'm infected with procrastination.

My dad told me of this man who retired when he was 30 and he would just ride his bike around and look at everybody going to work and think, "Man, their lives must suck." How'd he do it? Well, it's simple, he was smart and not a consumer. I am not kidding. This happened. I want to be this man. I'll let you know when I get there.

a post in which i discuss the dangers of living with electricity and sleeping in waterbeds.

2007-04-22T08:10:00.000-07:00

I am cold. My stomach hurts and my neighbors are crazy. Not fun crazy, mysterious crazy. Every night I hear one of their cars pull out of the driveway around midnight and come back around 4AM. There is a wife, a man, and their kid. And some cats. Their windows are not tinted at all, so when I walk down my driveway, I can see them eating dinner.

I always wonder about people like that.

They probably think we're crazy. There's always kids here and a French girl who stops when she walks in a manner that shakes the entire house. When I try to sleep, I can hear her walking downstairs in the kitchen, hear her stop at the refrigerator, and walk back to her room. Fucking pig.

God. Some people really piss the hell out of me. Like sometimes I can't stand it when my mom walks around the house stacking books up and breathing out real hard through her nose and then unstacking the books again. Can't stand it. But I never say a peep about it and when Ella gets mad at my mom, I just hate Ella more and love my mom more. It's a constant cycle that my mom always wins.

That's all anything is, just a constant cycle of doing and undoing things. Like dishwashers and made-up beds. I never see the point of it all. To me it just seems like work and more work and tiny droplets of fun here and there, but we can't have too much fun because that would be UNETHICAL and UNJUST and UNFAIR and would unravel the poorly constructed lives in which we thrust around here and there, unsatisfied and confused.

I say, it all seems rather dull to me.

anywhere.

2007-04-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

Jesus, I think.
It has been fifteen years
And I still don't know what I'm doing
Here or anywhere else

When I walk I still feel
Like I'm just flopping around
As if I were underwater
Here or anywhere else

I still don't like shoes
Or air conditioning, really
Washing machines keep me awake
Here or anywhere else

I hear life gets softer
As life gets longer
I hope life never gets soft to me
Here or anywhere else

I hear those feet sneaking up
The stairs like I don't know
What is going on
Here and Everywhere Else

Baby's hand.

2007-04-05T20:04:00.000-07:00

What depends upon a human
being

Is immeasurable
and yet
ever so measurable
as it lightly grasps
the very tip of my little finger.

Painting Angry.

2007-03-03T18:55:00.000-08:00

As I sit HERE

with my mouth

falling

apart into my hand,

I wonder why I have ever been so

angry

as I am now.

And what evolutionary

progress

such anger has instilled in

us fragile

human beings.

For there is nothing

so frightening

or so confusing

at once

as yourslef,

enraged.

The air is clean.

2007-02-12T18:20:00.000-08:00

No, it's not okay and I don't know how to fix it.

2007-02-10T13:34:00.000-08:00

Hello?

Is he awake?

Is he snoring?

Did you tell her?

Was I snoring?

Can you hear me?
Do you want to go?
Do you want to go where?
Do you want to go drink?
Do you want to go smoke?
Do you have any?
Did you shut the door?
You wanna leave?
Did you lock it?
Can we go now?
Do you have any more money?
Can you call them?
Do they have money?
Which one?
Are you deaf?
How much longer?
Are you okay?
Did you buy some?
Is she crying?
What did she say?
Are they upset?
Do they understand?
Is it okay?
Can you fix it?
Hello?

Rainforest Dreams, Part II, feat. Ross (an edited explanation/ interview/ discussion/ argument/ philosophy/ symbolism, and so much more!)

2007-01-27T18:31:00.000-08:00

Ross: so are you ever going to explain your story to me
me: well no, because theres not that much to explain. i mean what do you want to know?
Ross: jesus christ
alright
first off
is there a correlation to steve erwin?
or someone you know
me: gosh no
gosh no
Ross: as a fellow writer, I know there is a root to every story, like I doubt that nothing inspire it
was it just a whim?
me: oh no something inspired it, it thats what you mean
8:15 PM Ross: care to share?
me: now let me think of what it was exactly..
me: well one of my brother's friends has a name that is sort of like erwin. oh, it's nolan. that's it. that made me think of erwin. and i don't know why i was thinking of nolan.
8:16 PM maybe because that is just such a peculiar name and this was rather a peculiar story.
Ross: I find this hard to beleive
me: also, nolan's parents smoke weed and are like super-hippies. so thats fun.
8:17 PM Ross: that a curious name sparked one of the most bizaree stories of nature, love, death, and war between earth and machine
or maybe im cursed to look deep into things that aren't there
moving on to second point
you used amber alot
8:18 PM and I found that funny
isn't it a great concept
me: yes. i suppose it is.
Ross: you aren't much of an interviewee eh
me: okay that whole thing definitely had a deeper meaning. perhaps multiple ones.
8:19 PM Ross: of course it did
like the whole thing with erwin being infatuated with something, but never taking the initiative actually go to his amazon
8:20 PM me: i like the symbolism that presents itself when a bug dies in the sap of a tree. its like nature is killing itself for nature and even more, people make jewelry out of it. like, nature destroying nature is beautiful. because it is beautiful.
Ross: and then pretending it to be a paradise when you finnally get there to fool yourself from losing hope. and that wanting something is better than having it
8:21 PM hmmm
me: and the fact that two people want to enrich themselves and end up witnessing the ultimate destruction of nature BY NATURE, now that's interesting.
yes. that too.
Ross: i always forget that we are nature
it seems that the biased arrogance has gotten to me
8:22 PM did erwin and the girl die?
or was that symbolism?
were they frozen in amber?
or part of the trees and cut down by machines and bleeding sap
that part was vague
me: they were frozen in amber, so of course they died.
8:23 PM Ross: well symbolism is tricky
so they just sat there and let the sap freeze them slowly?
8:25 PM me: so the machines (human beings) cut down the trees, which are major symbolism because trees are major symbolism to me. trees give us everything, along with a variety of other green plants, but trees are like people. they are the product of millions of years of evolution and they have prevailed and are the biggest and most prominent. humans are also at the superior end of billlions of years of evolution and are the most prominent animal.
its like most prominent plant vs most prominent animal. but, when it boils down to it , trees are not dependent on us, but we are dependent on the trees.
8:26 PM its like the trees are our masters and we don't realize it because our fate walks beside that of trees' fate.
Ross: but we breathe the same air
8:27 PM they give us oxygen and we repay it by breathing out carbon dioside
we chop them down and burn them to keep us warm
me: and the fact that we destroy the (symbolic) thing that breathes life into our very souls, and that it turns out to be bigger than life for us, that is something.
but no
Ross: we eat their fruits
me: because there are other plants and organisms that do that already.
Ross: your looking at life as a battle
me: yes we eat their fruits, thats why we are dependent on them, but not the other way around.
8:28 PM Ross: its more like a communal circle of organism taking hits
me: perhaps i am
Ross: they need us to spread their seeds
we are all designed for each other
8:29 PM but we have gotten to the level where we see everything belonging to us and not the other way around
me: i look at it from an evolutionary standpoint. in evolution, trees came before us, hence we depend on them because out own needs evolved out of what they produce. not the other way around.
8:30 PM Ross: im not hating on trees
im just playing devils advocate
trees are my playground
did you ever watch the lord of the rings movies?
me: yeah. sure
8:32 PM Ross: I got shivers when the ents (tree people) tore up Isengard and destroyed the orcs and their furnaces. apart from being a nerdy statement by me. this was the battle between nature and industrialism. and evetually the dam was broken and floodwater wiped the fires away.
i know i know
bad example
8:33 PM me: okay i see how that can relate to my "biting the hand that feeds you" analogy
and the whole man vs. nature thing
8:34 PM but also, in my story nature destroyed itself, which is a big part as well
8:35 PM Ross: but how nautre truly destroy itself?
me: because the sap covered everything
Ross: life cannot be destroyed
me: it was all amber
Ross: hmmm
me: but its a story
Ross: i know
me: so yeah
Ross: I just find it so interesting
8:36 PM and you play it off as a weird lsd story inspired by a kid's name
and you explained a whole symbolic battle after I got the ball rolling
me: so, basically, what have we? 1. what you want is not as charming as it seems.
2. biting the hand that feeds you thing
8:38 PM 3. that destruction, which is change can be beautiful or at least regarded as beautiful (but can something be beautiful if there is no one to see it?)
what else?
Ross: so erwin was better off dreaming of the amazons beauty rather than seeing it?
me: no not at all
8:39 PM definitely better off seeing it.
Ross: so in the end, making love and dying in amber was the best bet?
me: just because something is not as charming as it seems somewhere else, doesn't mean its bad to experience it
yes yes yes
a thousand times yes
why would it be a no?
Ross: so destruction is beauty?
8:40 PM well
dying is probably going to be one of the worst things to happen to me
but erwin probably has differnt priorities
me: because, by some standard, humans are "progressing"? so to suddenly stop that progression in its tracks is bad? that is exactly what you're told. that's what people are told.
8:41 PM Ross: progression as in living, or progression as in industriliazation?
and don't condescend me
8:42 PM me: i think 5. is that i have to leave the reader questioning whether the ultimate halt of human progression locked in amber is a bad thing or just something that would have happened anyway in one way or another.
progression as in industrialization but also as in living
me: living is industrialization in a way
8:43 PM Ross: that philosphy reminds me of this one guy who comitted mass suicides
me: oh thats great, ross. gosh thanks
you're too kind, really
Ross: that came out kind of bad
i have to admit
but it is true
8:44 PM he said that :why do live...reproduce only to create more generations and turmoil" so that we whould jsut die and return to the "source"
I try to read up on crazies
me: exactly. thats good.
8:45 PM Ross: it gives me perspective
exactly?
hmmm
this conversation is going to be interesting
8:46 PM me: well, see, i don't think we should all kill ourselves, but i don't think that progression is innately "good" or "bad"
living is living
but is industrialization really progression at all?
see, i don't know.
8:47 PM Ross: if not for progression this internet conversation wouldn't exist
and we would have to sit otuside and feel nature and talk in person
me: but maybe this internet conversation doesn't NEED to exist
me: maybe we wouldn't be talking at all because maybe we would have never gone to school and would have never met
8:49 PM or maybe we were so preoccupied with progression that we would never have this conversation in the first place because, i'm sure, nothing in this conversation can be guaranteed as progression either way
so it might have been entirely forbidden in the first place

Rainforest Dreams

2007-01-23T16:02:00.000-08:00

I had never been to the Amazon Rainforest, but I had thought about it. And so did Mr.Ewrin. I know this because whenever I stepped into his cubicle I noticed all the books about the Amazon Rainforest on his bookshelves and I noticed his perfect green eyes dart over to the bookshelves sometimes when he thought I was not watching him or when I was writing something down on my notepad or to tie my shoe.
I wondered, How did it come to this? How did I come to sit here in this cubicle beside Mr. Erwin, poor, crazy Mr. Erwin who dreams about the Amazon Forest?

"Why don't you go?"
"Go...?"
"Why don't you just go to the Amazon?"
He was staring at me.
I gestured my head toward the books.
"I can't go because I'm here," he said. And smiled.
I blinked.
"Have you ever been," I asked.
"No! Of course not!"
I smiled.

Maybe we were both crazy. Letting our cubicles confine our lives into desks and papers and computers and shoelaces and lunch breaks. I was crazy and so was he and I knew it and the more I looked into his restless, confused eyes, the more I want to believe he knew it, too. The more I wanted to visit the Amazon Rainforest with Mr. Erwin.

But the more I thought about escaping to the Amazon, the more I wondered if it would be a disappointment. I wondered if we would arrive and be greeted with the imposing reality of sawdust and smoke and wood. Not wood, really though, timber. I wondered if it was possible that such a thing could happen. That we would arrive and shake hands with foreigners holding chainsaws and tree branches. We would hear the machines laughing as they ground up wood with their teeth. The sun would set and there would be a horrible silence. A silence louder than a thousand cannons would scream into our ears and eat away at our hearts, once so innocently hopeful and once so light. We would imagine the times when we would laugh at fluffy jokes and people with accents and we would sleep under the warmest, most secure blankets and dream vivid, colorful dreams about a living, breathing Amazon Forest.

Such memories would only hinder us then. They would be bags of sand in the Sahara. And we will try to laugh at silly things again. We will kick a pile of sawdust up with our foot and joke, "one million down, one million to go!" and we will laugh pathetic, devilish laughs. Those laughs will flood our souls with guilt and we will, in turn, be suffocated. We will know that those trees made the books and that the books were what inspired our journey in the first place. We will know of the dying cycle and we will run, run naked through the remaining forest. The rainforest mist will seep into our hair and our skin and it will be our tears. It will be good. And we will be running so fast that we will become the trees and their leaves all in one great, green blur. We will become the rainforest creatures and the misty air itself. When they come with their machines and saws they will not see us because, by then, we will be everything. We will be soaked down to our veins with rainforest love, and will be severed by those mechanical hands. First it will be our lips, then our eyes, and then finally our limbs, the one thing that made us one with the forest trees.

We will bleed sap and the rainforest will hear the saws eating at our flesh and will bleed with us. Our golden blood with cover the carpet of roots and fallen leafs on the rainforest floor. The entire Amazon will bleed for us and for themselves and for humanity and they will dance in the sea of sap that will become one huge tidal wave of gold. We will cry and our tears will be drops of amber. After hundreds of years of sadness, finally the sap will dry into amber and everything will be solid.

There will be an unprecedented silence, a silence like no other. One can never imagine such a silence because ever since we have been born we have heard. There has always been distant noises, no matter how quiet, and there has always been hearts beating and breaths taken and the twitching of small hairs. The earth will be muted. The earth will be a ball of amber, one of the deepest and most penetrating silences.

In millions of years, they will find us and dig us out of the brilliant golden amber with machines much like the ones that once destroyed us. They will find us stopped in perfect motion - in elevators, in movie theaters, in skyscrapers, having sex, killing ourselves (bullets in mid-air), on bikes and in cars. Every animal that had been present when the amber sunk into their bodies and forced the air to evacuate their unsuspecting lungs would have been perfectly preserved. And I will wonder if all of these things would have happened if I had not been able to stop them.

computer breaths

2007-01-06T18:59:00.000-08:00

I am a looker. Someone who looks over at people in other cars. Someone who wonders if that person in the other car, the red one with the "I need my space" bumper sticker, if they wish the world was bigger or smaller or if the world would stay the same but still be advancing. Wondering if that person in the other car wishes there were such thing as camoflauge M&M's because he loves camoflauge. He loves the mystery that rides on the backs of camoflauge things. He wishes he were tatooed entierly in camoflauge, but that means he would probably be fired from his job at Best Buy. He loves his job there, he can talk about how many pixels are in the newest Cannon camera and he can watch Finding Nemo at once on twenty television screens over and over, and he loves that each screen is a different size and is colored slightly differently from the next. He loves the hum of the intestines of the electronics constantly fanning themselves, breathing, living. He knows every line from Finding Nemo and sometimes he even wishes he could meet Dory, Nemo's friend, in person, even though he knows he never will because it is an animated film. Somtimes he even imagines himself having conversations with Dory, it is his guilty pleasure, because Finding Nemo is so much more to him than a Pixar film.

At home he likes to watch Mrs. Doubtfire and eat mushrooms, the kind that you can buy cheap at Publix in small, neat, green, pint-sized cardboard cartons. He stays up late, sometimes until 4 or 5 in the morning on days he doesn't have to work. He thinks about how few people are awake as late, or as early, as he is, and how he wishes he were dancing. How he wishes he were living and dancing and riding horses on ranches in New Mexico.

He thinks about sleeping and that when people sleep they are falling. He thinks that people sleep when they can no longer move and how that is juvenile. He thinks about the illusion that living is progress when sleep is the barrels of gasoline drenching life and setting it ablaze. He thinks about what all of this means, but by the time he gets to a conclusion he is asleap and the green carton of mushrooms is gently being lifted up and down as he takes deep, harmonic breaths, and the credits from Mrs. Doubtfire are rolling steadily, oh so steadily, over the screen and the song "Dude Looks like a lady" by areosmith is screaming from his television. It is his lullaby. The neighbors hear this song every so often, it is not unusual to hear this song through the skin-thin, peach-colored wall between their apartment, and they know he has just watched Mrs. Doubtfire because they have seen the movie and know what the end credits sound like. But now I am driving driving driving away and he is crossing lanes and now behind a truck advertising a computer specialist and I am turning left down another street and he is silently dying to me like the last breath of an ancient dinosaur.

beauty of rejection.

2007-01-01T14:23:00.000-08:00

New Year's sucked.

supporting details:
1. In crystal river for a family reunion.
----a. Crystal river = rednecks
----b. Crystal river = fishermen
2. With my brother who wasn't much fun anyways because he was on the phone and everyone else fell asleep.
3. Sat in a golf course.
4. There were ants.
5. There was rain.
6. That hideous thing with J.
7. No fireworks.
8. Crazy rednecks were walking their dog and playing golf when I was trying to rant.

Furthermore.
a. Atrocious thing with J.
b. Horrible feeling of rejection. (See #6. and above.)

...Feliz 2007

Dear N,

2006-12-21T06:47:00.000-08:00

E went back to Paris for Christmas break, but she comes back on the 8th. And, yes, Christmas is in four days and, yes, I am excited. I don't know what I'm getting and I didn't really ask for anything. I got my mom the James Browne acoustical cd and my dad says he wants shower gel, which is an odd gift to get one's dad for Christmas, I think.

I'm not sure what you mean by the "ghetto creed", but maybe I should. E says that I only seem American because I have blonde hair, but other than that, I don't drive a big car or wear a lot of makeup or listen to rap music or eat hamburgers because I am vegan. I think this is strange because not all American girls do that. This makes me think America is outwardly portrayed differently than it really is in a lot of ways. Or maybe that only a small part of America is represented in the media, being the part that is blonde and drives big cars and wears a lot of makeup and eats hamburgers.

Speaking of Australian media, though, Peter Singer came from Australia, right? You've probably heard of him, I would think. Kids in my high school read his stuff and I'm reading one of his books right now.

Congratulations on the holiday bonus. And have fun with that partying.

Speaking of nintendos, I heard that new Wii thing was pretty cool. I have never even seen one, much less played one. I don't understand how a nintendo can be awesome. Isn't it just a box hooked up to a television? Wouldn't that be like saying a computer mouse was awesome? Or that the new version of firefox is awesome?

--L

Dear M,

2006-12-21T05:44:00.000-08:00

I understand if you think I'm overreacting and being mean when I talk about E, and I might be. I'm not sure. This kind of thing has never happened to me, but I do know that she is at least a little bit mean because once my mom went to the store to buy her construction paper and she didn't even say "thank you" or even look up from "One Tree Hill", which is one of her favorite American shows. She just sort of stuck her nose up in the air.

And I do know that she treats me like I am nothing compared to her because I don't listen to rap music or get tanked (and brag about it) or think it's cool to brag about how so many boys like her and how weird they all are, like she does. She says that my boyfriend likes her so much and that he is a freak.

I try hard to get along with her, I really do. But it's difficult when she has friends over and I'm sitting on the couch reading and she points me out to her friends and sort of whispers, but I can hear her, "And this is L, but she's like... a loser". And they will toss their heads back and laugh. And I feel like I am in middle school or something, with bullies. Only, she lives with me and I never was actually bullied in middle school.

I suppose in some ways I would be more okay with her meanness if I was mean to her first or if there was some other initiation, but it's nothing like that because I was so kind to her when she first came. I was the one helping her find her way to class before she could speak English well and the one helping her find friends. She even wears my clothes.

I hope all of that sounds how I wanted it to because I find this subject very hard to express to other people in a way that they can sympathize with me and reassure me that nothing she says or thinks means anything. Which is true, I suppose, but hard to remember sometimes.

To look at this from a different angle, perhaps all of the resentment I have towards her is just a strange animal instinct. For example, if there was a bear family living in a cave and one day another girl bear came and lived in the cave and this bear was close in age with the 15-year old girl bear and French and they went to the same high school and the same parties and pretty much did everything with her, I think there would be some resentment without even counting in all the horribly devilish things she really does and only factoring in all the time they spent together and the fact that if I was a bear and so was she, I might be seeing her as competition. All this time I might have been seeing her subconsciously as competition and not realized it. Wow, this is why I like letters so much.

I am positive I am not leaving anything out, because that's what my friends ask when I talk about her and might be what you were thinking. The only thing I am really leaving out is that she is staying in our house for free and she doesn't say thank you (maybe that's just a French thing?) or is even nice in return (again, a French thing?). I suppose she is nice to my brother, though, in a way, because she flirts with him 24/7. If that even qualifies as being nice. But I hear that is just a French thing, too.

She's back in Paris for Christmas break and comes back on January 8, though. I've decided that when she comes back I'm going to try really hard not to let her bother me so much and just be so, so nice to her and see how that turns out. I'll let you know.

Love always,
L

Welcome to the Society of the Mind: A Consortium of Intelligent Thought

2006-12-02T15:49:00.000-08:00

As there are so many, many good and wonderful things going for me, which there are,
I hate to
ruin them all
with petty inconvienciences.

However.

My life, once a beautifully
folded
newspaper, is now fallen apart.
The different sections soaring down the street, with the wind,
like frightened pigeons.

And they are not looking back.
Nor do they
have any intention of doing so.

The blind frusteration that comes
with the disinigration of those
loose pages
could, in fact, be more frusterating
than the initiators.

blushes mad like meaningless

2006-11-27T14:28:00.000-08:00

For now, the drive on my laptop is currently ruined. Lost. There are computer technicians intricatly investigating the problem as I type, at least that is what I have been told.

I have been told that they are trying to save its hardware, my work. Everything. But the chances are slim for survival. They are keeping it overnight to fully troubleshoot the problem.

How? Why? I asked the computer man, my voice cracking as if about to cry.

It could be for a number of reasons. You might have dropped it too hard. But, since it seems so dear to you, that probably wouldn't be the case.

Oh, no. No. No. No.

And now, I have oogles of homework to do because everything, everything is on that disk drive. I must recreate the hours of work.

But somehow, this feels more important, because one day an influential writer will find this small, seemingly insignificant voice, this creative vent into which I channel my thoughts, and read everything I have ever posted and will say to himself, "I must meet this writer, must find him or her and make their work known".

I can feel it. It is destiny.

And, before I can say, "No! Wait! My laptop! My darling! She must be okay!" I will be wisked off to a New York apartment/writer's studio, much like Andy Warhol's Factory, with many other witers, all of them young and vivid. And I, the yougest and most vivid of them all, bursting with fresh ideas and colors.

And we will be a young band of writers, scraping up meger amounts of food and shelter, ever so delicately. And we will be excellent, our youthful minds viciously creating works of art that have never been produced, are so original that the public, our readers, does not know what to do with it. We are radical. We are new. The world, still so young in its creation, it not yet ready for us.

Only few buy articles that feature us until, one day, we are discovered by The New Yorker and I am published. One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

A former (and barely notable, if not for her failing me) history teacher I once had in high school, who so avidly reads articles in The New Yorker and who, so unsympathetitically, failed me, inspects the contents page. Beside 'Fiction' there is a name. Delicate splotches of ink gather together to form letters and those letters are the beautifully hopeful, orphaned children in a family that is a name. A name that is mine.

Her mind recognizes the name. She knows she failed me. She knows she must now retire from teaching because she once told me my ten page essay on child labor was a discrase. She is distraught. Says she can only go on if I will accept her apology.

I recieve a letter in the mail, or no, a call. She is weeping, histarically, begging for forgiveness. My work of ficton had changed her life, now she is knowing that she let such a prosperous, ready mind float by her, unable to aknowledge my glowing talent.

Of course I am more than willing to help. I reassure her, telling her that I wasn't even that great in the beginning. I had no sence of self, no foundation on which to build on. A wondering soul in a forest of hallucinations. Only after teaching me, I tell her, did the endless barrels of gasoline drench my creativity and the flame of initiation set it ablaze. Only until then did the inferno commence and the conflagration begin.

But now, now there are studies. Until the future reader of my work considers me worthy. Now there is homework and my poor, helpless computer (we must pray for her!). And now there is no time for this sort of creative outlet. Sympathy. Sympathy.

I never said that. I never said that.

2006-11-26T18:02:00.000-08:00

She slams the door as she walks out of the house.
She will never come back, I think.
Her heart, I mean, will never return.
Always there will be an awkward margin of emotions between them.
I hear him say something about killing himself.
Hypothetically, he says. Hypothetically.
What? You're going to kill yourself? she says.
No, hypothetically. Hypothetically.
How can you kill yourself hypothetically? she says.
Do you want to kill yourself? she says. Hypothetically?

I hear them talk about their house in St.Petersburg.
He wants to sell it. The money.
She wants to keep it. Her family, she says. The memories.
Both of her parents are dead. Her father died when she was fourteen.

But the money, he says. The money.
She is crying and is walking, running, towards to door.
And that is when she slams it and afterward everything stops.

But there is no silence to us. Just the throbbing of our hearts in our ears.
The pressure of the blood rocking back and forth through the veins.

The power has gone out with that slam and we are searching for the flashlights.
Quickly, methodically, painstakingly we search.
The flashlights, fuck, where did they go? Fuck.
We search and surely she is laughing at the patheticness of this darkness.
Failed. Yes. We have failed eachother now and are destroyed by the sheer blackness, crumbling our pride, which is only visible under the yellow glow of those damn, damn, untrustworthy kitchen lights.
Oh, the precious light, why have you forsaken us?

LOVE IS

2006-11-18T16:37:00.000-08:00

Love is an elderly couple crossing the street.

Love is a dying elephant in the Sahara.

Love is Tarzan living with
the apes.

Love is sleeping on the hard, unforgiving surface of an
otherwise charming
cobblestone alley.

Love is using grammatically incorrect words.

Love is the beer cap you step on
walking to the bathroom barefoot.

Love is an eagle soaring over the
knowing clouds of somber melancholy.

The lost pad of paper
with the most ingenious and original ideas,
that is love.

Love is an old woman
scolding
a dirty dog.

And the dog,
he is love too.

Love is a mysterious bruise,
yellowing around its even
more mysterious
edges.

Love is the men of all great murders,
moments that still scream
with revenge.

Love is the challenging
curtain
of youth.

Love is something harsh
and fragmented.

Love is the frame
around the picture.

Love is the sound dust particles make
dispersing from a forgotten jacket,
the sounds the deaf imagine.

Love is the fat ladies that
are tourists outside McDonalds.

Love is their poor, small, overworking hearts,
relentlessly beating, fighting their
dangerously
low
health standards.

Love is their grandson,
desperately searching for a promising
truth in the golden arches.

Love is dead ends
and butterflies,
and scary clowns that frighten little children.

Love is a determined Hitler,
dreaming pleasant and incessant dreams of blue-eyed angels
salted with golden, angelic hair.

And love is the spider
spinning its web, the
ink with which this lovely story
of humanity is written.

And love is a word used
far too much
and much too soon.

a chocolate chip in the sugar cookie of your soul

2006-11-10T15:50:00.000-08:00

The way the sun shines and
the colors shifting through the trees
like lasers on the cornea
of you eye.

The sails of a thousand boats
on the calm, clear, and blessed water
of a single thought.
The invisible wind becomming
ever so
visible
within this naked eye.
The soul of which is perched
under a dimming light
singing a noiseless tune.

The path of your life is outside of my window. It has taken the form of a wise oak tree. Each morning its branches whisper me awake.

2006-10-26T20:27:00.000-07:00

A drop of rain is perched atop a rainforest leaf.

A drop of rain is dancing down a school bus window as an awaiting child is brushing back his damp hair.
There is a brown bag in his right hand and his fingers wrap around it tightly when the bus driver yells at the other children for talking.
The bus driver is a wildebeast.
His muddy toes wiggle in his sandles.
They are worms making tunnels in dirt.
A sneeze to his left.
A journey to his right.

Wind howles past the open windows.
This is the ocean.
Outside it is dawn. Above the horizon the sun blinks to the world.
The wheat fields of the world sigh a great and mighty sigh.
The children of the world stick and unstick the dried glue between their fingers and crumple their brown lunch bags in between their sweaty hands.
They link and unlink their fingers in anticipation.
They are lighting the candles and the flames dance the dance of humanity infront of a million eager eyes.

Their breaths crackle and pop like the artic ice.
Clumsy feet upon the grassy hills are the beat of escaping memories sacrificing themselves to time.
The restless wheels.
The drifting shores.
The song of rain on rainforest leaves.

welcome to earth

2006-10-12T19:23:00.000-07:00

A fragile collision of
elements and what have you
placed upon elaborate pedistools
and welcome to earth.

clouds cry when the humidity is too much for their oily complexion

2006-10-05T17:15:00.000-07:00

little spots of you
dripping down into
the dust
the dry
dust

are my best friends
today.

5ome words.

2006-09-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

selfish.
hates air conditioning.
i love.
another skinhead.
your peace sign.
knows what happened.
looking good.
going in the boat.
have bacardi.
the score.
with an egg and vinegar.
parties tonight.
gandhi.

[makes eye contact]

gentlemen.
god bless america.
gentlemen.

so the girl.

2006-09-30T09:09:00.000-07:00

in a world full of
everything
we are so
nothing

so alone
but so together
and rubbing up against
one another

so that i dont know
if my best friend
is today or
yesterday

slipping down
the drain
slowing down
the flow

using irrelevant
thoughts
words
and what have you

strive for the nothing
money
when we should be
feeling and being

the
dance
of
humanity
is
calling

falling in love
with our own emotions
but we are too concerned
if it is

fucking
legal.

a musical idea.

2006-09-23T18:40:00.000-07:00

the french girl
who lives on
my level
strokes my brothers back
when they walk

i walk alone
behind
them
and watch the trees
as they cry

their sympathy upon my
self pity
is truly
an incredible
feat

they know
i am the lonely
sister who cannot
coo
and hum
and snap
and click my tounge
and dance
like the french girl

she takes
my picture
and i am probably
scowling
scowling
scowling

The most adoring citizens.

2006-09-23T18:35:00.000-07:00

she is watching
a video about how to get
people to give money to
charaties.

i tell her the united
states is the second-worst
donator in the entire
world.

only italy is below us.
a fact that speaks for itself.

when i tell her this she
orders me to be quiet because
she has to watch
this important film.

a fact that speaks for itself.