Today has been the hardest of my life.
My skin has never been more devoid of color except for two paintbrush marks of red smeared across each cheekbone. My lips match now, burned raw by every morning walk and my inevitable yet unconscious gnawing at my lower lip. It bleeds but I never know, except occasionally a client points it out and looks concerned. Concern, my least favorite display of emotion. In this particular circumstance I believe it to be much less concern and more likely disgust. I pay no mind to it. I pay no mind to much these days but I do feel the wind blow across my collarbones and the tops of my wrists, eyelashes and the tip of my nose. It seems that this feels more like home than anything. I think to myself with a widening smile, “Hello, I love you and I am so glad you’re back”. To extend my reprieve, I breathe in deeply, my chest swells, I close my eyes and keep my hands in shapes of stars held out in front of me. My stay always ends when an old pick-up flies by pushing me forward again and disconcertingly yells, “Keep going, keep moving, you can not stay here or there or anywhere but you should know that by now”.
Home seems thousands of miles away but there is my apartment where I rarely sleep, hardly eat but am in good company most of the time so I swallow my absent sense of wholeness and crawl up the muted green stairs. I am always fumbling for my keys and a shiver goes up my spine when I, for a split second, think that I am alone. Cracking the door reveals a familiar happy-faced animal that leaps against my body but god, of course I don’t mind. He says “Hello, I love you and I’m so glad you’re back” and I greet him with a pat on the head before scurrying off to my bedroom to peel away my clothes. Standing for a moment, I look around that poor excuse of a bedroom where I find no salvation except for in the photos taped on the walls and in the letters and books stacked amongst my jewelry on that too-small dresser. “My only real things” escapes from my lips and I attempt to shake off my loneliness by losing myself in my Mother’s old grey sweater again. Hello, I love you and I’m so glad you’re back.
Somehow knowingly she calls with first words, “It’s snowing! Pretty snow globe snow. I wish you were here.”
I am but you should know that by now.
“Hello, I love you and I’m so glad you’re back.”
Some days I think I can be a real pessimist. Other days, I feel like I’m not cynical enough. I know I’m having one of the latter every time I pick up a gas-station-sandwich, just *knowing* it will be better this time. You know, it never fucking is. I dunno what’s so goddam alluring about saran-wrappedness, but it gets me every time. I need to be reminded that no matter how hard they try, gas stations will never, ever produce food that won’t cause some form of cancer three ways.
“Gossip about celebrities exists for the same reason religion exists - because it is a very powerful meme. Humans evolved to fit about 150 people into their sphere-of-people-they-care-about (or monkeysphere if you’re familiar with that article), and by gossiping about those people with others the people in a community are able to confirm their community’s morals and standards. Most of us no longer live in small villages of about 150 people, so celebrities serve as a proxy - that is, while you and I probably don’t know ANY of the same people, we both “know” a bunch of celebrities. By having a “national dialogue” (or gossipfest) about these celebrities, our society is working to preserve its “values” (e.g., adultery = bad). Similarly, when you and I talk about a celebrity, we are coming to a consensus that that type of behavior is bad (or good, or none of our business, or whatever we decide about it).”
-subtextual
Wow, this is eloquent. And it makes so much sense.
“There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, if mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.”
Also, borders.com is having a buy-one-get-one-60%off sale all day. I wanted to share that with you.
edit: nevermind.
Serious scientific inquiry needs to happen on the tranquilizing affects of kettle corn on the human brain. My well-grounded theory is that the flavor complexity is just too much for the palette to comprehend and cognitive ability immediately begins to disintegrate - to the degree that all one can do is continually shove handfuls into the mouth while loathing their consummate sloth. I am not immune.
I am* sprawled out on the floor, three pillows built like steps under the arch of my back giving me some semblence of support, and I’m reading. This room is lightly dark and really, really chilly (to the bone, I’m feeling it). There’s a fireplace to my right, but it’s an electric one. An electric fireplace. A carpeted floor, insulated double-paned windows, and a credit-card-cell-phone right here. The heat warms the room, but it’s not the invention of combustion. It’s generated from a 120W plug; it’s pumped into the wooden mantle, pumped over the LCD faux-flames, pumped into the room, pumped into me. Everything about this is the simplest explanation of my life.
It’s what I think I want, and yeah, I’m sated when I get it, but I can’t help but feel like some people (who want the same thing) are somehow feasting on truer results. I need a real fireplace.
*was
